THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES II, VOLUME 1 (of 5)

by Thomas Babington Macaulay. 

Philadelphia

Porter & Coates

VOL. I. 

CONTENTS:

CHAPTER I. 

 Introduction Britain under the Romans Britain under the Saxons Conversion of the Saxons to Christianity Danish Invasions; The Normans The Norman Conquest Separation of England and Normandy Amalgamation of Races English Conquests on the Continent Wars of the Roses Extinction of Villenage Beneficial Operation of the Roman Catholic Religion The early English Polity often misrepresented, and why? Nature of the Limited Monarchies of the Middle Ages Prerogatives of the early English Kings Limitations of the Prerogative Resistance an ordinary Check on Tyranny in the Middle Ages Peculiar Character of the English Aristocracy Government of the Tudors Limited Monarchies of the Middle Ages generally turned into Absolute Monarchies The English Monarchy a singular Exception The Reformation and its Effects Origin of the Church of England Her peculiar Character Relation in which she stood to the Crown The Puritans Their Republican Spirit No systematic parliamentary Opposition offered to the Government of Elizabeth Question of the Monopolies Scotland and Ireland become Parts of the same Empire with England Diminution of the Importance of England after the Accession of James I Doctrine of Divine Right The Separation between the Church and the Puritans becomes wider Accession and Character of Charles I Tactics of the Opposition in the House of Commons Petition of Right Petition of Right violated; Character and Designs of Wentworth Character of Laud Star Chamber and High Commission Ship-Money Resistance to the Liturgy in Scotland A Parliament called and dissolved The Long Parliament First Appearance of the Two great English Parties The Remonstrance Impeachment of the Five Members Departure of Charles from London Commencement of the Civil War Successes of the Royalists Rise of the Independents Oliver Cromwell Selfdenying Ordinance; Victory of the Parliament Domination and Character of the Army Rising against the Military Government suppressed Proceedings against the King His Execution Subjugation of Ireland and Scotland Expulsion of the Long Parliament The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell Oliver succeeded by Richard Fall of Richard and Revival of the Long Parliament Second Expulsion of the Long Parliament The Army of Scotland marches into England Monk declares for a Free Parliament General Election of 1660 The Restoration

CHAPTER II. 

 Conduct of those who restored the House of Stuart unjustly censured Abolition of Tenures by Knight Service; Disbandment of the Army Disputes between the Roundheads and Cavaliers renewed Religious Dissension Unpopularity of the Puritans Character of Charles II Character of the Duke of York and Earl of Clarendon General Election of 1661 Violence of the Cavaliers in the new Parliament Persecution of the Puritans Zeal of the Church for Hereditary Monarchy Change in the Morals of the Community Profligacy of Politicians State of Scotland State of Ireland The Government become unpopular in England War with the Dutch Opposition in the House of Commons Fall of Clarendon State of European Politics, and Ascendancy of France Character of Lewis XIV The Triple Alliance The Country Party Connection between Charles II. And France Views of Lewis with respect to England Treaty of Dover Nature of the English Cabinet The Cabal Shutting of the Exchequer War with the United Provinces, and their extreme Danger William, Prince of Orange Meeting of the Parliament; Declaration of Indulgence It is cancelled, and the Test Act passed The Cabal dissolved Peace with the United Provinces; Administration of Danby Embarrassing Situation of the Country Party Dealings of that Party with the French Embassy Peace of Nimeguen Violent Discontents in England Fall of Danby; the Popish Plot Violence of the new House of Commons Temple's Plan of Government Character of Halifax Character of Sunderland Prorogation of the Parliament; Habeas Corpus Act; Second General Election of 1679 Popularity of Monmouth Lawrence Hyde Sidney Godolphin Violence of Factions on the Subject of the Exclusion Bill Names of Whig and Tory Meeting of Parliament; The Exclusion Bill passes the Commons; \ Exclusion Bill rejected by the Lords Execution of Stafford; General Election of 1681 Parliament held at Oxford, and dissolved Tory Reaction Persecution of the Whigs Charter of the City confiscated; Whig Conspiracies Detection of the Whig Conspiracies Severity of the Government; Seizure of Charters Influence of the Duke of York He is opposed by Halifax Lord Guildford Policy of Lewis State of Factions in the Court of Charles at the time of his Death

CHAPTER III. 

 Great Change in the State of England since 1685 Population of England in 1685 Increase of Population greater in the North than in the South Revenue in 1685 Military System The Navy The Ordnance Noneffective Charge; Charge of Civil Government Great Gains of Ministers and Courtiers State of Agriculture Mineral Wealth of the Country Increase of Rent The Country Gentlemen The Clergy The Yeomanry; Growth of the Towns; Bristol Norwich Other Country Towns Manchester; Leeds; Sheffield Birmingham Liverpool Watering-places; Cheltenham; Brighton; Buxton; Tunbridge Wells Bath London The City Fashionable Part of the Capital Lighting of London Police of London Whitefriars; The Court The Coffee Houses Difficulty of Travelling Badness of the Roads Stage Coaches Highwaymen Inns Post Office Newspapers News-letters The Observator Scarcity of Books in Country Places; Female Education Literary Attainments of Gentlemen Influence of French Literature Immorality of the Polite Literature of England State of Science in England State of the Fine Arts State of the Common People; Agricultural Wages Wages of Manufacturers Labour of Children in Factories Wages of different Classes of Artisans Number of Paupers Benefits derived by the Common People from the Progress of Civilisation Delusion which leads Men to overrate the Happiness of preceding Generations

CHAPTER IV. 

 Death of Charles II Suspicions of Poison Speech of James II. To the Privy Council James proclaimed State of the Administration New Arrangements Sir George Jeffreys The Revenue collected without an Act of Parliament A Parliament called Transactions between James and the French King Churchill sent Ambassador to France; His History Feelings of the Continental Governments towards England Policy of the Court of Rome Struggle in the Mind of James; Fluctuations in his Policy Public Celebration of the Roman Catholic Rites in the Palace His Coronation Enthusiasm of the Tories; Addresses The Elections Proceedings against Oates Proceedings against Dangerfield Proceedings against Baxter Meeting of the Parliament of Scotland Feeling of James towards the Puritans Cruel Treatment of the Scotch Covenanters Feeling of James towards the Quakers William Penn Peculiar Favour shown to Roman Catholics and Quakers Meeting of the English Parliament; Trevor chosen Speaker; Character of Seymour The King's Speech to the Parliament Debate in the Commons; Speech of Seymour The Revenue voted; Proceedings of the Commons concerning Religion Additional Taxes voted; Sir Dudley North Proceedings of the Lords Bill for reversing the Attainder of Stafford

CHAPTER V. 

 Whig Refugees on the Continent Their Correspondents in England Characters of the leading Refugees; Ayloffe; Wade Goodenough; Rumbold Lord Grey Monmouth Ferguson Scotch Refugees; Earl of Argyle Sir Patrick Hume; Sir John Cochrane; Fletcher of Saltoun Unreasonable Conduct of the Scotch Refugees Arrangement for an Attempt on England and Scotland John Locke Preparations made by Government for the Defence of Scotland Conversation of James with the Dutch Ambassadors; Ineffectual Attempts to prevent Argyle from sailing Departure of Argyle from Holland; He lands in Scotland His Disputes with his Followers Temper of the Scotch Nation Argyle's Forces dispersed Argyle a Prisoner His Execution. Execution of Rumbold Death of Ayloffe Devastation of Argyleshire Ineffectual Attempts to prevent Monmouth from leaving Holland His Arrival at Lyme His Declaration His Popularity in the West of England Encounter of the Rebels with the Militia at Bridport Encounter of the Rebels with the Militia at Axminster; News of the Rebellion carried to London; Loyalty of the Parliament Reception of Monmouth at Taunton He takes the Title of King His Reception at Bridgewater Preparations of the Government to oppose him His Design on Bristol He relinquishes that Design Skirmish at Philip's Norton; Despondence of Monmouth He returns to Bridgewater; The Royal Army encamps at Sedgemoor Battle of Sedgemoor Pursuit of the Rebels Military Executions; Flight of Monmouth His Capture His Letter to the King; He is carried to London His Interview with the King His Execution His Memory cherished by the Common People Cruelties of the Soldiers in the West; Kirke Jeffreys sets out on the Western Circuit Trial of Alice Lisle The Bloody Assizes Abraham Holmes Christopher Battiseombe; The Hewlings Punishment of Tutchin Rebels Transported Confiscation and Extortion Rapacity of the Queen and her Ladies Grey; Cochrane; Storey Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson Jeffreys made Lord Chancellor Trial and Execution of Cornish Trials and Executions of Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt Trial and Execution of Bateman Persecution of the Protestant Dissenters

HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

CHAPTER I. 

I PURPOSE to write the history of England from the accession of KingJames the Second down to a time which is within the memory of men stillliving. I shall recount the errors which, in a few months, alienated aloyal gentry and priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall trace thecourse of that revolution which terminated the long struggle between oursovereigns and their parliaments, and bound up together the rights ofthe people and the title of the reigning dynasty. I shall relate how thenew settlement was, during many troubled years, successfully defendedagainst foreign and domestic enemies; how, under that settlement, the authority of law and the security of property were found to becompatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action neverbefore known; how, from the auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnishedno example; how our country, from a state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers; how heropulence and her martial glory grew together; how, by wise and resolutegood faith, was gradually established a public credit fruitful ofmarvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have seemedincredible; how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinksinto insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at lengthunited to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble tiesof interest and affection; how, in America, the British colonies rapidlybecame far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes andPizarro had added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth; how in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less splendid and more durablethan that of Alexander. 

Nor will it be less my duty faithfully to record disasters mingled withtriumphs, and great national crimes and follies far more humiliatingthan any disaster. It will be seen that even what we justly account ourchief blessings were not without alloy. It will be seen that the systemwhich effectually secured our liberties against the encroachments ofkingly power gave birth to a new class of abuses from which absolutemonarchies are exempt. It will be seen that, in consequence partlyof unwise interference, and partly of unwise neglect, the increase ofwealth and the extension of trade produced, together with immense good, some evils from which poor and rude societies are free. It will be seenhow, in two important dependencies of the crown, wrong was followedby just retribution; how imprudence and obstinacy broke the ties whichbound the North American colonies to the parent state; how Ireland, cursed by the domination of race over race, and of religion overreligion, remained indeed a member of the empire, but a witheredand distorted member, adding no strength to the body politic, andreproachfully pointed at by all who feared or envied the greatness ofEngland. 

Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of thischequered narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all religiousminds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the history of ourcountry during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the historyof physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement. Those whocompare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age whichexists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: butno man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to takea morose or desponding view of the present. 

I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have undertaken ifI were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of the rise and fallof administrations, of intrigues in the palace, and of debates in theparliament. It will be my endeavour to relate the history of the peopleas well as the history of the government, to trace the progress ofuseful and ornamental arts, to describe the rise of religious sectsand the changes of literary taste, to portray the manners of successivegenerations and not to pass by with neglect even the revolutions whichhave taken place in dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements. Ishall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignityof history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of thenineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors. 

The events which I propose to relate form only a single act of a greatand eventful drama extending through ages, and must be very imperfectlyunderstood unless the plot of the preceding acts be well known. I shalltherefore introduce my narrative by a slight sketch of the history ofour country from the earliest times. I shall pass very rapidly over manycenturies: but I shall dwell at some length on the vicissitudes of thatcontest which the administration of King James the Second brought to adecisive crisis. [1]

Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness whichshe was destined to attain. Her inhabitants when first they becameknown to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the natives of theSandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman arms; but shereceived only a faint tincture of Roman arts and letters. Of the westernprovinces which obeyed the Caesars, she was the last that was conquered, and the first that was flung away. No magnificent remains of Latinporches and aqueducts are to be found in Britain. No writer of Britishbirth is reckoned among the masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It isnot probable that the islanders were at any time generally familiar withthe tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the vicinityof the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been predominant. Itdrove out the Celtic; it was not driven out by the Teutonic; and it isat this day the basis of the French, Spanish and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears never to have superseded the old Gaelicspeech, and could not stand its ground against the German. 

The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons had derivedfrom their southern masters was effaced by the calamities of the fifthcentury. In the continental kingdoms into which the Roman empire wasthen dissolved, the conquerors learned much from the conquered race. InBritain the conquered race became as barbarous as the conquerors. 

All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the continentalprovinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric, Clovis, Alboin, werezealous Christians. The followers of Ida and Cerdic, on the other hand, brought to their settlements in Britain all the superstitions of theElbe. While the German princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo, Arles, andRavenna listened with reverence to the instructions of bishops, adoredthe relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching theNicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performingsavage rites in the temples of Thor and Woden. 

The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the WesternEmpire kept up some intercourse with those eastern provinces where theancient civilisation, though slowly fading away under the influence ofmisgovernment, might still astonish and instruct barbarians, where thecourt still exhibited the splendour of Diocletian and Constantine, where the public buildings were still adorned with the sculptures ofPolycletus and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants, themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still read andinterpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes, and of Plato. From this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores were, to thepolished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects of a mysterioushorror, such as that with which the Ionians of the age of Homer hadregarded the Straits of Scylla and the city of the Laestrygoniancannibals. There was one province of our island in which, as Procopiushad been told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air wassuch that no man could inhale it and live. To this desolate region thespirits of the departed were ferried over from the land of the Franks atmidnight. A strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly office. Thespeech of the dead was distinctly heard by the boatmen, their weightmade the keel sink deep in the water; but their forms were invisibleto mortal eye. Such were the marvels which an able historian, thecontemporary of Belisarius, of Simplicius, and of Tribonian, gravelyrelated in the rich and polite Constantinople, touching the country inwhich the founder of Constantinople had assumed the imperial purple. Concerning all the other provinces of the Western Empire we havecontinuous information. It is only in Britain that an age of fablecompletely separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric andThrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are historical men andwomen. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordredare mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and whoseadventures must be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus. 

At length the darkness begins to break; and the country which had beenlost to view as Britain reappears as England. The conversion of theSaxon colonists to Christianity was the first of a long series ofsalutary revolutions. It is true that the Church had been deeplycorrupted both by that superstition and by that philosophy against whichshe had long contended, and over which she had at last triumphed. Shehad given a too easy admission to doctrines borrowed from the ancientschools, and to rites borrowed from the ancient temples. Roman policyand Gothic ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, hadcontributed to deprave her. Yet she retained enough of the sublimetheology and benevolent morality of her earlier days to elevate manyintellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things also which at a laterperiod were justly regarded as among her chief blemishes were, in theseventh century, and long afterwards, among her chief merits. Thatthe sacerdotal order should encroach on the functions of the civilmagistrate would, in our time, be a great evil. But that which in an ageof good government is an evil may, in an ago of grossly bad government, be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by wiselaws well administered, and by an enlightened public opinion, than bypriestcraft: but it is better that men should be governed by priestcraftthan by brute violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan than by sucha warrior as Penda. A society sunk in ignorance, and ruled by merephysical force, has great reason to rejoice when a class, of which theinfluence is intellectual and moral, rises to ascendancy. Such a classwill doubtless abuse its power: but mental power, even when abused, is still a nobler and better power than that which consists merely incorporeal strength. We read in our Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who, when at the height of greatness, were smitten with remorse, who abhorredthe pleasures and dignities which they had purchased by guilt, whoabdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone for their offences bycruel penances and incessant prayers. These stories have drawn forthbitter expressions of contempt from some writers who, while they boastedof liberality, were in truth as narrow-minded as any monk of the darkages, and whose habit was to apply to all events in the history of theworld the standard received in the Parisian society of the eighteenthcentury. Yet surely a system which, however deformed by superstition, introduced strong moral restraints into communities previously governedonly by vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a system whichtaught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanestbondman, a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve a morerespectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists. 

The same observations will apply to the contempt with which, in thelast century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages, thesanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of the middleages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to travel by liberalcuriosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was better that the rudeinhabitant of the North should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim, than that he should never see anything but those squalid cabins anduncleared woods amidst which he was born. In times when life and whenfemale honour were exposed to daily risk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the precinct of a shrine should be regarded withan irrational awe, than that there should be no refuge inaccessible tocruelty and licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapableof forming extensive political combinations, it was better that theChristian nations should be roused and united for the recovery of theHoly Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be overwhelmed bythe Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a later period, have beenjustly thrown on the indolence and luxury of religious orders, it wassurely good that, in an age of ignorance and violence, there should bequiet cloisters and gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safelycultivated, in which gentle and contemplative natures could find anasylum, in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing theÆneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle, in which he who had a genius for art might illuminate a martyrology orcarve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn for natural philosophymight make experiments on the properties of plants and minerals. Hadnot such retreats been scattered here and there, among the huts ofa miserable peasantry, and the castles of a ferocious aristocracy, European society would have consisted merely of beasts of burden andbeasts of prey. The Church has many times been compared by divinesto the ark of which we read in the Book of Genesis: but never was theresemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she alone rode, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the greatworks of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing within her thatfeeble germ from which a Second and more glorious civilisation was tospring. 

Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the darkages, productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was to unite thenations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth. What the Olympianchariot course and the Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities, fromTrebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her Bishop were to all Christiansof the Latin communion, from Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew upsentiments of enlarged benevolence. Races separated from each other byseas and mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code ofpublic law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not seldommitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished enemies wereall members of one great federation. 

Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A regularcommunication was opened between our shores and that part of Europe inwhich the traces of ancient power and policy were yet discernible. Many noble monuments which have since been destroyed or defaced stillretained their pristine magnificence; and travellers, to whom Livy andSallust were unintelligible, might gain from the Roman aqueducts andtemples some faint notion of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa, stillglittering with bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of itscolumns and statues, the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into aquarry, told to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story of thatgreat civilised world which had passed away. The islanders returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half opened minds, and told thewondering inhabitants of the hovels of London and York that, near thegrave of Saint Peter, a mighty race, now extinct, had piled up buildingswhich would never be dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followedin the train of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustanage was assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. Thenames of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout Europe. Suchwas the state of our country when, in the ninth century, began the lastgreat migration of the northern barbarians. 

During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour forthinnumerable pirates, distinguished by strength, by valour, by mercilessferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No country suffered somuch from these invaders as England. Her coast lay near to the portswhence they sailed; nor was any shire so far distant from the sea asto be secure from attack. The same atrocities which had attended thevictory of the Saxon over the Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at the hand of the Dane. Civilization, --just asit began to rise, was met by this blow, and sank down once more. Largecolonies of adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on theeastern shores of our island, spread gradually westward, and, supportedby constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the dominionof the whole realm. The struggle between the two fierce Teutonic breedslasted through six generations. Each was alternately paramount. Cruelmassacres followed by cruel retribution, provinces wasted, conventsplundered, and cities rased to the ground, make up the greater part ofthe history of those evil days. At length the North ceased to send fortha constant stream of fresh depredators; and from that time the mutualaversion of the races began to subside. Intermarriage became frequent. The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons; and thus one causeof deadly animosity was removed. The Danish and Saxon tongues, bothdialects of one widespread language, were blended together. But thedistinction between the two nations was by no means effaced, whenan event took place which prostrated both, in common slavery anddegradation, at the feet of a third people. 

The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom. Their valour andferocity had made them conspicuous among the rovers whom Scandinavia hadsent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their sails were long the terror ofboth coasts of the Channel. Their arms were repeatedly carried far intothe heart of: the Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under thewalls of Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs ofCharlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered bya noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was their favouriteelement. In that province they founded a mighty state, which graduallyextended its influence over the neighbouring principalities of Britannyand Maine. Without laying aside that dauntless valour which had been theterror of every land from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidlyacquired all, and more than all, the knowledge and refinement which theyfound in the country where they settled. Their courage secured theirterritory against foreign invasion. They established internal order, such as had long been unknown in the Frank empire. They embracedChristianity; and with Christianity they learned a great part of whatthe clergy had to teach. They abandoned their native speech, and adoptedthe French tongue, in which the Latin was the predominant element. Theyspeedily raised their new language to a dignity and importance which ithad never before possessed. They found it a barbarous jargon; they fixedit in writing; and they employed it in legislation, in poetry, and inromance. They renounced that brutal intemperance to which all the otherbranches of the great German family were too much inclined. The politeluxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the coarsevoracity and drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish neighbours. He lovedto display his magnificence, not in huge piles of food and hogsheads ofstrong drink, but in large and stately edifices, rich armour, gallanthorses, choice falcons, well ordered tournaments, banquets delicaterather than abundant, and wines remarkable rather for their exquisiteflavour than for their intoxicating power. That chivalrous spirit, whichhas exercised so powerful an influence on the politics, morals, andmanners of all the European nations, was found in the highest exaltationamong the Norman nobles. Those nobles were distinguished by theirgraceful bearing and insinuating address. They were distinguished alsoby their skill in negotiation, and by a natural eloquence which theyassiduously cultivated. It was the boast of one of their historians thatthe Norman gentlemen were orators from the cradle. But their chieffame was derived from their military exploits. Every country, fromthe Atlantic Ocean to the Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies of theirdiscipline and valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a handful ofwarriors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another founded the monarchyof the Two Sicilies, and saw the emperors both of the East and of theWest fly before his arms. A third, the Ulysses of the first crusade, wasinvested by his fellow soldiers with the sovereignty of Antioch; anda fourth, the Tancred whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, wascelebrated through Christendom as the bravest and most generous of thedeliverers of the Holy Sepulchre. 

The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to produce an effecton the public mind of England. Before the Conquest, English princesreceived their education in Normandy. English sees and English estateswere bestowed on Normans. The French of Normandy was familiarly spokenin the palace of Westminster. The court of Rouen seems to have beento the court of Edward the Confessor what the court of Versailles longafterwards was to the court of Charles the Second. 

The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not onlyplaced a Duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up the wholepopulation of England to the tyranny of the Norman race. The subjugationof a nation by a nation has seldom, even in Asia, been more complete. The country was portioned out among the captains of the invaders. Strong military institutions, closely connected with the institution ofproperty, enabled the foreign conquerors to oppress the children of thesoil. A cruel penal code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, thoughbeaten down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some boldmen, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook themselves tothe woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest laws, wageda predatory war against their oppressors. Assassination was an event ofdaily occurrence. Many Normans suddenly disappeared leaving no trace. The corpses of many were found bearing the marks of violence. Death bytorture was denounced against the murderers, and strict search wasmade for them, but generally in vain; for the whole nation was in aconspiracy to screen them. It was at length thought necessary to laya heavy fine on every Hundred in which a person of French extractionshould be found slain; and this regulation was followed up by anotherregulation, providing that every person who was found slain should besupposed to be a Frenchman, unless he was proved to be a Saxon. 

During the century and a half which followed the Conquest, there is, tospeak strictly, no English history. The French Kings of Englandrose, indeed, to an eminence which was the wonder and dread of allneighbouring nations. They conquered Ireland. They received the homageof Scotland. By their valour, by their policy, by their fortunatematrimonial alliances, they became far more popular on the Continentthan their liege lords the Kings of France. Asia, as well as Europe, was dazzled by the power and glory of our tyrants. Arabian chroniclersrecorded with unwilling admiration the fall of Acre, the defence ofJoppa, and the victorious march to Ascalon; and Arabian motherslong awed their infants to silence with the name of the lionheartedPlantagenet. At one time it seemed that the line of Hugh Capet was aboutto end as the Merovingian and Carlovingian lines had ended, and that asingle great monarchy would spread from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees. Sostrong an association is established in most minds between the greatnessof a sovereign and the greatness of the nation which he rules, thatalmost every historian of England has expatiated with a sentiment ofexultation on the power and splendour of her foreign masters, and haslamented the decay of that power and splendour as a calamity to ourcountry. This is, in truth, as absurd as it would be in a Haytian negroof our time to dwell with national pride on the greatness of Lewis theFourteenth, and to speak of Blenheim and Ramilies with patriotic regretand shame. The Conqueror and his descendants to the fourth generationwere not Englishmen: most of them were born in France: they spent thegreater part of their lives in France: their ordinary speech was French:almost every high office in their gift was filled by a Frenchman: everyacquisition which they made on the Continent estranged them more andmore from the population of our island. One of the ablest among themindeed attempted to win the hearts of his English subjects by espousingan English princess. But, by many of his barons, this marriage wasregarded as a marriage between a white planter and a quadroon girl wouldnow be regarded in Virginia. In history he is known by the honourablesurname of Beauclerc; but, in his own time, his own countrymencalled him by a Saxon nickname, in contemptuous allusion to his Saxonconnection. 

Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, succeeded in unitingall France under their government, it is probable that England wouldnever have had an independent existence. Her princes, her lords, herprelates, would have been men differing in race and language fromthe artisans and the tillers of the earth. The revenues of her greatproprietors would have been spent in festivities and diversions on thebanks of the Seine. The noble language of Milton and Burke would haveremained a rustic dialect, without a literature, a fixed grammar, or afixed orthography, and would have been contemptuously abandoned to theuse of boors. No man of English extraction would have risen to eminence, except by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman. 

England owes her escape from such calamities to an event which herhistorians have generally represented as disastrous. Her interest was sodirectly opposed to the interests of her rulers that she had no hope butin their errors and misfortunes. The talents and even the virtues of herfirst six French Kings were a curse to her. The follies and vices of theseventh were her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities ofhis father, of Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he evenpossessed the martial courage of Stephen or of Richard, and had the Kingof France at the same time been as incapable as all the other successorsof Hugh Capet had been, the House of Plantagenet must have risen tounrivalled ascendancy in Europe. But, just at this conjuncture, France, for the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was governed by aprince of great firmness and ability. On the other hand England, which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally by wisestatesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of atrifler and a coward. From that moment her prospects brightened. Johnwas driven from Normandy. The Norman nobles were compelled to make theirelection between the island and the continent. Shut up by the sea withthe people whom they had hitherto oppressed and despised, they graduallycame to regard England as their country, and the English as theircountrymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon found that they hadcommon interests and common enemies. Both were alike aggrieved by thetyranny of a bad king. Both were alike indignant at the favour shown bythe court to the natives of Poitou and Aquitaine. The great grandsons ofthose who had fought under William and the great grandsons of those whohad fought under Harold began to draw near to each other in friendship;and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, wonby their united exertions, and framed for their common benefit. 

Here commences the history of the English nation. The history of thepreceding events is the history of wrongs inflicted and sustained byvarious tribes, which indeed all dwelt on English ground, but whichregarded each other with aversion such as has scarcely ever existedbetween communities separated by physical barriers. For even the mutualanimosity of countries at war with each other is languid when comparedwith the animosity of nations which, morally separated, are yet locallyintermingled. In no country has the enmity of race been carried fartherthan in England. In no country has that enmity been more completelyeffaced. The stages of the process by which the hostile elements weremelted down into one homogeneous mass are not accurately known to us. But it is certain that, when John became King, the distinction betweenSaxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the end of thereign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In the time of Richardthe First, the ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was "May Ibecome an Englishman!" His ordinary form of indignant denial was "Do youtake me for an Englishman?" The descendant of such a gentleman a hundredyears later was proud of the English name. 

The sources of the noblest rivers which spread fertility overcontinents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be soughtin wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps, and rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the history of ourcountry during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there thatwe must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and ourglory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that thenational character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it hasever since retained, 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 distinctnessthat constitution which has ever since, through all changes, preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other freeconstitutions in the world are copies, and which, in spite of somedefects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which any greatsociety has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that theHouse of Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblieswhich now meet, either in the old or in the new world, held its firstsittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity ofa science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival of the imperialjurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who mannedthe rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of Englandterrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges whichstill exist at both the great national seats of learning were founded. Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than the languagesof the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highestpurposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to thetongue of Greece alone. Then too appeared the first faint dawn of thatnoble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the manyglories of England. 

Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races wasall but complete; and it was soon made manifest, by signs not to bemistaken, that a people inferior to none existing in the world had beenformed by the mixture of three branches of the great Teutonic familywith each other, and with the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed, scarcely anything in common between the England to which John had beenchased by Philip Augustus, and the England from which the armies ofEdward the Third went forth to conquer France. 

A period of more than a hundred years followed, during which the chiefobject of the English was to establish, by force of arms, a great empireon the Continent. The claim of Edward to the inheritance occupied bythe House of Valois was a claim in which it might seem that his subjectswere little interested. But the passion for conquest spread fast fromthe prince to the people. The war differed widely from the warswhich the Plantagenets of the twelfth century had waged against thedescendants of Hugh Capet. For the success of Henry the Second, or ofRichard the First, would have made England a province of France. Theeffect of the successes of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth was tomake France, for a time, a province of England. The disdain with which, in the twelfth century, the conquerors from the Continent had regardedthe islanders, was now retorted by the islanders on the people of theContinent. Every yeoman from Kent to Northumberland valued himself asone of a race born for victory and dominion, and looked down withscorn on the nation before which his ancestors had trembled. Even thoseknights of Gascony and Guienne who had fought gallantly under the BlackPrince were regarded by the English as men of an inferior breed, andwere contemptuously excluded from honourable and lucrative commands. Inno long time our ancestors altogether lost sight of the originalground of quarrel. They began to consider the crown of France as amere appendage to the crown of England; and, when in violation of theordinary law of succession, they transferred the crown of England to theHouse of Lancaster, they seem to have thought that the right of Richardthe Second to the crown of France passed, as of course, to that house. The zeal and vigour which they displayed present a remarkable contrastto the torpor of the French, who were far more deeply interested inthe event of the struggle. The most splendid victories recorded in thehistory of the middle ages were gained at this time, against great odds, by the English armies. Victories indeed they were of which a nation mayjustly be proud; for they are to be attributed to the moral superiorityof the victors, a superiority which was most striking in the lowestranks. The knights of England found worthy rivals in the knights ofFrance. Chandos encountered an equal foe in Du Guesclin. But France hadno infantry that dared to face the English bows and bills. A French Kingwas brought prisoner to London. An English King was crowned at Paris. The banner of St. George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and theAlps. On the south of the Ebro the English won a great battle, which fora time decided the fate of Leon and Castile; and the English Companiesobtained a terrible preeminence among the bands of warriors who let outtheir weapons for hire to the princes and commonwealths of Italy. 

Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers during that stirringperiod. While France was wasted by war, till she at length found inher own desolation a miserable defence against invaders, the Englishgathered in their harvests, adorned their cities, pleaded, traded, andstudied in security. Many of our noblest architectural monuments belongto that age. Then rose the fair chapels of New College and of SaintGeorge, the nave of Winchester and the choir of York, the spire ofSalisbury and the majestic towers of Lincoln. A copious and forciblelanguage, formed by an infusion of French into German, was now thecommon property of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it longbefore genius began to apply that admirable machine to worthy purposes. While English warriors, leaving behind them the devastated provinces ofFrance, entered Valladolid in triumph, and spread terror to the gates ofFlorence, English poets depicted in vivid tints all the wide varietyof human manners and fortunes, and English thinkers aspired to know, ordared to doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe. The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos andHawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe. 

In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English people, properlyso called, first take place among the nations of the world. Yet whilewe contemplate with pleasure the high and commanding qualities whichour forefathers displayed, we cannot but admit that the end which theypursued was an end condemned both by humanity and by enlightened policy, and that the reverses which compelled them, after a long and bloodystruggle, to relinquish the hope of establishing a great continentalempire, were really blessings in the guise of disasters. The spirit ofthe French was at last aroused: they began to oppose a vigorous nationalresistance to the foreign conquerors; and from that time the skillof the English captains 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. Sincethat age no British government has ever seriously and steadily pursuedthe design of making great conquests on the Continent. The people, indeed, continued to cherish with pride the recollection of Cressy, ofPoitiers, and of Agincourt. Even after the lapse of many years it waseasy to fire their blood and to draw forth their subsidies by promisingthem an expedition for the conquest of France. But happily the energiesof our country have been directed to better objects; and she nowoccupies in the history of mankind a place far more glorious than ifshe had, as at one time seemed not improbable, acquired by the swordan ascendancy similar to that which formerly belonged to the Romanrepublic. 

Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the warlike peopleemployed in civil strife those arms which had been the terror of Europe. The means of profuse expenditure had long been drawn by the Englishbarons from the oppressed provinces of France. That source of supplywas gone: but the ostentatious and luxurious habits which prosperity hadengendered still remained; and the great lords, unable to gratify theirtastes by plundering the French, were eager to plunder each other. The realm to which they were now confined would not, in the phrase ofComines, 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 animosityof those factions did not really arise from the dispute about thesuccession it lasted long after all ground of dispute about thesuccession was removed. The party of the Red Rose survived the lastprince who claimed the crown in right of Henry the Fourth. The partyof the White Rose survived the marriage of Richmond and Elizabeth. Left without chiefs who had any decent show of right, the adherents ofLancaster rallied round a line of bastards, and the adherents of Yorkset up a succession of impostors. When, at length, many aspiring nobleshad perished on the field of battle or by the hands of the executioner, when many illustrious houses had disappeared forever from history, whenthose great families which remained had been exhausted and sobered bycalamities, it was universally acknowledged that the claims of all thecontending Plantagenets were united in the house of Tudor. 

Meanwhile a change was proceeding infinitely more momentous than theacquisition or loss of any province, than the rise or fall ofany dynasty. Slavery and the evils by which slavery is everywhereaccompanied were fast disappearing. 

It is remarkable that the two greatest and most salutary socialrevolutions which have taken place in England, that revolution which, inthe thirteenth century, put an end to the tyranny of nation over nation, and that revolution which, a few generations later, put an end to theproperty of man in man, were silently and imperceptibly effected. Theystruck contemporary observers with no surprise, and have received fromhistorians a very scanty measure of attention. They were brought aboutneither by legislative regulations nor by physical force. Moral causesnoiselessly effaced first the distinction between Norman and Saxon, andthen the distinction between master and slave. None can venture to fixthe precise moment at which either distinction ceased. Some faint tracesof the old Norman feeling might perhaps have been found late in thefourteenth century. Some faint traces of the institution of villenagewere detected by the curious so late as the days of the Stuarts; nor hasthat institution ever, to this hour, been abolished by statute. 

It would be most unjust not to acknowledge that the chief agent inthese two great deliverances was religion; and it may perhaps be doubtedwhether a purer religion might not have been found a less efficientagent. The benevolent spirit of the Christian morality is undoubtedlyadverse to distinctions of caste. But to the Church of Rome suchdistinctions are peculiarly odious; for they are incompatible with otherdistinctions which are essential to her system. She ascribes to everypriest a mysterious dignity which entitles him to the reverence of everylayman; and she does not consider any man as disqualified, by reasonof his nation or of his family, for the priesthood. Her doctrinesrespecting the sacerdotal character, however erroneous they may be, haverepeatedly mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict society. That superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly noxious which, inregions cursed by the tyranny of race over race, creates an aristocracyaltogether independent of race, inverts the relation between theoppressor and the oppressed, and compels the hereditary master to kneelbefore the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To this day, in some countries where negro slavery exists, Popery appears inadvantageous contrast to other forms of Christianity. It is notoriousthat the antipathy between the European and African races is by nomeans so strong at Rio Janerio as at Washington. In our own country thispeculiarity of the Roman Catholic system produced, during the middleages, many salutary effects. It is true that, shortly after the battleof Hastings, Saxon prelates and abbots were violently deposed, and thatecclesiastical adventurers from the Continent were intruded by hundredsinto lucrative benefices. Yet even then pious divines of Norman bloodraised their voices against such a violation of the constitution of theChurch, refused to accept mitres from the hands of William, and chargedhim, on the peril of his soul, not to forget that the vanquishedislanders were his fellow Christians. The first protector whom theEnglish found among the dominant caste was Archbishop Anselm. At atime when the English name was a reproach, and when all the civil andmilitary dignities of the kingdom were supposed to belong exclusivelyto the countrymen of the Conqueror, the despised race learned, withtransports of delight, that one of themselves, Nicholas Breakspear, had been elevated to the papal throne, and had held out his foot to bekissed by ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy. It wasa national as well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes tothe 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 doubtthat he perished by Norman hands, and that the Saxons cherished hismemory with peculiar tenderness and veneration, and, in their popularpoetry, represented him as one of their own race. A successor of Becketwas foremost among the refractory magnates who obtained that charterwhich secured the privileges both of the Norman barons and of the Saxonyeomanry. How great a part the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics subsequentlyhad in the abolition of villenage we learn from the unexceptionabletestimony of Sir Thomas Smith, one of the ablest Protestant counsellorsof 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 successfully hadthe Church used her formidable machinery that, before the Reformationcame, she had enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdomexcept her own, who, to do her justice, seem to have been very tenderlytreated. 

There can be no doubt that, when these two great revolutions had beeneffected, our forefathers were by far the best governed people inEurope. During three hundred years the social system had been in aconstant course of improvement. Under the first Plantagenets there hadbeen barons able to bid defiance to the sovereign, and peasants degradedto the level of the swine and oxen which they tended. The exorbitantpower of the baron had been gradually reduced. The condition of thepeasant had been gradually elevated. Between the aristocracy andthe working people had sprung up a middle class, agricultural andcommercial. There was still, it may be, more inequality than isfavourable to the happiness and virtue of our species: but no man wasaltogether above the restraints of law; and no man was altogether belowits protection. 

That the political institutions of England were, at this early period, regarded by the English with pride and affection, and by the mostenlightened men of neighbouring nations with admiration and envy, is proved by the clearest evidence. But touching the nature of theseinstitutions there has been much dishonest and acrimonious controversy. 

The historical literature of England has indeed suffered grievously froma circumstance which has not a little contributed to her prosperity. Thechange, great as it is, which her polity has undergone during thelast six centuries, has been the effect of gradual development, not ofdemolition and reconstruction. The present constitution of our countryis, to the constitution under which she flourished five hundred yearsago, what the tree is to the sapling, what the man is to the boy. Thealteration has been great. Yet there never was a moment at which thechief part of what existed was not old. A polity thus formed must aboundin anomalies. But for the evils arising from mere anomalies we haveample compensation. Other societies possess written constitutionsmore symmetrical. But no other society has yet succeeded in unitingrevolution with prescription, progress with stability, the energy ofyouth with the majesty of immemorial antiquity. 

This great blessing, however, has its drawbacks: and one of thosedrawbacks is that every source of information as to our early historyhas been poisoned by party spirit. As there is no country wherestatesmen have been so much under the influence of the past, so there isno country where historians have been so much under the influence ofthe present. Between these two things, indeed, there is a naturalconnection. Where history is regarded merely as a picture of life andmanners, or as a collection of experiments from which general maximsof civil wisdom may be drawn, a writer lies under no very pressingtemptation to misrepresent transactions of ancient date. But wherehistory is regarded as a repository of titledeeds, on which the rightsof governments and nations depend, the motive to falsification becomesalmost irresistible. A Frenchman is not now impelled by any stronginterest either to exaggerate or to underrate the power of the Kings ofthe house of Valois. The privileges of the States General, of the Statesof Britanny, of the States of Burgundy, are to him matters of as littlepractical importance as the constitution of the Jewish Sanhedrim or ofthe Amphictyonic Council. The gulph of a great revolution completelyseparates the new from the old system. No such chasm divides theexistence of the English nation into two distinct parts. Our laws andcustoms have never been lost in general and irreparable ruin. With usthe precedents of the middle ages are still valid precedents, and arestill cited, on the gravest occasions, by the most eminent Statesmen. For example, when King George the Third was attacked by the malady whichmade him incapable of performing his regal functions, and when the mostdistinguished lawyers and politicians differed widely as to the coursewhich ought, in such circumstances, to be pursued, the Houses ofParliament would not proceed to discuss any plan of regency till allthe precedents which were to be found in our annals, from the earliesttimes, had been collected and arranged. Committees were appointed toexamine the ancient records of the realm. The first case reported wasthat of the year 1217: much importance was attached to the cases of1326, of 1377, and of 1422: but the case which was justly consideredas most in point was that of 1455. Thus in our country the dearestinterests of parties have frequently been on the results of theresearches of antiquaries. The inevitable consequence was that ourantiquaries conducted their researches in the spirit of partisans. 

It is therefore not surprising that those who have written, concerningthe limits of prerogative and liberty in the old polity of Englandshould generally have shown the temper, not of judges, but of angry anduncandid advocates. For they were discussing, not a speculative matter, but a matter which had a direct and practical connection with the mostmomentous and exciting disputes of their own day. From the commencementof the long contest between the Parliament and the Stuarts down to thetime when the pretensions of the Stuarts ceased to be formidable, fewquestions were practically more important than the question whether theadministration of that family had or had not been in accordance with theancient constitution of the kingdom. This question could be decided onlyby reference to the records of preceding reigns. Bracton and Fleta, theMirror of Justice and the Rolls of Parliament, were ransacked to findpretexts for the excesses of the Star Chamber on one side, and of theHigh Court of Justice on the other. During a long course of years everyWhig historian was anxious to prove that the old English government wasall but republican, every Tory historian to prove that it was all butdespotic. 

With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles of themiddle ages. Both readily found what they sought; and both obstinatelyrefused to see anything but what they sought. The champions of theStuarts could easily point out instances of oppression exercised onthe subject. The defenders of the Roundheads could as easily produceinstances of determined and successful resistance offered to the Crown. The Tories quoted, from ancient writings, expressions almost as servileas were heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The Whigs discoveredexpressions as bold and severe as any that resounded from the judgmentseat of Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous instances in whichKings had extorted money without the authority of Parliament. Anotherset cited cases in which the Parliament had assumed to itself the powerof inflicting punishment on Kings. Those who saw only one half of theevidence would have concluded that the Plantagenets were as absoluteas the Sultans of Turkey: those who saw only the other half would haveconcluded that the Plantagenets had as little real power as the Dogesof Venice; and both conclusions would have been equally remote from thetruth. 

The old English government was one of a class of limited monarchieswhich sprang up in Western Europe during the middle ages, and which, notwithstanding many diversities, bore to one another a strong familylikeness. That there should have been such a likeness is not strange Thecountries in which those monarchies arose had been provinces of the samegreat civilised empire, and had been overrun and conquered, about thesame time, by tribes of the same rude and warlike nation. They weremembers of the same great coalition against Islam. They were incommunion with the same superb and ambitious Church. Their politynaturally took the same form. They had institutions derived partly fromimperial Rome, partly from papal Rome, partly from the old Germany. All had Kings; and in all the kingly office became by degrees strictlyhereditary. All had nobles bearing titles which had originally indicatedmilitary rank. The dignity of knighthood, the rules of heraldry, werecommon to all. All had richly endowed ecclesiastical establishments, municipal corporations enjoying large franchises, and senates whoseconsent was necessary 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 wereundoubtedly extensive. The spirit of religion and the spirit of chivalryconcurred to exalt his dignity. The sacred oil had been poured on hishead. It was no disparagement to the bravest and noblest knights tokneel at his feet. His person was inviolable. He alone was entitled toconvoke the Estates of the realm: he could at his pleasure dismiss them;and his assent was necessary to all their legislative acts. He was thechief of the executive administration, the sole organ of communicationwith foreign powers, the captain of the military and naval forces of thestate, the fountain of justice, of mercy, and of honour. He had largepowers for the regulation of trade. It was by him that money wascoined, that weights and measures were fixed, that marts and havenswere appointed. His ecclesiastical patronage was immense. His hereditaryrevenues, economically administered, sufficed to meet the ordinarycharges of government. His own domains were of vast extent. He was alsofeudal lord paramount of the whole soil of his kingdom, and, in thatcapacity, possessed many lucrative and many formidable rights, whichenabled him to annoy and depress those who thwarted him, and to enrichand aggrandise, without any cost to himself, those who enjoyed hisfavour. 

But his power, though ample, was limited by three great constitutionalprinciples, so ancient that none can say when they began to exist, so potent that their natural development, continued through manygenerations, has produced the order of things under which we now live. 

First, the King could not legislate without the consent of hisParliament. Secondly, he could impose no tax without the consent ofhis Parliament. Thirdly, he was bound to conduct the executiveadministration according to the laws of the land, and, if he broke thoselaws, his advisers and his agents were responsible. 

No candid Tory will deny that these principles had, five hundred yearsago, acquired the authority of fundamental rules. On the other hand, no candid Whig will affirm that they were, till a later period, clearedfrom all ambiguity, or followed out to all their consequences. Aconstitution of the middle ages was not, like a constitution of theeighteenth or nineteenth century, created entire by a single act, and fully set forth in a single document. It is only in a refinedand speculative age that a polity is constructed on system. In rudesocieties the progress of government resembles the progress of languageand of versification. Rude societies have language, and often copiousand energetic language: but they have no scientific grammar, nodefinitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification, and often versificationof great power and sweetness: but they have no metrical canons; and theminstrel whose numbers, regulated solely by his ear, are the delightof his audience, would himself be unable to say of how many dactyls andtrochees each of his lines consists. As eloquence exists before syntax, and song before prosody, so government may exist in a high degreeof excellence long before the limits of legislative, executive, andjudicial power have been traced with precision. 

It was thus in our country. The line which bounded the royalprerogative, though in general sufficiently clear, had not everywherebeen drawn with accuracy and distinctness. There was, therefore, nearthe border some debatable ground on which incursions and reprisalscontinued to take place, till, after ages of strife, plain and durablelandmarks were at length set up. It may be instructive to note in whatway, and to what extent, our ancient sovereigns were in the habit ofviolating the three great principles by which the liberties of thenation were protected. 

No English King has ever laid claim to the general legislative power. The most violent and imperious Plantagenet never fancied himselfcompetent to enact, without the consent of his great council, that ajury should consist of ten persons instead of twelve, that a widow'sdower should be a fourth part instead of a third, that perjury shouldbe a felony, or that the custom of gavelkind should be introduced intoYorkshire. [2] But the King had the power of pardoning offenders; andthere is one point at which the power of pardoning and the power oflegislating seem to fade into each other, and may easily, at least in asimple age, be confounded. A penal statute is virtually annulled if thepenalties which it imposes are regularly remitted as often as they areincurred. The sovereign was undoubtedly competent to remit penaltieswithout limit. He was therefore competent to annul virtually a penalstatute. It might seem that there could be no serious objection to hisdoing formally what he might do virtually. Thus, with the help of subtleand courtly lawyers, grew up, on the doubtful frontier which separatesexecutive from legislative functions, that great anomaly known as thedispensing power. 

That the King could not impose taxes without the consent of Parliamentis admitted to have been, from time immemorial, a fundamental law ofEngland. It was among the articles which John was compelled by theBarons to sign. Edward the First ventured to break through the rule:but, able, powerful, and popular as he was, he encountered an oppositionto which he found it expedient to yield. He covenanted accordingly inexpress terms, for himself and his heirs, that they would never againlevy any aid without the assent and goodwill of the Estates of therealm. His powerful and victorious grandson attempted to violate thissolemn compact: but the attempt was strenuously withstood. At length thePlantagenets gave up the point in despair: but, though they ceased toinfringe the law openly, they occasionally contrived, by evading it, to procure an extraordinary supply for a temporary purpose. They wereinterdicted from taxing; but they claimed the right of begging andborrowing. They therefore sometimes begged in a tone not easily to bedistinguished from that of command, and sometimes borrowed with smallthought of repaying. But the fact that they thought it necessary todisguise their exactions under the names of benevolences and loanssufficiently proves that the authority of the great constitutional rulewas universally recognised. 

The principle that the King of England was bound to conduct theadministration according to law, and that, if he did anything againstlaw, his advisers and agents were answerable, was established at a veryearly period, as the severe judgments pronounced and executed on manyroyal favourites sufficiently prove. It is, however, certain that therights of individuals were often violated by the Plantagenets, and thatthe injured parties were often unable to obtain redress. According tolaw no Englishman could be arrested or detained in confinement merelyby the mandate of the sovereign. In fact, persons obnoxious to thegovernment were frequently imprisoned without any other authority thana royal order. According to law, torture, the disgrace of the Romanjurisprudence, could not, in any circumstances, be inflicted on anEnglish subject. Nevertheless, during the troubles of the fifteenthcentury, a rack was introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally usedunder the plea of political necessity. But it would be a great error toinfer from such irregularities that the English monarchs were, either intheory or in practice, absolute. We live in a highly civilised society, through which intelligence is so rapidly diffused by means of the pressand of the post office that any gross act of oppression committed inany part of our island is, in a few hours, discussed by millions. If thesovereign were now to immure a subject in defiance of the writ of HabeasCorpus, or to put a conspirator to the torture, the whole nation wouldbe instantly electrified by the news. In the middle ages the state ofsociety was widely different. Rarely and with great difficulty did thewrongs of individuals come to the knowledge of the public. A man mightbe illegally confined during many months in the castle of Carlisle orNorwich; and no whisper of the transaction might reach London. It ishighly probable that the rack had been many years in use before thegreat majority of the nation had the least suspicion that it was everemployed. Nor were our ancestors by any means so much alive as we are tothe importance of maintaining great general rules. We have been taughtby long experience that we cannot without danger suffer any breach ofthe constitution to pass unnoticed. It is therefore now universally heldthat a government which unnecessarily exceeds its powers ought to bevisited with severe parliamentary censure, and that a government which, under the pressure of a great exigency, and with pure intentions, hasexceeded its powers, ought without delay to apply to Parliament for anact of indemnity. But such were not the feelings of the Englishmen ofthe fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They were little disposed tocontend for a principle merely as a principle, or to cry out against anirregularity which was not also felt to be a grievance. As long as thegeneral spirit of the administration was mild and popular, theywere willing to allow some latitude to their sovereign. If, for endsgenerally acknowledged to be good, he exerted a vigour beyond thelaw, they not only forgave, but applauded him, and while they enjoyedsecurity and prosperity under his rule, were but too ready to believethat whoever had incurred his displeasure had deserved it. But to thisindulgence there was a limit; nor was that King wise who presumed far onthe forbearance of the English people. They might sometimes allow him tooverstep the constitutional line: but they also claimed the privilegeof overstepping that line themselves, whenever his encroachments were soserious as to excite alarm. If, not content with occasionally oppressingindividuals, he cared to oppress great masses, his subjects promptlyappealed to the laws, and, that appeal failing, appealed as promptly tothe 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 andproudest king to reason, the check of physical force. It is difficultfor an Englishman of the nineteenth century to imagine to himself thefacility and rapidity with which, four hundred years ago, this check wasapplied. The people have long unlearned the use of arms. The art ofwar has been carried to a perfection unknown to former ages; and theknowledge of that art is confined to a particular class. A hundredthousand soldiers, well disciplined and commanded, will keep down tenmillions of ploughmen and artisans. A few regiments of household troopsare sufficient to overawe all the discontented spirits of a largecapital. In the meantime the effect of the constant progress of wealthhas been to make insurrection far more terrible to thinking men thanmaladministration. Immense sums have been expended on works which, ifa rebellion broke out, might perish in a few hours. The mass of movablewealth collected in the shops and warehouses of London alone exceedsfive hundredfold that which the whole island contained in the days ofthe Plantagenets; and, if the government were subverted by physicalforce, all this movable wealth would be exposed to imminent risk ofspoliation and destruction. Still greater would be the risk to publiccredit, on which thousands of families directly depend for subsistence, and with which the credit of the whole commercial world is inseparablyconnected. It is no exaggeration to say that a civil war of a week onEnglish ground would now produce disasters which would be felt from theHoang-ho to the Missouri, and of which the traces would be discernibleat the distance of a century. In such a state of society resistance mustbe regarded as a cure more desperate than almost any malady which canafflict the state. In the middle ages, on the contrary, resistance wasan ordinary remedy for political distempers, a remedy which was alwaysat hand, and which, though doubtless sharp at the moment, produced nodeep or lasting ill effects. If a popular chief raised his standard ina popular cause, an irregular army could be assembled in a day. Regulararmy there was none. Every man had a slight tincture of soldiership, and scarcely any man more than a slight tincture. The national wealthconsisted chiefly in flocks and herds, in the harvest of the year, andin the simple buildings inhabited by the people. All the furniture, thestock of shops, the machinery which could be found in the realm was ofless value than the property which some single parishes now contain. Manufactures were rude; credit was almost unknown. Society, therefore, recovered from the shock as soon as the actual conflict was over. Thecalamities of civil war were confined to the slaughter on the field ofbattle, and to a few subsequent executions and confiscations. In a weekthe peasant was driving his team and the esquire flying his hawks overthe field of Towton or of Bosworth, as if no extraordinary event hadinterrupted the regular course of human life. 

More than a hundred and sixty years have now elapsed since the Englishpeople have by force subverted a government. During the hundred andsixty years which preceded the union of the Roses, nine Kings reigned inEngland. Six of these nine Kings were deposed. Five lost their livesas well as their crowns. It is evident, therefore, that any comparisonbetween our ancient and our modern polity must lead to most erroneousconclusions, unless large allowance be made for the effect of thatrestraint which resistance and the fear of resistance constantlyimposed on the Plantagenets. As our ancestors had against tyranny a mostimportant security which we want, they might safely dispense with somesecurities to which we justly attach the highest importance. As wecannot, without the risk of evils from which the imagination recoils, employ physical force as a check on misgovernment, it is evidently ourwisdom to keep all the constitutional checks on misgovernment in thehighest state of efficiency, to watch with jealousy the first beginningsof encroachment, and never to suffer irregularities, even when harmlessin themselves, to pass unchallenged, lest they acquire the force ofprecedents. Four hundred years ago such minute vigilance might well seemunnecessary. A nation of hardy archers and spearmen might, with smallrisk to its liberties, connive at some illegal acts on the part of aprince whose general administration was good, and whose throne was notdefended by a single company of regular soldiers. 

Under this system, rude as it may appear when compared with thoseelaborate constitutions of which the last seventy years have beenfruitful, the English long enjoyed a large measure of freedom andhappiness. Though, during the feeble reign of Henry the Sixth, the statewas torn, first by factions, and at length by civil war; though Edwardthe Fourth was a prince of dissolute and imperious character; thoughRichard the Third has generally been represented as a monster ofdepravity; though the exactions of Henry the Seventh caused greatrepining; it is certain that our ancestors, under those Kings, were farbetter governed than the Belgians under Philip, surnamed the Good, orthe French under that Lewis who was styled the Father of his people. Even while the wars of the Roses were actually raging, our countryappears to have been in a happier condition than the neighbouring realmsduring years of profound peace. Comines was one of the most enlightenedstatesmen of his time. He had seen all the richest and most highlycivilised parts of the Continent. He had lived in the opulent towns ofFlanders, the Manchesters and Liverpools of the fifteenth century. Hehad visited Florence, recently adorned by the magnificence of Lorenzo, and Venice, not yet bumbled by the Confederates of Cambray. This eminentman deliberately pronounced England to be the best governed country ofwhich he had any knowledge. Her constitution he emphatically designatedas a just and holy thing, which, while it protected the people, reallystrengthened the hands of a prince who respected it. In no other countrywere men so effectually secured from wrong. The calamities produced byour intestine wars seemed to him to be confined to the nobles and thefighting men, and to leave no traces such as he had been accustomed tosee elsewhere, no ruined dwellings, no depopulated cities. 

It was not only by the efficiency of the restraints imposed on the royalprerogative that England was advantageously distinguished from most ofthe neighbouring countries. A: peculiarity equally important, thoughless noticed, was the relation in which the nobility stood here to thecommonalty. There was a strong hereditary aristocracy: but it was of allhereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had noneof the invidious character of a caste. It was constantly receivingmembers from the people, and constantly sending down members to minglewith the people. Any gentleman might become a peer. The younger son of apeer was but a gentleman. Grandsons of peers yielded precedence to newlymade knights. The dignity of knighthood was not beyond the reach ofany man who could by diligence and thrift realise a good estate, orwho could attract notice by his valour in a battle or a siege. It wasregarded as no disparagement for the daughter of a Duke, nay of a royalDuke, to espouse a distinguished commoner. Thus, Sir John Howard marriedthe daughter of Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. Sir Richard Pole marriedthe Countess of Salisbury, daughter of George, Duke of Clarence. Goodblood was indeed held in high respect: but between good blood and theprivileges of peerage there was, most fortunately for our country, nonecessary connection. Pedigrees as long, and scutcheons as old, were tobe found out of the House of Lords as in it. There were new men who borethe highest titles. There were untitled men well known to be descendedfrom knights who had broken the Saxon ranks at Hastings, and scaled thewalls of Jerusalem. There were Bohuns, Mowbrays, DeVeres, nay, kinsmenof the House of Plantagenet, with no higher addition than that ofEsquire, and with no civil privileges beyond those enjoyed by everyfarmer and shopkeeper. There was therefore here no line like that whichin some other countries divided the patrician from the plebeian. Theyeoman was not inclined to murmur at dignities to which his own childrenmight rise. The grandee was not inclined to insult a class into whichhis own children must descend. 

After the wars of York and Lancaster, the links which connected thenobility and commonalty became closer and more numerous than ever. Theextent of destruction which had fallen on the old aristocracy may beinferred from a single circumstance. In the year 1451 Henry the Sixthsummoned fifty-three temporal Lords to parliament. The temporal Lordssummoned by Henry the Seventh to the parliament of 1485 were onlytwenty-nine, and of these several had recently been elevated to thepeerage. During the following century the ranks of the nobility werelargely recruited from among the gentry. The constitution of the Houseof Commons tended greatly to promote the salutary intermixture ofclasses. The knight of the shire was the connecting link betweenthe baron and the shopkeeper. On the same benches on which sate thegoldsmiths, drapers, and grocers, who had been returned to parliament bythe commercial towns, sate also members who, in any other country, wouldhave been called noblemen, hereditary lords of manors, entitled to holdcourts and to bear coat armour, and able to trace back an honourabledescent through many generations. Some of them were younger sons andbrothers of lords. Others could boast of even royal blood. At length theeldest son of an Earl of Bedford, called in courtesy by the second titleof his father, offered himself as candidate for a seat in the House ofCommons, and his example was followed by others. Seated in that house, the heirs of the great peers naturally became as zealous for itsprivileges as any of the humble burgesses with whom they were mingled. Thus our democracy was, from an early period, the most aristocratic, andour aristocracy the most democratic in the world; a peculiaritywhich has lasted down to the present day, and which has produced manyimportant moral and political effects. 

The government of Henry the Seventh, of his son, and of hisgrandchildren was, on the whole, more arbitrary than that of thePlantagenets. Personal character may in some degree explain thedifference; for courage and force of will were common to all the men andwomen of the House of Tudor. They exercised their power during a periodof a hundred and twenty years, always with vigour, often with violence, sometimes with cruelty. They, in imitation of the dynasty whichhad preceded them, occasionally invaded the rights of the subject, occasionally exacted taxes under the name of loans and gifts, andoccasionally dispensed with penal statutes: nay, though they neverpresumed to enact any permanent law by their own authority, theyoccasionally 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 a certain point:for they had no armed force, and they were surrounded by an armedpeople. Their palace was guarded by a few domestics, whom the array ofa single shire, or of a single ward of London, could with ease haveoverpowered. These haughty princes were therefore under a restraintstronger than any that mere law can impose, under a restraint which didnot, indeed, prevent them from sometimes treating an individual in anarbitrary and even in a barbarous manner, but which effectually securedthe nation against general and long continued oppression. They mightsafely be tyrants, within the precinct of the court: but it wasnecessary for them to watch with constant anxiety the temper of thecountry. Henry the Eighth, for example, encountered no opposition whenhe wished to send Buckingham and Surrey, Anne Boleyn and Lady Salisbury, to the scaffold. But when, without the consent of Parliament, hedemanded of his subjects a contribution amounting to one sixth of theirgoods, he soon found it necessary to retract. The cry of hundreds ofthousands was that they were English and not French, freemen and notslaves. In Kent the royal commissioners fled for their lives. In Suffolkfour thousand men appeared in arms. The King's lieutenants in thatcounty vainly exerted themselves to raise an army. Those who did notjoin in the insurrection declared that they would not fight againsttheir brethren in such a quarrel. Henry, proud and selfwilled as he was, shrank, not without reason from a conflict with the roused spirit ofthe nation. He had before his eyes the fate of his predecessors whohad perished at Berkeley and Pomfret. He not only cancelled hisillegal commissions; he not only granted a general pardon to all themalecontents; but he publicly and solemnly apologised for his infractionof the laws. 

His conduct, on this occasion, well illustrates the whole policy of hishouse. The temper of the princes of that line was hot, and theirspirits high, but they understood the character of the nation that theygoverned, and never once, like some of their predecessors, and some oftheir successors, carried obstinacy to a fatal point. The discretion ofthe Tudors was such, that their power, though it was often resisted, was never subverted. The reign of every one of them was disturbed byformidable discontents: but the government was always able either tosoothe the mutineers or to conquer and punish them. Sometimes, by timelyconcessions, it succeeded in averting civil hostilities; but in generalit stood firm, and called for help on the nation. The nation obeyedthe call, rallied round the sovereign, and enabled him to quell thedisaffected minority. 

Thus, from the age of Henry the Third to the age of Elizabeth, Englandgrew and flourished under a polity which contained the germ of ourpresent institutions, and which, though not very exactly defined, orvery exactly observed, was yet effectually prevented from degeneratinginto despotism, by the awe in which the governors stood of the spiritand strength of the governed. 

But such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the progressof society. The same causes which produce a division of labour in thepeaceful arts must at length make war a distinct science and a distincttrade. A time arrives when the use of arms begins to occupy the entireattention of a separate class. It soon appears that peasants andburghers, however brave, are unable to stand their ground againstveteran soldiers, whose whole life is a preparation for the day ofbattle, whose nerves have been braced by long familiarity with danger, and whose movements have all the precision of clockwork. It is foundthat the defence of nations can no longer be safely entrusted towarriors taken from the plough or the loom for a campaign of fortydays. If any state forms a great regular army, the bordering statesmust imitate the example, or must submit to a foreign yoke. But, wherea great regular army exists, limited monarchy, such as it was in themiddle ages, can exist no longer. The sovereign is at once emancipatedfrom what had been the chief restraint on his power; and he inevitablybecomes absolute, unless he is subjected to checks such as would besuperfluous in a society where all are soldiers occasionally, and nonepermanently. 

With the danger came also the means of escape. In the monarchies of themiddle ages the power of the sword belonged to the prince; but the powerof the purse belonged to the nation; and the progress of civilisation, as it made the sword of the prince more and more formidable to thenation, made the purse of the nation more and more necessary to theprince. His hereditary revenues would no longer suffice, even for theexpenses of civil government. It was utterly impossible that, withouta regular and extensive system of taxation, he could keep in constantefficiency a great body of disciplined troops. The policy which theparliamentary assemblies of Europe ought to have adopted was to taketheir stand firmly on their constitutional right to give or withholdmoney, and resolutely to refuse funds for the support of armies, tillample securities had been provided against despotism. 

This wise policy was followed in our country alone. In the neighbouringkingdoms great military establishments were formed; no new safeguardsfor public liberty were devised; and the consequence was, that the oldparliamentary institutions everywhere ceased to exist. In France, wherethey had always been feeble, they languished, and at length died ofmere weakness. In Spain, where they had been as strong as in any partof Europe, they struggled fiercely for life, but struggled too late. Themechanics of Toledo and Valladolid vainly defended the privileges of theCastilian Cortes against the veteran battalions of Charles the Fifth. Asvainly, in the next generation, did the citizens of Saragossa stand upagainst Philip the Second, for the old constitution of Aragon. One afteranother, the great national councils of the continental monarchies, councils once scarcely less proud and powerful than those which sateat Westminster, sank into utter insignificance. If they met, they metmerely as our Convocation now meets, to go through some venerable forms. 

In England events took a different course. This singular felicity sheowed chiefly to her insular situation. Before the end of the fifteenthcentury great military establishments were indispensable to the dignity, and even to the safety, of the French and Castilian monarchies. Ifeither of those two powers had disarmed, it would soon have beencompelled to submit to the dictation of the other. But England, protected by the sea against invasion, and rarely engaged in warlikeoperations on the Continent, was not, as yet, under the necessityof employing regular troops. The sixteenth century, the seventeenthcentury, found her still without a standing army. At the commencementof the seventeenth century political science had made considerableprogress. The fate of the Spanish Cortes and of the French StatesGeneral had given solemn warning to our Parliaments; and ourParliaments, fully aware of the nature and magnitude of the danger, adopted, in good time, a system of tactics which, after a contestprotracted through three generations, was at length successful. 

Almost every writer who has treated of that contest has been desirous toshow that his own party was the party which was struggling to preservethe old constitution unaltered. The truth however is that the oldconstitution could not be preserved unaltered. A law, beyond the controlof human wisdom, had decreed that there should no longer be governmentsof that peculiar class which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had been common throughout Europe. The question, therefore, was notwhether our polity should undergo a change, but what the nature ofthe change should be. The introduction of a new and mighty force haddisturbed the old equilibrium, and had turned one limited monarchy afteranother into an absolute monarchy. What had happened elsewhere wouldassuredly have happened here, unless the balance had been redressed bya great transfer of power from the crown to the parliament. Our princeswere about to have at their command means of coercion such as noPlantagenet or Tudor had ever possessed. They must inevitably havebecome despots, unless they had been, at the same time, placed underrestraints to which no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever been subject. 

It seems certain, therefore, that, had none but political causes beenat work, the seventeenth century would not have passed away withouta fierce conflict between our Kings and their Parliaments. But othercauses of perhaps greater potency contributed to produce the sameeffect. While the government of the Tudors was in its highest vigouran event took place which has coloured the destinies of all Christiannations, and in an especial manner the destinies of England. Twiceduring the middle ages the mind of Europe had risen up against thedomination of Rome. The first insurrection broke out in the south ofFrance. The energy of Innocent the Third, the zeal of the young ordersof Francis and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crusaders whom thepriesthood let loose on an unwarlike population, crushed the Albigensianchurches. The second reformation had its origin in England, and spreadto Bohemia. The Council of Constance, by removing some ecclesiasticaldisorders which had given scandal to Christendom, and the princesof Europe, by unsparingly using fire and sword against the heretics, succeeded in arresting and turning back the movement. Nor is thismuch to be lamented. The sympathies of a Protestant, it is true, willnaturally be on the side of the Albigensians and of the Lollards. Yet anenlightened and temperate Protestant will perhaps be disposed to doubtwhether 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, ifthat Church had been overthrown in the twelfth or even in the fourteenthcentury, the vacant space would have been occupied by some system morecorrupt still. There was then, through the greater part of Europe, verylittle knowledge; and that little was confined to the clergy. Not oneman in five hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Bookswere few and costly. The art of printing was unknown. Copies of theBible, inferior in beauty and clearness to those which every cottagermay now command, sold for prices which many priests could not affordto give. It was obviously impossible that the laity should search theScriptures for themselves. It is probable therefore, that, as soon asthey had put off one spiritual yoke, they would have put on another, and that the power lately exercised by the clergy of the Church ofRome would have passed to a far worse class of teachers. The sixteenthcentury was comparatively a time of light. Yet even in the sixteenthcentury a considerable number of those who quitted the old religionfollowed the first confident and plausible guide who offered himself, and were soon led into errors far more serious than those which they hadrenounced. Thus Matthias and Kniperdoling, apostles of lust, robbery, and murder, were able for a time to rule great cities. In a darker agesuch false prophets might have founded empires; and Christianity mighthave been distorted into a cruel and licentious superstition, morenoxious, not only than Popery, but even than Islamism. 

About a hundred years after the rising of the Council of Constance, thatgreat change emphatically called the Reformation began. The fulnessof time was now come. The clergy were no longer the sole or the chiefdepositories of knowledge The invention of printing had furnished theassailants of the Church with a mighty weapon which had been wantingto their predecessors. The study of the ancient writers, the rapiddevelopment of the powers of the modern languages, the unprecedentedactivity which was displayed in every department of literature, thepolitical state of Europe, the vices of the Roman court, the exactionsof the Roman chancery, the jealousy with which the wealth and privilegesof the clergy were naturally regarded by laymen, the jealousy with whichthe Italian ascendency was naturally regarded by men born on our side ofthe Alps, all these things gave to the teachers of the new theology anadvantage which they perfectly understood how to use. 

Those who hold that the influence of the Church of Rome in the darkages was, on the whole, beneficial to mankind, may yet with perfectconsistency regard the Reformation as an inestimable blessing. Theleading strings, which preserve and uphold the infant, would impede thefullgrown man. And so the very means by which the human mind is, in onestage of its progress, supported and propelled, may, in another stage, be mere hindrances. There is a season in the life both of an individualand of a society, at which submission and faith, such as at a laterperiod would be justly called servility and credulity, are usefulqualities. The child who teachably and undoubtingly listens to theinstructions of his elders is likely to improve rapidly. But the man whoshould receive with childlike docility every assertion and dogma utteredby another man no wiser than himself would become contemptible. It isthe same with communities. The childhood of the European nationswas passed under the tutelage of the clergy. The ascendancy of thesacerdotal order was long the ascendancy which naturally and properlybelongs to intellectual superiority. The priests, with all their faults, were by far the wisest portion of society. It was, therefore, on thewhole, good that they should be respected and obeyed. The encroachmentsof the ecclesiastical power on the province of the civil power producedmuch more happiness than misery, while the ecclesiastical power was inthe hands of the only class that had studied history, philosophy, andpublic 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 thesixteenth century many of them were in every intellectual attainmentfully equal to the most enlightened of their spiritual pastors. Thenceforward that dominion, which, during the dark ages, had been, inspite of many abuses, a legitimate and salutary guardianship, became anunjust and noxious tyranny. 

From the time when the barbarians overran the Western Empire to the timeof the revival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome had beengenerally favourable to science to civilisation, and to good government. But, during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the humanmind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advancehas been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts oflife, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverseproportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provincesof Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in politicalservitude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, onceproverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skilland industry into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes andstatesmen, philosophers and poets. Whoever, knowing what Italy andScotland naturally are, and what, four hundred years ago, they actuallywere, shall now compare the country round Rome with the country roundEdinburgh, will be able to form some judgment as to the tendency ofPapal domination. The descent of Spain, once the first among monarchies, to the lowest depths of degradation, the elevation of Holland, in spiteof many natural disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth sosmall has ever reached, teach the same lesson. Whoever passes in Germanyfrom a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Switzerlandfrom a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a RomanCatholic to a Protestant county, finds that he has passed from a lowerto a higher grade of civilisation. On the other side of the Atlantic thesame law prevails. The Protestants of the United States have left farbehind them the Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The RomanCatholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole continent roundthem is in a ferment with Protestant activity and enterprise. The Frenchhave doubtless shown an energy and an intelligence which, even whenmisdirected, have justly entitled them to be called a great people. Butthis apparent exception, when examined, will be found to confirm therule; for in no country that is called Roman Catholic, has the RomanCatholic Church, during several generations, possessed so littleauthority as in France. The literature of France is justly held in highesteem throughout the world. But if we deduct from that literature allthat belongs to four parties which have been, on different grounds, in rebellion against the Papal domination, all that belongs tothe Protestants, all that belongs to the assertors of the Gallicanliberties, all that belongs to the Jansenists, and all that belongs tothe philosophers, how much will be left?

It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the Roman Catholicreligion or to the Reformation. For the amalgamation of races and forthe abolition of villenage, she is chiefly indebted to the influencewhich the priesthood in the middle ages exercised over the laity. Forpolitical and intellectual freedom, and for all the blessings whichpolitical and intellectual freedom have brought in their train, sheis chiefly indebted to the great rebellion of the laity against thepriesthood. 

The struggle between the old and the new theology in our country waslong, and the event sometimes seemed doubtful. There were two extremeparties, prepared to act with violence or to suffer with stubbornresolution. Between them lay, during a considerable time, a middleparty, which blended, very illogically, but by no means unnaturally, lessons learned in the nursery with the sermons of the modernevangelists, and, while clinging with fondness to all observances, yetdetested abuses with which those observances were closely connected. Menin such a frame of mind were willing to obey, almost with thankfulness, the dictation of an able ruler who spared them the trouble of judgingfor themselves, and, raising a firm and commanding voice above theuproar of controversy, told them how to worship and what to believe. It is not strange, therefore, that the Tudors should have been able toexercise a great influence on ecclesiastical affairs; nor is it strangethat their influence should, for the most part, have been exercised witha view to their own interest. 

Henry the Eighth attempted to constitute an Anglican Church differingfrom the Roman Catholic Church on the point of the supremacy, and onthat point alone. His success in this attempt was extraordinary. Theforce of his character, the singularly favourable situation in whichhe stood with respect to foreign powers, the immense wealth which thespoliation of the abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support ofthat class which still halted between two Opinions, enabled him to biddefiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics those whoavowed the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as traitors those whoowned the authority of the Pope. But Henry's system died with him. Hadhis life been prolonged, he would have found it difficult to maintain aposition assailed with equal fury by all who were zealous either forthe new or for the old opinions. The ministers who held the royalprerogatives in trust for his infant son could not venture to persist inso hazardous a policy; nor could Elizabeth venture to return to it. Itwas necessary to make a choice. The government must either submit toRome, or must obtain the aid of the Protestants. The government and theProtestants had only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal power. The English Reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on theContinent. They unanimously condemned as Antichristian numerous dogmasand practices to which Henry had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabethreluctantly abandoned. Many felt a strong repugnance even to thingsindifferent which had formed part of the polity or ritual of themystical Babylon. Thus Bishop Hooper, who died manfully at Gloucesterfor his religion, long refused to wear the episcopal vestments. BishopRidley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the ancient altarsof his diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be administered in themiddle of churches, at tables which the Papists irreverently termedoyster boards. Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb to be a stagedress, a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised thathe would spare no labour to extirpate such degrading absurdities. Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from dislikeof what he regarded as the mummery of consecration. Bishop Parkhurstuttered a fervent prayer that the Church of England would propose toherself the Church of Zurich as the absolute pattern of a Christiancommunity. Bishop Ponet was of opinion that the word Bishop should beabandoned to the Papists, and that the chief officers of the purifiedchurch should be called Superintendents. When it is considered thatnone of these prelates belonged to the extreme section of the Protestantparty, it cannot be doubted that, if the general sense of that partyhad been followed, the work of reform would have been carried on asunsparingly in England as in Scotland. 

But, as the government needed the support of the protestants, so theProtestants needed the protection of the government. Much was thereforegiven up on both sides: an union was effected; and the fruit of thatunion was the Church of England. 

To the peculiarities of this great institution, and to the strongpassions which it has called forth in the minds both of friends and ofenemies, are to be attributed many of the most important events whichhave, since the Reformation, taken place in our country; nor can thesecular history of England be at all understood by us, unless we studyit in constant connection with the history of her ecclesiastical polity. 

The man who took the chief part in settling the condition, of thealliance which produced the Anglican Church was Archbishop Cranmer. Hewas the representative of both the parties which, at that time, neededeach other's assistance. He was at once a divine and a courtier. In hischaracter of divine he was perfectly ready to go as far in the way ofchange as any Swiss or Scottish Reformer. In his character of courtierhe was desirous to preserve that organisation which had, during manyages, admirably served the purposes of the Bishops of Rome, and might beexpected now to serve equally well the purposes of the English Kings andof their ministers. His temper and his understanding, eminently fittedhim to act as mediator. Saintly in his professions, unscrupulous inhis dealings, zealous for nothing, bold in speculation, a coward and atimeserver in action, a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend, he was inevery way qualified to arrange the terms of the coalition between thereligious and the worldly enemies of Popery. 

To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of theChurch, retain the visible marks of the compromise from which shesprang. She occupies a middle position between the Churches of Romeand Geneva. Her doctrinal confessions and discourses, composed byProtestants, set forth principles of theology in which Calvin orKnox would have found scarcely a word to disapprove. Her prayers andthanksgivings, derived from the ancient Breviaries, are very generallysuch that Cardinal Fisher or Cardinal Pole might have heartily joined inthem. A controversialist who puts an Arminian sense on her Articles andHomilies will be pronounced by candid men to be as unreasonable as acontroversialist who denies that the doctrine of baptismal regenerationcan be discovered in her Liturgy. 

The Church of Rome held that episcopacy was of divine institution, andthat certain supernatural graces of a high order had been transmitted bythe imposition of hands through fifty generations, from the Eleven whoreceived their commission on the Galilean mount, to the bishops whomet at Trent. A large body of Protestants, on the other hand, regardedprelacy as positively unlawful, and persuaded themselves that theyfound a very different form of ecclesiastical government prescribed inScripture. The founders of the Anglican Church took a middle course. They retained episcopacy; but they did not declare it to be aninstitution essential to the welfare of a Christian society, or to theefficacy of the sacraments. Cranmer, indeed, on one important occasion, plainly avowed his conviction that, in the primitive times, there was nodistinction between bishops and priests, and that the laying on of handswas altogether superfluous. 

Among the Presbyterians the conduct of public worship is, to a greatextent, left to the minister. Their prayers, therefore, are not exactlythe same in any two assemblies on the same day, or on any two days inthe same assembly. In one parish they are fervent, eloquent, and full ofmeaning. In the next parish they may be languid or absurd. The priestsof the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, have, during manygenerations, daily chanted the same ancient confessions, supplications, and thanksgivings, in India and Lithuania, in Ireland and Peru. Theservice, being in a dead language, is intelligible only to the learned;and the great majority of the congregation may be said to assist asspectators rather than as auditors. Here, again, the Church of Englandtook a middle course. She copied the Roman Catholic forms of prayer, but translated them into the vulgar tongue, and invited the illiteratemultitude to join its voice to that of the minister. 

In every part of her system the same policy may be traced. Utterlyrejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and condemning asidolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental bread and wine, sheyet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required her children to receive thememorials of divine love, meekly kneeling upon their knees. Discardingmany rich vestments which surrounded 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 ofChrist. Discarding a crowd of pantomimic gestures which, in the RomanCatholic worship, are substituted for intelligible words, she yetshocked many rigid Protestants by marking the infant just sprinkled fromthe font with the sign of the cross. The Roman Catholic addressed hisprayers to a multitude of Saints, among whom were numbered many menof doubtful, and some of hateful, character. The Puritan refused theaddition of Saint even to the apostle of the Gentiles, and to thedisciple whom Jesus loved. The Church of England, though she askedfor the intercession of no created being, still set apart days for thecommemoration of some who had done and suffered great things for thefaith. She retained confirmation and ordination as edifying rites; butshe degraded them from the rank of sacraments. Shrift was no part of hersystem. Yet she gently invited the dying penitent to confess his sins toa divine, and empowered her ministers to soothe the departing soul byan absolution which breathes the very spirit of the old religion. Ingeneral it may be said that she appeals more to the understanding, andless to the senses and the imagination, than the Church of Rome, andthat she appeals less to the understanding, and more to the sensesand imagination, than the Protestant Churches of Scotland, France, andSwitzerland. 

Nothing, however, so strongly distinguished the Church of England fromother Churches as the relation in which she stood to the monarchy. TheKing was her head. The limits of the authority which he possessed, as such, were not traced, and indeed have never yet been traced withprecision. The laws which declared him supreme in ecclesiasticalmatters were drawn rudely and in general terms. If, for the purpose ofascertaining the sense of those laws, we examine the books and lives ofthose who founded the English Church, our perplexity will be increased. For the founders of the English Church wrote and acted in an age ofviolent intellectual fermentation, and of constant action and reaction. They therefore often contradicted each other and sometimes contradictedthemselves. That the King was, under Christ, sole head of the Church wasa doctrine which they all with one voice affirmed: but those words hadvery different significations in different mouths, and in the samemouth at different conjunctures. Sometimes an authority which would havesatisfied Hildebrand was ascribed to the sovereign: then it dwindleddown to an authority little more than that which had been claimed bymany ancient English princes who had been in constant communion with theChurch of Rome. What Henry and his favourite counsellors meant, at onetime, by the supremacy, was certainly nothing less than the whole powerof the keys. The King was to be the Pope of his kingdom, the vicarof God, the expositor of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramentalgraces. He arrogated to himself the right of deciding dogmatically whatwas orthodox doctrine and what was heresy, of drawing up and imposingconfessions of faith, and of giving religious instruction to his people. He proclaimed that all jurisdiction, spiritual as well as temporal, wasderived from him alone, and that it was in his power to confer episcopalauthority, and to take it away. He actually ordered his seal to be putto commissions by which bishops were appointed, who were to exercisetheir functions as his deputies, and during his pleasure. According tothis system, as expounded by Cranmer, the King was the spiritual as wellas the temporal chief of the nation. In both capacities His Highnessmust have lieutenants. As he appointed civil officers to keep his seal, to collect his revenues, and to dispense justice in his name, sohe appointed divines of various ranks to preach the gospel, and toadminister the sacraments. It was unnecessary that there should be anyimposition of hands. The King, --such was the opinion of Cranmer given inthe plainest words, --might in virtue of authority derived from God, makea priest; and the priest so made needed no ordination whatever. Theseopinions the Archbishop, in spite of the opposition of less courtlydivines, followed out to every legitimate consequence. He held that hisown spiritual functions, like the secular functions of the Chancellorand Treasurer, were at once determined by a demise of the crown. WhenHenry died, therefore, the Primate and his suffragans took out freshcommissions, empowering them to ordain and to govern the Church till thenew sovereign should think fit to order otherwise. When it was objectedthat a power to bind and to loose, altogether distinct from temporalpower, had been given by our Lord to his apostles, some theologians ofthis 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 oughtto be exercised by the chief magistrate as the representative of thesociety. When it was objected that Saint Paul had spoken of certainpersons whom the Holy Ghost had made overseers and shepherds of thefaithful, it was answered that King Henry was the very overseer, the very shepherd whom the Holy Ghost had appointed, and to whom theexpressions of Saint Paul applied. [3]

These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well as toCatholics; and the scandal was greatly increased when the supremacy, which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was again annexed to thecrown, on the accession of Elizabeth. It seemed monstrous that a womanshould be the chief bishop of a Church in which an apostle had forbiddenher even to let her voice be heard. The Queen, therefore, found itnecessary expressly to disclaim that sacerdotal character whichher father had assumed, and which, according to Cranmer, had beeninseparably joined, by divine ordinance, to the regal function. When theAnglican confession of faith was revised in her reign, the supremacywas explained in a manner somewhat different from that which had beenfashionable at the court of Henry. Cranmer had declared, in emphaticterms, that God had immediately committed to Christian princes the wholecure of all their subjects, as well concerning the administration ofGod's word for the cure of souls, as concerning the administration ofthings political. [4] The thirty-seventh article of religion, framedunder Elizabeth, declares, in terms as emphatic, that the ministeringof God's word does not belong to princes. The Queen, however, still hadover the Church a visitatorial power of vast and undefined extent. Shewas entrusted by Parliament with the office of restraining and punishingheresy and every sort of ecclesiastical abuse, and was permitted todelegate her authority to commissioners. The Bishops were little morethan her ministers. Rather than grant to the civil magistrate theabsolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the Church of Rome, inthe eleventh century, set all Europe on fire. Rather than grant to thecivil magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, theministers of the Church of Scotland, in our time, resigned their livingsby hundreds. The Church of England had no such scruples. By the royalauthority alone her prelates were appointed. By the royal authorityalone her Convocations were summoned, regulated, prorogued, anddissolved. Without the royal sanction her canons had no force. Oneof the articles of her faith was that without the royal consent noecclesiastical council could lawfully assemble. From all her judicaturesan appeal lay, in the last resort, to the sovereign, even when thequestion was whether an opinion ought to be accounted heretical, orwhether the administration of a sacrament had been valid. Nor did theChurch grudge this extensive power to our princes. By them she had beencalled into existence, nursed through a feeble infancy, guarded fromPapists on one side and from Puritans on the other, protected againstParliaments which bore her no good will, and avenged on literaryassailants whom she found it hard to answer. Thus gratitude, hope, fear, common attachments, common enmities, bound her to the throne. All hertraditions, all her tastes, were monarchical. Loyalty became a pointof professional honour among her clergy, the peculiar badge whichdistinguished them at once from Calvinists and from Papists. Both theCalvinists and the Papists, widely as they differed in other respects, regarded with extreme jealousy all encroachments of the temporal poweron the domain of the spiritual power. Both Calvinists and Papistsmaintained that subjects might justifiably draw the sword againstungodly rulers. In France Calvinists resisted Charles the Ninth: Papistsresisted Henry the Fourth: both Papists and Calvinists resisted Henrythe Third. In Scotland Calvinists led Mary captive. On the north ofthe Trent Papists took arms against the English throne. The Churchof England meantime condemned both Calvinists and Papists, and loudlyboasted that no duty was more constantly or earnestly inculcated by herthan that of submission to princes. 

The advantages which the crown derived from this close alliance withthe Established Church were great; but they were not without seriousdrawbacks. The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first beenconsidered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for serving twomasters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with the worshipof Baal. In the days of Edward the Sixth the scruples of this party hadrepeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the government. WhenElizabeth came to the throne, those difficulties were much increased. Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of Protestantism wastherefore far fiercer and more intolerant after the cruelties of Marythan before them. Many persons who were warmly attached to the newopinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland andGermany. They had been hospitably received by their brethren in thefaith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich, and Geneva, and had been, during some years, accustomed to a more simpleworship, and to a more democratical form of church government, thanEngland had yet seen. These men returned to their country convinced thatthe reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far lesssearching and extensive than the interests of pure religion required. But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession fromElizabeth. Indeed her system, wherever it differed from her brother's, seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were little disposed tosubmit, in matters of faith, to any human authority. They had recently, in reliance on their own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against aChurch strong in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent. It was by nocommon exertion of intellectual energy that they had thrown off the yokeof that gorgeous and imperial superstition; and it was vain to expectthat, immediately after such an emancipation, they would patientlysubmit to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed, when the priestlifted up the host, to bow down with their faces to the earth, as beforea present God, they had learned to treat the mass as an idolatrousmummery. Long accustomed to regard the Pope as the successor of thechief 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 ofSin. It was not to be expected that they would immediately transferto an upstart authority the homage which they had withdrawn from theVatican; that they would submit their private judgment to the authorityof a Church founded on private judgment alone; that they would be afraidto dissent from teachers who themselves dissented from what had latelybeen the universal faith of western Christendom. It is easy to conceivethe indignation which must have been felt by bold and inquisitivespirits, glorying in newly acquired freedom, when an institution youngerby many years than themselves, an institution which had, under their owneyes, gradually received its form from the passions and interest of acourt, began to mimic the lofty style of Rome. 

Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined that theyshould be persecuted. Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect: it made them a faction. To their hatred of theChurch was now added hatred of the Crown. The two sentiments wereintermingled; and each embittered the other. The opinions of the Puritanconcerning the relation of ruler and subject were widely different fromthose which were inculcated in the Homilies. His favourite divines had, both by precept and by example, encouraged resistance to tyrantsand persecutors. His fellow Calvinists in France, in Holland, andin Scotland, were in arms against idolatrous and cruel princes. Hisnotions, too, respecting, the government of the state took a tingefrom his notions respecting the government of the Church. Some of thesarcasms which were popularly thrown on episcopacy might, without muchdifficulty, be turned against royalty; and many of the arguments whichwere used to prove that spiritual power was best lodged in a synodseemed to lead to the conclusion that temporal power was best lodged ina parliament. 

Thus, as the priest of the Established Church was, from interest, fromprinciple, and from passion, zealous for the royal prerogatives, thePuritan was, from interest, from principle, and from passion, hostile tothem. The power of the discontented sectaries was great. They were foundin every rank; but they were strongest among the mercantile classes inthe towns, and among the small proprietors in the country. Early inthe reign of Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House ofCommons. And doubtless had our ancestors been then at liberty to fixtheir attention entirely on domestic questions, the strife between theCrown and the Parliament would instantly have commenced. But that wasno season for internal dissensions. It might, indeed, well be doubtedwhether the firmest union among all the orders of the state could avertthe common danger by which all were threatened. Roman Catholic Europeand reformed Europe were struggling for death or life. France dividedagainst herself, had, for a time, ceased to be of any account inChristendom. The English Government was at the head of the Protestantinterest, and, while persecuting Presbyterians at home, extended apowerful protection to Presbyterian Churches abroad. At the head of theopposite party was the mightiest prince of the age, a prince who ruledSpain, Portugal, Italy, the East and the West Indies, whose armiesrepeatedly marched to Paris, and whose fleets kept the coasts ofDevonshire and Sussex in alarm. It long seemed probable that Englishmenwould have to fight desperately on English ground for their religion andindependence. Nor were they ever for a moment free from apprehensionsof some great treason at home. For in that age it had become a point ofconscience and of honour with many men of generous natures to sacrificetheir country to their religion. A succession of dark plots, formed byRoman Catholics against the life of the Queen and the existence of thenation, kept society in constant alarm. Whatever might be the faults ofElizabeth, it was plain that, to speak humanly, the fate of the realmand of all reformed Churches was staked on the security of her personand on the success of her administration. To strengthen her hands was, therefore, the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant; and that dutywas well performed. The Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons towhich she had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that shemight be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might beput down under her feet, and that her arms might be victorious by seaand land. One of the most stubborn of the stubborn sect, immediatelyafter his hand had been lopped off for an offence into which he had beenhurried by his intemperate zeal, waved his hat with the hand which wasstill left him, and shouted "God save the Queen!" The sentiment withwhich these men regarded her has descended to their posterity. TheNonconformists, rigorously as she treated them, have, as a body, alwaysvenerated her memory. [5]

During the greater part of her reign, therefore, the Puritans in theHouse of Commons, though sometimes mutinous, felt no disposition toarray themselves in systematic opposition to the government. But, when the defeat of the Armada, the successful resistance of the UnitedProvinces to the Spanish power, the firm establishment of Henry theFourth on the throne of France, and the death of Philip the Second, had secured the State and the Church against all danger from abroad, an obstinate struggle, destined to last during several generations, instantly began at home. 

It was in the Parliament of 1601 that the opposition which had, duringforty years, been silently gathering and husbanding strength, foughtits first great battle and won its first victory. The ground was wellchosen. The English Sovereigns had always been entrusted with thesupreme direction of commercial police. It was their undoubtedprerogative to regulate coin, weights, and measures, and to appointfairs, markets, and ports. The line which bounded their authority overtrade 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 monopolyby scores. There was scarcely a family in the realm which did notfeel itself aggrieved by the oppression and extortion which this abusenaturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, 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 vainthat a courtly minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts ofthe Queen's Highness to be called in question. The language of thediscontented party was high and menacing, and was echoed by the voiceof the whole nation. The coach of the chief minister of the crown wassurrounded by an indignant populace, who cursed the monopolies, andexclaimed that the prerogative should not be suffered to touch the oldliberties of England. There seemed for a moment to be some danger thatthe long and glorious reign of Elizabeth would have a shameful anddisastrous end. She, however, with admirable judgment and temper, declined the contest, put herself at the head of the reforming party, redressed the grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching and dignifiedlanguage, for their tender care of the general weal, brought back toherself the hearts of the people, and left to her successors a memorableexample of the way in which it behoves a ruler to deal with publicmovements 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 bothScotland and Ireland became parts of the same empire with England. BothScotland and Ireland, indeed, had been subjugated by the Plantagenets;but neither country had been patient under the yoke. Scotland had, withheroic energy, vindicated her independence, had, from the time of RobertBruce, been a separate kingdom, and was now joined to the southernpart of the island in a manner which rather gratified than wounded hernational pride. Ireland had never, since the days of Henry the Second, been able to expel the foreign invaders; but she had struggled againstthem long and fiercely. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuriesthe English power in that island was constantly declining, and in thedays of Henry the Seventh, sank to the lowest point. The Irish dominionsof that prince consisted only of the counties of Dublin and Louth, ofsome parts of Meath and Kildare, and of a few seaports scattered alongthe coast. A large portion even of Leinster was not yet divided intocounties. Munster, Ulster, and Connaught were ruled by petty sovereigns, partly Celts, and partly degenerate Normans, who had forgotten theirorigin and had adopted the Celtic language and manners. But during thesixteenth century, the English power had made great progress. The halfsavage chieftains who reigned beyond the pale had submitted one afteranother to the lieutenants of the Tudors. At length, a few weeks beforethe death of Elizabeth, the conquest, which had been begun more thanfour hundred years before by Strongbow, was completed by Mountjoy. Scarcely had James the First mounted the English throne when the lastO'Donnel and O'Neil who have held the rank of independent princes kissedhis hand at Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his judges heldassizes in every part of Ireland; and the English law superseded thecustoms which had prevailed among the aboriginal tribes. 

In extent Scotland and Ireland were nearly equal to each other, and weretogether nearly equal to England, but were much less thicklypeopled than England, and were very far behind England in wealth andcivilisation. Scotland had been kept back by the sterility of her soil;and, in the midst of light, the thick darkness of the middle ages stillrested on Ireland. 

The population of Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic tribeswhich were thinly scattered over the Hebrides and over the mountainousparts of the northern shires, was of the same blood with the populationof England, and spoke a tongue which did not differ from the purestEnglish more than the dialects of Somersetshire and Lancashire differedfrom each other. In Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with theexception of the small English colony near the coast, was Celtic, andstill kept the Celtic speech and manners. 

In natural courage and intelligence both the nations which now becameconnected with England ranked high. In perseverance, in selfcommand, inforethought, in all the virtues which conduce to success in life, theScots have never been surpassed. The Irish, on the other hand, weredistinguished by qualities which tend to make men interesting ratherthan prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous race, easily movedto tears or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among the nations ofnorthern Europe they had the susceptibility, the vivacity, the naturalturn for acting and rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of theMediterranean Sea. In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputablesuperiority. Though that kingdom was then the poorest in Christendom, it already vied in every branch of learning with the most favouredcountries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched asthose of the Icelanders of our time, wrote Latin verse with more thanthe delicacy of Vida, and made discoveries in science which would haveadded to the renown of Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan orNapier. The genius, with which her aboriginal inhabitants were largelyendowed' showed itself as yet only in ballads which wild and rugged asthey were, seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to contain a portion ofthe pure gold of poetry. 

Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved herdignity. Having, during many generations, courageously withstood theEnglish arms, she was now joined to her stronger neighbour on the mosthonourable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving one. She retainedher own constitution and laws. Her tribunals and parliaments remainedentirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments which sate atWestminster. The administration of Scotland was in Scottish hands; forno Englishman had any motive to emigrate northward, and to contend withthe shrewdest and most pertinacious of all races for what was to bescraped together in the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotlandby no means escaped the fate ordained for every country which isconnected, but not incorporated, with another country of greaterresources. Though in name an independent kingdom, she was, during morethan a century, really treated, in many respects, as a subject province. 

Ireland was undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the sword. Herrude national institutions had perished. The English colonists submittedto the dictation of the mother country, without whose support they couldnot exist, and indemnified themselves by trampling on the people amongwhom they had settled. The parliaments which met at Dublin could pass nolaw which had not been previously approved by the English Privy Council. The authority of the English legislature extended over Ireland. Theexecutive administration was entrusted to men taken either from Englandor 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 todiffer from Scotland remains to be noticed. Scotland was Protestant. Inno part of Europe had the movement of the popular mind against the RomanCatholic Church been so rapid and violent. The Reformers had vanquished, deposed, and imprisoned their idolatrous sovereign. They would notendure even such a compromise as had been effected in England. They hadestablished the Calvinistic doctrine, discipline, and worship; and theymade little distinction between Popery and Prelacy, between the Mass andthe Book of Common Prayer. Unfortunately for Scotland, the prince whomshe sent to govern a fairer inheritance had been so much annoyed bythe pertinacity with which her theologians had asserted against him theprivileges of the synod and the pulpit that he hated the ecclesiasticalpolity to which she was fondly attached as much as it was in hiseffeminate nature to hate anything, and had no sooner mounted theEnglish throne than he began to show an intolerant zeal for thegovernment and ritual of the English Church. 

The Irish were the only people of northern Europe who had remained trueto the old religion. This is to be partly ascribed to the circumstancethat they were some centuries behind their neighbours in knowledge. Butother causes had cooperated. The Reformation had been a national as wellas a moral revolt. It had been, not only an insurrection of the laityagainst the clergy, but also an insurrection of all the branches of thegreat German race against an alien domination. It is a most significantcircumstance that no large society of which the tongue is not Teutonichas ever turned Protestant, and that, wherever a language derived fromthat of ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this dayprevails. The patriotism of the Irish had taken a peculiar direction. The object of their animosity was not Rome, but England; and they hadespecial reason to abhor those English sovereigns who had been thechiefs of the great schism, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. Duringthe vain struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintainedagainst the Tudors, religious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm becameinseparably blended in the minds of the vanquished race. The new feudof Protestant and Papist inflamed the old feud of Saxon and Celt. The English conquerors meanwhile, neglected all legitimate means ofconversion. No care was taken to provide the vanquished nation withinstructors capable of making themselves understood. No translation ofthe Bible was put forth in the Irish language. The government contenteditself with setting up a vast hierarchy of Protestant archbishops, bishops, and rectors, who did nothing, and who, for doing nothing, werepaid out of the spoils of a Church loved and revered by the great bodyof the people. 

There was much in the state both of Scotland and of Ireland which mightwell excite the painful apprehensions of a farsighted statesman. As yet, however, there was the appearance of tranquillity. For the first timeall 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 newKing governed was, in extent, nearly double that which Elizabeth hadinherited. His empire was the most complete within itself and the mostsecure from attack that was to be found in the world. The Plantagenetsand Tudors had been repeatedly under the necessity of defendingthemselves against Scotland while they were engaged in continental war. The long conflict in Ireland had been a severe and perpetual drain ontheir resources. Yet even under such disadvantages those sovereigns hadbeen highly considered throughout Christendom. It might, therefore, notunreasonably be expected that England, Scotland, and Ireland combinedwould form a state second to none that then existed. 

All such expectations were strangely disappointed. On the day of theaccession of James the First, England descended from the rank which shehad hitherto held, and began to be regarded as a power hardly of thesecond order. During many years the great British monarchy, under foursuccessive princes of the House of Stuart, was scarcely a more importantmember of the European system than the little kingdom of Scotland hadpreviously been. This, however, is little to be regretted. Of James theFirst, as of John, it may be said that, if his administration had beenable and splendid, it would probably have been fatal to our country, and that we owe more to his weakness and meanness than to the wisdom andcourage of much better sovereigns. He came to the throne at a criticalmoment. The time was fast approaching when either the King mustbecome absolute, or the parliament must control the whole executiveadministration. Had James been, like Henry the Fourth, like Maurice ofNassau, or like Gustavus Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic ruler, had he put himself at the head of the Protestants of Europe, hadhe gained great victories over Tilly and Spinola, had he adornedWestminster with the spoils of Bavarian monasteries and Flemishcathedrals, had he hung Austrian and Castilian banners in Saint Paul's, and had he found himself, after great achievements, at the head of fiftythousand troops, brave, well disciplined, and devotedly attached to hisperson, the English Parliament would soon have been nothing more thana name. Happily he was not a man to play such a part. He began hisadministration by putting an end to the war which had raged duringmany years between England and Spain; and from that time he shunnedhostilities with a caution which was proof against the insults of hisneighbours and the clamours of his subjects. Not till the last year ofhis life could the influence of his son, his favourite, his Parliament, and his people combined, induce him to strike one feeble blow indefence of his family and of his religion. It was well for those whom hegoverned that he in this matter disregarded their wishes. The effect ofhis pacific policy was that, in his time, no regular troops were needed, and that, while France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany swarmed withmercenary soldiers, the defence of our island was still confided to themilitia. 

As the King had no standing army, and did not even attempt 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 themeans which alone could make him really absolute, he constantly putforward, in the most offensive form, claims of which none of hispredecessors had ever dreamed. It was at this time that those strangetheories which Filmer afterwards formed into a system and which becamethe badge of the most violent class of Tories and high churchmen, firstemerged into notice. It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Beingregarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government, with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order ofprimogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the Christian, andeven to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human power, not even thatof the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though itextended to ten centuries, could deprive a legitimate prince of hisrights, that the authority of such a prince was necessarily alwaysdespotic; that the laws, by which, in England and in other countries, the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessionswhich the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume;and that any treaty which a king might conclude with his people wasmerely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a contract ofwhich the performance could be demanded. It is evident that this theory, though intended to strengthen the foundations of government, altogetherunsettles them. Does the divine and immutable law of primogeniture admitfemales, or exclude them? On either supposition half the sovereigns ofEurope must be usurpers, reigning in defiance of the law of God, andliable to be dispossessed by the rightful heirs. The doctrine thatkingly government is peculiarly favoured by Heaven receives nocountenance from the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament we readthat the chosen people were blamed and punished for desiring a king, andthat they were afterwards commanded to withdraw their allegiancefrom him. Their whole history, far from countenancing the notion thatsuccession in order of primogeniture is of divine institution, wouldrather seem to indicate that younger brothers are under the especialprotection of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacobof Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse nor Solomon of DavidNor does the system of Filmer receive any countenance from thosepassages of the New Testament which describe government as an ordinanceof God: for the government under which the writers of the New Testamentlived was not a hereditary monarchy. The Roman Emperors were republicanmagistrates, named by the senate. None of them pretended to rule byright of birth; and, in fact, both Tiberius, to whom Christ commandedthat tribute should be given, and Nero, whom Paul directed the Romans toobey, were, according to the patriarchal theory of government, usurpers. In the middle ages the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right wouldhave been regarded as heretical: for it was altogether incompatible withthe high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It was a doctrine unknownto the founders of the Church of England. The Homily on Wilful Rebellionhad strongly, and indeed too strongly, inculcated submission toconstituted authority, but had made no distinction between hereditaryend elective monarchies, or between monarchies and republics. Indeedmost of the predecessors of James would, from personal motives, haveregarded the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. WilliamRufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry theFifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, hadall reigned in defiance of the strict rule of descent. A gravedoubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It wasimpossible that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn could have beenlawfully married to Henry the Eighth; and the highest authority inthe realm had pronounced that neither was so. The Tudors, far fromconsidering the law of succession as a divine and unchangeableinstitution, were constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighthobtained an act of parliament, giving him power to leave the crown bywill, and actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal familyof Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed asimilar power, with the full approbation of the most eminent Reformers. Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to grave objection, andunwilling to admit even a reversionary right in her rival and enemythe Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to pass a law, enacting thatwhoever should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, with theassent of the Estates of the realm, to alter the succession, shouldsuffer death as a traitor: But the situation of James was widelydifferent from that of Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities andin popularity, regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded fromthe throne by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots wasyet the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He had, therefore, an obvious interest in inculcating the superstitions notionthat birth confers rights anterior to law, and unalterable by law. Itwas a notion, moreover, well suited to his intellect and temper. It soonfound many advocates among those who aspired to his favour, and maderapid progress among the clergy of the Established Church. 

Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began to manifestitself strongly in the Parliament and in the country, the claims of themonarch took a monstrous form which would have disgusted the proudestand most arbitrary of those who had preceded him on the throne. 

James was always boasting of his skill in what he called kingcraft; andyet it is hardly possible even to imagine a course more directly opposedto all the rules of kingcraft, than that which he followed. The policyof wise rulers has always been to disguise strong acts under popularforms. It was thus that Augustus and Napoleon established absolutemonarchies, while the public regarded them merely as eminent citizensinvested with temporary magistracies. The policy of James was the directreverse of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his Parliament by constantlytelling them that they held their privileges merely during his pleasureand that they had no more business to inquire what he might lawfullydo than what the Deity might lawfully do. Yet he quailed before them, abandoned minister after minister to their vengeance, and suffered themto tease him into acts directly opposed to his strongest inclinations. Thus the indignation excited by his claims and the scorn excited byhis concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthlessminions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny andrapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His cowardice, hischildishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishmentsthere was something eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course ofhis reign, all the venerable associations by which the throng had longbeen fenced were gradually losing their strength. During two hundredyears all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the exception ofHenry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous, and ofprincely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above the ordinarylevel. It was no light thing that on the very eve of the decisivestruggle between our Kings and their Parliaments, royalty should beexhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of abuffoon and of a pedagogue. 

In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from the days ofEdward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been distracted, had becomemore formidable than ever. The interval which had separated the firstgeneration of Puritans from Cranmer and Jewel was small indeed whencompared with the interval which separated the third generation ofPuritans from Laud and Hammond. While the recollection of Mary'scruelties was still fresh, while the powers of the Roman Catholic partystill inspired apprehension, while Spain still retained ascendency andaspired to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they hada strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. The animositywhich they felt towards each other was languid when compared withthe animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists andNonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of extremeseverity against the Papists. But when more than half a century ofundisturbed possession had given confidence to the Established Church, when nine tenths of the nation had become heartily Protestant, whenEngland was at peace with all the world, when there was no danger thatPopery would be forced by foreign arms on the nation, when the lastconfessors who had stood before Bonner had passed away, a change tookplace in the feeling of the Anglican clergy. Their hostility to theRoman Catholic doctrine and discipline was considerably mitigated. Their dislike of the Puritans, on the other hand, increased daily. Thecontroversies which had from the beginning divided the Protestant partytook such a form as made reconciliation hopeless; and new controversiesof still greater importance were added to the old subjects of dispute. 

The founders of the Anglican Church had retained episcopacy as anancient, a decent, and a convenient ecclesiastical polity, but had notdeclared that form of church government to be of divine institution. Wehave already seen how low an estimate Cranmer had formed of the officeof a Bishop. In the reign of Elizabeth, Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, andother eminent doctors defended prelacy, as innocent, as useful, as whatthe state might lawfully establish, as what, when established by thestate, was entitled to the respect of every citizen. But they neverdenied that a Christian community without a Bishop might be a pureChurch. [6] On the contrary, they regarded the Protestants of theContinent as of the same household of faith with themselves. Englishmenin England were indeed bound to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop, as they were bound to acknowledge the authority of the Sheriff and ofthe Coroner: but the obligation was purely local. An English churchman, nay even an English prelate, if he went to Holland, conformed withoutscruple to the established religion of Holland. Abroad the ambassadorsof Elizabeth and James went in state to the very worship which Elizabethand James persecuted at home, and carefully abstained from decoratingtheir private chapels after the Anglican fashion, lest scandal shouldbe given to weaker brethren. An instrument is still extant by which thePrimate of all England, in the year 1582, authorised a Scotch minister, ordained, according to the laudable forms of the Scotch Church, by theSynod of East Lothian, to preach and administer the sacraments inany part of the province of Canterbury. [7] In the year 1603, theConvocation solemnly recognised the Church of Scotland, a Church inwhich episcopal control and episcopal ordination were then unknown, as abranch of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ. [8] It was even held thatPresbyterian ministers were entitled to place and voice in oecumenicalcouncils. When the States General of the United Provinces convoked atDort a synod of doctors not episcopally ordained, an English Bishop andan English Dean, commissioned by the head of the English Church, satewith those doctors, preached to them, and voted with them on the gravestquestions of theology. [9] Nay, many English benefices were held bydivines who had been admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic formused on the Continent; nor was reordination by a Bishop in such casesthen thought necessary, or even lawful. [10]

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 aChristian society and to the efficacy of the most solemn ordinances ofreligion. To that office belonged certain high and sacred privileges, which no human power could give or take away. A church might as well bewithout the doctrine of the Trinity, or the doctrine of the Incarnation, as without the apostolical orders; and the Church of Rome, which, in themidst of all her corruptions, had retained the apostolical orders, was nearer to primitive purity than those reformed societies which hadrashly set up, in opposition to the divine model, a system invented bymen. 

In the days of Edward the Sixth and of Elizabeth, the defenders of theAnglican ritual had generally contented themselves with saying that itmight be used without sin, and that, therefore, none but a perverse andundutiful subject would refuse to use it when enjoined to do so by themagistrate. Now, however, that rising party which claimed for the polityof the Church a celestial origin began to ascribe to her services a newdignity and importance. It was hinted that, if the established worshiphad any fault, that fault was extreme simplicity, and that the Reformershad, in the heat of their quarrel with Rome, abolished many ancientceremonies which might with advantage have been retained. Days andplaces were again held in mysterious veneration. Some practices whichhad long been disused, and which were commonly regarded as superstitiousmummeries, were revived. Paintings and carvings, which had escaped thefury of the first generation of Protestants, became the objects of arespect such as to many seemed idolatrous. 

No part of the system of the old Church had been more detested by theReformers than the honour paid to celibacy. They held that the doctrineof Rome on this subject had been prophetically condemned by the apostlePaul, as a doctrine of devils; and they dwelt much on the crimes andscandals which seemed to prove the justice of this awful denunciation. Luther had evinced his own opinion in the clearest manner, by espousinga nun. Some of the most illustrious bishops and priests who had died byfire during the reign of Mary had left wives and children. Now, however, it began to be rumoured that the old monastic spirit had reappearedin the Church of England; that there was in high quarters a prejudiceagainst married priests; that even laymen, who called themselvesProtestants, had made resolutions of celibacy which almost amountedto vows; nay, that a minister of the established religion had set up anunnery, in which the psalms were chaunted at midnight, by a company ofvirgins dedicated to God. [11]

Nor was this all. A class of questions, as to which the founders of theAnglican Church and the first generation of Puritans had differedlittle or not at all, began to furnish matter for fierce disputes. Thecontroversies which had divided the Protestant body in its infancy hadrelated almost exclusively to Church government and to ceremonies. Therehad been no serious quarrel between the contending parties on points ofmetaphysical theology. The doctrines held by the chiefs of the hierarchytouching original sin, faith, grace, predestination, and election, were those which are popularly called Calvinistic. Towards the close ofElizabeth's reign her favourite prelate, Archbishop Whitgift, drewup, in concert with the Bishop of London and other theologians, thecelebrated instrument known by the name of the Lambeth Articles. In thatinstrument the most startling of the Calvinistic doctrines are affirmedwith a distinctness which would shock many who, in our age, are reputedCalvinists. One clergyman, who took the opposite side, and spoke harshlyof Calvin, was arraigned for his presumption by the University ofCambridge, and escaped punishment only by expressing his firm belief inthe tenets of reprobation and final perseverance, and his sorrow forthe offence which he had given to pious men by reflecting on the greatFrench reformer. The school of divinity of which Hooker was the chiefoccupies a middle place between the school of Cranmer and the school ofLaud; and Hooker has, in modern times, been claimed by the Arminiansas an ally. Yet Hooker pronounced Calvin to have been a man superiorin wisdom to any other divine that France had produced, a man to whomthousands were indebted for the knowledge of divine truth, but who washimself indebted to God alone. When the Arminian controversy arosein Holland, the English government and the English Church lent strongsupport to the Calvinistic party; nor is the English name altogetherfree from the stain which has been left on that party by theimprisonment of Grocius and the judicial murder of Barneveldt. 

But, even before the meeting of the Dutch synod, that part of theAnglican clergy which was peculiarly hostile to the Calvinistic Churchgovernment and to the Calvinistic worship had begun to regard withdislike the Calvinistic metaphysics; and this feeling was very naturallystrengthened by the gross injustice, insolence, and cruelty of the partywhich was prevalent at Dort. The Arminian doctrine, a doctrine lessausterely logical than that of the early Reformers, but more agreeableto the popular notions of the divine justice and benevolence, spreadfast and wide. The infection soon reached the court. Opinions whichat the time of the accession of James, no clergyman could have avowedwithout imminent risk of being stripped of his gown, were now the besttitle to preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by a simplecountry gentleman what the Arminians held, answered, with as much truthas wit, that they held all the best bishoprics and deaneries in England. 

While the majority of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one direction, theposition which they had originally occupied, the majority of thePuritan body departed, in a direction diametrically opposite, from theprinciples and practices of their fathers. The persecution which theseparatists had undergone had been severe enough to irritate, but notsevere enough to destroy. They had been, not tamed into submission, butbaited into savageness and stubborness. After the fashion of oppressedsects, they mistook their own vindictive feelings for emotions of piety, encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation, a disposition tobrood over their wrongs, and, when they had worked themselves up intohating their enemies, imagined that they were only hating the enemiesof heaven. In the New Testament there was little indeed which, even whenperverted by the most disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenancethe indulgence of malevolent passions. But the Old Testament containedthe history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity andministers of his vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do manythings which, if done without his special command, would have beenatrocious crimes. In such a history it was not difficult for fierceand gloomy spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit theirwishes. The extreme Puritans therefore began to feel for the OldTestament a preference, which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avoweven to themselves; but which showed itself in all their sentiments andhabits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they refusedto that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the epistles of Paulhave come down to us. They baptized their children by the names, not ofChristian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. In defianceof the express and reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, theyturned the weekly festival by which the Church had, from the primitivetimes, commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish Sabbath. They sought for principles of jurisprudence in the Mosaic law, and forprecedents to guide their ordinary conduct in the books of Judgesand Kings. Their thoughts and discourse ran much on acts which wereassuredly not recorded as examples for our imitation. The prophet whohewed in pieces a captive king, the rebel general who gave the blood ofa queen to the dogs, the matron who, in defiance of plighted faith, andof the laws of eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of thefugitive ally who had just fed at her board, and who was sleeping underthe shadow of her tent, were proposed as models to Christians sufferingunder the tyranny of princes and prelates. Morals and manners weresubjected to a code resembling that of the synagogue, when the synagoguewas in its worst state. The dress, the deportment, the language, thestudies, the amusements of the rigid sect were regulated on principlesnot unlike those of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands andbroad phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbath-breaker and awinebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink afriend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, towear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would haveappeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, andcontemptible to the serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threwover all life a more than monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence bywhich the great Reformers had been eminently distinguished, and to whichthey had been, in no small measure, indebted for their success, wereregarded by the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if not withaversion. Some precisians had scruples about teaching the Latin grammar, because the names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it. Thefine arts were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ wassuperstitious. The light music of Ben Jonson's masques was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in England were idolatrous, and the other halfindecent. The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by hisgait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, theupturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, andabove all, by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion, theimagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced into theEnglish language, and metaphors borrowed from the boldest lyric poetryof a remote age and country, and applied to the common concerns ofEnglish life, were the most striking peculiarities of this cant, which moved, not without cause, the derision both of Prelatists andlibertines. 

Thus the political and religious schism which had originated in thesixteenth century was, during the first quarter of the seventeenthcentury, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish despotismwere in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending to republicanism werein favour with a large portion of the House of Commons. The violentPrelatists who were, to a man, zealous for prerogative, and the violentPuritans who were, to a man, zealous for the privileges of Parliament, regarded each other with animosity more intense than that which, in thepreceding generation, had existed between Catholics and Protestants. 

While the minds of men were in this state, the country, after a peaceof many years, at length engaged in a war which required strenuousexertions. This war hastened the approach of the great constitutionalcrisis. It was necessary that the King should have a large militaryforce. He could not have such a force without money. He could notlegally raise money without the consent of Parliament. It followed, therefore, that he either must administer the government in conformitywith the sense of the House of Commons, or must venture on such aviolation of the fundamental laws of the land as had been unknown duringseveral centuries. The Plantagenets and the Tudors had, it is true, occasionally supplied a deficiency in their revenue by a benevolence ora forced loan: but these expedients were always of a temporary nature. To meet the regular charge of a long war by regular taxation, imposedwithout the consent of the Estates of the realm, was a course whichHenry the Eighth himself would not have dared to take. It seemed, therefore, that the decisive hour was approaching, and that the EnglishParliament would soon either share the fate of the senates of theContinent, or obtain supreme ascendency in the state. 

Just at this conjuncture James died. Charles the First succeeded to thethrone. He had received from nature a far better understanding, a farstronger will, and a far keener and firmer temper than his father's. He had inherited his father's political theories, and was much moredisposed than his father to carry them into practice. He was, like hisfather, a zealous Episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his father hadnever been, a zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a Papistmuch better than a Puritan. It would be unjust to deny that Charles hadsome of the qualities of a good, and even of a great prince. He wroteand spoke, not, like his father, with the exactness of a professor, butafter the fashion of intelligent and well educated gentlemen. His tastein literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified, though notgracious, his domestic life without blemish. Faithlessness was the chiefcause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, intruth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange that his conscience, which, on occasions of littlemoment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproachedhim with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he wasperfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but also onprinciple. He seems to have learned from the theologians whom he mostesteemed that between him and his subjects there could be nothing of thenature of mutual contract; that he could not, even if he would, divesthimself of his despotic authority; and that, in every promise which hemade, there was an implied reservation that such promise might be brokenin case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge. 

And now began that hazardous game on which were staked the destinies ofthe English people. It was played on the side of the House of Commonswith keenness, but with admirable dexterity, coolness, and perseverance. Great statesmen who looked far behind them and far before them were atthe head of that assembly. They were resolved to place the King in sucha situation that he must either conduct the administration in conformitywith the wishes of his Parliament, or make outrageous attacks on themost sacred principles of the constitution. They accordingly doled outsupplies to him very sparingly. He found that he must govern either inharmony with the House of Commons or in defiance of all law. His choicewas soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament, and levied taxes byhis own authority. He convoked a second Parliament, and found it moreintractable than the first. He again resorted to the expedient ofdissolution, raised fresh taxes without any show of legal right, andthrew the chiefs of the opposition into prison At the same time a newgrievance, which the peculiar feelings and habits of the English nationmade insupportably painful, and which seemed to all discerning men tobe of fearful augury, excited general discontent and alarm. Companiesof soldiers were billeted on the people; and martial law was, in someplaces, substituted for the ancient jurisprudence of the realm. 

The King called a third Parliament, and soon perceived that theopposition was stronger and fiercer than ever. He now determined on achange of tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible resistance to thedemands of the Commons, he, after much altercation and many evasions, agreed to a compromise which, if he had faithfully adhered to it, wouldhave averted a long series of calamities. The Parliament grantedan ample supply. The King ratified, in the most solemn manner, thatcelebrated law, which is known by the name of the Petition of Right, and which is the second Great Charter of the liberties of England. Byratifying that law he bound himself never again to raise money withoutthe consent of the Houses, never again to imprison any person, exceptin due course of law, and never again to subject his people to thejurisdiction of courts martial. 

The day on which the royal sanction was, after many delays, solemnlygiven 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 loudacclamations as soon as the clerk had pronounced the ancient form ofwords by which our princes have, during many ages, signified theirassent to the wishes of the Estates of the realm. Those acclamationswere reechoed by the voice of the capital and of the nation; butwithin three weeks it became manifest that Charles had no intention ofobserving the compact into which he had entered. The supply given by therepresentatives of the nation was collected. The promise by which thatsupply had been obtained was broken. A violent contest followed. TheParliament was dissolved with every mark of royal displeasure. Some ofthe most distinguished members were imprisoned; and one of them, SirJohn 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 makepeace with his neighbours, and thenceforth gave his whole mind toBritish politics. 

Now commenced a new era. Many English Kings had occasionally committedunconstitutional acts: but none had ever systematically attempted tomake himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Suchwas the end which Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March1629 to April 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in our historyhad there been an interval of eleven years between Parliament andParliament. Only once had there been an interval of even half thatlength. This fact alone is sufficient to refute those who representCharles as having merely trodden in the footsteps of the Plantagenetsand 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 ofRight were violated by him, not occasionally, but constantly, and onsystem; that a large part of the revenue was raised without any legalauthority; and that persons obnoxious to the government languished foryears in prison, without being ever called upon to plead before anytribunal. 

For these things history must hold the King himself chiefly responsible. From the time of his third Parliament he was his own prime minister. Several persons, however, whose temper and talents were suited tohis purposes, were at the head of different departments of theadministration. 

Thomas Wentworth, successively created Lord Wentworth and Earl ofStrafford, a man of great abilities, eloquence, and courage, but of acruel and imperious nature, was the counsellor most trusted in politicaland military affairs. He had been one of the most distinguished membersof the opposition, and felt towards those whom he had deserted thatpeculiar malignity which has, in all ages, been characteristic ofapostates. He perfectly understood the feelings, the resources, and thepolicy of the party to which he had lately belonged, and had formed avast and deeply meditated scheme which very nearly confounded even theable tactics of the statesmen by whom the House of Commons had beendirected. To this scheme, in his confidential correspondence, he gavethe 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 amonarch as absolute as any on the Continent; to put the estates and thepersonal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of the crown; todeprive the courts of law of all independent authority, even in ordinaryquestions of civil right between man and man; and to punish withmerciless rigour all who murmured at the acts of the government, or whoapplied, even in the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal forrelief against those acts. [12]

This was his end; and he distinctly saw in what manner alone thisend could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions aclearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuingan object pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justlyentitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one instrument, and only one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carriedinto execution. That instrument was a standing army. To the forming ofsuch an army, therefore, he directed all the energy of his strong mind. In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishinga military despotism, not only over the aboriginal population, but alsoover 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. [13]

The ecclesiastical administration was, in the meantime, principallydirected by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Of all the prelatesof the Anglican Church, Laud had departed farthest from the principlesof the Reformation, and had drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was moreremote than even that of the Dutch Arminians from the theology of theCalvinists. His passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holidays, vigils, and sacred places, his ill concealed dislike of the marriageof ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zealwith which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence of thelaity, would have made him an object of aversion to the Puritans, evenif he had used only legal and gentle means for the attainment of hisends. But his understanding was narrow; and his commerce with the worldhad been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for hisown dignity, slow to sympathise with the sufferings of others, and proneto the error, common in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevishand malignant moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his directionevery corner of the realm was subjected to a constant and minuteinspection. Every little congregation of separatists was tracked out andbroken up. Even the devotions of private families could not escape thevigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigour inspire that thedeadly hatred of the Church, which festered in innumerable bosoms, wasgenerally disguised under an outward show of conformity. On the very eveof troubles, fatal to himself and to his order, the Bishops of severalextensive dioceses were able to report to him that not a singledissenter was to be found within their jurisdiction. [14]

The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the civiland ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the commonlaw, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, werescandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were lessready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class ofcourts, the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than twocenturies, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost amongthese courts in power and in infamy were the Star Chamber and the HighCommission, the former a political, the latter a religious inquisition. Neither was a part of the old constitution of England. The Star Chamberhad been remodelled, and the High Commission created, by the Tudors. Thepower which these boards had possessed before the accession of Charleshad been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed whencompared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly by the violentspirit of the primate, and free from the control of Parliament, theydisplayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had beenunknown to any former age. The government was able through theirinstrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate withoutrestraint. A separate council which sate at York, under the presidencyof Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act ofprerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. Allthese tribunals insulted and defied the authority of Westminster Hall, and daily committed excesses which the most distinguished Royalists havewarmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there was hardlya man of note in the realm who had not personal experience of theharshness and greediness of the Star Chamber, that the High Commissionhad 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 adead letter on the north of the Trent. 

The government of England was now, in all points but one, as despotic asthat of France. But that one point was all important. There was still nostanding army. There was therefore, no security that the whole fabricof tyranny might not be subverted in a single day; and, if taxes wereimposed by the royal authority for the support of an army, it wasprobable that there would be an immediate and irresistible explosion. This was the difficulty which more than any other perplexed Wentworth. The Lord Keeper Finch, in concert with other lawyers who were employedby the government, recommended an expedient which was eagerly adopted. The ancient princes of England, as they called on the inhabitants of thecounties near Scotland to arm and array themselves for the defence ofthe border, had sometimes called on the maritime counties to furnishships for the defence of the coast. In the room of ships money hadsometimes been accepted. This old practice it was now determined, aftera long interval, not only to revive but to extend. Former princes hadraised shipmoney only in time of war: it was now exacted in a time ofprofound peace. Former princes, even in the most perilous wars, hadraised shipmoney only along the coasts: it was now exacted from theinland shires. Former princes had raised shipmoney only for the maritimedefence of the country: It was now exacted, by the admission of theRoyalists themselves. With the object, not of maintaining a navy, butof furnishing the King with supplies which might be increased athis discretion to any amount, and expended at his discretion for anypurpose. 

The whole nation was alarmed and incensed. John Hampden, an opulent andwell born gentleman of Buckinghamshire, highly considered in his ownneighbourhood, but as yet little known to the kingdom generally, had thecourage to step forward, to confront the whole power of the government, and take on himself the cost and the risk of disputing the prerogativeto which the King laid claim. The case was argued before the judgesin the Exchequer Chamber. So strong were the arguments against thepretensions of the crown that, dependent and servile as the judges were, the majority against Hampden was the smallest possible. Still there wasa majority. The interpreters of the law had pronounced that one greatand productive tax might be imposed by the royal authority. Wentworthjustly observed that it was impossible to vindicate their judgmentexcept by reasons directly leading to a conclusion which they had notventured to draw. If money might legally be raised without the consentof Parliament for the support of a fleet, it was not easy to deny thatmoney might, without consent of Parliament, be legally raised for thesupport of an army. 

The decision of the judges increased the irritation of the people. Acentury earlier, irritation less serious would have produced a generalrising. But discontent did not now so readily as in an earlier age takethe form of rebellion. The nation had been long steadily advancing inwealth and in civilisation. Since the great northern Earls took up armsagainst Elizabeth seventy years had elapsed; and during those seventyyears there had been no civil war. Never, during the whole existenceof the English nation, had so long a period passed without intestinehostilities. Men had become accustomed to the pursuits of peacefulindustry, and, exasperated as they were, hesitated long before they drewthe sword. 

This was the conjuncture at which the liberties of the nation were inthe greatest peril. The opponents of the government began to despair ofthe destiny of their country; and many looked to the American wildernessas the only asylum in which they could enjoy civil and spiritualfreedom. There a few resolute Puritans, who, in the cause of theirreligion, feared neither the rage of the ocean nor the hardships ofuncivilised life, neither the fangs of savage beasts nor the tomahawksof more savage men, had built, amidst the primeval forests, villageswhich are now great and opulent cities, but which have, throughevery change, retained some trace of the character derived from theirfounders. The government regarded these infant colonies with aversion, and attempted violently to stop the stream of emigration, but could notprevent the population of New England from being largely recruited bystouthearted and Godfearing men from every part of the old England. And now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect of Thorough. A few yearsmight probably suffice for the execution of his great design. Ifstrict economy were observed, if all collision with foreign powers werecarefully avoided, the debts of the crown would be cleared off: therewould be funds available for the support of a large military force; andthat force would soon break the refractory spirit of the nation. 

At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the wholeface of public affairs. Had the King been wise, he would have pursued acautious and soothing policy towards Scotland till he was master in theSouth. For Scotland was of all his kingdoms that in which there was thegreatest risk that a spark might produce a flame, and that a flame mightbecome a conflagration. Constitutional opposition, indeed, such as hehad encountered at Westminster, he had not to apprehend at Edinburgh. The Parliament of his northern kingdom was a very different body fromthat which bore the same name in England. It was ill constituted: it waslittle considered; and it had never imposed any serious restraint onany of his predecessors. The three Estates sate in one house. Thecommissioners of the burghs were considered merely as retainers of thegreat nobles. No act could be introduced till it had been approved bythe Lords of Articles, a committee which was really, though not inform, nominated by the crown. But, though the Scottish Parliament wasobsequious, the Scottish people had always been singularly turbulent andungovernable. They had butchered their first James in his bedchamber:they had repeatedly arrayed themselves in arms against James theSecond; they had slain James the Third on the field of battle: theirdisobedience had broken the heart of James the Fifth: they had deposedand imprisoned Mary: they had led her son captive; and their temper wasstill as intractable as ever. Their habits were rude and martial. Allalong the southern border, and all along the line between the highlandsand the lowlands, raged an incessant predatory war. In every part of thecountry men were accustomed to redress their wrongs by the strong hand. Whatever loyalty the nation had anciently felt to the Stuarts had cooledduring their long absence. The supreme influence over the public mindwas divided between two classes of malecontents, the lords of the soiland the preachers; lords animated by the same spirit which had oftenimpelled the old Douglasses to withstand the royal house, and preacherswho had inherited the republican opinions and the unconquerable spiritof Knox. Both the national and religious feelings of the populationhad been wounded. All orders of men complained that their country, thatcountry which had, with so much glory, defended her independence againstthe ablest and bravest Plantagenets, had, through the instrumentality ofher native princes, become in effect, though not in name, a provinceof England. In no part of Europe had the Calvinistic doctrine anddiscipline taken so strong a hold on the public mind. The Church of Romewas regarded by the great body of the people with a hatred which mightjustly be called ferocious; and the Church of England, which seemedto be every day becoming more and more like the Church of Rome, was anobject of scarcely less aversion. 

The government had long wished to extend the Anglican system over thewhole island, and had already, with this view, made several changeshighly distasteful to every Presbyterian. One innovation, however, themost hazardous of all, because it was directly cognisable by the sensesof the common people, had not yet been attempted. The public worshipof God was still conducted in the manner acceptable to the nation. Now, however, Charles and Laud determined to force on the Scots the Englishliturgy, or rather a liturgy which, wherever it differed from that ofEngland, differed, in the judgment of all rigid Protestants, for theworse. 

To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminalignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling, our country owesher freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produceda riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation wasin arms. The power of England was indeed, as appeared some years later, sufficient to coerce Scotland: but a large part of the English peoplesympathised with the religious feelings of the insurgents; and manyEnglishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altarsand surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion whichseemed likely to confound the arbitrary projects of the court, and tomake the calling of a Parliament necessary. 

For the senseless freak which had produced these effects Wentworthis not responsible. [15] It had, in fact, thrown all his plans intoconfusion. To counsel submission, however, was not in his nature. Anattempt was made to put down the insurrection by the sword: but theKing's military means and military talents were unequal to the task. To impose fresh taxes on England in defiance of law, would, at thisconjuncture, 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 seeingconstitutional government restored, and grievances redressed. The newHouse of Commons was more temperate and more respectful to the thronethan any which had sate since the death of Elizabeth. The moderationof this assembly has been highly extolled by the most distinguishedRoyalists and seems to have caused no small vexation and disappointmentto the chiefs of the opposition: but it was the uniform practice ofCharles, a practice equally impolitic and ungenerous, to refuse allcompliance with the desires of his people, till those desireswere expressed in a menacing tone. As soon as the Commons showed adisposition to take into consideration the grievances under whichthe country had suffered during eleven years, the King dissolved theParliament with every mark of displeasure. 

Between the dissolution of this shortlived assembly and the meetingof that ever memorable body known by the name of the Long Parliament, intervened a few months, during which the yoke was pressed down moreseverely than ever on the nation, while the spirit of the nation rose upmore angrily than ever against the yoke. Members of the House of Commonswere questioned by the Privy Council touching their parliamentaryconduct, and thrown into prison for refusing to reply. Shipmoney waslevied with increased rigour. The Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs of Londonwere threatened with imprisonment for remissness in collecting thepayments. Soldiers were enlisted by force. Money for their support wasexacted from their counties. Torture, which had always been illegal, andwhich had recently been declared illegal even by the servile judges ofthat age, was inflicted for the last time in England in the month ofMay, 1610. 

Everything now depended on the event of the King's military operationsagainst the Scots. Among his troops there was little of that feelingwhich separates professional soldiers from the mass of a nation, andattaches them to their leaders. His army, composed for the most part ofrecruits, who regretted the plough from which they had been violentlytaken, and who were imbued with the religious and political sentimentsthen prevalent throughout the country, was more formidable to himselfthan to the enemy. The Scots, encouraged by the heads of the Englishopposition, and feebly resisted by the English forces, marched acrossthe Tweed and the Tyne, and encamped on the borders of Yorkshire. And now the murmurs of discontent swelled into an uproar by which allspirits save one were overawed. 

But the voice of Strafford was still for Thorough; and he even, in thisextremity, showed a nature so cruel and despotic, that his own pikemenwere ready to tear him in pieces. 

There was yet one last expedient which, as the King flattered himself, might save him from the misery of facing another House of Commons. Tothe House of Lords he was less averse. The Bishops were devoted tohim; and though the temporal peers were generally dissatisfied withhis administration, they were, as a class, so deeply interested in themaintenance of order, and in the stability of ancient institutions, thatthey were not likely to call for extensive reforms. Departing fromthe uninterrupted practice of centuries, he called a Great Councilconsisting of Lords alone. But the Lords were too prudent to assume theunconstitutional functions with which he wished to invest them. Withoutmoney, without credit, without authority even in his own camp, heyielded to the pressure of necessity. The Houses were convoked; and theelections proved that, since the spring, the distrust and hatred withwhich the government was regarded had made fearful progress. 

In November, 1640, met that renowned Parliament which, in spite of manyerrors and disasters, is justly entitled to the reverence andgratitude of all who, in any part of the world enjoy the blessings ofconstitutional government. 

During the year which followed, no very important division of opinionappeared in the Houses. The civil and ecclesiastical administrationhad, through a period of nearly twelve years, been so oppressive and sounconstitutional that even those classes of which the inclinationsare generally on the side of order and authority were eager to promotepopular reforms and to bring the instruments of tyranny to justice. Itwas enacted that no interval of more than three years should ever elapsebetween Parliament and Parliament, and that, if writs under the GreatSeal were not issued at the proper time, the returning officers should, without such writs, call the constituent bodies together for the choiceof representatives. The Star Chamber, the High Commission, the Councilof York were swept away. Men who, after suffering cruel mutilations, hadbeen confined in remote dungeons, regained their liberty. On the chiefministers of the crown the vengeance of the nation was unsparinglywreaked. The Lord Keeper, the Primate, the Lord Lieutenant wereimpeached. Finch saved himself by flight. Laud was flung into the Tower. Strafford was put to death by act of attainder. On the day on which thisact passed, the King gave his assent to a law by which he bound himselfnot to adjourn, prorogue, or dissolve the existing Parliament withoutits own consent. 

After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses, in September 1641, adjourned for a short vacation; and the King visited Scotland. He withdifficulty pacified that kingdom by consenting, not only to relinquishhis plans of ecclesiastical reform, but even to pass, with a very badgrace, an act declaring that episcopacy was contrary to the word of God. 

The recess of the English Parliament lasted six weeks. The day onwhich the Houses met again is one of the most remarkable epochs in ourhistory. From that day dates the corporate existence of the two greatparties which have ever since alternately governed the country. In onesense, indeed, the distinction which then became obvious had alwaysexisted, and always must exist. For it has its origin in diversitiesof temper, of understanding, and of interest, which are found in allsocieties, and which will be found till the human mind ceases to bedrawn in opposite directions by the charm of habit and by the charm ofnovelty. Not only in politics but in literature, in art, in science, in surgery and mechanics, in navigation and agriculture, nay, even inmathematics, we find this distinction. Everywhere there is a class ofmen who cling with fondness to whatever is ancient, and who, even whenconvinced by overpowering reasons that innovation would be beneficial, consent to it with many misgivings and forebodings. We find alsoeverywhere another class of men, sanguine in hope, bold in speculation, always pressing forward, quick to discern the imperfections of whateverexists, disposed to think lightly of the risks and inconveniences whichattend improvements and disposed to give every change credit for beingan improvement. In the sentiments of both classes there is something toapprove. But of both the best specimens will be found not far from thecommon frontier. The extreme section of one class consists of bigoteddotards: the extreme section of the other consists of shallow andreckless empirics. 

There can be no doubt that in our very first Parliaments might have beendiscerned a body of members anxious to preserve, and a body eager toreform. But, while the sessions of the legislature were short, thesebodies did not take definite and permanent forms, array themselves underrecognised leaders, or assume distinguishing names, badges, and warcries. During the first months of the Long Parliament, the indignationexcited by many years of lawless oppression was so strong andgeneral that the House of Commons acted as one man. Abuse afterabuse disappeared without a struggle. If a small minority of therepresentative body wished to retain the Star Chamber and the HighCommission, that minority, overawed by the enthusiasm and by thenumerical superiority of the reformers, contented itself with secretlyregretting institutions which could not, with any hope of success, beopenly defended. At a later period the Royalists found it convenient toantedate the separation between themselves and their opponents, andto attribute the Act which restrained the King from dissolving orproroguing the Parliament, the Triennial Act, the impeachment ofthe ministers, and the attainder of Strafford, to the faction whichafterwards made war on the King. But no artifice could be moredisingenuous. Every one of those strong measures was actively promotedby the men who were afterward foremost among the Cavaliers. Norepublican spoke of the long misgovernment of Charles more severely thanColepepper. The most remarkable speech in favour of the Triennial Billwas made by Digby. The impeachment of the Lord Keeper was moved byFalkland. The demand that the Lord Lieutenant should be kept closeprisoner was made at the bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not till the lawattainting Strafford was proposed did the signs of serious disunionbecome visible. Even against that law, a law which nothing but extremenecessity could justify, only about sixty members of the House ofCommons voted. It is certain that Hyde was not in the minority, and thatFalkland not only voted with the majority, but spoke strongly for thebill. Even the few who entertained a scruple about inflicting death bya retrospective enactment thought it necessary to express the utmostabhorrence 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, twohostile parties, essentially the same with those which, under differentnames, have ever since contended, and are still contending, for thedirection of public affairs, appeared confronting each other. Duringsome years they were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. Theywere subsequently called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that theseappellations are likely soon to become obsolete. 

It would not be difficult to compose a lampoon or panegyric on eitherof these renowned factions. For no man not utterly destitute of judgmentand candor will deny that there are many deep stains on the fame of theparty to which he belongs, or that the party to which he is opposed mayjustly boast of many illustrious names, of many heroic actions, and ofmany great services rendered to the state. The truth is that, thoughboth parties have often seriously erred, England could have sparedneither. If, in her institutions, freedom and order, the advantagesarising from innovation and the advantages arising from prescription, have been combined to an extent elsewhere unknown, we may attribute thishappy peculiarity to the strenuous conflicts and alternate victoriesof two rival confederacies of statesmen, a confederacy zealous forauthority and antiquity, and a confederacy zealous for liberty andprogress. 

It ought to be remembered that the difference between the two greatsections of English politicians has always been a difference rather ofdegree than of principle. There were certain limits on the right and onthe left, which were very rarely overstepped. A few enthusiasts on oneside were ready to lay all our laws and franchises at the feet ofour Kings. A few enthusiasts 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 averseto despotism; and the great majority of the champions of popular rightswere averse to anarchy. Twice, in the course of the seventeenth century, the two parties suspended their dissensions, and united their strengthin a common cause. Their first coalition restored hereditary monarchy. Their second coalition rescued constitutional freedom. 

It is also to be noted that these two parties have never been the wholenation, nay, that they have never, taken together, made up a majorityof the nation. Between them has always been a great mass, which hasnot steadfastly adhered to either, which has sometimes remained inertlyneutral, and which has sometimes oscillated to and fro. That mass hasmore than once passed in a few years from one extreme to the other, andback again. Sometimes it has changed sides, merely because it was tiredof supporting the same men, sometimes because it was dismayed by itsown excesses, sometimes because it had expected impossibilities, and hadbeen disappointed. But whenever it has leaned with its whole weight ineither direction, that weight has, for the time, been irresistible. 

When the rival parties first appeared in a distinct form, they seemedto be not unequally matched. On the side of the government was alarge majority of the nobles, and of those opulent and well descendedgentlemen to whom nothing was wanting of nobility but the name. These, with the dependents whose support they could command, were no smallpower in the state. On the same side were the great body of the clergy, both the Universities, and all those laymen who were strongly attachedto episcopal government and to the Anglican ritual. These respectableclasses found themselves in the company of some allies much lessdecorous than themselves. The Puritan austerity drove to the king'sfaction all who made pleasure their business, who affected gallantry, splendour of dress, or taste in the higher arts. With these went all wholive by amusing the leisure of others, from the painter and the comicpoet, down to the ropedancer and the Merry Andrew. For these artistswell knew that they might thrive under a superb and luxurious despotism, but must starve under the rigid rule of the precisians. In the sameinterest were the Roman Catholics to a man. The Queen, a daughter ofFrance, was of their own faith. Her husband was known to be stronglyattached to her, and not a little in awe of her. Though undoubtedly aProtestant on conviction, he regarded the professors of the old religionwith no ill-will, and would gladly have granted them a much largertoleration than he was disposed to concede to the Presbyterians. If theopposition obtained the mastery, it was probable that the sanguinarylaws enacted against Papists in the reign of Elizabeth, would beseverely enforced. The Roman Catholics were therefore induced by thestrongest motives to espouse the cause of the court. They in generalacted with a caution which brought on them the reproach of cowardiceand lukewarmness; but it is probable that, in maintaining great reserve, they consulted the King's interest as well as their own. It was not forhis service that they should be conspicuous among his friends. 

The main strength of the opposition lay among the small freeholders inthe country, and among the merchants and shopkeepers of the towns. But these were headed by a formidable minority of the aristocracy, aminority which included the rich and powerful Earls of Northumberland, Bedford, Warwick, Stamford, and Essex, and several other Lords of greatwealth and influence. In the same ranks was found the whole body ofProtestant Nonconformists, and most of those members of the EstablishedChurch who still adhered to the Calvinistic opinions which, fortyyears before, had been generally held by the prelates and clergy. Themunicipal corporations took, with few exceptions, the same side. In theHouse of Commons the opposition preponderated, but not very decidedly. 

Neither party wanted strong arguments for the course which it wasdisposed to take. The reasonings of the most enlightened Royalists maybe summed up thus:--"It is true that great abuses have existed; but theyhave been redressed. It is true that precious rights have been invaded;but they have been vindicated and surrounded with new securities. Thesittings of the Estates of the realm have been, in defiance of allprecedent and of the spirit of the constitution, intermitted duringeleven years; but it has now been provided that henceforth three yearsshall never elapse without a Parliament. The Star Chamber the HighCommission, the Council of York, oppressed end plundered us; but thosehateful courts have now ceased to exist. The Lord Lieutenant aimed atestablishing military despotism; but he has answered for his treasonwith his head. The Primate tainted our worship with Popish rites andpunished our scruples with Popish cruelty; but he is awaiting in theTower the judgment of his peers. The Lord Keeper sanctioned a plan bywhich the property of every man in England was placed at the mercy ofthe Crown; but he has been disgraced, ruined, and compelled to takerefuge in a foreign land. The ministers of tyranny have expiatedtheir crimes. The victims of tyranny have been compensated for theirsufferings. It would therefore be most unwise to persevere further inthat course which was justifiable and necessary when we first met, aftera 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 overdespotism as to run into anarchy. It was not in our power to overturnthe bad institutions which lately afflicted our country, without shockswhich have loosened the foundations of government. Now that thoseinstitutions have fallen, we must hasten to prop the edifice which itwas lately our duty to batter. Henceforth it will be our wisdom to lookwith jealousy on schemes of innovation, and to guard from encroachmentall the prerogatives with which the law has, for the public good, armedthe sovereign. "

Such were the views of those men of whom the excellent Falkland may beregarded as the leader. It was contended on the other side with not lessforce, by men of not less ability and virtue, that the safety which theliberties of the English people enjoyed was rather apparent than real, and that the arbitrary projects of the court would be resumed as soonas the vigilance of the Commons was relaxed. True it was, --such was thereasoning of Pym, of Hollis, and of Hampden--that many good laws hadbeen passed: but, if good laws had been sufficient to restrain theKing, his subjects would have had little reason ever to complain of hisadministration. The recent statutes were surely not of more authoritythan the Great Charter or the Petition of Right. Yet neither the GreatCharter, hallowed by the veneration of four centuries, nor the Petitionof Right, sanctioned, after mature reflection, and for valuableconsideration, by Charles himself, had been found effectual for theprotection of the people. If once the check of fear were withdrawn, if once the spirit of opposition were suffered to slumber, all thesecurities for English freedom resolved themselves into a single one, the royal word; and it had been proved by a long and severe experiencethat the royal word could not be trusted. 

The two parties were still regarding each other with cautious hostility, and had not yet measured their strength, when news arrived whichinflamed the passions and confirmed the opinions of both. The greatchieftains of Ulster, who, at the time of the accession of James, had, after a long struggle, submitted to the royal authority, had not longbrooked the humiliation of dependence. They had conspired against theEnglish government, and had been attainted of treason. Their immensedomains had been forfeited to the crown, and had soon been peopled bythousands of English and Scotch emigrants. The new settlers were, incivilisation and intelligence, far superior to the native population, and sometimes abused their superiority. The animosity produced bydifference of race was increased by difference of religion. Under theiron rule of Wentworth, scarcely a murmur was heard: but, when thatstrong pressure was withdrawn, when Scotland had set the example ofsuccessful resistance, when England was distracted by internal quarrels, the smothered rage of the Irish broke forth into acts of fearfulviolence. On a sudden, the aboriginal population rose on the colonists. A war, to which national and theological hatred gave a character ofpeculiar ferocity, desolated Ulster, and spread to the neighbouringprovinces. The castle of Dublin was scarcely thought secure. Every postbrought to London exaggerated accounts of outrages which, without anyexaggeration were sufficient to move pity end horror. These evil tidingsroused to the height the zeal of both the great parties which weremarshalled against each other at Westminster. The Royalists maintainedthat it was the first duty of every good Englishman and Protestant, at such a crisis, to strengthen the hands of the sovereign. To theopposition it seemed that there were now stronger reasons than ever forthwarting and restraining him. That the commonwealth was in dangerwas undoubtedly a good reason for giving large powers to a trustworthymagistrate: but it was a good reason for taking away powers from amagistrate who was at heart a public enemy. To raise a great army hadalways 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, theforces levied for the reduction of Ireland would be employed againstthe liberties of England. Nor was this all. A horrible suspicion, unjustindeed, but not altogether unnatural, had arisen in many minds. TheQueen was an avowed Roman Catholic: the King was not regarded by thePuritans, whom he had mercilessly persecuted, as a sincere Protestant;and so notorious was his duplicity, that there was no treachery of whichhis subjects might not, with some show of reason, believe him capable. It was soon whispered that the rebellion of the Roman Catholics ofUlster was part of a vast work of darkness which had been planned atWhitehall. 

After some weeks of prelude, the first great parliamentary conflictbetween the parties, which have ever since contended, and are stillcontending, for the government of the nation, took place on thetwenty-second of November, 1641. 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 hisaccession, and expressing the distrust with which his policy was stillregarded by his people. That assembly, which a few months before hadbeen unanimous in calling for the reform of abuses, was now dividedinto two fierce and eager factions of nearly equal strength. After a hotdebate of many hours, the remonstrance was carried by only eleven votes. 

The result of this struggle was highly favourable to the conservativeparty. It could not be doubted that only some great indiscretion couldprevent them from shortly obtaining the predominance in the Lower House. The Upper House was already their own. Nothing was wanting to ensuretheir success, but that the King should, in all his conduct, showrespect for the laws and scrupulous good faith towards his subjects. 

His first measures promised well. He had, it seemed, at last discoveredthat an entire change of system was necessary, and had wisely madeup his mind to what could no longer be avoided. He declared hisdetermination to govern in harmony with the Commons, and, for that end, to call to his councils men in whose talents and character the Commonsmight place confidence. Nor was the selection ill made. Falkland, Hyde, and Colepepper, all three distinguished by the part which they had takenin reforming abuses and in punishing evil ministers, were invited tobecome the confidential advisers of the Crown, and were solemnly assuredby Charles that he would take no step in any way affecting the LowerHouse of Parliament without their privity. 

Had he kept this promise, it cannot be doubted that the reaction whichwas already in progress would very soon have become quite as strong asthe most respectable Royalists would have desired. Already the violentmembers of the opposition had begun to despair of the fortunes of theirparty, to tremble for their own safety, and to talk of selling theirestates and emigrating to America. That the fair prospects which hadbegun to open before the King were suddenly overcast, that his life wasdarkened by adversity, and at length shortened by violence, is to beattributed to his own faithlessness and contempt of law. 

The truth seems to be that he detested both the parties into which theHouse of Commons was divided: nor is this strange; for in both thoseparties the love of liberty and the love of order were mingled, thoughin different proportions. The advisers whom necessity had compelled himto call round him were by no means after his own heart. They had joinedin condemning his tyranny, in abridging his power, and in punishing hisinstruments. They were now indeed prepared to defend in a strictly legalway his strictly legal prerogative; but they would have recoiled withhorror from the thought of reviving Wentworth's projects of Thorough. They were, therefore, in the King's opinion, traitors, who differed onlyin the degree of their seditious malignity from Pym and Hampden. 

He accordingly, a few days after he had promised the chiefs of theconstitutional Royalists that no step of importance should be takenwithout their knowledge, formed a resolution the most momentous of hiswhole life, carefully concealed that resolution from them, and executedit in a manner which overwhelmed them with shame and dismay. He sent theAttorney General to impeach Pym, Hollis, Hampden, and other members ofthe House of Commons of high treason at the bar of the House of Lords. Not content with this flagrant violation of the Great Charter and of theuninterrupted practice of centuries, he went in person, accompanied byarmed men, to seize the leaders of the opposition within the walls ofParliament. 

The attempt failed. The accused members had left the House a short timebefore Charles entered it. A sudden and violent revulsion of feeling, both in the Parliament and in the country, followed. The most favourableview that has ever been taken of the King's conduct on this occasion byhis most partial advocates is that he had weakly suffered himself to behurried into a gross indiscretion by the evil counsels of his wife andof his courtiers. But the general voice loudly charged him with fardeeper guilt. At the very moment at which his subjects, after a longestrangement produced by his maladministration, were returning to himwith feelings of confidence and affection, he had aimed a deadly blow atall their dearest rights, at the privileges of Parliament, at the veryprinciple of trial by jury. He had shown that he considered oppositionto his arbitrary designs as a crime to be expiated only by blood. He hadbroken faith, not only with his Great Council and with his people, but with his own adherents. He had done what, but for an unforeseenaccident, would probably have produced a bloody conflict round theSpeaker's chair. Those who had the chief sway in the Lower House nowfelt that not only their power and popularity, but their lands andtheir necks, were staked on the event of the struggle in which they wereengaged. The flagging zeal of the party opposed to the court revived inan instant. During the night which followed the outrage the whole cityof London was in arms. In a few hours the roads leading to the capitalwere covered with multitudes of yeomen spurring hard to Westminster withthe badges of the parliamentary cause in their hats. In the House ofCommons the opposition became at once irresistible, and carried, by morethan two votes to one, resolutions of unprecedented violence. Strongbodies of the trainbands, regularly relieved, mounted guard roundWestminster Hall. The gates of the King's palace were daily besieged bya furious multitude whose taunts and execrations were heard even inthe presence chamber, and who could scarcely be kept out of the royalapartments by the gentlemen of the household. Had Charles remained muchlonger in his stormy capital, it is probable that the Commons would havefound a plea for making him, under outward forms of respect, a stateprisoner. 

He quitted London, never to return till the day of a terrible andmemorable reckoning had arrived. A negotiation began which occupiedmany months. Accusations and recriminations passed backward and forwardbetween the contending parties. All accommodation had become impossible. The sure punishment which waits on habitual perfidy had at lengthovertaken the King. It was to no purpose that he now pawned his royalword, and invoked heaven to witness the sincerity of his professions. The distrust with which his adversaries regarded him was not to beremoved by oaths or treaties. They were convinced that they could besafe only when he was utterly helpless. Their demand, therefore, was, that he should surrender, not only those prerogatives which he hadusurped in violation of ancient laws and of his own recent promises, butalso other prerogatives which the English Kings had always possessed, and continue to possess at the present day. No minister must beappointed, no peer created, without the consent of the Houses. Aboveall, 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 ofresistance, was not to be expected. Yet it will be difficult to showthat the Houses could safely have exacted less. They were truly in amost embarrassing position. The great majority of the nation was firmlyattached to hereditary monarchy. Those who held republican opinionswere as yet few, and did not venture to speak out. It was thereforeimpossible to abolish kingly government. Yet it was plain that noconfidence could be placed in the King. It would have been absurd inthose who knew, by recent proof, that he was bent on destroying them, tocontent themselves with presenting to him another Petition of Right, and receiving from him fresh promises similar to those which hehad repeatedly made and broken. Nothing but the want of an army hadprevented him from entirely subverting the old constitution of therealm. It was now necessary to levy a great regular army for theconquest of Ireland; and it would therefore have been mere insanity toleave him in possession of that plenitude of military authority whichhis ancestors had enjoyed. 

When a country is in the situation in which England then was, when thekingly office is regarded with love and veneration, but the personwho fills that office is hated and distrusted, it should seem that thecourse which ought to be taken is obvious. The dignity of the officeshould be preserved: the person should be discarded. Thus our ancestorsacted in 1399 and in 1689. Had there been, in 1642, any man occupying aposition similar to that which Henry of Lancaster occupied at the timeof the deposition of Richard the Second, and which William of Orangeoccupied at the time of the deposition of James the Second, it isprobable that the Houses would have changed the dynasty, and would havemade no formal change in the constitution. The new King, called to thethrone by their choice, and dependent on their support, would have beenunder the necessity of governing in conformity with their wishesand opinions. But there was no prince of the blood royal in theparliamentary party; and, though that party contained many men of highrank and many men of eminent ability, there was none who towered soconspicuously above the rest that he could be proposed as a candidatefor the crown. As there was to be a King, and as no new King could befound, it was necessary to leave the regal title to Charles. Only onecourse, therefore, was left: and that was to disjoin the regal titlefrom the regal prerogatives. 

The change which the Houses proposed to make in our institutions, though it seems exorbitant, when distinctly set forth and digested intoarticles of capitulation, really amounts to little more than the changewhich, in the next generation, was effected by the Revolution. It istrue that, at the Revolution, the sovereign was not deprived by law ofthe power of naming his ministers: but it is equally true that, sincethe Revolution, no minister has been able to retain office six monthsin opposition to the sense of the House of Commons. It is true thatthe sovereign still possesses the power of creating peers, and themore important power of the sword: but it is equally true that in theexercise of these powers the sovereign has, ever since theRevolution, been guided by advisers who possess the confidence of therepresentatives of the nation. In fact, the leaders of the Roundheadparty 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 theParliament, by giving to the Parliament a supreme control over theexecutive administration. The statesmen of the Revolution effected thisindirectly by changing the dynasty. The Roundheads of 1642, being unableto change the dynasty, were compelled to take a direct course towardstheir end. 

We cannot, however, wonder that the demands of the opposition, importingas they did a complete and formal transfer to the Parliament of powerswhich had always belonged to the Crown, should have shocked that greatparty of which the characteristics are respect for constitutionalauthority and dread of violent innovation. That party had recently beenin hopes of obtaining by peaceable means the ascendency in the House ofCommons; but every such hope had been blighted. The duplicity of Charleshad made his old enemies irreconcileable, had driven back into the ranksof the disaffected a crowd of moderate men who were in the very act ofcoming over to his side, and had so cruelly mortified his best friendsthat they had for a time stood aloof in silent shame and resentment. Now, however, the constitutional Royalists were forced to make theirchoice between two dangers; and they thought it their duty rather torally round a prince whose past conduct they condemned, and whose wordinspired them with little confidence, than to suffer the regal office tobe degraded, and the polity of the realm to be entirely remodelled. With such feelings, many men whose virtues and abilities would have donehonour to any cause, ranged themselves on the side of the King. 

In August 1642 the sword was at length drawn; and soon, in almost everyshire of the kingdom, two hostile factions appeared in arms againsteach other. It is not easy to say which of the contending parties was atfirst the more formidable. The Houses commanded London and the countiesround London, the fleet, the navigation of the Thames, and most of thelarge towns and seaports. They had at their disposal almost all themilitary stores of the kingdom, and were able to raise duties, both ongoods imported from foreign countries, and on some important productsof domestic industry. The King was ill provided with artillery andammunition. The taxes which he laid on the rural districts occupied byhis troops produced, it is probable, a sum far less than that whichthe Parliament 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 uptheir silver chargers and christening bowls, in order to assist him. But experience has fully proved that the voluntary liberality ofindividuals, even in times of the greatest excitement, is a poorfinancial resource when compared 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, andwhich, notwithstanding his mismanagement, gave him, during some months, a superiority in the war. His troops at first fought much better thanthose of the Parliament. Both armies, it is true, were almost entirelycomposed of men who had never seen a field of battle. Nevertheless, thedifference was great. The Parliamentary ranks were filled with hirelingswhom want and idleness had induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment wasregarded as one of the best; and even Hampden's regiment was describedby 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 terriblethan death, accustomed to fencing, to the use of fire arms, to boldriding, and to manly and perilous sport, which has been well called theimage of war. Such gentlemen, mounted on their favourite horses, andcommanding little bands composed of their younger brothers, grooms, gamekeepers, and huntsmen, were, from the very first day on which theytook the field, qualified to play their part with credit in a skirmish. The steadiness, the prompt obedience, the mechanical precision ofmovement, which are characteristic of the regular soldier, these gallantvolunteers never attained. But they were at first opposed to enemies asundisciplined as themselves, and far less active, athletic, and daring. For a time, therefore, the Cavaliers were successful in almost everyencounter. 

The Houses had also been unfortunate in the choice of a general. Therank and wealth of the Earl of Essex made him one of the most importantmembers of the parliamentary party. He had borne arms on the Continentwith credit, and, when the war began, had as high a military reputationas any man in the country. But it soon appeared that he was unfit forthe post of Commander in Chief. He had little energy and no originality. The methodical tactics which he had learned in the war of the Palatinatedid not save him from the disgrace of being surprised and baffled bysuch a Captain as Rupert, who could claim no higher fame than that of anenterprising partisan. 

Nor were the officers who held the chief commissions under Essexqualified to supply what was wanting in him. For this, indeed, theHouses are scarcely to be blamed. In a country which had not, within thememory of the oldest person living, made war on a great scale byland, generals of tried skill and valour were not to be found. It wasnecessary, therefore, in the first instance, to trust untried men; andthe preference was naturally given to men distinguished either by theirstation, 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 Earlof Stamford, one of the greatest nobles of England, was routed bythe Royalists at Stratton. Nathaniel Fiennes, inferior to none of hiscontemporaries in talents for civil business, disgraced himself by thepusillanimous surrender of Bristol. Indeed, of all the statesmen who atthis juncture accepted high military commands, Hampden alone appears tohave carried into the camp the capacity and strength of mind which hadmade him eminent in politics. 

When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was decidedly with theRoyalists. They were victorious, both in the western and in the northerncounties. They had wrested Bristol, the second city in the kingdom, fromthe Parliament. They had won several battles, and had not sustained asingle serious or ignominious defeat. Among the Roundheads adversity hadbegun to produce dissension and discontent. The Parliament was keptin alarm, sometimes by plots, and sometimes by riots. It was thoughtnecessary to fortify London against the royal army, and to hangsome disaffected citizens at their own doors. Several of the mostdistinguished peers who had hitherto remained at Westminster fled to thecourt at Oxford; nor can it be doubted that, if the operations of theCavaliers had, at this season, been directed by a sagacious and powerfulmind, Charles would soon have marched in triumph to Whitehall. 

But the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass away; and it neverreturned. In August 1643 he sate down before the city of Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhabitants and by the garrison, with adetermination such as had not, since the commencement of the war, beenshown by the adherents of the Parliament. The emulation of London wasexcited. The trainbands of the City volunteered to march wherever theirservices might be required. A great force was speedily collected, and began to move westward. The siege of Gloucester was raised: theRoyalists in every part of the kingdom were disheartened: the spirit ofthe parliamentary party revived: and the apostate Lords, who hadlately fled from Westminster to Oxford, hastened back from Oxford toWestminster. 

And now a new and alarming class of symptoms began to appear in thedistempered body politic. There had been, from the first, in theparliamentary party, some men whose minds were set on objects from whichthe majority of that party would have shrunk with horror. These menwere, in religion, Independents. They conceived that every Christiancongregation had, under Christ, supreme jurisdiction in thingsspiritual; that appeals to provincial and national synods were scarcelyless unscriptural than appeals to the Court of Arches, or to theVatican; and that Popery, Prelacy, and Presbyterianism were merely threeforms of one great apostasy. In politics, the Independents were, to usethe phrase of their time, root and branch men, or, to use the kindredphrase of our own time, radicals. Not content with limiting the power ofthe monarch, they were desirous to erect a commonwealth on the ruins ofthe old English polity. At first they had been inconsiderable, bothin numbers and in weight; but before the war had lasted two years theybecame, not indeed the largest, but the most powerful faction in thecountry. Some of the old parliamentary leaders had been removed bydeath; and others had forfeited the public confidence. Pym had beenborne, with princely honours, to a grave among the Plantagenets. Hampdenhad fallen, as became him, while vainly endeavouring, by his heroicexample, to inspire his followers with courage to face the fiery cavalryof Rupert. Bedford had been untrue to the cause. Northumberland wasknown to be lukewarm. Essex and his lieutenants had shown little vigourand ability in the conduct of military operations. At such a conjunctureit 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 peacefuloccupations, he had, at more than forty years of age, accepted acommission in the parliamentary army. No sooner had he become a soldierthan he discerned, with the keen glance of genius, what Essex, and menlike Essex, with all their experience, were unable to perceive. He sawprecisely where the strength of the Royalists lay, and by what meansalone that strength could be overpowered. He saw that it was necessaryto reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw also that there wereabundant and excellent materials for the purpose, materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of which the gallant squadrons of theKing were composed. It was necessary to look for recruits who were notmere mercenaries, for recruits of decent station and grave character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty. With such men he filled hisown regiment, and, while he subjected them to a discipline more rigidthan had ever before been known in England, he administered to theirintellectual and moral nature stimulants of fearful potency. 

The events of the year 1644 fully proved the superiority of hisabilities. In the south, where Essex held the command, the parliamentaryforces underwent a succession of shameful disasters; but in the norththe victory of Marston Moor fully compensated for all that had been lostelsewhere. That victory was not a more serious blow to the Royaliststhan to the party which had hitherto been dominant at Westminster, forit was notorious that the day, disgracefully lost by the Presbyterians, had been retrieved by the energy of Cromwell, and by the steady valourof the warriors whom he had trained. 

These events produced the Selfdenying Ordinance and the new model of thearmy. Under decorous pretexts, and with every mark of respect, Essex andmost of those who had held high posts under him were removed; and theconduct of the war was intrusted to very different hands. Fairfax, abrave soldier, but of mean understanding and irresolute temper, was thenominal Lord General of the forces; but Cromwell was their real head. 

Cromwell made haste to organise the whole army on the same principleson which he had organised his own regiment. As soon as this process wascomplete, the event of the war was decided. The Cavaliers had now toencounter natural courage equal to their own, enthusiasm stronger thantheir own, and discipline such as was utterly wanting to them. It soonbecame a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men ofa different breed from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby took place thefirst great encounter between the Royalists and the remodelled army ofthe Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive. Itwas followed by other triumphs in rapid succession. In a few monthsthe authority of the Parliament was fully established over the wholekingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was by them, in a manner whichdid not much exalt their national character, delivered up to his Englishsubjects. 

While the event of the war was still doubtful, the Houses had put thePrimate to death, had interdicted, within the sphere of their authority, the use of the Liturgy, and had required all men to subscribe thatrenowned instrument known by the name of the Solemn League and Covenant. Covenanting work, as it was called, went on fast. Hundreds of thousandsaffixed their names to the rolls, and, with hands lifted up towardsheaven, swore to endeavour, without respect of persons, the extirpationof Popery and Prelacy, heresy and schism, and to bring to publictrial and condign punishment all who should hinder the reformation ofreligion. When the struggle was over, the work of innovation and revengewas pushed on with increased ardour. The ecclesiastical polity of thekingdom was remodelled. Most of the old clergy were ejected from theirbenefices. Fines, often of ruinous amount, were laid on the Royalists, already impoverished by large aids furnished to the King. Many estateswere confiscated. Many proscribed Cavaliers found it expedient topurchase, at an enormous cost, the projection of eminent members of thevictorious party. Large domains, belonging to the crown, to the bishops, and to the chapters, were seized, and either granted away or put up toauction. In consequence of these spoliations, a great part of the soilof England was at once offered for sale. As money was scarce, as themarket was glutted, as the title was insecure and as the awe inspiredby powerful bidders prevented free competition, the prices were oftenmerely nominal. Thus many old and honourable families disappeared andwere heard of no more; and many new men rose rapidly to affluence. 

But, while the Houses were employing their authority thus, it suddenlypassed out of their hands. It had been obtained by calling intoexistence a power which could not be controlled. In the summer of1647, about twelve months after the last fortress of the Cavaliers hadsubmitted to the Parliament, the Parliament was compelled to submit toits own soldiers. 

Thirteen years followed, during which England was, under various namesand forms, really governed by the sword. Never before that time, or since that time, was the civil power in our country subjected tomilitary dictation. 

The army which now became supreme in the state was an army verydifferent from any that has since been seen among us. At present thepay of the common soldier is not such as can seduce any but thehumblest class of English labourers from their calling. A barrieralmost impassable separates him from the commissioned officer. The greatmajority of those who rise high in the service rise by purchase. Sonumerous and extensive are the remote dependencies of England, thatevery man who enlists in the line must expect to pass many years inexile, and some years in climates unfavourable to the health and vigourof the European race. The army of the Long Parliament was raised forhome service. The pay of the private soldier was much above the wagesearned by the great body of the people; and, if he distinguished himselfby intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior in station andeducation to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, andaccustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by thepressure of want, not by the love of novelty and license, not by thearts of recruiting officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of distinction and promotion. The boast of thesoldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was thatthey had not been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chieflyfor the sake of lucre. That they were no janissaries, but freebornEnglishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in jeopardyfor the liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty itwas to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved. 

A force thus composed might, without injury to its efficiency, beindulged in some liberties which, if allowed to any other troops, wouldhave proved subversive of all discipline. In general, soldiers whoshould form themselves into political clubs, elect delegates, and passresolutions on high questions of state, would soon break loose from allcontrol, would cease to form an army, and would become the worst andmost dangerous of mobs. Nor would it be safe, in our time, to toleratein any regiment religious meetings, at which a corporal versed inScripture should lead the devotions of his less gifted colonel, andadmonish a backsliding major. But such was the intelligence, thegravity, and the selfcommand of the warriors whom Cromwell had trained, that in their camp a political organisation and a religious organisationcould exist without destroying military organisation. The same men, who, off duty, were noted as demagogues and field preachers, weredistinguished by steadiness, by the spirit of order, and by promptobedience on watch, on drill, and on the field of battle. 

In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn couragecharacteristic of the English people was, by the system of Cromwell, atonce regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have maintained orders asstrict. Other leaders have inspired their followers with zeal as ardent. But in his camp alone the most rigid discipline was found in companywith the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with theprecision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism ofCrusaders. From the time when the army was remodelled to the time whenit was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or onthe Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surroundedby difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not onlynever failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieceswhatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard theday of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the mostrenowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne wasstartled by the shout of stern exultation with which his English alliesadvanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a true soldier, when he learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen torejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy; and the banished Cavaliersfelt an emotion of national pride, when they saw a brigade of theircountrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive beforeit in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a passageinto a counterscarp which had just been pronounced impregnable by theablest of the Marshals of France. 

But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from otherarmies was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded allranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that, in thatsingular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long dominion of the soldiery, the property of thepeaceable citizen and the honour of woman were held sacred. If outrageswere committed, they were outrages of a very different kind fromthose of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girlcomplained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce of platewas taken from the shops of the goldsmiths. But a Pelagian sermon, ora window on which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in thePuritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertionsof the officers to quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was torestrain his musketeers and dragoons from invading by main force thepulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not savoury; and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marksof the hatred with which those stern spirits regarded every vestige ofPopery. 

To keep down the English people was no light task even for that army. Nosooner was the first pressure of military tyranny felt, than the nation, unbroken to such servitude, began to struggle fiercely. Insurrectionsbroke out even in those counties which, during the recent war, had beenthe most submissive to the Parliament. Indeed, the Parliament itselfabhorred its old defenders more than its old enemies, and was desirousto come to terms of accommodation with Charles at the expense of thetroops. In Scotland at the same time, a coalition was formed between theRoyalists and a large body of Presbyterians who regarded the doctrinesof the Independents with detestation. At length the storm burst. Therewere risings in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Wales. The fleet in theThames suddenly hoisted the royal colours, stood out to sea, and menacedthe southern coast. A great Scottish force crossed the frontierand advanced into Lancashire. It might well be suspected that thesemovements were contemplated with secret complacency by a majority bothof the Lords and of the Commons. 

But the yoke of the army was not to be so shaken off. While Fairfaxsuppressed the risings in the neighbourhood of the capital, Oliverrouted the Welsh insurgents, and, leaving their castles in ruins, marched against the Scots. His troops were few, when compared with theinvaders; but he was little in the habit of counting his enemies. TheScottish army was utterly destroyed. A change in the Scottish governmentfollowed. An administration, hostile to the King, was formed atEdinburgh; and Cromwell, more than ever the darling of his soldiers, returned in triumph to London. 

And now a design, to which, at the commencement of the civil war, no manwould have dared to allude, and which was not less inconsistent with theSolemn League and Covenant than with the old law of England, began totake 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 generalto the ranks, or from the ranks to the general; whether it is to beascribed to policy using fanaticism as a tool, or to fanaticism bearingdown policy with headlong impulse, are questions which, even at thisday, cannot be answered with perfect confidence. It seems, however, on the whole, probable that he who seemed to lead was really forced tofollow, and that, on this occasion, as on another great occasion a fewyears later, he sacrificed his own judgment and his own inclinations tothe wishes of the army. For the power which he had called into existencewas a power which even he could not always control; and, that he mightordinarily command, it was necessary that he should sometimes obey. Hepublicly protested that he was no mover in the matter, that the firststeps had been taken without his privity, that he could not advise theParliament to strike the blow, but that he submitted his own feelings tothe force of circumstances which seemed to him to indicate the purposesof Providence. It has been the fashion to consider these professions asinstances of the hypocrisy which is vulgarly imputed to him. But eventhose who pronounce him a hypocrite will scarcely venture to call him afool. They are therefore bound to show that he had some purpose to serveby secretly stimulating the army to take that course which he did notventure openly to recommend. It would be absurd to suppose that he whowas never by his respectable enemies represented as wantonly cruel orimplacably vindictive, would have taken the most important step of hislife under the influence of mere malevolence. He was far too wise a mannot to know, when he consented to shed that august blood, that he wasdoing a deed which was inexpiable, and which would move the grief andhorror, not only of the Royalists, but of nine tenths of those who hadstood by the Parliament. Whatever visions may have deluded others, hewas assuredly dreaming neither of a republic on the antique pattern, nor of the millennial reign of the Saints. If he already aspired tobe himself the founder of a new dynasty, it was plain that Charles theFirst was a less formidable competitor than Charles the Second wouldbe. At the moment of the death of Charles the First the loyalty ofevery Cavalier would be transferred, 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 largeproportion of those who yet shuddered at the thought of slaying him:Charles the Second would excite all the interest which belongs todistressed youth and innocence. It is impossible to believe thatconsiderations so obvious, and so important, escaped the most profoundpolitician of that age. The truth is that Cromwell had, at onetime, meant to mediate between the throne and the Parliament, and toreorganise the distracted State by the power of the sword, under thesanction of the royal name. In this design he persisted till he wascompelled to abandon it by the refractory temper of the soldiers, andby the incurable duplicity of the King. A party in the camp began toclamour 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 Olivercould hardly quell. And though, by a judicious mixture of severity andkindness, he succeeded in restoring order, he saw that it would be inthe highest degree difficult and perilous to contend against the rage ofwarriors, who regarded the fallen tyrant as their foe, and as the foeof their God. At the same time it became more evident than ever that theKing could not be trusted. The vices of Charles had grown upon him. Theywere, indeed, vices which difficulties and perplexities generally bringout in the strongest light. Cunning is the natural defence of the weak. A prince, therefore, who is habitually a deceiver when at the height ofpower, is not likely to learn frankness in the midst of embarrassmentsand distresses. Charles was not only a most unscrupulous but a mostunlucky dissembler. There never was a politician to whom so many fraudsand falsehoods were brought home by undeniable evidence. He publiclyrecognised the Houses at Westminster as a legal Parliament, and, at thesame time, made a private minute in council declaring the recognitionnull. He publicly disclaimed all thought of calling in foreign aidagainst his people: he privately solicited aid from France, fromDenmark, and from Lorraine. He publicly denied that he employed Papists:at the same time he privately sent to his generals directions to employevery Papist that would serve. He publicly took the sacrament at Oxford, as a pledge that he never would even connive at Popery. He privatelyassured his wife, that he intended to tolerate Popery in England; and heauthorised Lord Glamorgan to promise that Popery should be establishedin Ireland. Then he attempted to clear himself at his agent's expense. Glamorgan received, in the Royal handwriting, reprimands intended to beread by others, and eulogies which were to be seen only by himself. Tosuch an extent, indeed, had insincerity now tainted the King's wholenature, that his most devoted friends could not refrain from complainingto each other, with bitter grief and shame, of his crooked politics. Hisdefeats, they said, gave them less pain than his intrigues. Since he hadbeen a prisoner, there was no section of the victorious party which hadnot been the object both of his flatteries and of his machinations; butnever was he more unfortunate than when he attempted at once to cajoleand to undermine Cromwell. 

Cromwell had to determine whether he would put to hazard the attachmentof his party, the attachment of his army, his own greatness, nay hisown life, in an attempt which would probably have been vain, to savea prince whom no engagement could bind. With many struggles andmisgivings, and probably not without many prayers, the decision wasmade. Charles was left to his fate. The military saints resolved that, in defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the almost universalsentiment of the nation, the King should expiate his crimes withhis blood. He for a time expected a death like that of his unhappypredecessors, Edward the Second and Richard the Second. But he was inno danger of such treason. Those who had him in their gripe were notmidnight stabbers. What they did they did in order that it might be aspectacle to heaven and earth, and that it might be held in everlastingremembrance. They enjoyed keenly the very scandal which they gave. Thatthe ancient constitution and the public opinion of England were directlyopposed to regicide made regicide seem strangely fascinating to a partybent on effecting a complete political and social revolution. In orderto accomplish their purpose, it was necessary that they should firstbreak in pieces every part of the machinery of the government; and thisnecessity was rather agreeable than painful to them. The Commons passeda vote tending to accommodation with the King. The soldiers excluded themajority by force. The Lords unanimously rejected the proposition thatthe King should be brought to trial. Their house was instantly closed. No court, known to the law, would take on itself the office of judgingthe fountain of justice. A revolutionary tribunal was created. Thattribunal pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and apublic enemy; and his head was severed from his shoulders, beforethousands of spectators, in front of the banqueting hall of his ownpalace. 

In no long time it became manifest that those political and religiouszealots, to whom this deed is to be ascribed, had committed, not only acrime, but an error. They had given to a prince, hitherto known to hispeople chiefly by his faults, an opportunity of displaying, on a greattheatre, before the eyes of all nations and all ages, some qualitieswhich irresistibly call forth the admiration and love of mankind, thehigh spirit of a gallant gentleman, the patience and meekness of apenitent Christian. Nay, they had so contrived their revenge that thevery man whose life had been a series of attacks on the liberties ofEngland now seemed to die a martyr in the cause of those liberties. Nodemagogue ever produced such an impression on the public mind as thecaptive King, who, retaining in that extremity all his regal dignity, and confronting death with dauntless courage, gave utterance to thefeelings of his oppressed people, manfully refused to plead beforea court unknown to the law, appealed from military violence to theprinciples of the constitution, asked by what right the House of Commonshad been purged of its most respectable members and the House of Lordsdeprived of its legislative functions, and told his weeping hearersthat he was defending, not only his own cause, but theirs. His longmisgovernment, his innumerable perfidies, were forgotten. His memorywas, in the minds of the great majority of his subjects, associated withthose free institutions which he had, during many years, laboured todestroy: for those free institutions had perished with him, and, amidstthe mournful silence of a community kept down by arms, had been defendedby his voice alone. From that day began a reaction in favour of monarchyand of the exiled house, reaction which never ceased till the throne hadagain been set up in all its old dignity. 

At first, however, the slayers of the King seemed to have derived newenergy from that sacrament of blood by which they had bound themselvesclosely together, and separated themselves for ever from the great bodyof their countrymen. England was declared a commonwealth. The House ofCommons, reduced to a small number of members, was nominally the supremepower in the state. In fact, the army and its great chief governedeverything. Oliver had made his choice. He had kept the hearts of hissoldiers, and had broken with almost every other class of his fellowcitizens. Beyond the limits of his camps and fortresses he couldscarcely be said to have a party. Those elements of force which, whenthe civil war broke out, had appeared arrayed against each other, werecombined against him; all the Cavaliers, the great majority of theRoundheads, the Anglican Church, the Presbyterian Church, the RomanCatholic Church, England, Scotland, Ireland. Yet such, was his geniusand resolution that he was able to overpower and crush everything thatcrossed his path, to make himself more absolute master of his countrythan any of her legitimate Kings had been, and to make his country moredreaded and respected than she had been during many generations underthe rule of her legitimate Kings. 

England had already ceased to struggle. But the two other kingdoms whichhad been governed by the Stuarts were hostile to the new republic. TheIndependent party was equally odious to the Roman Catholics of Irelandand to the Presbyterians of Scotland. Both those countries, lately inrebellion against Charles the First, now acknowledged the authority ofCharles the Second. 

But everything yielded to the vigour and ability of Cromwell. In afew months he subjugated Ireland, as Ireland had never been subjugatedduring the five centuries of slaughter which had elapsed since thelanding of the first Norman settlers. He resolved to put an end to thatconflict 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 that which Israel waged on the Canaanites, smotethe idolaters with the edge of the sword, so that great cities were leftwithout inhabitants, drove many thousands to the Continent, shipped offmany thousands to the West Indies, and supplied the void thus made bypouring in numerous colonists, of Saxon blood, and of Calvinistic faith. Strange to say, under that iron rule, the conquered country began towear an outward face of prosperity. Districts, which had recently beenas wild as those where the first white settlers of Connecticut werecontending with the red men, were in a few years transformed into thelikeness of Kent and Norfolk. New buildings, roads, and plantations wereeverywhere seen. The rent of estates rose fast; and soon the Englishlandowners began to complain that they were met in every market by theproducts of Ireland, and to clamour for protecting laws. 

From Ireland the victorious chief, who was now in name, as he had longbeen in reality, Lord General of the armies of the Commonwealth, turnedto Scotland. The Young King was there. He had consented to professhimself a Presbyterian, and to subscribe the Covenant; and, in returnfor these concessions, the austere Puritans who bore sway at Edinburghhad permitted him to assume the crown, and to hold, under theirinspection and control, a solemn and melancholy court. This mock royaltywas of short duration. In two great battles Cromwell annihilated themilitary force of Scotland. Charles fled for his life, and, with extremedifficulty, escaped the fate of his father. The ancient kingdom of theStuarts was reduced, for the first time, to profound submission. Of thatindependence, so manfully defended against the mightiest and ablest ofthe Plantagenets, no vestige was left. The English Parliament madelaws for Scotland. English judges held assizes in Scotland. Even thatstubborn 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 between thewarriors who had subjugated Ireland and Scotland and the politicians whosate at Westminster: but the alliance which had been cemented by dangerwas dissolved by victory. The Parliament forgot that it was but thecreature of the army. The army was less disposed than ever to submit tothe dictation of the Parliament. Indeed the few members who made up whatwas contemptuously called the Rump of the House of Commons had no moreclaim than the military chiefs to be esteemed the representatives ofthe nation. The dispute was soon brought to a decisive issue. Cromwellfilled the House with armed men. The Speaker was pulled out of hischair, the mace taken from the table, the room cleared, and the doorlocked. The nation, which loved neither of the contending parties, but which was forced, in its own despite, to respect the capacityand resolution of the General, looked on with patience, if not withcomplacency. 

King, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been vanquished 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 towhich he owed his immense authority. That singular body of men was, forthe most part, composed of zealous republicans. In the act of enslavingtheir country, they had deceived themselves into the belief that theywere emancipating her. The book which they venerated furnished them witha precedent which was frequently in their mouths. It was true that theignorant and ungrateful nation murmured against its deliverers. Even sohad another chosen nation murmured against the leader who brought it, bypainful and dreary paths, from the house of bondage to the land flowingwith milk and honey. Yet had that leader rescued his brethren in spiteof themselves; nor had he shrunk from making terrible examples of thosewho contemned the proffered freedom, and pined for the fleshpots, thetaskmasters, and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of the warlikesaints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement of a free and piouscommonwealth. 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 Kinghad ever exercised: but it was probable that their aid would be at oncewithdrawn 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 hadbeen; nor would it be just to consider the change which his views hadundergone as the effect merely of selfish ambition. He had, when hecame up to the Long Parliament, brought with him from his rural retreatlittle knowledge of books, no experience of great affairs, and a tempergalled by the long tyranny of the government and of the hierarchy. Hehad, during the thirteen years which followed, gone through a politicaleducation of no common kind. He had been a chief actor in a successionof revolutions. He had been long the soul, and at last the head, ofa party. He had commanded armies, won battles, negotiated treaties, subdued, pacified, and regulated kingdoms. It would have been strangeindeed if his notions had been still the same as in the days when hismind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion, and whenthe greatest events which diversified the course of his life were acattle fair or a prayer meeting at Huntingdon. He saw that some schemesof innovation for which he had once been zealous, whether good or badin themselves, were opposed to the general feeling of the country, andthat, if he persevered in those schemes, he had nothing before him butconstant troubles, which must be suppressed by the constant use of thesword. He therefore wished to restore, in all essentials, that ancientconstitution which the majority of the people had always loved, and forwhich they now pined. The course afterwards taken by Monk was not opento Cromwell. The memory of one terrible day separated the great regicidefor ever from the House of Stuart. What remained was that he shouldmount the ancient English throne, and reign according to the ancientEnglish polity. If he could effect this, he might hope that the woundsof the lacerated State would heal fast. Great numbers of honestand quiet men would speedily rally round him. Those Royalists whoseattachment was rather to institutions than to persons, to the kinglyoffice than to King Charles the First or King Charles the Second, wouldsoon kiss the hand of King Oliver. The peers, who now remained sullenlyat 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 possession, gladly resume their ancient functions. Northumberland and Bedford, Manchester and Pembroke, would be proud to bear the crown and thespurs, the sceptre and the globe, before the restorer of aristocracy. Asentiment of loyalty would gradually bind the people to the new dynasty;and, on the decease of the founder of that dynasty, the royal dignitymight descend with general acquiescence to his posterity. 

The ablest Royalists were of opinion that these views were correct, andthat, if Cromwell had been permitted to follow his own judgment, theexiled line would never have been restored. But his plan was directlyopposed 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 indeedunwilling to see the administration in the hands of any single person. The great majority, however, were disposed to support their general, aselective first magistrate of a commonwealth, against all factions whichmight resist his authority: but they would not consent that he shouldassume the regal title, or that the dignity, which was the just rewardof his personal merit, should be declared hereditary in his family. Allthat was left to him was to give to the new republic a constitution aslike the constitution of the old monarchy as the army would bear. Thathis elevation to power might not seem to be merely his own act, heconvoked a council, composed partly of persons on whose support he coulddepend, and partly of persons whose opposition he might safely defy. This assembly, which he called a Parliament, and which the populacenicknamed, from one of the most conspicuous members, Barebonesa'sParliament, after exposing itself during a short time to the publiccontempt, surrendered back to the General the powers which ithad received from him, and left him at liberty to frame a plan ofgovernment. 

His plan bore, from the first, a considerable resemblance to the oldEnglish constitution: but, in a few years, he thought it safe to proceedfurther, and to restore almost every part of the ancient system underhew names and forms. The title of King was not revived; but the kinglyprerogatives were intrusted to a Lord High Protector. The sovereignwas called not His Majesty, but His Highness. He was not crowned andanointed in Westminster Abbey, but was solemnly enthroned, girt witha sword of state, clad in a robe of purple, and presented with a richBible, in Westminster Hall. His office was not declared hereditary: buthe was permitted to name his successor; and none could doubt that hewould name his Son. 

A House of Commons was a necessary part of the new polity. Inconstituting this body, the Protector showed a wisdom and a publicspirit which were not duly appreciated by his contemporaries. The vicesof the old representative system, though by no means so serious as theyafterwards became, had already been remarked by farsighted men. Cromwellreformed that system on the same principles on which Mr. Pitt, a hundredand thirty years later, attempted to reform it, and on which it was atlength reformed in our own times. Small boroughs were disfranchisedeven more unsparingly than in 1832; and the number of county memberswas greatly increased. Very few unrepresented towns had yet grown intoimportance. Of those towns the most considerable were Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax. Representatives were given to all three. An additionwas made to the number of the members for the capital. The electivefranchise was placed on such a footing that every man of substance, whether possessed of freehold estates in land or not, had a vote forthe county in which he resided. A few Scotchmen and a few of the Englishcolonists settled in Ireland were summoned to the assembly which was tolegislate, at Westminster, for every part of the British isles. 

To create a House of Lords was a less easy task. Democracy does notrequire the support of prescription. Monarchy has often stood withoutthat support. But a patrician order is the work of time. Oliver foundalready existing a nobility, opulent, highly considered, and as popularwith the commonalty as any nobility has ever been. Had he, as King ofEngland, commanded the peers to meet him in Parliament according to theold usage of the realm, many of them would undoubtedly have obeyed thecall. This he could not do; and it was to no purpose that he offeredto the chiefs of illustrious families seats in his new senate. Theyconceived that they could not accept a nomination to an upstart assemblywithout renouncing their birthright and betraying their order. TheProtector was, therefore, under the necessity of filling his Upper Housewith new men who, during the late stirring times, had made themselvesconspicuous. This was the least happy of his contrivances, anddispleased all parties. The Levellers were angry with him forinstituting a privileged class. The multitude, which felt respect andfondness for the great historical names of the land, laughed withoutrestraint at a House of Lords, in which lucky draymen and shoemakerswere seated, to which few of the old nobles were invited, and from whichalmost all those old nobles who were invited turned disdainfully away. 

How Oliver's Parliaments were constituted, however, was practicallyof little moment: for he possessed the means of conducting theadministration without their support, and in defiance of theiropposition. His wish seems to have been to govern constitutionally, andto substitute the empire of the laws for that of the sword. But he soonfound that, hated as he was, both by Royalists and Presbyterians, hecould be safe only by being absolute. The first House of Commons whichthe people elected by his command, questioned his authority, and wasdissolved without having passed a single act. His second House ofCommons, though it recognised him as Protector, and would gladly havemade him King, obstinately refused to acknowledge his new Lords. He hadno course left but to dissolve the Parliament. "God, " he exclaimed, atparting, "be judge between you and me!"

Yet was the energy of the Protector's administration in nowise relaxedby these dissensions. Those soldiers who would not suffer him to assumethe kingly title stood by him when he ventured on acts of power, ashigh as any English King has ever attempted. The government, therefore, though in form a republic, was in truth a despotism, moderated only bythe wisdom, the sobriety, and the magnanimity of the despot. The countrywas divided into military districts. Those districts were placed underthe command of Major Generals. Every insurrectionary movement waspromptly put down and punished. The fear inspired by the power of thesword, in so strong, steady, and expert a hand, quelled the spirit bothof Cavaliers and Levellers. The loyal gentry declared that they werestill as ready as ever to risk their lives for the old government andthe old dynasty, if there were the slightest hope of success: but torush, at the head of their serving men and tenants, on the pikes ofbrigades victorious in a hundred battles and sieges, would be a franticwaste of innocent and honourable blood. Both Royalists and Republicans, having no hope in open resistance, began to revolve dark schemes ofassassination: but the Protector's intelligence was good: his vigilancewas unremitting; and, whenever he moved beyond the walls of his palace, the drawn swords and cuirasses of his trusty bodyguards encompassed himthick on every side. 

Had he been a cruel, licentious, and rapacious prince, the nation mighthave found courage in despair, and might have made a convulsive effortto free itself from military domination. But the grievances which thecountry suffered, though such as excited serious discontent, were byno means such as impel great masses of men to stake their lives, theirfortunes, and the welfare of their families against fearful odds. Thetaxation, though heavier than it had been under the Stuarts, was notheavy when compared with that of the neighbouring states and withthe resources of England. Property was secure. Even the Cavalier, whorefrained from giving disturbance to the new settlement, enjoyed inpeace whatever the civil troubles had left hem. The laws were violatedonly in cases where the safety of the Protector's person and governmentwas concerned. Justice was administered between man and man with anexactness and purity not before known. Under no English government sincethe Reformation, had there been so little religious persecution. Theunfortunate Roman Catholics, indeed, were held to be scarcely within thepale of Christian charity. But the clergy of the fallen Anglican Churchwere suffered to celebrate their worship on condition that they wouldabstain from preaching about politics. Even the Jews, whose publicworship had, ever since the thirteenth century, been interdicted, were, in spite of the strong opposition of jealous traders and fanaticaltheologians, permitted to build a synagogue in London. 

The Protector's foreign policy at the same time extorted the ungraciousapprobation of those who most detested him. The Cavaliers could scarcelyrefrain from wishing that one who had done so much to raise the fame ofthe nation had been a legitimate King; and the Republicans were forcedto 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 herglory in exchange. After half a century during which England had been ofscarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, she atonce became the most formidable power in the world, dictated termsof peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries ofChristendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by landand sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and acquired onthe Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for theloss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of theProtestant interest. All the reformed Churches scattered over RomanCatholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Huguenotsof Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets of the Alps professed aProtestantism older than that of Augsburg, were secured from oppressionby the mere terror of his great name The Pope himself was forced topreach humanity and moderation to Popish princes. For a voice whichseldom threatened in vain had declared that, unless favour were shownto the people of God, the English guns should be heard in the Castle ofSaint Angelo. In truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for hisown sake and that of his family, so much reason to desire as a generalreligious war in Europe. In such a war he must have been the captain ofthe Protestant armies. The heart of England would have been with him. His victories would have been hailed with an unanimous enthusiasmunknown in the country since the rout of the Armada, and would haveeffaced the stain which one act, condemned by the general voice ofthe nation, has left on his splendid fame. Unhappily for him he had noopportunity of displaying his admirable military talents, except againstthe 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 itbeen a worse government, it might perhaps have been overthrown in spiteof all its strength. Had it been a weaker government, it would certainlyhave been overthrown in spite of all its merits. But it had moderationenough to abstain from those oppressions which drive men mad; and ithad a force and energy which none but men driven mad by oppression wouldventure to encounter. 

It has often been affirmed, but with little reason, that Oliver diedat a time fortunate for his renown, and that, if his life had beenprolonged, it would probably have closed amidst disgraces and disasters. It is certain that he was, to the last, honoured by his soldiers, obeyedby the whole population of the British islands, and dreaded by allforeign powers, that he was laid among the ancient sovereigns of Englandwith funeral pomp such as London had never before seen, and that hewas succeeded by his son Richard as quietly as any King had ever beensucceeded by any Prince of Wales. 

During five months, the administration of Richard Cromwell went onso tranquilly and regularly that all Europe believed him to be firmlyestablished on the chair of state. In truth his situation was in somerespects much more advantageous than that of his father. The youngman had made no enemy. His hands were unstained by civil blood. The Cavaliers themselves allowed him to be an honest, good-naturedgentleman. The Presbyterian party, powerful both in numbers and inwealth, had been at deadly feud with the late Protector, but wasdisposed to regard the present Protector with favour. That party hadalways been desirous to see the old civil polity of the realm restoredwith some clearer definitions and some stronger safeguards for publicliberty, but had many reasons for dreading the restoration of the oldfamily. Richard was the very man for politicians of this description. His humanity, ingenuousness, and modesty, the mediocrity of hisabilities, and the docility with which he submitted to the guidance ofpersons wiser than himself, admirably qualified him to be the head of alimited monarchy. 

For a time it seemed highly probable that he would, under the directionof able advisers, effect what his father had attempted in vain. AParliament was called, and the writs were directed after the oldfashion. The small boroughs which had recently been disfranchisedregained their lost privilege: Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax ceased toreturn members; and the county of York was again limited to two knights. It may seem strange to a generation which has been excited almost tomadness by the question of parliamentary reform that great shires andtowns should have submitted with patience and even with complacency, tothis change: but though speculative men might, even in that age, discernthe vices of the old representative system, and predict that those viceswould, sooner or later, produce serious practical evil, the practicalevil had not yet been felt. Oliver's representative system, on the otherhand, though constructed on sound principles, was not popular. Both theevents in which it originated, and the effects which it had produced, prejudiced men against it. It had sprung from military violence. Ithad been fruitful of nothing but disputes. The whole nation was sickof government by the sword, and pined for government by the law. Therestoration, therefore, even of anomalies and abuses, which were instrict conformity with the law, and which had been destroyed by thesword, gave general satisfaction. 

Among the Commons there was a strong opposition, consisting partly ofavowed Republicans, and partly of concealed Royalists: but a large andsteady majority appeared to be favourable to the plan of revivingthe old civil constitution under a new dynasty. Richard was solemnlyrecognised as first magistrate. The Commons not only consented totransact business with Oliver's Lords, but passed a vote acknowledgingthe right of those nobles who had, in the late troubles, taken the sideof public liberty, to sit in the Upper House of Parliament without anynew creation. 

Thus far the statesmen by whose advice Richard acted had beensuccessful. Almost all the parts of the government were now constitutedas they had been constituted at the commencement of the civil war. Hadthe Protector and the Parliament been suffered to proceed undisturbed, there can be little doubt that an order of things similar to that whichwas afterwards established under the House of Hanover would have beenestablished under the House of Cromwell. But there was in the statea power more than sufficient to deal with Protector and Parliamenttogether. Over the soldiers Richard had no authority except that whichhe derived from the great name which he had inherited. He had never ledthem to victory. He had never even borne arms. All his tastes and habitswere pacific. Nor were his opinions and feelings on religious subjectsapproved by the military saints. That he was a good man he evinced byproofs more satisfactory than deep groans or long sermons, by humilityand suavity when he was at the height of human greatness, and bycheerful resignation under cruel wrongs and misfortunes: but the cantthen common in every guardroom gave him a disgust which he had notalways the prudence to conceal. The officers who had the principalinfluence among the troops stationed near London were not his friends. They were men distinguished by valour and conduct in the field, butdestitute of the wisdom and civil courage which had been conspicuousin their deceased leader. Some of them were honest, but fanatical, Independents and Republicans. Of this class Fleetwood was therepresentative. Others were impatient to be what Oliver had been. Hisrapid elevation, his prosperity and glory, his inauguration in the Hall, and his gorgeous obsequies in the Abbey, had inflamed their imagination. They were as well born as he, and as well educated: they could notunderstand why they were not as worthy to wear the purple robe, and towield the sword of state; and they pursued the objects of their wildambition, not, like him, with patience, vigilance, sagacity, anddetermination, but with the restlessness and irresolution characteristicof aspiring mediocrity. Among these feeble copies of a great originalthe most conspicuous was Lambert. 

On the very day of Richard's accession the officers began to conspireagainst their new master. The good understanding which existed betweenhim and his Parliament hastened the crisis. Alarm and resentment spreadthrough the camp. Both the religious and the professional feelings ofthe army were deeply wounded. It seemed that the Independents were to besubjected to the Presbyterians, and that the men of the sword were tobe subjected to the men of the gown. A coalition was formed betweenthe military malecontents and the republican minority of the House ofCommons. It may well be doubted whether Richard could have triumphedover that coalition, even if he had inherited his father's clearjudgment and iron courage. It is certain that simplicity and meeknesslike his were not the qualities which the conjuncture required. He fellingloriously, and without a struggle. He was used by the army as aninstrument for the purpose of dissolving the Parliament, and was thencontemptuously thrown aside. The officers gratified their republicanallies by declaring that the expulsion of the Rump had been illegal, andby inviting that assembly to resume its functions. The old Speaker and aquorum of the old members came together, and were proclaimed, amidstthe scarcely stifled derision and execration of the whole nation, thesupreme power in the commonwealth. It was at the same time expresslydeclared that there should be no first magistrate, and no House ofLords. 

But this state of things could not last. On the day on which the longParliament revived, revived also its old quarrel with the army. Againthe Rump forgot that it owed its existence to the pleasure of thesoldiers, and began to treat them as subjects. Again the doors of theHouse of Commons were closed by military violence; and a provisionalgovernment, named by the officers, assumed the direction of affairs. 

Meanwhile the sense of great evils, and the strong apprehension of stillgreater evils close at hand, had at length produced an alliance betweenthe Cavaliers and the Presbyterians. Some Presbyterians had, indeed, been disposed to such an alliance even before the death of Charles theFirst: but it was not till after the fall of Richard Cromwell that thewhole party became eager for the restoration of the royal house. Therewas no longer any reasonable hope that the old constitution could bereestablished under a new dynasty. One choice only was left, the Stuartsor the army. The banished family had committed great faults; but it haddearly expiated those faults, and had undergone a long, and, it might behoped, a salutary training in the school of adversity. It was probablethat Charles the Second would take warning by the fate of Charlesthe First. But, be this as it might, the dangers which threatened thecountry were such that, in order to avert them, some opinions might wellbe compromised, and some risks might well be incurred. It seemed but toolikely that England would fall under the most odious and degrading ofall kinds of government, under a government uniting all the evils ofdespotism to all the evils of anarchy. Anything was preferable to theyoke of a succession of incapable and inglorious tyrants, raised topower, like the Deys of Barbary, by military revolutions recurring atshort intervals. Lambert seemed likely to be the first of these rulers;but within a year Lambert might give place to Desborough, and Desboroughto Harrison. As often as the truncheon was transferred from one feeblehand to another, the nation would be pillaged for the purpose ofbestowing a fresh donative on the troops. If the Presbyteriansobstinately stood aloof from the Royalists, the state was lost; and menmight well doubt whether, by the combined exertions of Presbyterians andRoyalists, it could be saved. For the dread of that invincible army wason all the inhabitants of the island; and the Cavaliers, taught bya hundred disastrous fields how little numbers can effect againstdiscipline, were even more completely cowed than the Roundheads. 

While the soldiers remained united, all the plots and risings of themalecontents were ineffectual. But a few days after the second expulsionof the Rump, came tidings which gladdened the hearts of all who wereattached either to monarchy or to liberty: That mighty force which had, during many years, acted as one man, and which, while so acting, hadbeen found irresistible, was at length divided against itself. The armyof Scotland had done good service to the Commonwealth, and was inthe highest state of efficiency. It had borne no part in the laterevolutions, and had seen them with indignation resembling theindignation which the Roman legions posted on the Danube and theEuphrates felt, when they learned that the empire had been put up tosale by the Praetorian Guards. It was intolerable that certain regimentsshould, merely because they happened to be quartered near Westminster, take on themselves to make and unmake several governments in the courseof half a year. If it were fit that the state should be regulated by thesoldiers, those soldiers who upheld the English ascendency on the northof the Tweed were as well entitled to a voice as those who garrisonedthe Tower of London. There appears to have been less fanaticism amongthe troops stationed in Scotland than in any other part of the army; andtheir general, George Monk, was himself the very opposite of a zealot. He had at the commencement of the civil war, borne arms for the King, had been made prisoner by the Roundheads, had then accepted a commissionfrom the Parliament, and, with very slender pretensions to saintship, had raised himself to high commands by his courage and professionalskill. He had been an useful servant to both the Protectors, and hadquietly acquiesced when the officers at Westminster had pulled downRichard and restored the Long Parliament, and would perhaps haveacquiesced as quietly in the second expulsion of the Long Parliament, if the provisional government had abstained from giving him cause ofoffence and apprehension. For his nature was cautious and somewhatsluggish; nor was he at all disposed to hazard sure and moderateadvantages for the chalice of obtaining even the most splendidsuccess. He seems to have been impelled to attack the new rulers ofthe Commonwealth less by the hope that, if he overthrew them, he shouldbecome great, than by the fear that, if he submitted to them, he shouldnot even be secure. Whatever were his motives, he declared himselfthe champion of the oppressed civil power, refused to acknowledge theusurped authority of the provisional government, and, at the head ofseven thousand veterans, marched into England. 

This step was the signal for a general explosion. The people everywhererefused to pay taxes. The apprentices of the City assembled by thousandsand clamoured for a free Parliament. The fleet sailed up the Thames, anddeclared against the tyranny of the soldiers. The soldiers, no longerunder the control of one commanding mind, separated into factions. Everyregiment, afraid lest it should be left alone a mark for the vengeanceof the oppressed nation, hastened to make a separate peace. Lambert, whohad hastened northward to encounter the army of Scotland, was abandonedby his troops, and became a prisoner. During thirteen years the civilpower had, in every conflict, been compelled to yield to the militarypower. The military power now humbled itself before the civil power. The Rump, generally hated and despised, but still the only body in thecountry which had any show of legal authority, returned again to thehouse 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 thepurpose of restoring peace and liberty to the distracted nation. The General, coldblooded, taciturn, zealous for no polity and for noreligion, maintained an impenetrable reserve. What were at this timehis plans, and whether he had any plan, may well be doubted. His greatobject, apparently, was to keep himself, as long as possible, free tochoose between several lines of action. Such, indeed, is commonly thepolicy of men who are, like him, distinguished rather by wariness thanby farsightedness. It was probably not till he had been some days in thecapital that he had made up his mind. The cry of the whole people wasfor a free Parliament; and there could be no doubt that a Parliamentreally free would instantly restore the exiled family. The Rump and thesoldiers were still hostile to the House of Stuart. But the Rump wasuniversally detested and despised. The power of the soldiers was indeedstill formidable, but had been greatly diminished by discord. They hadno head. They had recently been, in many parts of the country, arrayedagainst each other. On the very day before Monk reached London, therewas a fight in the Strand between the cavalry and the infantry. Anunited army had long kept down a divided nation; but the nation was nowunited, and the army was divided. 

During a short time the dissimulation or irresolution of Monk kept allparties in a state of painful suspense. At length he broke silence, anddeclared for a free Parliament. 

As soon as his declaration was known, the whole nation was wild withdelight. Wherever he appeared thousands thronged round him, shouting andblessing his name. The bells of all England rang joyously: the guttersran with ale; and, night after night, the sky five miles round Londonwas reddened by innumerable bonfires. Those Presbyterian members of theHouse of Commons who had many years before been expelled by the army, returned to their seats, and were hailed with acclamations by greatmultitudes, which filled Westminster Hall and Palace Yard. TheIndependent leaders no longer dared to show their faces in the streets, and were scarcely safe within their own dwellings. Temporary provisionwas made for the government: writs were issued for a general election;and then that memorable Parliament, which had, in the course oftwenty eventful years, experienced every variety of fortune, which hadtriumphed over its sovereign, which had been enslaved and degraded byits servants, which had been twice ejected and twice restored, solemnlydecreed its own dissolution. 

The result of the elections was such as might have been expected fromthe temper of the nation. The new House of Commons consisted, with fewexceptions, of persons friendly to the royal family. The Presbyteriansformed the majority. 

That there would be a restoration now seemed almost certain; but whetherthere would be a peaceable restoration was matter of painful doubt. Thesoldiers were in a gloomy and savage mood. They hated the title of King. They hated the name of Stuart. They hated Presbyterianism much, andPrelacy more. They saw with bitter indignation that the close of theirlong domination was approaching, and that a life of inglorious toiland penury was before them. They attributed their ill fortune to theweakness of some generals, and to the treason of others. One hourof their beloved Oliver might even now restore the glory which haddeparted. Betrayed, disunited, and left without any chief in whom theycould confide, they were yet to be dreaded. It was no light thing toencounter the rage and despair of fifty thousand fighting men, whosebacks no enemy had ever seen. Monk, and those with whom he acted, werewell aware that the crisis was most perilous. They employed every artto soothe and to divide the discontented warriors. At the same timevigorous preparation was made for a conflict. The army of Scotland, nowquartered in London, was kept in good humour by bribes, praises, andpromises. The wealthy citizens grudged nothing to a redcoat, and wereindeed so liberal of their best wine, that warlike saints were sometimesseen in a condition not very honourable either to their religious orto their military character. Some refractory regiments Monk venturedto disband. In the mean time the greatest exertions were made by theprovisional government, with the strenuous aid of the whole body ofthe gentry and magistracy, to organise the militia. In every county thetrainbands were held ready to march; and this force cannot be estimatedat less than a hundred and twenty thousand men. In Hyde Park twentythousand citizens, well armed and accoutred, passed in review, andshowed a spirit which justified the hope that, in case of need, theywould fight manfully for their shops and firesides. The fleet washeartily with the nation. It was a stirring time, a time of anxiety, yetof hope. The prevailing opinion was that England would be delivered, butnot without a desperate and bloody struggle, and that the class whichhad so long ruled by the sword would perish by the sword. 

Happily the dangers of a conflict were averted. There was indeed onemoment of extreme peril. Lambert escaped from his confinement, andcalled his comrades to arms. The flame of civil war was actuallyrekindled; but by prompt and vigorous exertion it was trodden out beforeit had time to spread. The luckless imitator of Cromwell was againa prisoner. The failure of his enterprise damped the spirit of thesoldiers; and they sullenly resigned themselves to their fate. 

The new Parliament, which, having been called without the royal writ, ismore accurately described as a Convention, met at Westminster. TheLords repaired to the hall, from which they had, during more than elevenyears, been excluded by force. Both Houses instantly invited the King toreturn to his country. He was proclaimed with pomp never before known. A gallant fleet convoyed him from Holland to the coast of Kent. When helanded, the cliffs of Dover were covered by thousands of gazers, amongwhom scarcely one could be found who was not weeping with delight. Thejourney to London was a continued triumph. The whole road from Rochesterwas bordered by booths and tents, and looked like an interminable fair. Everywhere flags were flying, bells and music sounding, wine and aleflowing in rivers to the health of him whose return was the return ofpeace, of law, and of freedom. But in the midst of the general joy, onespot presented a dark and threatening aspect. On Blackheath the army wasdrawn up to welcome the sovereign. He smiled, bowed, and extended hishand graciously to the lips of the colonels and majors. But all hiscourtesy was vain. The countenances of the soldiers were sad andlowering; and had they given way to their feelings, the festive pageantof which they reluctantly made a part would have had a mournful andbloody end. But there was no concert among them. Discord and defectionhad left them no confidence in their chiefs or in each other. Thewhole array of the City of London was under arms. Numerous companies ofmilitia had assembled from various parts of the realm, under the commandof loyal noblemen and gentlemen, to welcome the King. That great dayclosed in peace; and the restored wanderer reposed safe in the palace ofhis ancestors. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE history of England, during the seventeenth century, is the historyof the transformation of a limited monarchy, constituted after thefashion of the middle ages, into a limited monarchy suited to that moreadvanced state of society in which the public charges can no longer beborne by the estates of the crown, and in which the public defencecan no longer be entrusted to a feudal militia. We have seen that thepoliticians who were at the head of the Long Parliament made, in 1642, a great effort to accomplish this change by transferring, directlyand formally, to the estates of the realm the choice of ministers, thecommand of the army, and the superintendence of the whole executiveadministration. This scheme was, perhaps, the best that could then becontrived: but it was completely disconcerted by the course which thecivil war took. The Houses triumphed, it is true; but not till aftersuch a struggle as made it necessary for them to call into existencea power which they could not control, and which soon began to domineerover all orders and all parties: During a few years, the evilsinseparable from military government were, in some degree, mitigatedby the wisdom and magnanimity of the great man who held the supremecommand. But, when the sword, which he had wielded, with energy indeed, but with energy always guided by good sense and generally tempered bygood nature, had passed to captains who possessed neither his abilitiesnor his virtues. It seemed too probable that order and liberty wouldperish in one ignominious ruin. 

That ruin was happily averted. It has been too much the practice ofwriters zealous for freedom to represent the Restoration as a disastrousevent, and to condemn the folly or baseness of that Convention, whichrecalled the royal family without exacting new securities againstmaladministration. Those who hold this language do not comprehend thereal nature of the crisis which followed the deposition of RichardCromwell. England was in imminent danger of falling under the tyranny ofa succession of small men raised up and pulled down by military caprice. To deliver the country from the domination of the soldiers was the firstobject of every enlightened patriot: but it was an object which, whilethe soldiers were united, the most sanguine could scarcely expect toattain. On a sudden a gleam of hope appeared. General was opposed togeneral, army to army. On the use which might be made of one auspiciousmoment depended the future destiny of the nation. Our ancestors usedthat moment well. They forgot old injuries, waved petty scruples, adjourned to a more convenient season all dispute about the reformswhich our institutions needed, and stood together, Cavaliers andRoundheads, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, in firm union, for theold laws of the land against military despotism. The exact partition ofpower among King, Lords, and Commons might well be postponed till ithad been decided whether England should be governed by King, Lords, and Commons, or by cuirassiers and pikemen. Had the statesmen of theConvention taken a different course, had they held long debates on theprinciples of government, had they drawn up a new constitution and sentit to Charles, had conferences been opened, had couriers been passingand repassing during some weeks between Westminster and the Netherlands, with projects and counterprojects, replies by Hyde and rejoinders byPrynne, the coalition on which the public safety depended would havebeen dissolved: the Presbyterians and Royalists would certainly havequarrelled: the military factions might possibly have been reconciled;and the misjudging friends of liberty might long have regretted, undera rule worse than that of the worst Stuart, the golden opportunity whichhad been suffered to escape. 

The old civil polity was, therefore, by the general consent of both thegreat parties, reestablished. It was again exactly what it had been whenCharles the First, eighteen years before, withdrew from his capital. Allthose acts of the Long Parliament which had received the royal assentwere admitted to be still in full force. One fresh concession, aconcession in which the Cavaliers were even more deeply interested thanthe Roundheads, was easily obtained from the restored King. The militarytenure of land had been originally created as a means of nationaldefence. But in the course of ages whatever was useful in theinstitution had disappeared; and nothing was left but ceremonies andgrievances. A landed proprietor who held an estate under the crown byknight service, --and it was thus that most of the soil of England washeld, --had to pay a large fine on coming to his property. He could notalienate one acre without purchasing a license. When he died, if hisdomains descended to an infant, the sovereign was guardian, and was notonly entitled to great part of the rents during the minority, but couldrequire the ward, under heavy penalties, to marry any person of suitablerank. The chief bait which attracted a needy sycophant to the court wasthe hope of obtaining as the reward of servility and flattery, a royalletter to an heiress. These abuses had perished with the monarchy. Thatthey should not revive with it was the wish of every landed gentleman inthe kingdom. They were, therefore, solemnly abolished by statute; andno relic of the ancient tenures in chivalry was allowed to remain exceptthose honorary services which are still, at a coronation, rendered tothe person of the sovereign by some lords of manors. 

The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men, accustomed tothe profession of arms, were at once thrown on the world: and experienceseemed to warrant the belief that this change would produce much miseryand crime, that the discharged veterans would be seen begging in everystreet, or that they would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no suchresult followed. In a few months there remained not a trace indicatingthat the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed intothe mass of the community. The Royalists themselves confessed that, inevery department of honest industry the discarded warriors prosperedbeyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or awaggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in allprobability one of Oliver's old soldiers. 

The military tyranny had passed away; but it had left deep and enduringtraces in the public mind. The name of standing army was long held inabhorrence: and it is remarkable that this feeling was even strongeramong the Cavaliers than among the Roundheads. It ought to be consideredas a most fortunate circumstance that, when our country was, for thefirst 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 anddemolished the Church. Had a prince with a title as good as that ofCharles, commanded an army as good as that of Cromwell, there wouldhave been little hope indeed for the liberties of England. Happily thatinstrument by which alone the monarchy could be made absolute became anobject of peculiar horror and disgust to the monarchical party, and longcontinued to be inseparably associated in the imagination of Royalistsand Prelatists with regicide and field preaching. A century after thedeath of Cromwell, the Tories still continued to clamour against everyaugmentation of the regular soldiery, and to sound the praise of anational militia. So late as the year 1786, a minister who enjoyed nocommon measure of their confidence found it impossible to overcome theiraversion to his scheme of fortifying the coast: nor did they ever lookwith entire complacency on the standing army, till the French Revolutiongave a new direction to their apprehensions. 

The coalition which had restored the King terminated with the dangerfrom which it had sprung; and two hostile parties again appearedready for conflict. Both, indeed, were agreed as to the propriety ofinflicting punishment on some unhappy men who were, at that moment, objects of almost universal hatred. Cromwell was no more; and those whohad fled before him were forced to content themselves with the miserablesatisfaction of digging up, hanging, quartering, and burning the remainsof the greatest prince that has ever ruled England. 

Other objects of vengeance, few indeed, yet too many, were found amongthe republican chiefs. Soon, however, the conquerors, glutted with theblood of the regicides, turned against each other. The Roundheads, while admitting the virtues of the late King, and while condemning thesentence passed upon him by an illegal tribunal, yet maintained that hisadministration had been, in many things, unconstitutional, and thatthe Houses had taken arms against him from good motives and on stronggrounds. The monarchy, these politicians conceived, had no worse enemythan the flatterer who exalted prerogative above the law, who condemnedall opposition to regal encroachments, and who reviled, not onlyCromwell and Harrison, but Pym and Hampden, as traitors. If the Kingwished for a quiet and prosperous reign, he must confide in those who, though they had drawn the sword in defence of the invaded privileges ofParliament, had yet exposed themselves to the rage of the soldiers inorder to save his father, and had taken the chief part in bringing backthe royal family. 

The feeling of the Cavaliers was widely different. During eighteen yearsthey had, through all vicissitudes, been faithful to the Crown. Havingshared the distress of their prince, were they not to share his triumph?Was no distinction to be made between them and the disloyal subject whohad fought against his rightful sovereign, who had adhered to RichardCromwell, and who had never concurred in the restoration of the Stuarts, till it appeared that nothing else could save the nation from thetyranny of the army? Grant that such a man had, by his recent services, fairly earned his pardon. Yet were his services, rendered at theeleventh hour, to be put in comparison with the toils and sufferings ofthose who had borne the burden and heat of the day? Was he to be rankedwith men who had no need of the royal clemency, with men who had, inevery part of their lives, merited the royal gratitude? Above all, washe to be suffered to retain a fortune raised out of the substance of theruined defenders of the throne? Was it not enough that his head and hispatrimonial estate, a hundred times forfeited to justice, were secure, and that he shared, with the rest of the nation, in the blessings ofthat mild government of which he had long been the foe? Was it necessarythat he should be rewarded for his treason at the expense of men whoseonly crime was the fidelity with which they had observed their oath ofallegiance. And what interest had the King in gorging his old enemieswith prey torn from his old friends? What confidence could be placed inmen who had opposed their sovereign, made war on him, imprisoned him, and who, even now, instead of hanging down their heads in shame andcontrition, vindicated all that they had done, and seemed to think thatthey had given an illustrious proof of loyalty by just stopping short ofregicide? It was true they had lately assisted to set up the throne: butit was not less true that they had previously pulled it down, and thatthey still avowed principles which might impel them to pull it downagain. Undoubtedly it might be fit that marks of royal approbationshould be bestowed on some converts who had been eminently useful: butpolicy, as well as justice and gratitude, enjoined the King to give thehighest place in his regard to those who, from first to last, throughgood and evil, had stood by his house. On these grounds the Cavaliersvery naturally demanded indemnity for all that they had suffered, andpreference in the distribution of the favours of the Crown. Some violentmembers of the party went further, and clamoured for large categories ofproscription. 

The political feud was, as usual, exasperated by a religious feud. The King found the Church in a singular state. A short time before thecommencement of the civil war, his father had given a reluctant assentto a bill, strongly supported by Falkland, which deprived the Bishopsof their seats in the House of Lords: but Episcopacy and the Liturgy hadnever been abolished by law. The Long Parliament, however, had passedordinances which had made a complete revolution in Church governmentand in public worship. The new system was, in principle, scarcely lessErastian than that which it displaced. The Houses, guided chiefly bythe counsels of the accomplished Selden, had determined to keep thespiritual power strictly subordinate to the temporal power. They hadrefused to declare that any form of ecclesiastical polity was of divineorigin; and they had provided that, from all the Church courts, anappeal should lie in the last resort to Parliament. With this highlyimportant reservation, it had been resolved to set up in England ahierarchy closely resembling that which now exists in Scotland. Theauthority of councils, rising one above another in regular gradation, was substituted for the authority of Bishops and Archbishops. TheLiturgy gave place to the Presbyterian Directory. But scarcely hadthe new regulations been framed, when the Independents rose to supremeinfluence in the state. The Independents had no disposition to enforcethe ordinances touching classical, provincial, and national synods. Those ordinances, therefore, were never carried into full execution. ThePresbyterian system was fully established nowhere but in Middlesex andLancashire. In the other fifty counties almost every parish seems tohave been unconnected with the neighbouring parishes. In some districts, indeed, the ministers formed themselves into voluntary associations, forthe purpose of mutual help and counsel; but these associations had nocoercive power. The patrons of livings, being now checked by neitherBishop nor Presbytery, would have been at liberty to confide the cureof souls to the most scandalous of mankind, but for the arbitraryintervention of Oliver. He established, by his own authority, a boardof commissioners, called Triers. Most of these persons were Independentdivines; but a few Presbyterian ministers and a few laymen had seats. The certificate of the Triers stood in the place both of institutionand of induction; and without such a certificate no person could hold abenefice. This was undoubtedly one of the most despotic acts ever doneby any English ruler. Yet, as it was generally felt that, without somesuch precaution, the country would be overrun by ignorant and drunkenreprobates, bearing the name and receiving the pay of ministers, some highly respectable persons, who were not in general friendlyto Cromwell, allowed that, on this occasion, he had been a publicbenefactor. The presentees whom the Triers had approved took possessionof the rectories, cultivated the glebe lands, collected the tithes, prayed without book or surplice, and administered the Eucharist tocommunicants seated at long tables. 

Thus the ecclesiastical polity of the realm was in inextricableconfusion. Episcopacy was the form of government prescribed by the oldlaw which was still unrepealed. The form of government prescribed byparliamentary ordinance was Presbyterian. But neither the old lawnor the parliamentary ordinance was practically in force. The Churchactually established may be described as an irregular body made up of afew Presbyteries and many Independent congregations, which were all helddown and held together by the authority of the government. 

Of those who had been active in bringing back the King, many werezealous for Synods and for the Directory, and many were desirous toterminate by a compromise the religious dissensions which had longagitated England. Between the bigoted followers of Laud and the bigotedfollowers of Knox there could be neither peace nor truce: but it didnot seem impossible to effect an accommodation between the moderateEpiscopalians of the school of Usher and the moderate Presbyteriansof the school of Baxter. The moderate Episcopalians would admit thata Bishop might lawfully be assisted by a council. The moderatePresbyterians would not deny that each provincial assembly mightlawfully have a permanent president, and that this president mightlawfully be called a Bishop. There might be a revised Liturgy whichshould not exclude extemporaneous prayer, a baptismal service inwhich the sign of the cross might be used or omitted at discretion, acommunion service at which the faithful might sit if their conscienceforbade them to kneel. But to no such plan could the great bodies of theCavaliers listen with patience. The religious members of that party wereconscientiously attached to the whole system of their Church. She hadbeen dear to their murdered King. She had consoled them in defeat andpenury. Her service, so often whispered in an inner chamber during theseason of trial, had such a charm for them that they were unwilling topart with a single response. Other Royalists, who made little presenceto piety, yet loved the episcopal church because she was the foe oftheir foes. They valued a prayer or a ceremony, not on account of thecomfort which it conveyed to themselves, but on account of the vexationwhich it gave to the Roundheads, and were so far from being disposed topurchase union by concession that they objected to concession chieflybecause it tended to produce union. 

Such feelings, though blamable, were natural, and not whollyinexcusable. The Puritans had undoubtedly, in the day of their power, given cruel provocation. They ought to have learned, if from nothingelse, yet from their own discontents, from their own struggles, fromtheir own victory, from the fall of that proud hierarchy by which theyhad been so heavily oppressed, that, in England, and in the seventeenthcentury, it was not in the power of the civil magistrate to drill theminds of men into conformity with his own system of theology. Theyproved, however, as intolerant and as meddling as ever Laud had been. They interdicted under heavy penalties the use of the Book of CommonPrayer, not only in churches, but even in private houses. It was acrime in a child to read by the bedside of a sick parent one of thosebeautiful collects which had soothed the griefs of forty generationsof Christians. Severe punishments were denounced against such asshould presume to blame the Calvinistic mode of worship. Clergymen ofrespectable character were not only ejected from their benefices bythousands, but were frequently exposed to the outrages of a fanaticalrabble. Churches and sepulchres, fine works of art and curious remainsof antiquity, were brutally defaced. The Parliament resolved that allpictures in the royal collection which contained representations ofJesus or of the Virgin Mother should be burned. Sculpture fared asill as painting. Nymphs and Graces, the work of Ionian chisels, weredelivered over to Puritan stonemasons to be made decent. Against thelighter vices the ruling faction waged war with a zeal little temperedby humanity or by common sense. Sharp laws were passed against betting. It was enacted that adultery should be punished with death. The illicitintercourse of the sexes, even where neither violence nor seduction wasimputed, where no public scandal was given, where no conjugal right wasviolated, was made a misdemeanour. Public amusements, from the masqueswhich were exhibited at the mansions of the great down to the wrestlingmatches and grinning matches on village greens, were vigorouslyattacked. One ordinance directed that all the Maypoles in England shouldforthwith be hewn down. Another proscribed all theatrical diversions. The playhouses were to be dismantled, the spectators fined, theactors whipped at the cart's tail. Rope-dancing, puppet-shows, bowls, horse-racing, were regarded with no friendly eye. But bearbaiting, thena favourite diversion of high and low, was the abomination whichmost strongly stirred the wrath of the austere sectaries. It is to beremarked that their antipathy to this sport had nothing in common withthe feeling which has, in our own time, induced the legislature tointerfere for the purpose of protecting beasts against the wantoncruelty of men. The Puritan hated bearbaiting, not because it gave painto the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Indeed, he generally contrived to enjoy the double pleasure of tormenting bothspectators and bear. [16]

Perhaps no single circumstance more strongly illustrates the temper ofthe precisians than their conduct respecting Christmas day. Christmashad been, from time immemorial, the season of joy and domesticaffection, the season when families assembled, when children came homefrom school, when quarrels were made up, when carols were heard in everystreet, when every house was decorated with evergreens, and everytable was loaded with good cheer. At that season all hearts not utterlydestitute of kindness were enlarged and softened. At that season thepoor were admitted to partake largely of the overflowings of the wealthof the rich, whose bounty was peculiarly acceptable on account ofthe shortness of the days and of the severity of the weather. At thatseason, the interval between landlord and tenant, master and servant, was less marked than through the rest of the year. Where there is muchenjoyment there will be some excess: yet, on the whole, the spirit inwhich the holiday was kept was not unworthy of a Christian festival. Thelong Parliament gave orders, in 1644, that the twenty-fifth of Decembershould be strictly observed as a fast, and that all men should pass itin humbly bemoaning the great national sin which they and their fathershad so often committed on that day by romping under the mistletoe, eating boar's head, and drinking ale flavored with roasted apples. Nopublic act of that time seems to have irritated the common people more. On the next anniversary of the festival formidable riots broke out inmany places. The constables were resisted, the magistrates insulted, thehouses of noted zealots attacked, and the prescribed service of the dayopenly read in the churches. 

Such was the spirit of the extreme Puritans, both Presbyterian andIndependent. Oliver, indeed, was little disposed to be eithera persecutor or a meddler. But Oliver, the head of a party, andconsequently, to a great extent, the slave of a party, could notgovern altogether according to his own inclinations. Even under hisadministration many magistrates, within their own jurisdiction, madethemselves as odious as Sir Hudibras, interfered with all the pleasuresof the neighbourhood, dispersed festive meetings, and put fiddlers inthe stocks. Still more formidable was the zeal of the soldiers. In everyvillage where they appeared there was an end of dancing, bellringing, and hockey. In London they several times interrupted theatricalperformances at which the Protector had the judgment and good nature toconnive. 

With the fear and hatred inspired by such a tyranny contempt was largelymingled. The peculiarities of the Puritan, his look, his dress, his dialect, his strange scruples, had been, ever since the time ofElizabeth, favourite subjects with mockers. But these peculiaritiesappeared far more grotesque in a faction which ruled a great empirethan in obscure and persecuted congregations. The cant, which had movedlaughter when it was heard on the stage from Tribulation Wholesome andZeal-of-the-Land Busy, was still more laughable when it proceeded fromthe lips of Generals and Councillors of State. It is also to be noticedthat during the civil troubles several sects had sprung into existence, whose eccentricities surpassed anything that had before been seen inEngland. A mad tailor, named Lodowick Muggleton, wandered from pothouseto pothouse, tippling ale, and denouncing eternal torments against thosewho refused to believe, on his testimony, that the Supreme Being wasonly six feet high, and that the sun was just four miles from the earth. [17] George Fox had raised a tempest of derision by proclaiming that itwas a violation of Christian sincerity to designate a single person by aplural pronoun, and that it was an idolatrous homage to Janus and Wodento talk about January and Wednesday. His doctrine, a few years later, was embraced by some eminent men, and rose greatly in the publicestimation. But at the time of the Restoration the Quakers werepopularly regarded as the most despicable of fanatics. By the Puritansthey were treated with severity here, and were persecuted to thedeath in New England. Nevertheless the public, which seldom makes nicedistinctions, often confounded the Puritan with the Quaker. Both wereschismatics. Both hated episcopacy and the Liturgy. Both had what seemedextravagant whimsies about dress, diversions and postures. Widely as thetwo differed in opinion, they were popularly classed together as cantingschismatics; and whatever was ridiculous or odious in either increasedthe scorn and aversion which the multitude felt for both. 

Before the civil wars, even those who most disliked the opinions andmanners of the Puritan were forced to admit that his moral conduct wasgenerally, in essentials, blameless; but this praise was now no longerbestowed, and, unfortunately, was no longer deserved. The general fateof sects is to obtain a high reputation for sanctity while they areoppressed, and to lose it as soon as they become powerful: and thereason is obvious. It is seldom that a man enrolls himself in aproscribed body from any but conscientious motives. Such a body, therefore, is composed, with scarcely an exception, of sincere persons. The most rigid discipline that can be enforced within a religioussociety is a very feeble instrument of purification, when compared witha little sharp persecution from without. We may be certain that very fewpersons, not seriously impressed by religious convictions, applied forbaptism while Diocletian was vexing the Church, or joined themselvesto Protestant congregations at the risk of being burned by Bonner. But, when a sect becomes powerful, when its favour is the road to riches anddignities, worldly and ambitious men crowd into it, talk its language, conform strictly to its ritual, mimic its peculiarities, and frequentlygo beyond its honest members in all the outward indications of zeal. Nodiscernment, no watchfulness, on the part of ecclesiastical rulers, canprevent the intrusion of such false brethren. The tares and wheat mustgrow together. Soon the world begins to find out that the godly arenot better than other men, and argues, with some justice, that, if notbetter, they must be much worse. In no long time all those signs whichwere formerly regarded as characteristic of a saint are regarded ascharacteristic 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 inthe state. No man could hope to rise to eminence and command but bytheir favour. Their favour was to be gained only by exchanging withthem the signs and passwords of spiritual fraternity. One of thefirst resolutions adopted by Barebone's Parliament, the most intenselyPuritanical of all our political assemblies, was that no person shouldbe admitted into the public service till the House should be satisfiedof his real godliness. What were then considered as the signs of realgodliness, 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 allreligions were the same. The sincere Puritans soon found themselves lostin a multitude, not merely of men of the world, but of the very worstsort of men of the world. For the most notorious libertine who hadfought under the royal standard might justly be thought virtuouswhen compared with some of those who, while they talked about sweetexperiences and comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practiceof fraud, rapacity, and secret debauchery. The people, with a rashnesswhich we may justly lament, but at which we cannot wonder, formed theirestimate of the whole body from these hypocrites. The theology, themanners, the dialect of the Puritan were thus associated in the publicmind with the darkest and meanest vices. As soon as the Restorationhad made it safe to avow enmity to the party which had so long beenpredominant, a general outcry against Puritanism rose from every cornerof the kingdom, and was often swollen by the voices of those verydissemblers whose villany had brought disgrace on the Puritan name. 

Thus the two great parties, which, after a long contest, had for amoment concurred in restoring monarchy, were, both in politics and inreligion, again opposed to each other. The great body of the nationleaned to the Royalists. The crimes of Strafford and Laud, the excessesof the Star Chamber and of the High Commission, the great serviceswhich the Long Parliament had, during the first year of its existence, rendered to the state, had faded from the minds of men. The execution ofCharles the First, the sullen tyranny of the Rump, the violence of thearmy, were remembered with loathing; and the multitude was inclined tohold all who had withstood the late King responsible for his death andfor the subsequent disasters. 

The House of Commons, having been elected while the Presbyterians weredominant, by no means represented the general sense of the people. Mostof the members, while execrating Cromwell and Bradshaw, reverenced thememory of Essex and of Pym. One sturdy Cavalier, who ventured to declarethat all who had drawn the sword against Charles the First were as muchtraitors as those who kind cut off his head, was called to order, placedat the bar, and reprimanded by the Speaker. The general wish of theHouse undoubtedly was to settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a mannersatisfactory to the moderate Puritans. But to such a settlement both thecourt and the nation were averse. 

The restored King was at this time more loved by the people than any ofhis predecessors had ever been. The calamities of his house, the heroicdeath of his father, his own long sufferings and romantic adventures, made him an object of tender interest. His return had delivered thecountry from an intolerable bondage. Recalled by the voice of both thecontending factions, he was in a position which enabled him to arbitratebetween them; and in some respects he was well qualified for the task. He had received from nature excellent parts and a happy temper. Hiseducation had been such as might have been expected to develope hisunderstanding, and to form him to the practice of every public andprivate virtue. He had passed through all varieties of fortune, and hadseen both sides of human nature. He had, while very young, been drivenforth from a palace to a life of exile. Penury, and danger. He had, atthe age when the mind and body are in their highest perfection, and whenthe first effervescence of boyish passions should have subsided, beenrecalled from his wanderings to wear a crown. He had been taught bybitter experience how much baseness, perfidy, and ingratitude may liehid under the obsequious demeanor of courtiers. He had found, on theother hand, in the huts of the poorest, true nobility of soul. Whenwealth was offered to any who would betray him, when death was denouncedagainst all who should shelter him, cottagers and serving men had kepthis secret truly, and had kissed his hand under his mean disguises withas much reverence as if he had been seated on his ancestral throne. Fromsuch a school it might have been expected that a young man who wantedneither abilities nor amiable qualities would have come forth a greatand good King. Charles came forth from that school with social habits, with polite and engaging manners, and with some talent for livelyconversation, addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond ofsauntering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of selfdenial and ofexertion, without faith in human virtue or in human attachment withoutdesire of renown, and without sensibility to reproach. According to him, every person was to be bought: but some people haggled more about theirprice than others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and veryskilful it was called by some fine name. The chief trick by which clevermen kept up the price of their abilities was called integrity. The chieftrick by which handsome women kept up the price of their beauty wascalled modesty. The love of God, the love of country, the love offamily, the love of friends, were phrases of the same sort, delicateand convenient synonymes for the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind, Charles naturally cared very little what they thought of him. Honour andshame were scarcely more to him than light and darkness to the blind. His contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems, whenviewed in connection with the rest of his character, to deserve nocommendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not valuereal glory will not value its counterfeit. 

It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of hisspecies, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in men but whatwas hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so far humane that itwas highly disagreeable to him to see their sufferings or to hear theircomplaints. This, however, is a sort of humanity which, though amiableand laudable in a private man whose power to help or hurt is bounded bya narrow circle, has in princes often been rather a vice than a virtue. More than one well disposed ruler has given up whole provinces to rapineand oppression, merely from a wish to see none but happy faces round hisown board and in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great societieswho hesitates about disobliging the few who have access to him, for thesake of the many whom he will never see. The facility of Charles wassuch as has perhaps never been found in any man of equal sense. He was aslave without being a dupe. Worthless men and women, to the very bottomof whose hearts he saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of affectionfor him and undeserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him outof titles, places, domains, state secrets and pardons. He bestowedmuch; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the fame ofbeneficence. He never gave spontaneously; but it was painful to him torefuse. The consequence was that his bounty generally went, not to thosewho deserved it best, nor even to those whom he liked best, but to themost shameless and importunate suitor who could obtain an audience. 

The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles the Seconddiffered widely from those by which his predecessor and his successorwere actuated. He was not a man to be imposed upon by the patriarchaltheory of government and the doctrine of divine right. He was utterlywithout ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicatedhis crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing theadministration. Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance ofaffairs, that the very clerks who attended him when he sate in councilcould not refrain from sneering at his frivolous remarks, and at hischildish impatience. Neither gratitude nor revenge had any sharein determining his course; for never was there a mind on which bothservices and injuries left such faint and transitory impressions. He wished merely to be a King such as Lewis the Fifteenth of Franceafterwards was; a King who could draw without limit on the treasury forthe gratification of his private tastes, who could hire with wealth andhonours persons capable of assisting him to kill the time, and who, even when the state was brought by maladministration to the depths ofhumiliation and to the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcometruth from the purlieus of his own seraglio, and refuse to see and hearwhatever might disturb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and forthese ends alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it couldbe obtained without risk or trouble. In the religious disputeswhich divided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at allinterested. For his opinions oscillated in contented suspense betweeninfidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience was neutral in thequarrel between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians, his taste wasby no means so. His favourite vices were precisely those to which thePuritans were least indulgent. He could not get through one day withoutthe help of diversions which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a maneminently well bred, and keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he was movedto contemptuous mirth by the Puritan oddities. He had indeed some reasonto dislike the rigid sect. He had, at the age when the passions aremost impetuous and when levity is most pardonable, spent some months inScotland, a King in name, but in fact a state prisoner in the handsof austere Presbyterians. Not content with requiring him to conform totheir worship and to subscribe their Covenant, they had watched allhis motions, and lectured him on all his youthful follies. He had beencompelled to give reluctant attendance at endless prayers and sermons, and might think himself fortunate when he was not insolently remindedfrom the pulpit of his own frailties, of his father's tyranny, and ofhis mother's idolatry. Indeed he had been so miserable during this partof his life that the defeat which made him again a wanderer might beregarded as a deliverance rather than as a calamity. Under the influenceof such feelings as these Charles was desirous to depress the partywhich had resisted his father. 

The King's brother, James Duke of York, took the same side. Though alibertine, James was diligent, methodical, and fond of authority andbusiness. His understanding was singularly slow and narrow, and histemper obstinate, harsh, and unforgiving. That such a prince should havelooked with no good will on the free institutions of England, and on theparty which was peculiarly zealous for those institutions, can exciteno surprise. As yet the Duke professed himself a member of the AnglicanChurch but he had already shown inclinations which had seriously alarmedgood Protestants. 

The person on whom devolved at this time the greatest part of the labourof governing was Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the realm, who was sooncreated Earl of Clarendon. The respect which we justly feel forClarendon as a writer must not blind us to the faults which he committedas a statesman. Some of those faults, however, are explained and excusedby the unfortunate position in which he stood. He had, during the firstyear of the Long Parliament, been honourably distinguished among thesenators who laboured to redress the grievances of the nation. Oneof the most odious of those grievances, the Council of York, had beenremoved in consequence chiefly of his exertions. When the great schismtook place, when the reforming party and the conservative party firstappeared marshalled against each other, he, with many wise and good men, took the conservative side. He thenceforward followed the fortunes ofthe court, enjoyed as large a share of the confidence of Charles theFirst as the reserved nature and tortuous policy of that prince allowedto any minister, and subsequently shared the exile and directed thepolitical conduct of Charles the Second. At the Restoration Hyde becamechief minister. In a few months it was announced that he was closelyrelated by affinity to the royal house. His daughter had become, by asecret marriage, Duchess of York. His grandchildren might perhaps wearthe crown. He was raised by this illustrious connection over the headsof the old nobility of the land, and was for a time supposed to beallpowerful. In some respects he was well fitted for his great place. Noman wrote abler state papers. No man spoke with more weight and dignityin Council and in Parliament. No man was better acquainted with generalmaxims of statecraft. No man observed the varieties of character with amore discriminating eye. It must be added that he had a strong sense ofmoral and religious obligation, a sincere reverence for the laws of hiscountry, and a conscientious regard for the honour and interest of theCrown. But his temper was sour, arrogant, and impatient of opposition. Above all, he had been long an exile; and this circumstance alone wouldhave completely disqualified him for the supreme direction of affairs. It is scarcely possible that a politician, who has been compelled bycivil troubles to go into banishment, and to pass many of the best yearsof his life abroad, can be fit, on the day on which he returns to hisnative land, to be at the head of the government. Clarendon was noexception to this rule. He had left England with a mind heated by afierce conflict which had ended in the downfall of his party and of hisown fortunes. From 1646 to 1660 he had lived beyond sea, looking on allthat passed at home from a great distance, and through a false medium. His notions of public affairs were necessarily derived from thereports of plotters, many of whom were ruined and desperate men. Eventsnaturally seemed to him auspicious, not in proportion as they increasedthe prosperity and glory of the nation, but in proportion as they tendedto hasten the hour of his own return. His wish, a wish which he has notdisguised, was that, till his countrymen brought back the old line, theymight never enjoy quiet or freedom. At length he returned; and, withouthaving a single week to look about him, to mix with society, to notethe changes which fourteen eventful years had produced in the nationalcharacter and feelings, he was at once set to rule the state. In suchcircumstances, a minister of the greatest tact and docility wouldprobably have fallen into serious errors. But tact and docility made nopart of the character of Clarendon. To him England was still theEngland of his youth; and he sternly frowned down every theory and everypractice which had sprung up during his own exile. Though he was farfrom meditating any attack on the ancient and undoubted power of theHouse of Commons, he saw with extreme uneasiness the growth of thatpower. The royal prerogative, for which he had long suffered, and bywhich he had at length been raised to wealth and dignity, was sacredin his eyes. The Roundheads he regarded both with political and withpersonal aversion. To the Anglican Church he had always been stronglyattached, and had repeatedly, where her interests were concerned, separated himself with regret from his dearest friends. His zeal forEpiscopacy and for the Book of Common Prayer was now more ardent thanever, and was mingled with a vindictive hatred of the Puritans, whichdid him little honour either as a statesman or as a Christian. 

While the House of Commons which had recalled the royal family wassitting, it was impossible to effect the re-establishment of theold ecclesiastical system. Not only were the intentions of the courtstrictly concealed, but assurances which quieted the minds of themoderate Presbyterians were given by the King in the most solemn manner. He had promised, before his restoration, that he would grant liberty ofconscience to his subjects. He now repeated that promise, and addeda promise to use his best endeavours for the purpose of effecting acompromise between the contending sects. He wished, he said, to see thespiritual jurisdiction divided between bishops and synods. The Liturgyshould be revised by a body of learned divines, one-half of whom shouldbe Presbyterians. The questions respecting the surplice, the posture atthe Eucharist, and the sign of the cross in baptism, should be settledin a way which would set tender consciences at ease. When the Kinghad thus laid asleep the vigilance of those whom he most feared, hedissolved the Parliament. He had already given his assent to an act bywhich an amnesty was granted, with few exceptions, to all who, duringthe late troubles, had been guilty of political offences. He had alsoobtained from the Commons a grant for life of taxes, the annual productof which was estimated at twelve hundred thousand pounds. The actualincome, indeed, during some years, amounted to little more than amillion: but this sum, together with the hereditary revenue of thecrown, was then sufficient to defray the expenses of the government intime of peace. Nothing was allowed for a standing army. The nation wassick of the very name; and the least mention of such a force would haveincensed and alarmed all parties. 

Early in 1661 took place a general election. The people were mad withloyal enthusiasm. The capital was excited by preparations for the mostsplendid coronation that had ever been known. The result was that a bodyof representatives was returned, such as England had never yet seen. Alarge proportion of the successful candidates were men who had foughtfor the Crown and the Church, and whose minds had been exasperated bymany injuries and insults suffered at the hands of the Roundheads. Whenthe members met, the passions which animated each individually acquirednew strength from sympathy. The House of Commons was, during some years, more zealous for royalty than the King, more zealous for episcopacythan the Bishops. Charles and Clarendon were almost terrified at thecompleteness of their own success. They found themselves in a situationnot unlike that in which Lewis the Eighteenth and the Duke of Richelieuwere placed while the Chamber of 1815 was sitting. Even if the Kinghad been desirous to fulfill the promises which he had made to thePresbyterians, it would have been out of his power to do so. It wasindeed only by the strong exertion of his influence that he couldprevent the victorious Cavaliers from rescinding the act of indemnity, and retaliating without mercy all that they had suffered. 

The Commons began by resolving that every member should, on pain ofexpulsion, take the sacrament according to the form prescribed by theold Liturgy, and that the Covenant should be burned by the hangman inPalace Yard. An act was passed, which not only acknowledged the powerof the sword to be solely in the King, but declared that in no extremitywhatever could the two Houses be justified in withstanding him by force. Another act was passed which required every officer of a corporation toreceive the Eucharist according to the rites of the Church of England, and to swear that he held resistance to the King's authority to be inall cases unlawful. A few hotheaded men wished to bring in a bill, whichshould at once annul all the statutes passed by the Long Parliament, and should restore the Star Chamber and the High Commission; but thereaction, violent as it was, did not proceed quite to this length. Itstill continued to be the law that a Parliament should be held everythree years: but the stringent clauses which directed the returningofficers to proceed to election at the proper time, even without theroyal writ, were repealed. The Bishops were restored to their seats inthe Upper House. The old ecclesiastical polity and the old Liturgy wererevived without any modification which had any tendency to conciliateeven the most reasonable Presbyterians. Episcopal ordination was now, for the first time, made an indispensable qualification for churchpreferment. About two thousand ministers of religion, whose consciencedid not suffer them to conform, were driven from their benefices in oneday. The dominant party exultingly reminded the sufferers that the LongParliament, when at the height of power, had turned out a still greaternumber of Royalist divines. The reproach was but too well founded: butthe Long Parliament had at least allowed to the divines whom it ejecteda provision sufficient to keep them from starving; and this example theCavaliers, intoxicated with animosity, had not the justice and humanityto follow. 

Then came penal statutes against Nonconformists, statutes for whichprecedents might too easily be found in the Puritan legislation, but towhich the King could not give his assent without a breach of promisespublicly made, in the most important crisis of his life, to those onwhom his fate depended. The Presbyterians, in extreme distress andterror, fled to the foot of the throne, and pleaded their recentservices and the royal faith solemnly and repeatedly plighted. The Kingwavered. He could not deny his own hand and seal. He could not but beconscious that he owed much to the petitioners. He was little in thehabit of resisting importunate solicitation. His temper was not that ofa persecutor. He disliked the Puritans indeed; but in him dislike was alanguid feeling, very little resembling the energetic hatred which hadburned in the heart of Laud. He was, moreover, partial to the RomanCatholic religion; and he knew that it would be impossible to grantliberty of worship to the professors of that religion without extendingthe same indulgence to Protestant dissenters. He therefore made a feebleattempt to restrain the intolerant zeal of the House of Commons; butthat House was under the influence of far deeper convictions and farstronger passions than his own. After a faint struggle he yielded, andpassed, with the show of alacrity, a series of odious acts againstthe separatists. It was made a crime to attend a dissenting place ofworship. A single justice of the peace might convict without a jury, andmight, for the third offence, pass sentence of transportation beyond seafor seven years. With refined cruelty it was provided that the offendershould not be transported to New England, where he was likely to findsympathising friends. If he returned to his own country before theexpiration of his term of exile, he was liable to capital punishment. A new and most unreasonable test was imposed on divines who had beendeprived of their benefices for nonconformity; and all who refused totake that test were prohibited from coming within five miles of any townwhich was governed by a corporation, of any town which was representedin Parliament, or of any town where they had themselves resided asministers. The magistrates, by whom these rigorous statutes were tobe enforced, were in general men inflamed by party spirit and by theremembrance of wrongs suffered in the time of the commonwealth. Thegaols were therefore soon crowded with dissenters, and, among thesufferers, were some of whose genius and virtue any Christian societymight well be proud. 

The Church of England was not ungrateful for the protection which shereceived from the government. From the first day of her existence, shehad been attached to monarchy. But, during the quarter of a centurywhich followed the Restoration, her zeal for royal authority andhereditary right passed all bounds. She had suffered with the House ofStuart. She had been restored with that House. She was connected withit by common interests, friendships, and enmities. It seemed impossiblethat a day could ever come when the ties which bound her to the childrenof her august martyr would be sundered, and when the loyalty in whichshe gloried would cease to be a pleasing and profitable duty. Sheaccordingly magnified in fulsome phrase that prerogative which wasconstantly employed to defend and to aggrandise her, and reprobated, much at her ease, the depravity of those whom oppression, from whichshe was exempt, had goaded to rebellion. Her favourite theme wasthe doctrine of non-resistance. That doctrine she taught without anyqualification, and followed out to all its extreme consequences. Herdisciples were never weary of repeating that in no conceivable case, noteven if England were cursed with a King resembling Busiris or Phalaris, with a King who, in defiance of law, and without the presence ofjustice, should daily doom hundreds of innocent victims to tortureand death, would all the Estates of the realm united be justified inwithstanding his tyranny by physical force. Happily the principles ofhuman nature afford abundant security that such theories will never bemore than theories. The day of trial came; and the very men who had mostloudly and most sincerely professed this extravagant loyalty were, inevery county of England arrayed in arms against the throne. 

Property all over the kingdom was now again changing hands. The nationalsales, not having been confirmed by Act of Parliament, were regarded bythe tribunals as nullities. The bishops, the deans, the chapters, theRoyalist nobility and gentry, reentered on their confiscated estates, and ejected even purchasers who had given fair prices. The losses whichthe Cavaliers had sustained during the ascendency of their opponentswere thus in part repaired; but in part only. All actions for mesneprofits were effectually barred by the general amnesty; and thenumerous Royalists, who, in order to discharge fines imposed by the LongParliament, or in order to purchase the favour of powerful Roundheads, had sold lands for much less than the real value, were not relieved fromthe legal consequences of their own acts. 

While these changes were in progress, a change still more important tookplace in the morals and manners of the community. Those passionsand tastes which, under the rule of the Puritans, had been sternlyrepressed, and, if gratified at all, had been gratified by stealth, broke forth with ungovernable violence as soon as the check waswithdrawn. Men flew to frivolous amusements and to criminal pleasureswith the greediness which long and enforced abstinence naturallyproduces. Little restraint was imposed by public opinion. For thenation, nauseated with cant, suspicious of all pretensions to sanctityand still smarting from the recent tyranny of rulers austere in life andpowerful in prayer, looked for a time with complacency on the softer andgayer vices. Still less restraint was imposed by the government. Indeed there was no excess which was not encouraged by the ostentatiousprofligacy of the King and of his favourite courtiers. A few counsellorsof Charles the First, who were now no longer young, retained thedecorous gravity which had been thirty years before in fashion atWhitehall. Such were Clarendon himself, and his friends, ThomasWriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James Butler, Dukeof Ormond, who, having through many vicissitudes struggled gallantlyfor the royal cause in Ireland, now governed that kingdom as LordLieutenant. But neither the memory of the services of these men, northeir great power in the state, could protect them from the sarcasmswhich modish vice loves to dart at obsolete virtue. The praise ofpoliteness and vivacity could now scarcely be obtained except by someviolation of decorum. Talents great and various assisted to spread thecontagion. Ethical philosophy had recently taken a form well suitedto please a generation equally devoted to monarchy and to vice. ThomasHobbes had, in language more precise and luminous than has ever beenemployed by any other metaphysical writer, maintained that the will ofthe prince was the standard of right and wrong, and that every subjectought to be ready to profess Popery, Mahometanism, or Paganism, at theroyal command. Thousands who were incompetent to appreciate what wasreally 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. Hobbism soon becamean almost essential part of the character of the fine gentleman. Allthe lighter kinds of literature were deeply tainted by the prevailinglicentiousness. Poetry stooped to be the pandar of every low desire. Ridicule, instead of putting guilt and error to the blush, turned herformidable shafts against innocence and truth. The restored Churchcontended indeed against the prevailing immorality, but contendedfeebly, and with half a heart. It was necessary to the decorum ofher character that she should admonish her erring children: but heradmonitions were given in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Her attentionwas elsewhere engaged. Her whole soul was in the work of crushing thePuritans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Caesar the thingswhich were Caesar's. She had been pillaged and oppressed by the partywhich preached an austere morality. She had been restored to opulenceand honour by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion weredisposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they were yetready to fight knee deep in blood for her cathedrals and places, forevery line of her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If thedebauched Cavalier haunted brothels and gambling houses, he at leastavoided conventicles. If he never spoke without uttering ribaldry andblasphemy, he made some amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howeto gaol for preaching and praying. Thus the clergy, for a time, made waron schism with so much vigour that they had little leisure to make waron vice. The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence andunder the special sanction of the head of the Church, publicly recitedby female lips in female ears, while the author of the Pilgrim'sProgress languished in a dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospelto the poor. It is an unquestionable and a most instructive fact thatthe years during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy wasin the zenith were precisely the years during which national virtue wasat the lowest point. 

Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the prevailingimmorality; but those persons who made politics their business wereperhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt society. For they wereexposed, not only to the same noxious influences which affected thenation generally, but also to a taint of a peculiar and of a mostmalignant kind. Their character had been formed amidst frequent andviolent revolutions and counterrevolutions. In the course of a fewyears they had seen the ecclesiastical and civil polity of their countryrepeatedly changed. They had seen an Episcopal Church persecutingPuritans, a Puritan Church persecuting Episcopalians, and an EpiscopalChurch persecuting Puritans again. They had seen hereditary monarchyabolished and restored. They had seen the Long Parliament thrice supremein the state, and thrice dissolved amidst the curses and laughter ofmillions. They had seen a new dynasty rapidly rising to the height ofpower and glory, and then on a sudden hurled down from the chair ofstate without a struggle. They had seen a new representative systemdevised, tried and abandoned. They had seen a new House of Lordscreated and scattered. They had seen great masses of property violentlytransferred from Cavaliers to Roundheads, and from Roundheads back toCavaliers. During these events no man could be a stirring and thrivingpolitician who was not prepared to change with every change of fortune. It was only in retirement that any person could long keep the charactereither of a steady Royalist or of a steady Republican. One who, insuch an age, is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce allthoughts of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midstof endless mutation, he must be always on the watch for the indicationsof a coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment for desertinga falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a faction while itwas uppermost, he must suddenly extricate himself from it when itsdifficulties begin, must assail it, must persecute it, must enter on anew career of power and prosperity in company with new associates. Hissituation naturally developes in him to the highest degree a peculiarclass of abilities and a peculiar class of vices. He becomes quick ofobservation and fertile of resource. He catches without effort the toneof any sect or party with which he chances to mingle. He discernsthe signs of the times with a sagacity which to the multitude appearsmiraculous, with a sagacity resembling that with which a veteran policeofficer pursues the faintest indications of crime, or with which aMohawk warrior follows a track through the woods. But we shell seldomfind, in a statesman so trained, integrity, constancy, any of thevirtues 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 he has no reverence for prescription. He has seen so manynew institutions, from which much had been expected, produce meredisappointment, that he has no hope of improvement. He sneers alike atthose who are anxious to preserve and at those who are eager to reform. There is nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple ora blush, join in defending or in destroying. Fidelity to opinions andto friends seems to him mere dulness and wrongheadedness. Politicshe regards, not as a science of which the object is the happiness ofmankind, but as an exciting game of mixed chance and skill, at whicha dexterous and lucky player may win an estate, a coronet, perhaps acrown, and at which one rash move may lead to the loss of fortune andof life. Ambition, which, in good times, and in good minds, is half avirtue, now, disjoined from every elevated and philanthropic sentiment, becomes a selfish cupidity scarcely less ignoble than avarice. Amongthose politicians who, from the Restoration to the accession of theHouse 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 ourage, would be called gross perfidy and corruption. It is scarcely anexaggeration to say that the most unprincipled public men who have takenpart in affairs within our memory would, if tried by the standardwhich was in fashion during the latter part of the seventeenth century, deserve to be regarded as scrupulous and disinterested. 

While these political, religious, and moral changes were taking place inEngland, the Royal authority had been without difficulty reestablishedin every other part of the British islands. In Scotland the restorationof the Stuarts had been hailed with delight; for it was regarded asthe restoration of national independence. And true it was that the yokewhich Cromwell had imposed was, in appearance, taken away, that theScottish Estates again met in their old hall at Edinburgh, and that theSenators of the College of Justice again administered the Scottishlaw according to the old forms. Yet was the independence of the littlekingdom necessarily rather nominal than real; for, as long as the Kinghad England on his side, he had nothing to apprehend from disaffectionin his other dominions. He was now in such a situation that he couldrenew the attempt which had proved destructive to his father without anydanger of his father's fate. Charles the First had tried to force hisown religion by his regal power on the Scots at a moment when both hisreligion and his regal power were unpopular in England; and he had notonly failed, but had raised troubles which had ultimately cost himhis crown and his head. Times had now changed: England was zealous formonarchy and prelacy; and therefore the scheme which had formerly beenin the highest degree imprudent might be resumed with little risk tothe throne. The government resolved to set up a prelatical church inScotland. The design was disapproved by every Scotchman whose judgmentwas entitled to respect. Some Scottish statesmen who were zealousfor the King's prerogative had been bred Presbyterians. Though littletroubled with scruples, they retained a preference for the religion oftheir childhood; and they well knew how strong a hold that religion hadon the hearts of their countrymen. They remonstrated strongly: but, whenthey found that they remonstrated in vain, they had not virtue enough topersist in an opposition which would have given offence to theirmaster; and several of them stooped to the wickedness and baseness ofpersecuting what in their consciences they believed to be the purestform of Christianity. The Scottish Parliament was so constituted thatit had scarcely ever offered any serious opposition even to Kings muchweaker than Charles then was. Episcopacy, therefore, was establishedby law. As to the form of worship, a large discretion was left to theclergy. In some churches the English Liturgy was used. In others, theministers selected from that Liturgy such prayers and thanksgivingsas were likely to be least offensive to the people. But in general thedoxology was sung at the close of public worship; and the Apostles'Creed was recited when baptism was administered. By the great body ofthe Scottish nation the new Church was detested both as superstitiousand as foreign; as tainted with the corruptions of Rome, and as amark of the predominance of England. There was, however, no generalinsurrection. The country was not what it had been twenty-two yearsbefore. Disastrous war and alien domination had tamed the spirit of thepeople. The aristocracy, which was held in great honour by the middleclass and by the populace, had put itself at the head of the movementagainst Charles the First, but proved obsequious to Charles the Second. From the English Puritans no aid was now to be expected. They were afeeble party, proscribed both by law and by public opinion. The bulkof the Scottish nation, therefore, sullenly submitted, and, with manymisgivings of conscience, attended the ministrations of the Episcopalclergy, or of Presbyterian divines who had consented to accept from thegovernment a half toleration, known by the name of the Indulgence. But there were, particularly in the western lowlands, many fierce andresolute men who held that the obligation to observe the Covenant wasparamount to the obligation to obey the magistrate. These people, indefiance of the law, persisted in meeting to worship God after their ownfashion. The Indulgence they regarded, not as a partial reparation ofthe wrongs inflicted by the State on the Church, but as a new wrong, themore odious because it was disguised under the appearance of a benefit. Persecution, they said, could only kill the body; but the blackIndulgence was deadly to the soul. Driven from the towns, they assembledon heaths and mountains. Attacked by the civil power, they withoutscruple repelled force by force. At every conventicle they mustered inarms. They repeatedly broke out into open rebellion. They were easilydefeated, and mercilessly punished: but neither defeat nor punishmentcould subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured tilltheir bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandonedat another time to the mercy of troops of marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the boldest andmightiest 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, comparedwith which the hottest animosities of English politicians were lukewarm. The enmity between the Irish Cavaliers and the Irish Roundheads wasalmost forgotten in the fiercer enmity which raged between the Englishand the Celtic races. The interval between the Episcopalian and thePresbyterian seemed to vanish, when compared with the interval whichseparated both from the Papist. During the late civil troubles thegreater part of the Irish soil had been transferred from the vanquishednation to the victors. To the favour of the Crown few either of theold or of the new occupants had any pretensions. The despoilers and thedespoiled had, for the most part, been rebels alike. The governmentwas soon perplexed and wearied by the conflicting claims and mutualaccusations of the two incensed factions. Those colonists amongwhom Cromwell had portioned out the conquered territory, and whosedescendants are still called Cromwellians, asserted that the aboriginalinhabitants were deadly enemies of the English nation under everydynasty, and of the Protestant religion in every form. They describedand exaggerated the atrocities which had disgraced the insurrection ofUlster: they urged the King to follow up with resolution the policy ofthe Protector; and they were not ashamed to hint that there would neverbe peace in Ireland till the old Irish race should be extirpated. The Roman Catholics extenuated their offense as they best might, andexpatiated in piteous language on the severity of their punishment, which, in truth, had not been lenient. They implored Charles not toconfound the innocent with the guilty, and reminded him that many of theguilty had atoned for their fault by returning to their allegiance, andby defending his rights against the murderers of his father. The court, sick of the importunities of two parties, neither of which it had anyreason to love, at length relieved itself from trouble by dictatinga compromise. That system, cruel, but most complete and energetic, bywhich Oliver had proposed to make the island thoroughly English, wasabandoned. The Cromwellians were induced to relinquish a third part oftheir acquisitions. The land thus surrendered was capriciously dividedamong claimants whom the government chose to favour. But great numberswho protested that they were innocent of all disloyalty, and somepersons who boasted that their loyalty had been signally displayed, obtained neither restitution nor compensation, and filled France andSpain with outcries against the injustice and ingratitude of the Houseof Stuart. 

Meantime the government had, even in England, ceased to be popular. TheRoyalists had begun to quarrel with the court and with each other; andthe 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 thereturn of the King and the termination of the military tyranny had beenhailed could not have been permanent. For it is the law of our naturethat such fits of excitement shall always be followed by remissions. Themanner in which the court abused its victory made the remission speedyand complete. Every moderate man was shocked by the insolence, cruelty, and perfidy with which the Nonconformists were treated. The penal lawshad effectually purged the oppressed party of those insincere memberswhose vices had disgraced it, and had made it again an honest andpious body of men. The Puritan, a conqueror, a ruler, a persecutor, a sequestrator, had been detested. The Puritan, betrayed and evilentreated, deserted by all the timeservers who, in his prosperity, hadclaimed brotherhood with him, hunted from his home, forbidden undersevere penalties to pray or receive the sacrament according to hisconscience, yet still firm in his resolution to obey God rather thanman, was, in spite of some unpleasing recollections, an object of pityand respect to well constituted minds. These feelings became strongerwhen it was noised abroad that the court was not disposed to treatPapists with the same rigour which had been shown to Presbyterians. Avague suspicion that the King and the Duke were not sincere Protestantssprang up and gathered strength. Many persons too who had been disgustedby the austerity and hypocrisy of the Saints of the Commonwealth beganto be still more disgusted by the open profligacy of the court and ofthe Cavaliers, and were disposed to doubt whether the sullen precisenessof Praise God Barebone might not be preferable to the outrageousprofaneness and licentiousness of the Buckinghams and Sedleys. Evenimmoral men, who were not utterly destitute of sense and public spirit, complained that the government treated the most serious matters astrifles, and made trifles its serious business. A King might bepardoned for amusing his leisure with wine, wit, and beauty. But it wasintolerable that he should sink into a mere lounger and voluptuary, thatthe gravest affairs of state should be neglected, and that the publicservice should be starved and the finances deranged in order thatharlots and parasites might grow rich. 

A large body of Royalists joined in these complaints, and added manysharp reflections on the King's ingratitude. His whole revenue, indeed, would not have sufficed to reward them all in proportion to their ownconsciousness of desert. For to every distressed gentleman whohad fought under Rupert or Derby his own services seemed eminentlymeritorious, and his own sufferings eminently severe. Every one hadflattered himself that, whatever became of the rest, he should belargely recompensed for all that he had lost during the civil troubles, and that the restoration of the monarchy would be followed by therestoration of his own dilapidated fortunes. None of these expectantscould restrain his indignation, when he found that he was as poor underthe King as he had been under the Rump or the Protector. The negligenceand extravagance of the court excited the bitter indignation of theseloyal veterans. They justly said that one half of what His Majestysquandered on concubines and buffoons would gladden the hearts ofhundreds of old Cavaliers who, after cutting down their oaks and meltingtheir plate to help his father, now wandered about in threadbare suits, and did not know where to turn for a meal. 

At the same time a sudden fall of rents took place. The income of everylanded proprietor was diminished by five shillings in the pound. The cryof agricultural distress rose from every shire in the kingdom; andfor that distress the government was, as usual, held accountable. Thegentry, compelled to retrench their expenses for a period, saw withindignation the increasing splendour and profusion of Whitehall, andwere immovably fixed in the belief that the money which ought to havesupported their households had, by some inexplicable process, gone tothe favourites of the King. 

The minds of men were now in such a temper that every public act exciteddiscontent. Charles had taken to wife Catharine Princess of Portugal. The marriage was generally disliked; and the murmurs became loud when itappeared 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. Englishmenwere already beginning to observe with uneasiness the progress of theFrench power, and to regard the House of Bourbon with the same feelingwith which their grandfathers had regarded the House of Austria. Was itwise, men asked, at such a time, to make any addition to the strength ofa monarchy already too formidable? Dunkirk was, moreover, prized bythe people, not merely as a place of arms, and as a key to the LowCountries, but also as a trophy of English valour. It was to thesubjects of Charles what Calais had been to an earlier generation, andwhat the rock of Gibraltar, so manfully defended, through disastrous andperilous years, against the fleets and armies of a mighty coalition, isto ourselves. The plea of economy might have had some weight, if it hadbeen urged by an economical government. But it was notorious that thecharges of Dunkirk fell far short of the sums which were wasted at courtin vice and folly. It seemed insupportable that a sovereign, profusebeyond example in all that regarded his own pleasures, should beniggardly in all that regarded the safety and honour of the state. 

The public discontent was heightened, when it was found that, whileDunkirk was abandoned on the plea of economy, the fortress of Tangier, which was part of the dower of Queen Catharine, was repaired and kept upat an enormous charge. That place was associated with no recollectionsgratifying to the national pride: it could in no way promote thenational interests: it involved us in inglorious, unprofitable, andinterminable wars with tribes of half savage Mussulmans and it wassituated in a climate singularly unfavourable to the health and vigourof the English race. 

But the murmurs excited by these errors were faint, when compared withthe clamours which soon broke forth. The government engaged in war withthe United Provinces. The House of Commons readily voted sums unexampledin our history, sums exceeding those which had supported the fleets andarmies of Cromwell at the time when his power was the terror of allthe world. But such was the extravagance, dishonesty, and incapacity ofthose who had succeeded to his authority, that this liberality provedworse than useless. The sycophants of the court, ill qualified tocontend against the great men who 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 leaky andwithout rigging. It was at length determined to abandon all schemes ofoffensive war; and it soon appeared that even a defensive war was a tasktoo 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, onthe very day of that great humiliation, the King feasted with the ladiesof his seraglio, and amused himself with hunting a moth about the supperroom. Then, at length, tardy justice was done to the memory of Oliver. Everywhere men magnified his valour, genius, and patriotism. Everywhereit was remembered how, when he ruled, all foreign powers had trembledat the name of England, how the States General, now so haughty, hadcrouched at his feet, and how, when it was known that he was no more, Amsterdam was lighted up as for a great deliverance, and childrenran along the canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead. EvenRoyalists exclaimed that the state could be saved only by calling theold soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon the capital began to feelthe miseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to be procured. TilburyFort, the place where Elizabeth had, with manly spirit, hurled foulscorn at Parma and Spain, was insulted by the invaders. The roar offoreign 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 inthe streets crying out that England was bought and sold. The houses andcarriages of the ministers were attacked by the populace; and it seemedlikely that the government would have to deal at once with an invasionand with an insurrection. The extreme danger, it is true, soon passedby. A treaty was concluded, very different from the treaties whichOliver had been in the habit of signing; and the nation was once moreat peace, but was in a mood scarcely less fierce and sullen than in thedays of shipmoney. 

The discontent engendered by maladministration was heightened bycalamities which the best administration could not have averted. Whilethe ignominious war with Holland was raging, London suffered two greatdisasters, such as never, in so short a space of time, befel one city. A pestilence, surpassing in horror any that during three centurieshad visited the island, swept away, in six mouths, more than a hundredthousand human beings. And scarcely had the dead cart ceased to go itsrounds, when a fire, such as had not been known in Europe since theconflagration of Rome under Nero, laid in ruins the whole city, from theTower to the Temple, and from the river to the purlieus of Smithfield. 

Had there been a general election while the nation was smarting under somany disgraces and misfortunes, it is probable that the Roundheads wouldhave regained ascendency in the state. But the Parliament was stillthe Cavalier Parliament, chosen in the transport of loyalty which hadfollowed the Restoration. Nevertheless it soon became evident that noEnglish legislature, however loyal, would now consent to be merely whatthe legislature had been under the Tudors. From the death of Elizabethto the eve of the civil war, the Puritans, who predominated in therepresentative body, had been constantly, by a dexterous use of thepower of the purse, encroaching on the province of the executivegovernment. The gentlemen who, after the Restoration, filled the LowerHouse, though they abhorred the Puritan name, were well pleased toinherit the fruit of the Puritan policy. They were indeed most willingto employ the power which they possessed in the state for the purpose ofmaking their King mighty and honoured, both at home and abroad: butwith the power itself they were resolved not to part. The great Englishrevolution of the seventeenth century, that is to say, the transfer ofthe supreme control of the executive administration from the crown tothe House of Commons, was, through the whole long existence of thisParliament, proceeding noiselessly, but rapidly and steadily. Charles, kept poor by his follies and vices, wanted money. The Commons alonecould legally grant him money. They could not be prevented from puttingtheir own price on their grants. The price which they put on theirgrants was this, that they should be allowed to interfere with every oneof the King's prerogatives, to wring from him his consent to laws whichhe disliked, to break up cabinets, to dictate the course of foreignpolicy, and even to direct the administration of war. To the royaloffice, and the royal person, they loudly and sincerely professed thestrongest attachment. But to Clarendon they owed no allegiance; and theyfell on him as furiously as their predecessors had fallen on Strafford. The minister's virtues and vices alike contributed to his ruin. Hewas the ostensible head of the administration, and was therefore heldresponsible even for those acts which he had strongly, but vainly, opposed in Council. He was regarded by the Puritans, and by all whopitied them, as an implacable bigot, a second Laud, with much more thanLaud's understanding. He had on all occasions maintained that the Act ofindemnity ought to be strictly observed; and this part of his conduct, though highly honourable to him, made him hateful to all those Royalistswho wished to repair their ruined fortunes by suing the Roundheads fordamages and mesne profits. The Presbyterians of Scotland attributed tohim the downfall of their Church. The Papists of Ireland attributed tohim the loss of their lands. As father of the Duchess of York, he hadan obvious motive for wishing that there might be a barren Queen; and hewas therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The saleof Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with Holland, hewas, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogantdeportment, 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 ofruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately frontright opposite to the humbler residence of our Kings, drew on him muchdeserved, and some undeserved, censure. When the Dutch fleet was in theThames, it was against the Chancellor that the rage of the populace waschiefly directed. His windows were broken; the trees of his garden werecut down; and a gibbet was set up before his door. But nowhere was hemore detested than in the House of Commons. He was unable to perceivethat the time was fast approaching when that House, if it continued toexist at all, must be supreme in the state, when the management of thatHouse would be the most important department of politics, and when, without the help of men possessing the ear of that House, it wouldbe impossible to carry on the government. He obstinately persisted inconsidering the Parliament as a body in no respect differing from theParliament which had been sitting when, forty years before, he firstbegan to study law at the Temple. He did not wish to deprive thelegislature of those powers which were inherent in it by the oldconstitution of the realm: but the new development of those powers, though a development natural, inevitable, and to be prevented only byutterly destroying the powers themselves, disgusted and alarmed him. Nothing would have induced him to put the great seal to a writ forraising shipmoney, or to give his voice in Council for committing amember of Parliament to the Tower, on account of words spoken in debate:but, when the Commons began to inquire in what manner the money votedfor the war had been wasted, and to examine into the maladministrationof the navy, he flamed with indignation. Such inquiry, according to him, was out of their province. He admitted that the House was a most loyalassembly, that it had done good service to the crown, and that itsintentions were excellent. But, both in public and in the closet, he, on every occasion, expressed his concern that gentlemen so sincerelyattached to monarchy should unadvisedly encroach on the prerogative ofthe monarch. Widely as they differed in spirit from the members of theLong Parliament, they yet, he said, imitated that Parliament in meddlingwith matters which lay beyond the sphere of the Estates of the realm, and which were subject to the authority of the crown alone. The country, he maintained, would never be well governed till the knights of shiresand the burgesses were content to be what their predecessors had beenin the days of Elizabeth. All the plans which men more observantthan himself of the signs of that time proposed, for the purpose ofmaintaining a good understanding between the Court and the Commons, he disdainfully rejected as crude projects, inconsistent with theold polity of England. Towards the young orators, who were risingto distinction and authority in the Lower House, his deportment wasungracious: and he succeeded in making them, with scarcely an exception, his deadly enemies. Indeed one of his most serious faults wasan inordinate contempt for youth: and this contempt was the moreunjustifiable, because his own experience in English politics was by nomeans proportioned to his age. For so great a part of his life had beenpassed abroad that he knew less of that world in which he found himselfon his return than many who might have been his sons. 

For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons. For very differentreasons he was equally disliked by the Court. His morals as well as hispolities were those of an earlier generation. Even when he was a younglaw student, living much with men of wit and pleasure, his naturalgravity and his religious principles had to a great extent preservedhim from the contagion of fashionable debauchery; and he was by no meanslikely, in advanced years and in declining health, to turn libertine. On the vices of the young and gay he looked with an aversion almost asbitter and contemptuous as that which he felt for the theological errorsof the sectaries. He missed no opportunity of showing his scorn ofthe mimics, revellers, and courtesans who crowded the palace; and theadmonitions which he addressed to the King himself were very sharp, and, what Charles disliked still more, very long. Scarcely any voice wasraised in favour of a minister loaded with the double odium of faultswhich roused the fury of the people, and of virtues which annoyed andimportuned the sovereign. Southampton was no more. Ormond performedthe duties of friendship manfully and faithfully, but in vain. TheChancellor fell with a great ruin. The seal was taken from him: theCommons impeached him: his head was not safe: he fled from the country:an act was passed which doomed him to perpetual exile; and those who hadassailed and undermined him began to struggle for the fragments of hispower. 

The sacrifice of Clarendon in some degree took off the edge of thepublic appetite for revenge. Yet was the anger excited by the profusionand negligence of the government, and by the miscarriages of the latewar, by no means extinguished. The counsellors of Charles, with the fateof the Chancellor before their eyes, were anxious for their own safety. They accordingly advised their master to soothe the irritation whichprevailed both in the Parliament and throughout the country, and forthat end, to take a step which has no parallel in the history of theHouse of Stuart, and which was worthy of the prudence and magnanimity ofOliver. 

We have now reached a point at which the history of the great Englishrevolution begins to be complicated with the history of foreignpolitics. The power of Spain had, during many years, been declining. She still, it is true held in Europe the Milanese and the two Sicilies, Belgium, and Franche Comte. In America her dominions still spread, onboth sides of the equator, far beyond the limits of the torrid zone. Butthis great body had been smitten with palsy, and was not onlyincapable of giving molestation to other states, but could not, withoutassistance, repel aggression. France was now, beyond all doubt, the greatest power in Europe. Her resources have, since those days, absolutely increased, but have not increased so fast as the resourcesof England. It must also be remembered that, a hundred and eighty yearsago, the empire of Russia, now a monarchy of the first class, was asentirely out of the system of European politics as Abyssinia or Siam, that the House of Brandenburg was then hardly more powerful than theHouse of Saxony, and that the republic of the United States had notthen begun to exist. The weight of France, therefore, though still veryconsiderable, has relatively diminished. Her territory was not in thedays of Lewis the Fourteenth quite so extensive as at present: butit was large, compact, fertile, well placed both for attack and fordefence, situated in a happy climate, and inhabited by a brave, active, and ingenious people. The state implicitly obeyed the direction of asingle mind. The great fiefs which, three hundred years before, hadbeen, in all but name, independent principalities, had been annexed tothe crown. Only a few old men could remember the last meeting of theStates General. The resistance which the Huguenots, the nobles, and theparliaments had offered to the kingly power, had been put down by thetwo great Cardinals who had ruled the nation during forty years. Thegovernment was now a despotism, but, at least in its dealings with theupper classes, a mild and generous despotism, tempered by courteousmanners and chivalrous sentiments. The means at the disposal of thesovereign were, for that age, truly formidable. His revenue, raised, itis true, by a severe and unequal taxation which pressed heavily on thecultivators of the soil, far exceeded that of any other potentate. Hisarmy, excellently disciplined, and commanded by the greatest generalsthen living, already consisted of more than a hundred and twentythousand men. Such an array of regular troops had not been seen inEurope since the downfall of the Roman empire. Of maritime powers Francewas not the first. But, though she had rivals on the sea, she had notyet a superior. Such was her strength during the last forty years of theseventeenth century, that no enemy could singly withstand her, and thattwo great coalitions, in which half Christendom was united against her, failed of success. 

The personal qualities of the French King added to the respect inspiredby the power and importance of his kingdom. No sovereign has everrepresented the majesty of a great state with more dignity and grace. Hewas his own prime minister, and performed the duties of a prime ministerwith an ability and industry which could not be reasonably expected fromone who had in infancy succeeded to a crown, and who had been surroundedby flatterers before he could speak. He had shown, in an eminent degree, two talents invaluable to a prince, the talent of choosing his servantswell, and the talent of appropriating to himself the chief part of thecredit of their acts. In his dealings with foreign powers he had somegenerosity, but no justice. To unhappy allies who threw themselvesat his feet, and had no hope but in his compassion, he extended hisprotection with a romantic disinterestedness, which seemed better suitedto a knight errant than to a statesman. But he broke through the mostsacred ties of public faith without scruple or shame, whenever theyinterfered with his interest, or with what he called his glory. Hisperfidy and violence, however, excited less enmity than the insolencewith which he constantly reminded his neighbours of his own greatnessand of their littleness. He did not at this time profess the austeredevotion which, at a later period, gave to his court the aspect of amonastery. On the contrary, he was as licentious, though by no means asfrivolous and indolent, as his brother of England. But he was a sincereRoman Catholic; and both his conscience and his vanity impelled him touse his power for the defence and propagation of the true faith, afterthe example of his renowned predecessors, Clovis, Charlemagne, and SaintLewis. 

Our ancestors naturally looked with serious alarm on the growing powerof France. This feeling, in itself perfectly reasonable, was mingledwith other feelings less praiseworthy. France was our old enemy. It wasagainst France that the most glorious battles recorded in our annalshad been fought. The conquest of France had been twice effected by thePlantagenets. The loss of France had been long remembered as a greatnational disaster. The title of King of France was still borne by oursovereigns. The lilies of France still appeared, mingled with our ownlions, on the shield of the House of Stuart. In the sixteenth centurythe dread inspired by Spain had suspended the animosity of which Francehad anciently been the object. But the dread inspired by Spain had givenplace to contemptuous compassion; and France was again regarded as ournational foe. The sale of Dunkirk to France had been the most generallyunpopular act of the restored King. Attachment to France had beenprominent among the crimes imputed by the Commons to CIarendon. Even intrifles the public feeling showed itself. When a brawl took place in thestreets of Westminster between the retinues of the French and Spanishembassies, the populace, though forcibly prevented from interfering, had given unequivocal proofs that the old antipathy to France was notextinct. 

France and Spain were now engaged in a more serious contest. One of thechief objects of the policy of Lewis throughout his life was to extendhis dominions towards the Rhine. For this end he had engaged in warwith Spain, and he was now in the full career of conquest. The UnitedProvinces saw with anxiety the progress of his arms. That renownedfederation had reached the height of power, prosperity, and glory. TheBatavian territory, conquered from the waves and defended against themby human art, was in extent little superior to the principality ofWales. But all that narrow space was a busy and populous hive, in whichnew wealth was every day created, and in which vast masses of oldwealth were hoarded. The aspect of Holland, the rich cultivation, theinnumerable canals, the ever whirling mills, the endless fleets ofbarges, the quick succession of great towns, the ports bristling withthousands of masts, the large and stately mansions, the trim villas, therichly furnished apartments, the picture galleries, the summer rouses, the tulip beds, produced on English travellers in that age an effectsimilar to the effect which the first sight of England now produces on aNorwegian or a Canadian. The States General had been compelled to humblethemselves before Cromwell. But after the Restoration they had takentheir revenge, had waged war with success against Charles, and hadconcluded peace on honourable terms. Rich, however, as the Republicwas, and highly considered in Europe, she was no match for the power ofLewis. She apprehended, not without good cause, that his kingdommight soon be extended to her frontiers; and she might well dreadthe immediate vicinity of a monarch so great, so ambitious, and sounscrupulous. Yet it was not easy to devise any expedient which mightavert the danger. The Dutch alone could not turn the scale againstFrance. On the side of the Rhine no help was to be expected. SeveralGerman princes had been gained by Lewis; and the Emperor himself wasembarrassed by the discontents of Hungary. England was separated fromthe United Provinces by the recollection of cruel injuries recentlyinflicted and endured; and her policy had, since the restoration, beenso devoid of wisdom and spirit, that it was scarcely possible to expectfrom her any valuable assistance

But the fate of Clarendon and the growing ill humour of the Parliamentdetermined the advisers of Charles to adopt on a sudden a policy whichamazed and delighted the nation. 

The English resident at Brussels, Sir William Temple, one of the mostexpert diplomatists and most pleasing writers of that age, had alreadyrepresented to this court that it was both desirable and practicableto enter into engagements with the States General for the purpose ofchecking the progress of France. For a time his suggestions had beenslighted; but it was now thought expedient to act on them. He wascommissioned to negotiate with the States General. He proceeded to theHague, and soon came to an understanding with John De Witt, then thechief minister of Holland. Sweden, small as her resources were, had, forty years before, been raised by the genius of Gustavus Adolphus toa high rank among European powers, and had not yet descended to hernatural position. She was induced to join on this occasion with Englandand the States. Thus was formed that coalition known as the TripleAlliance. Lewis showed signs of vexation and resentment, but did notthink it politic to draw on himself the hostility of such a confederacyin addition to that of Spain. He consented, therefore, to relinquisha large part of the territory which his armies had occupied. Peace wasrestored to Europe; and the English government, lately an object ofgeneral contempt, was, during a few months, regarded by foreign powerswith respect scarcely less than that which the Protector had inspired. 

At home the Triple Alliance was popular in the highest degree. Itgratified alike national animosity and national pride. It put a limitto the encroachments of a powerful and ambitious neighbour. It boundthe leading Protestant states together in close union. Cavaliers andRoundheads rejoiced in common: but the joy of the Roundhead was evengreater than that of the Cavalier. For England had now allied herselfstrictly with a country republican in government and Presbyterian inreligion, against a country ruled by an arbitrary prince and attachedto the Roman Catholic Church. The House of Commons loudly applauded thetreaty; and some uncourtly grumblers described it as the only good thingthat had been done since the King came in. 

The King, however, cared little for the approbation of his Parliamentor of his people. The Triple Alliance he regarded merely as a temporaryexpedient for quieting discontents which had seemed likely to becomeserious. The independence, the safety, the dignity of the nationover which he presided were nothing to him. He had begun to findconstitutional restraints galling. Already had been formed in theParliament a strong connection known by the name of the Country Party. That party included all the public men who leaned towards Puritanismand Republicanism, and many who, though attached to the Church and tohereditary monarchy, had been driven into opposition by dread of Popery, by dread of France, and by disgust at the extravagance, dissoluteness, and faithlessness of the court. The power of this band of politicianswas constantly growing. Every year some of those members who had beenreturned to Parliament during the loyal excitement of 1661 had droppedoff; and the vacant seats had generally been filled by persons lesstractable. Charles did not think himself a King while an assembly ofsubjects could call for his accounts before paying his debts, andcould insist on knowing which of his mistresses or boon companions hadintercepted the money destined for the equipping and manning of thefleet. Though not very studious of fame, he was galled by the tauntswhich were sometimes uttered in the discussions of the Commons, and onone occasion attempted to restrain the freedom of speech by disgracefulmeans. Sir John Coventry, a country gentleman, had, in debate, sneeredat the profligacy of the court. In any former reign he would probablyhave been called before the Privy Council and committed to the Tower. Adifferent course was now taken. A gang of bullies was secretly sent toslit the nose of the offender. This ignoble revenge, instead of quellingthe spirit of opposition, raised such a tempest that the King wascompelled to submit to the cruel humiliation of passing an act whichattainted the instruments of his revenge, and which took from him thepower of pardoning them. 

But, impatient as he was of constitutional restraints, how was he toemancipate himself from them? He could make himself despotic only by thehelp 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 numerous enough to excite great jealousy andapprehension in the House of Commons and in the country, were scarcelynumerous enough to protect Whitehall and the Tower against a rising ofthe mob of London. Such risings were, indeed to be dreaded; for itwas calculated that in the capital and its suburbs dwelt not less thantwenty thousand of Oliver's old soldiers. 

Since the King was bent on emancipating himself from the control ofParliament, and since, in such an enterprise, he could not hope foreffectual 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 arduoustask of establishing absolute monarchy in England. Such an ally wouldundoubtedly expect substantial proofs of gratitude for such a service. Charles must descend to the rank of a great vassal, and must make peaceand war according to the directions of the government which protectedhim. His relation to Lewis would closely resemble that in whichthe Rajah of Nagpore and the King of Oude now stand to the BritishGovernment. Those princes are bound to aid the East India Company inall hostilities, defensive and offensive, and to have no diplomaticrelations but such as the East India Company shall sanction. TheCompany in return guarantees them against insurrection. As long as theyfaithfully discharge their obligations to the paramount power, theyare permitted to dispose of large revenues, to fill their palaces withbeautiful women, to besot themselves in the company of their favouriterevellers, and to oppress with impunity any subject who may incur theirdispleasure. [18] Such a life would be insupportable to a man of highspirit and of powerful understanding. But to Charles, sensual, indolent, unequal to any strong intellectual exertion, and destitute alike ofall patriotism and of all sense of personal dignity, the prospect hadnothing unpleasing. 

That the Duke of York should have concurred in the design of degradingthat crown which it was probable that he would himself one day wear mayseem more extraordinary. For his nature was haughty and imperious; and, indeed, he continued to the very last to show, by occasional starts andstruggles, his impatience of the French yoke. But he was almost as muchdebased by superstition as his brother by indolence and vice. Jameswas now a Roman Catholic. Religious bigotry had become the dominantsentiment of his narrow and stubborn mind, and had so mingleditself with his love of rule, that the two passions could hardly bedistinguished from each other. It seemed highly improbable that, withoutforeign aid, he would be able to obtain ascendency, or even toleration, for his own faith: and he was in a temper to see nothing humiliating inany step which might promote the interests of the true Church. 

A negotiation was opened which lasted during several months. The chiefagent between the English and French courts was the beautiful, graceful, and intelligent Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, sister of Charles, sisterin law of Lewis, and a favourite with both. The King of England offeredto declare himself a Roman Catholic, to dissolve the Triple Alliance, and to join with France against Holland, if France would engage to lendhim such military and pecuniary aid as might make him independent ofhis parliament. Lewis at first affected to receive these propositionscoolly, and at length agreed to them with the air of a man who isconferring a great favour: but in truth, the course which he hadresolved to take was one by which he might gain and could not lose. 

It seems certain that he never seriously thought of establishingdespotism and Popery in England by force of arms. He must have beenaware that such an enterprise would be in the highest degree arduous andhazardous, that it would task to the utmost all the energies of Franceduring many years, and that it would be altogether incompatible withmore promising schemes of aggrandisement, which were dear to his heart. He would indeed willingly have acquired the merit and the glory of doinga great service on reasonable terms to the Church of which he was amember. But he was little disposed to imitate his ancestors who, in thetwelfth and thirteenth centuries, had led the flower of French chivalryto die in Syria and Egypt: and he well knew that a crusade againstProtestantism in Great Britain would not be less perilous than theexpeditions in which the armies of Lewis the Seventh and of Lewis theNinth had perished. He had no motive for wishing the Stuarts to beabsolute. He did not regard the English constitution with feelings atall resembling those which have in later times induced princes to makewar on the free institutions of neighbouring nations. At present agreat party zealous for popular government has ramifications in everycivilised country. And important advantage gained anywhere by that partyis almost certain to be the signal for general commotion. It is notwonderful that governments threatened by a common danger should combinefor the purpose of mutual insurance. But in the seventeenth century nosuch danger existed. Between the public mind of England and the publicmind of France, there was a great gulph. Our institutions and ourfactions were as little understood at Paris as at Constantinople. It maybe doubted whether any one of the forty members of the French Academyhad an English volume in his library, or knew Shakespeare, Jonson, orSpenser, even by name. A few Huguenots, who had inherited the mutinousspirit of their ancestors, might perhaps have a fellow feeling withtheir brethren in the faith, the English Roundheads: but the Huguenotshad ceased to be formidable. The French, as a people, attached to theChurch of Rome, and proud of the greatness of their King and of theirown loyalty, looked on our struggles against Popery and arbitrary power, not only without admiration or sympathy, but with strong disapprobationand disgust. It would therefore be a great error to ascribe the conductof Lewis to apprehensions at all resembling those which, in our age, induced the Holy Alliance to interfere in the internal troubles ofNaples and Spain. 

Nevertheless, the propositions made by the court of Whitehall weremost welcome to him. He already meditated gigantic designs, which weredestined to keep Europe in constant fermentation during more than fortyyears. He wished to humble the United Provinces, and to annex Belgium, Franche Comte, and Loraine to his dominions. Nor was this all. The Kingof Spain was a sickly child. It was likely that he would die withoutissue. His eldest sister was Queen of France. A day would almostcertainly come, and might come very soon, when the House of Bourbonmight lay claim to that vast empire on which the sun never set. Theunion of two great monarchies under one head would doubtless be opposedby a continental coalition. But for any continental coalition Francesinglehanded was a match. England could turn the scale. On the coursewhich, in such a crisis, England might pursue, the destinies of theworld would depend; and it was notorious that the English Parliamentand nation were strongly attached to the policy which had dictated theTriple Alliance. Nothing, therefore, could be more gratifying to Lewisthan to learn that the princes of the House of Stuart needed his help, and were willing to purchase that help by unbounded subserviency. Hedetermined to profit by the opportunity, and laid down for himself aplan to which, without deviation, he adhered, till the Revolution of1688 disconcerted all his politics. He professed himself desirous topromote the designs of the English court. He promised large aid. He fromtime to time doled out such aid as might serve to keep hope alive, andas he could without risk or inconvenience spare. In this way, at anexpense very much less than that which he incurred in building anddecorating Versailles or Marli, he succeeded in making England, duringnearly twenty years, almost as insignificant a member of the politicalsystem of Europe as the republic of San Marino. 

His object was not to destroy our constitution, but to keep the variouselements of which it was composed in a perpetual state of conflict, and to set irreconcilable enmity between those who had the power of thepurse and those who had the power of the sword. With this view he bribedand stimulated both parties in turn, pensioned at once the ministersof the crown and the chiefs of the opposition, encouraged the court towithstand the seditious encroachments of the Parliament, and conveyed tothe Parliament intimations of the arbitrary designs of the court. 

One of the devices to which he resorted for the purpose of obtaining anascendency in the English counsels deserves especial notice. Charles, though incapable of love in the highest sense of the word, was theslave of any woman whose person excited his desires, and whose airs andprattle amused his leisure. Indeed a husband would be justly deridedwho should bear from a wife of exalted rank and spotless virtue half theinsolence which the King of England bore from concubines who, while theyowed everything to his bounty, caressed his courtiers almost before hisface. He had patiently endured the termagant passions of Barbara Palmerand the pert vivacity of Eleanor Gwynn. Lewis thought that themost useful envoy who could be sent to London, would be a handsome, licentious, and crafty Frenchwoman. Such a woman was Louisa, a lady ofthe House of Querouaille, whom our rude ancestors called Madam Carwell. She was soon triumphant over all her rivals, was created Duchess ofPortsmouth, was loaded with wealth, and obtained a dominion which endedonly with the life of Charles. 

The most important conditions of the alliance between the crowns weredigested 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 veryport amidst the acclamations and joyful tears of a too confiding people. 

By this treaty Charles bound himself to make public profession of theRoman Catholic religion, to join his arms to those of Lewis for thepurpose of destroying the power of the United Provinces, and to employthe whole strength of England, by land and sea, in support of the rightsof the House of Bourbon to the vast monarchy of Spain. Lewis, on theother hand, engaged to pay a large subsidy, and promised that, if anyinsurrection should break out in England, he would send an army at hisown charge to support his ally. 

This compact was made with gloomy auspices. Six weeks after it hadbeen signed and sealed, the charming princess, whose influence over herbrother and brother in law had been so pernicious to her country, wasno more. Her death gave rise to horrible suspicions which, for a moment, seemed likely to interrupt the newly formed friendship between theHouses of Stuart and Bourbon: but in a short time fresh assurances ofundiminished good will were exchanged between the confederates. 

The Duke of York, too dull to apprehend danger, or too fanatical to careabout it, was impatient to see the article touching the Roman Catholicreligion carried into immediate execution: but Lewis had the wisdomto perceive that, if this course were taken, there would be such anexplosion in England as would probably frustrate those parts of the planwhich he had most at heart. It was therefore determined that Charlesshould still call himself a Protestant, and should still, at highfestivals, receive the sacrament according to the ritual of the Churchof England. His more scrupulous brother ceased to appear in the royalchapel. 

About this time died the Duchess of York, daughter of the banishedEarl of Clarendon. She had been, during some years, a concealed RomanCatholic. She left two daughters, Mary and Anne, afterwards successivelyQueens of Great Britain. They were bred Protestants by the positivecommand of the King, who knew that it would be vain for him to professhimself a member of the Church of England, if children who seemed likelyto inherit his throne were, by his permission, brought up as members ofthe Church of Rome. 

The principal servants of the crown at this time were men whose nameshave justly acquired an unenviable notoriety. We must take heed, however, that we do not load their memory with infamy which of rightbelongs to their master. For the treaty of Dover the King himself ischiefly answerable. He held conferences on it with the French agents:he wrote many letters concerning it with his own hand: he was the personwho first suggested the most disgraceful articles which it contained;and he carefully concealed some of those articles from the majority ofhis Cabinet. 

Few things in our history are more curious than the origin and growth ofthe power now possessed by the Cabinet. From an early period theKings of England had been assisted by a Privy Council to which the lawassigned many important functions and duties. During several centuriesthis body deliberated on the gravest and most delicate affairs. Butby degrees its character changed. It became too large for despatch andsecrecy. The rank of Privy Councillor was often bestowed as an honorarydistinction on persons to whom nothing was confided, and whose opinionwas never asked. The sovereign, on the most important occasions, resorted for advice to a small knot of leading ministers. The advantagesand disadvantages of this course were early pointed out by Bacon, with his usual judgment and sagacity: but it was not till after theRestoration that the interior council began to attract general notice. During many years old fashioned politicians continued to regard theCabinet as an unconstitutional and dangerous board. Nevertheless, itconstantly became more and more important. It at length drew to itselfthe chief executive power, and has now been regarded, during severalgenerations as an essential part of our polity. Yet, strange to say, itstill continues to be altogether unknown to the law: the names of thenoblemen and gentlemen who compose it are never officially announced tothe public: no record is kept of its meetings and resolutions; nor hasits existence ever been recognised by any Act of Parliament. 

During some years the word Cabal was popularly used as synonymous withCabinet. But it happened by a whimsical coincidence that, in 1671, theCabinet consisted of five persons the initial letters of whose namesmade up the word Cabal; Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, andLauderdale. These ministers were therefore emphatically called theCabal; and they soon made that appellation so infamous that it has neversince their time been used except as a term of reproach. 

Sir Thomas Clifford was a Commissioner of the Treasury, and had greatlydistinguished himself in the House of Commons. Of the members of theCabal he was the most respectable. For, with a fiery and imperioustemper, he had a strong though a lamentably perverted sense of duty andhonour. 

Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, then Secretary of State, had since he cameto manhood, resided principally on the Continent, and had learned thatcosmopolitan indifference to constitutions and religions which is oftenobservable in persons whose life has been passed in vagrant diplomacy. If there was any form of government which he liked it was that ofFrance. If there was any Church for which he felt a preference, it wasthat of Rome. He had some talent for conversation, and some talent alsofor transacting the ordinary business of office. He had learned, duringa life passed in travelling and negotiating, the art of accommodatinghis language and deportment to the society in which he found himself. His vivacity in the closet amused the King: his gravity in debates andconferences imposed on the public; and he had succeeded in attaching tohimself, partly by services and partly by hopes, a considerable numberof personal retainers. 

Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were men in whom the immorality whichwas epidemic among the politicians of that age appeared in its mostmalignant type, but variously modified by greet diversities of temperand understanding. Buckingham was a sated man of pleasure, who hadturned to ambition as to a pastime. As he had tried to amuse himselfwith architecture and music, with writing farces and with seeking forthe philosopher's stone, so he now tried to amuse himself with a secretnegotiation and a Dutch war. He had already, rather from ficklenessand love of novelty than from any deep design, been faithless to everyparty. At one time he had ranked among the Cavaliers. At anothertime warrants had been out against him for maintaining a treasonablecorrespondence with the remains of the Republican party in the city. Hewas now again a courtier, and was eager to win the favour of the Kingby services from which the most illustrious of those who had fought andsuffered for the royal house would have recoiled with horror. 

Ashley, with a far stronger head, and with a far fiercer and moreearnest ambition, had been equally versatile. But Ashley's versatilitywas the effect, not of levity, but of deliberate selfishness. He hadserved and betrayed a succession of governments. But he had timed allhis treacheries so well that through all revolutions, his fortuneshad constantly been rising. The multitude, struck with admiration bya prosperity which, while everything else was constantly changing, remained unchangeable, attributed to him a prescience almost miraculous, and likened him to the Hebrew statesman of whom it is written that hiscounsel was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God. 

Lauderdale, loud and coarse both in mirth and anger, was, perhaps, underthe outward show of boisterous frankness, the most dishonest man in thewhole Cabal. He had made himself conspicuous among the Scotch insurgentsof 1638 by his zeal for the Covenant. He was accused of having beendeeply concerned in the sale of Charles the First to the EnglishParliament, and was therefore, in the estimation of good Cavaliers, atraitor, if possible, of a worse description than those who had sate inthe High Court of Justice. He often talked with a noisy jocularityof the days when he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chiefinstrument employed by the court in the work of forcing episcopacyon his reluctant countrymen; nor did he in that cause shrink from theunsparing use of the sword, the halter, and the boot. Yet those who knewhim 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 stillpreferred the Presbyterian form of church government to every other. 

Unscrupulous as Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were, it was notthought safe to intrust to them the King's intention of declaringhimself a Roman Catholic. A false treaty, in which the articleconcerning religion was omitted, was shown to them. The names and sealsof Clifford and Arlington are affixed to the genuine treaty. Both thesestatesmen had a partiality for the old Church, a partiality which thebrave and vehement Clifford in no long time manfully avowed, but whichthe colder and meaner Arlington concealed, till the near approach ofdeath scared him into sincerity. The three other cabinet ministers, however, were not men to be kept easily in the dark, and probablysuspected more than was distinctly avowed to them. They were certainlyprivy to all the political engagements contracted with France, and werenot ashamed to receive large gratifications from Lewis. 

The first object of Charles was to obtain from the Commons supplieswhich might be employed in executing the secret treaty. The Cabal, holding power at a time when our government was in a state oftransition, united in itself two different kinds of vices belongingto two different ages and to two different systems. As those five evilcounsellors were among the last English statesmen who seriously thoughtof destroying the Parliament, so they were the first English statesmenwho attempted extensively to corrupt it. We find in their policy at oncethe latest trace of the Thorough of Strafford, and the earliest trace ofthat methodical bribery which was afterwards practiced by Walpole. Theysoon perceived, however, that, though the House of Commons was chieflycomposed of Cavaliers, and though places and French gold had beenlavished on the members, there was no chance that even the least odiousparts of the scheme arranged at Dover would be supported by a majority. It was necessary to have recourse to fraud. The King professed greatzeal for the principles of the Triple Alliance, and pretended that, inorder to hold the ambition of France in check, it would be necessary toaugment the fleet. The Commons fell into the snare, and voted a grant ofeight hundred thousand pounds. The Parliament was instantly prorogued;and the court, thus emancipated from control, proceeded to the executionof the great design. 

The financial difficulties however were serious. A war with Hollandcould be carried on only at enormous cost. The ordinary revenue was notmore than sufficient to support the government in time of peace. Theeight hundred thousand pounds out of which the Commons had just beentricked would not defray the naval and military charge of a single yearof hostilities. After the terrible lesson given by the Long Parliament, even the Cabal did not venture to recommend benevolences or shipmoney. In this perplexity Ashley and Clifford proposed a flagitious breach ofpublic faith. The goldsmiths of London were then not only dealers in theprecious metals, but also bankers, and were in the habit of advancinglarge sums of money to the government. In return for these advances theyreceived assignments on the revenue, and were repaid with interest asthe taxes came in. About thirteen hundred thousand pounds had beenin this way intrusted to the honour of the state. On a sudden it wasannounced that it was not convenient to pay the principal, and that thelenders must content themselves with interest. They were consequentlyunable to meet their own engagements. The Exchange was in an uproar:several great mercantile houses broke; and dismay and distressspread through all society. Meanwhile rapid strides were made towardsdespotism. Proclamations, dispensing with Acts of Parliament, orenjoining what only Parliament could lawfully enjoin, appeared in rapidsuccession. Of these edicts the most important was the Declaration ofIndulgence. By this instrument the penal laws against Roman Catholicswere set aside; and, that the real object of the measure might notbe perceived, the laws against Protestant Nonconformists were alsosuspended. 

A few days after the appearance of the Declaration of Indulgence, warwas proclaimed against the United Provinces. By sea the Dutch maintainedthe struggle with honour; but on land they were at first borne down byirresistible force. A great French army passed the Rhine. Fortressafter fortress opened its gates. Three of the seven provinces of thefederation were occupied by the invaders. The fires of the hostile campwere seen from the top of the Stadthouse of Amsterdam. The Republic, thus fiercely assailed from without, was torn at the same time byinternal dissensions. The government was in the hands of a closeoligarchy of powerful burghers. There were numerous selfelected TownCouncils, each of which exercised within its own sphere, many of therights of sovereignty. These councils sent delegates to the ProvincialStates, and the Provincial States again sent delegates to the StatesGeneral. A hereditary first magistrate was no essential part of thispolity. Nevertheless one family, singularly fertile of great men, hadgradually obtained a large and somewhat indefinite authority. William, first of the name, Prince of Orange Nassau, and Stadtholder of Holland, had headed the memorable insurrection against Spain. His son Maurice hadbeen Captain General and first minister of the States, had, by eminentabilities and public services, and by some treacherous and cruelactions, raised himself to almost kingly power, and had bequeatheda great part of that power to his family. The influence of theStadtholders was an object of extreme jealousy to the municipaloligarchy. But the army, and that great body of citizens which wasexcluded from all share in the government, looked on the Burgomastersand Deputies with a dislike resembling the dislike with which thelegions and the common people of Rome regarded the Senate, and were aszealous for the House of Orange as the legions and the common people ofRome for the House of Caesar. The Stadtholder commanded the forces ofthe commonwealth, disposed of all military commands, had a large shareof the civil patronage, and was surrounded by pomp almost regal. 

Prince William the Second had been strongly opposed by the oligarchicalparty. His life had terminated in the year 1650, amidst great civiltroubles. He died childless: the adherents of his house were left fora short time without a head; and the powers which he had exercised weredivided among the Town Councils, the Provincial States, and the StatesGeneral. 

But, a few days after William's death, his widow, Mary, daughter ofCharles the first, King of Great Britain, gave birth to a son, destinedto raise the glory and authority of the House of Nassau to the highestpoint, to save the United Provinces from slavery, to curb the powerof France, and to establish the English constitution on a lastingfoundation. 

This Prince, named William Henry, was from his birth an object ofserious apprehension to the party now supreme in Holland, and of loyalattachment to the old friends of his line. He enjoyed high considerationas the possessor of a splendid fortune, as the chief of one of the mostillustrious houses in Europe, as a Magnate of the German empire, as aprince of the blood royal of England, and, above all, as the descendantof the founders of Batavian liberty. But the high office which had oncebeen considered as hereditary in his family remained in abeyance; andthe intention of the aristocratical party was that there should neverbe another Stadtholder. The want of a first magistrate was, to a greatextent, supplied by the Grand Pensionary of the Province of Holland, John De Witt, whose abilities, firmness, and integrity had raised him tounrivalled authority in the councils of the municipal oligarchy. 

The French invasion produced a complete change. The suffering andterrified people raged fiercely against the government. In their madnessthey attacked the bravest captains and the ablest statesmen of thedistressed commonwealth. De Ruyter was insulted by the rabble. De Wittwas torn in pieces before the gate of the palace of the States Generalat the Hague. The Prince of Orange, who had no share in the guilt ofthe murder, but who, on this occasion, as on another lamentable occasiontwenty years later, extended to crimes perpetrated in his cause anindulgence which has left a stain on his glory, became chief ofthe government without a rival. Young as he was, his ardent andunconquerable spirit, though disguised by a cold and sullen manner, soonroused the courage of his dismayed countrymen. It was in vain that bothhis uncle and the French King attempted by splendid offers to seduce himfrom the cause of the Republic. To the States General he spoke a highand inspiriting language. He even ventured to suggest a scheme which hasan aspect of antique heroism, and which, if it had been accomplished, would have been the noblest subject for epic song that is to be found inthe whole compass of modern history. He told the deputies that, even iftheir natal soil and the marvels with which human industry had coveredit were buried under the ocean, all was not lost. The Hollanders mightsurvive Holland. Liberty and pure religion, driven by tyrants andbigots from Europe, might take refuge in the farthest isles of Asia. Theshipping in the ports of the republic would suffice to carry twohundred thousand emigrants to the Indian Archipelago. There the Dutchcommonwealth might commence a new and more glorious existence, and mightrear, under the Southern Cross, amidst the sugar canes and nutmeg trees, the Exchange of a wealthier Amsterdam, and the schools of a more learnedLeyden. The national spirit swelled and rose high. The terms offeredby the allies were firmly rejected. The dykes were opened. The wholecountry was turned into one great lake from which the cities, with theirramparts and steeples, rose like islands. The invaders were forced tosave themselves from destruction by a precipitate retreat. Lewis, who, though he sometimes thought it necessary to appear at the head of histroops, greatly preferred a palace to a camp, had already returnedto enjoy the adulation of poets and the smiles of ladies in the newlyplanted alleys of Versailles. 

And now the tide turned fast. The event of the maritime war had beendoubtful; by land the United Provinces had obtained a respite; and arespite, though short, was of infinite importance. Alarmed by the vastdesigns of Lewis, both the branches of the great House of Austria sprangto arms. Spain and Holland, divided by the memory of ancient wrongs andhumiliations, were reconciled by the nearness of the common danger. From every part of Germany troops poured towards the Rhine. The Englishgovernment had already expended all the funds which had been obtained bypillaging the public creditor. No loan could be expected from the City. An attempt to raise taxes by the royal authority would have at onceproduced a rebellion; and Lewis, who had now to maintain a contestagainst half Europe, was in no condition to furnish the means ofcoercing the people of England. It was necessary to convoke theParliament. 

In the spring of 1673, therefore, the Houses reassembled after a recessof near two years. Clifford, now a peer and Lord Treasurer, and Ashley, now Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Chancellor, were the persons on whomthe King principally relied as Parliamentary managers. The Country Partyinstantly began to attack the policy of the Cabal. The attack was made, not in the way of storm, but by slow and scientific approaches. TheCommons at first held out hopes that they would give support to theking's foreign policy, but insisted that he should purchase that supportby abandoning his whole system of domestic policy. Their chief objectwas to obtain the revocation of the Declaration of Indulgence. Of allthe many unpopular steps taken by the government the most unpopular wasthe publishing of this Declaration. The most opposite sentiments hadbeen shocked by an act so liberal, done in a manner so despotic. Allthe enemies of religious freedom, and all the friends of civil freedom, found themselves on the same side; and these two classes made upnineteen twentieths of the nation. The zealous churchman exclaimedagainst the favour which had been shown both to the Papist and to thePuritan. The Puritan, though he might rejoice in the suspension of thepersecution by which he had been harassed, felt little gratitude for atoleration which he was to share with Antichrist. And all Englishmen whovalued liberty and law, saw with uneasiness the deep inroad which theprerogative had made into the province of the legislature. 

It must in candour be admitted that the constitutional question was thennot quite free from obscurity. Our ancient Kings had undoubtedly claimedand exercised the right of suspending the operation of penal laws. Thetribunals had recognised that right. Parliaments had suffered it to passunchallenged. That some such right was inherent in the crown, few evenof 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 English government could scarcely be distinguished from a puredespotism. That there was a limit was fully admitted by the King and hisministers. Whether the Declaration of Indulgence lay within or withoutthe limit was the question; and neither party could succeed in tracingany line which would bear examination. Some opponents of the governmentcomplained that the Declaration suspended not less than forty statutes. But why not forty as well as one? There was an orator who gave it as hisopinion that the King might constitutionally dispense with bad laws, butnot with good laws. The absurdity of such a distinction it is needlessto expose. The doctrine which seems to have been generally receivedin the House of Commons was, that the dispensing power was confined tosecular matters, and did not extend to laws enacted for the securityof the established religion. Yet, as the King was supreme head of theChurch, it should seem that, if he possessed the dispensing power atall, he might well possess that power where the Church was concerned. When the courtiers on the other side attempted to point out the boundsof this prerogative, they were not more successful than the oppositionhad been. 

The truth is that the dispensing power was a great anomaly in politics. It was utterly inconsistent in theory with the principles of mixedgovernment: but it had grown up in times when people troubled themselveslittle about theories. [19] It had not been very grossly abused inpractice. It had therefore been tolerated, and had gradually acquired akind of prescription. At length it was employed, after a long interval, in an enlightened age, and at an important conjuncture, to an extentnever before known, and for a purpose generally abhorred. It wasinstantly subjected to a severe scrutiny. Men did not, indeed, at first, venture to pronounce it altogether unconstitutional. But they beganto perceive that it was at direct variance with the spirit of theconstitution, and would, if left unchecked, turn the English governmentfrom a limited into an absolute monarchy. 

Under the influence of such apprehensions, the Commons denied the King'sright to dispense, not indeed with all penal statutes, but with penalstatutes in matters ecclesiastical, and gave him plainly to understandthat, unless he renounced that right, they would grant no supply for theDutch war. He, for a moment, showed some inclination to put everythingto hazard; but he was strongly advised by Lewis to submit to necessity, and to wait for better times, when the French armies, now employed in anarduous struggle on the Continent, might be available for the purposeof suppressing discontent in England. In the Cabal itself the signs ofdisunion and treachery began to appear. Shaftesbury, with his proverbialsagacity, saw that a violent reaction was at hand, and that all thingswere tending towards a crisis resembling that of 1640. He was determinedthat such a crisis should not find him in the situation of Strafford. He therefore turned suddenly round, and acknowledged, in the House ofLords, that the Declaration was illegal. The King, thus deserted byhis ally and by his Chancellor, yielded, cancelled the Declaration, andsolemnly promised that it should never be drawn into precedent. 

Even this concession was insufficient. The Commons, not content withhaving forced their sovereign to annul the Indulgence, next extorted hisunwilling assent to a celebrated law, which continued in force downto the reign of George the Fourth. This law, known as the Test Act, provided that all persons holding any office, civil or military, shouldtake the oath of supremacy, should subscribe a declaration againsttransubstantiation, and should publicly receive the sacrament accordingto the rites of the Church of England. The preamble expressed hostilityonly to the Papists: but the enacting clauses were scarcely moreunfavourable 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 RomanCatholics should have been effectually disarmed, relief would beextended to Protestant Nonconformists, made little opposition; nor couldthe King, who was in extreme want of money, venture to withhold hissanction. The act was passed; and the Duke of York was consequentlyunder the necessity of resigning the great place of Lord High Admiral. 

Hitherto the Commons had not declared against the Dutch war. But, whenthe King had, in return for money cautiously doled out, relinquishedhis whole plan of domestic policy, they fell impetuously on his foreignpolicy. They requested him to dismiss Buckingham and Lauderdale from hiscouncils forever, and appointed a committee to consider the propriety ofimpeaching Arlington. In a short time the Cabal was no more. Clifford, 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 tohis country seat. Arlington quitted the post of Secretary of State fora quiet and dignified employment in the Royal household. Shaftesburyand Buckingham made their peace with the opposition, and appeared atthe head of the stormy democracy of the city. Lauderdale, however, stillcontinued to be minister for Scotch affairs, with which the EnglishParliament could not interfere. 

And now the Commons urged the King to make peace with Holland, andexpressly declared that no more supplies should be granted for the war, unless it should appear that the enemy obstinately refused to consentto reasonable terms. Charles found it necessary to postpone to a moreconvenient season all thought of executing the treaty of Dover, and tocajole the nation by pretending to return to the policy of the TripleAlliance. Temple, who, during the ascendency of the Cabal, had livedin seclusion among his books and flower beds, was called forth from hishermitage. By his instrumentality a separate peace was concluded withthe United Provinces; and he again became ambassador at the Hague, wherehis presence was regarded as a sure pledge for the sincerity of hiscourt. 

The chief direction of affairs was now intrusted to Sir Thomas Osborne, a Yorkshire baronet, who had, in the House of Commons, shown eminenttalents for business and debate. Osborne became Lord Treasurer, and wassoon created Earl of Danby. He was not a man whose character, if triedby any high standard of morality, would appear to merit approbation. Hewas greedy of wealth and honours, corrupt himself, and a corrupter ofothers. The Cabal had bequeathed to him the art of bribing Parliaments, an art still rude, and giving little promise of the rare perfection towhich it was brought in the following century. He improved greatly onthe plan of the first inventors. They had merely purchased orators:but every man who had a vote, might sell himself to Danby. Yet the newminister must not be confounded with the negotiators of Dover. He wasnot without the feelings of an Englishman and a Protestant; nor didhe, in his solicitude for his own interests, ever wholly forget theinterests of his country and of his religion. He was desirous, indeed, to exalt the prerogative: but the means by which he proposed to exaltit were widely different from those which had been contemplated byArlington and Clifford. The thought of establishing arbitrary power, bycalling in the aid of foreign arms, and by reducing the kingdom to therank of a dependent principality, never entered into his mind. His planwas to rally round the monarchy those classes which had been the firmallies of the monarchy during the troubles of the preceding generation, and which had been disgusted by the recent crimes and errors of thecourt. With the help of the old Cavalier interest, of the nobles, of thecountry gentlemen, of the clergy, and of the Universities, it might, he conceived, be possible to make Charles, not indeed an absolutesovereign, but a sovereign scarcely less powerful than Elizabeth hadbeen. 

Prompted by these feelings, Danby formed the design of securing to theCavalier party the exclusive possession of all political power bothexecutive and legislative. In the year 1675, accordingly, a bill wasoffered to the Lords which provided that no person should hold anyoffice, or should sit in either House of Parliament, without firstdeclaring on oath that he considered resistance to the kingly power asin all cases criminal, and that he would never endeavour to alter thegovernment either in Church or State. During several weeks the debates, divisions, and protests caused by this proposition kept the country in astate of excitement. The opposition in the House of Lords, headed bytwo members of the Cabal who were desirous to make their peace with thenation, Buckingham and Shaftesbury, was beyond all precedent vehementand pertinacious, and at length proved successful. The bill was notindeed rejected, but was retarded, mutilated, and at length suffered todrop. 

So arbitrary and so exclusive was Danby's scheme of domestic policy. Hisopinions touching foreign policy did him more honour. They were in truthdirectly opposed to those of the Cabal and differed little from those ofthe Country Party. He bitterly lamented the degraded situation to whichEngland was reduced, and declared, with more energy than politeness, that his dearest wish was to cudgel the French into a proper respectfor her. So little did he disguise his feelings that, at a great banquetwhere the most illustrious dignitaries of the State and of the Churchwere assembled, he not very decorously filled his glass to the confusionof all who were against a war with France. He would indeed most gladlyhave seen his country united with the powers which were then combinedagainst Lewis, and was for that end bent on placing Temple, the authorof the Triple Alliance, at the head of the department which directedforeign affairs. But the power of the prime minister was limited. Inhis most confidential letters he complained that the infatuation of hismaster prevented England from taking her proper place among Europeannations. Charles was insatiably greedy of French gold: he had by nomeans relinquished the hope that he might, at some future day, be ableto establish absolute monarchy by the help of the French arms; and forboth reasons he wished to maintain a good understanding with the courtof Versailles. 

Thus the sovereign leaned towards one system of foreign politics, and the minister towards a system diametrically opposite. Neither thesovereign nor the minister, indeed, was of a temper to pursue any objectwith undeviating constancy. Each occasionally yielded to the importunityof the other; and their jarring inclinations and mutual concessions gaveto the whole administration a strangely capricious character. Charlessometimes, from levity and indolence, suffered Danby to take steps whichLewis resented as mortal injuries. Danby, on the other hand, ratherthan relinquish his great place, sometimes stooped to compliances whichcaused him bitter pain and shame. The King was brought to consent to amarriage between the Lady Mary, eldest daughter and presumptive heiressof the Duke of York and William of Orange, the deadly enemy of Franceand the hereditary champion of the Reformation. Nay, the brave Earl ofOssory, son of Ormond, was sent to assist the Dutch with some Britishtroops, who, on the most bloody day of the whole war, signallyvindicated the national reputation for stubborn courage. The Treasurer, on the other hand, was induced not only to connive at some scandalouspecuniary transactions which took place between his master and the courtof Versailles, but to become, unwillingly indeed and ungraciously, anagent in those transactions. 

Meanwhile the Country Party was driven by two strong feelings in twoopposite directions. The popular leaders were afraid of the greatnessof Lewis, who was not only making head against the whole strength of thecontinental alliance, but was even gaining ground. Yet they were afraidto entrust their own King with the means of curbing France, lest thosemeans should be used to destroy the liberties of England. The conflictbetween these apprehensions, both of which were perfectly legitimate, made the policy of the Opposition seem as eccentric and fickle as thatof 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 recruitinghad commenced, their dread of Lewis gave place to a nearer dread. Theybegan to fear that the new levies might be employed on a service inwhich Charles took much more interest than in the defence of Flanders. They therefore refused supplies, and clamoured for disbanding as loudlyas they had just before clamoured for arming. Those historians whohave severely reprehended this inconsistency do not appear to have madesufficient allowance for the embarrassing situation of subjects who havereason to believe that their prince is conspiring with a foreign andhostile power against their liberties. To refuse him military resourcesis to leave the state defenceless. Yet to give him military resourcesmay be only to arm him against the state. In such circumstancesvacillation cannot be considered as a proof of dishonesty or even ofweakness. 

These jealousies were studiously fomented by the French King. He hadlong kept England passive by promising to support the throne against theParliament. He now, alarmed at finding that the patriotic counselsof Danby seemed likely to prevail in the closet, began to inflame theParliament against the throne. Between Lewis and the Country Party therewas one thing, and one only in common, profound distrust of Charles. Could the Country Party have been certain that their sovereign meantonly 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 tomake war on the constitution of England, he would have made no attemptto stop them. But the unsteadiness and faithlessness of Charles weresuch that the French Government and the English opposition, agreeing innothing else, agreed in disbelieving his protestations, and were equallydesirous to keep him poor and without an army. Communications wereopened between Barillon, the Ambassador of Lewis, and those Englishpoliticians who had always professed, and who indeed sincerely felt, thegreatest dread and dislike of the French ascendency. The most upright ofthe Country Party, William Lord Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford, didnot scruple to concert with a foreign mission schemes for embarrassinghis own sovereign. This was the whole extent of Russell's offence. Hisprinciples and his fortune alike raised him above all temptations of asordid kind: but there is too much reason to believe that some of hisassociates were less scrupulous. It would be unjust to impute to themthe extreme wickedness of taking bribes to injure their country. On thecontrary, they meant to serve her: but it is impossible to deny thatthey were mean and indelicate enough to let a foreign prince pay themfor serving her. Among those who cannot be acquitted of this degradingcharge was one man who is popularly considered as the personificationof public spirit, and who, in spite of some great moral and intellectualfaults, has a just claim to be called a hero, a philosopher, and apatriot. It is impossible to see without pain such a name in the list ofthe pensioners of France. Yet it is some consolation to reflect that, inour time, a public man would be thought lost to all sense of duty andof shame, who should not spurn from him a temptation which conquered thevirtue and the pride of Algernon Sydney. 

The effect of these intrigues was that England, though she occasionallytook a menacing attitude, remained inactive till the continentalwar, having lasted near seven years, was terminated by the treaty ofNimeguen. The United Provinces, which in 1672 had seemed to be on theverge of utter ruin, obtained honourable and advantageous terms. Thisnarrow escape was generally ascribed to the ability and courage of theyoung Stadtholder. His fame was great throughout Europe, and especiallyamong the English, who regarded him as one of their own princes, andrejoiced to see him the husband of their future Queen. France retainedmany important towns in the Low Countries and the great province ofFranche Comte. Almost the whole loss was borne by the decaying monarchyof Spain. 

A few months after the termination of hostilities on the Continent camea great crisis in English politics. Towards such a crisis things hadbeen tending during eighteen years. The whole stock of popularity, greatas it was, with which the King had commenced his administration, had long been expended. To loyal enthusiasm had succeeded profounddisaffection. The public mind had now measured back again the spaceover which it had passed between 1640 and 1660, and was once more in thestate in which it had been when the Long Parliament met. 

The prevailing discontent was compounded of many feelings. One of thesewas wounded national pride. That generation had seen England, during afew years, allied on equal terms with France, victorious over Hollandand Spain, the mistress of the sea, the terror of Rome, the head of theProtestant interest. Her resources had not diminished; and it might havebeen expected that she would have been at least as highly consideredin Europe under a legitimate King, strong in the affection and willingobedience of his subjects, as she had been under an usurper whose utmostvigilance and energy were required to keep down a mutinous people. Yetshe had, in consequence of the imbecility and meanness of her rulers, sunk so low that any German or Italian principality which broughtfive thousand men into the field was a more important member of thecommonwealth of nations. 

With the sense of national humiliation was mingled anxiety for civilliberty. Rumours, indistinct indeed, but perhaps the more alarming byreason of their indistinctness, imputed to the court a deliberate designagainst all the constitutional rights of Englishmen. It had evenbeen whispered that this design was to be carried into effect by theintervention of foreign arms. The thought of Such intervention made theblood, even of the Cavaliers, boil in their veins. Some who had alwaysprofessed the doctrine of non-resistance in its full extent were nowheard to mutter that there was one limitation to that doctrine. If aforeign force were brought over to coerce the nation, they would notanswer for their own patience. 

But neither national pride nor anxiety for public liberty had sogreat an influence on the popular mind as hatred of the Roman Catholicreligion. That hatred had become one of the ruling passions of thecommunity, and was as strong in the ignorant and profane as in thosewho were Protestants from conviction. The cruelties of Mary's reign, cruelties which even in the most accurate and sober narrative excitejust detestation, and which were neither accurately nor soberly relatedin the popular martyrologies, the conspiracies against Elizabeth, andabove all the Gunpowder Plot, had left in the minds of the vulgar a deepand bitter feeling which was kept up by annual commemorations, prayers, bonfires, and processions. It should be added that those classes whichwere peculiarly distinguished by attachment to the throne, the clergyand the landed gentry, had peculiar reasons for regarding the Church ofRome with aversion. The clergy trembled for their benefices; the landedgentry for their abbeys and great tithes. While the memory of the reignof the Saints was still recent, hatred of Popery had in some degreegiven place to hatred of Puritanism; but, during the eighteen yearswhich had elapsed since the Restoration, the hatred of Puritanism hadabated, and the hatred of Popery had increased. The stipulations of thetreaty of Dover were accurately known to very few; but some hints hadgot abroad. The general impression was that a great blow was about tobe aimed at the Protestant religion. The King was suspected by many of aleaning towards Rome. His brother and heir presumptive was known to bea bigoted Roman Catholic. The first Duchess of York had died a RomanCatholic. James had then, in defiance of the remonstrances of the Houseof Commons, taken to wife the Princess Mary of Modena, another RomanCatholic. If there should be sons by this marriage, there was reason tofear that they might be bred Roman Catholics, and that a long successionof princes, hostile to the established faith, might sit on the Englishthrone. The constitution had recently been violated for the purpose ofprotecting the Roman Catholics from the penal laws. The ally by whom thepolicy of England had, during many years, been chiefly governed, was notonly a Roman Catholic, but a persecutor of the reformed Churches. Undersuch circumstances it is not strange that the common people should havebeen inclined to apprehend a return of the times of her whom they calledBloody Mary. 

Thus the nation was in such a temper that the smallest spark might raisea flame. At this conjuncture fire was set in two places at once to thevast mass of combustible matter; and in a moment the whole was in ablaze. 

The French court, which knew Danby to be its mortal enemy, artfullycontrived to ruin him by making him pass for its friend. Lewis, by theinstrumentality of Ralph Montague, a faithless and shameless man whohad resided in France as minister from England, laid before the House ofCommons proofs that the Treasurer had been concerned in an applicationmade by the Court of Whitehall to the Court of Versailles for a sum ofmoney. This discovery produced its natural effect. The Treasurer was, in truth, exposed to the vengeance of Parliament, not on account of hisdelinquencies, but on account of his merits; not because he had beenan accomplice in a criminal transaction, but because he had been a mostunwilling and unserviceable accomplice. But of the circumstances, whichhave, in the judgment of posterity, greatly extenuated his fault, hiscontemporaries were ignorant. In their view he was the broker who hadsold England to France. It seemed clear that his greatness was at anend, and doubtful whether his head could be saved. 

Yet was the ferment excited by this discovery slight, when compared withthe commotion which arose when it was noised abroad that a great Popishplot had been detected. One Titus Oates, a clergyman of the Church ofEngland, had, by his disorderly life and heterodox doctrine, drawn onhimself the censure of his spiritual superiors, had been compelled toquit his benefice, and had ever since led an infamous and vagrant life. He had once professed himself a Roman Catholic, and had passed some timeon the Continent in English colleges of the order of Jesus. In thoseseminaries he had heard much wild talk about the best means ofbringing England back to the true Church. From hints thus furnished heconstructed a hideous romance, resembling rather the dream of a sick manthan any transaction which ever took place in the real world. The Pope, he said, had entrusted the government of England to the Jesuits. TheJesuits had, by commissions under the seal of their society, appointedRoman Catholic clergymen, noblemen, and gentlemen, to all the highestoffices in Church and State. The Papists had burned down London once. They had tried to burn it down again. They were at that moment planninga scheme for setting fire to all the shipping in the Thames. They wereto rise at a signal and massacre all their Protestant neighbours. AFrench army was at the same time to land in Ireland. All the leadingstatesmen and divines of England were to be murdered. Three or fourschemes had been formed for assassinating the King. He was to bestabbed. He was to be poisoned in his medicine He was to be shot withsilver bullets. The public mind was so sore and excitable that theselies readily found credit with the vulgar; and two events which speedilytook place led even some reflecting men to suspect that the tale, thoughevidently distorted and exaggerated, might have some foundation. 

Edward Coleman, a very busy, and not very honest, Roman Catholicintriguer, had been among the persons accused. Search was made for hispapers. It was found that he had just destroyed the greater part ofthem. But a few which had escaped contained some passages such as, to minds strongly prepossessed, might seem to confirm the evidence ofOates. Those passages indeed, when candidly construed, appear toexpress little more than the hopes which the posture of affairs, thepredilections of Charles, the still stronger predilections of James, and the relations existing between the French and English courts, mightnaturally excite in the mind of a Roman Catholic strongly attached tothe interests of his Church. But the country was not then inclined toconstrue the letters of Papists candidly; and it was urged, withsome show of reason, that, if papers which had been passed over asunimportant were filled with matter so suspicious, some great mysteryof iniquity must have been contained in those documents which had beencarefully committed to the flames. 

A few days later it was known that Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, an eminentjustice of the peace who had taken the depositions of Oates againstColeman, had disappeared. Search was made; and Godfrey's corpse wasfound 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 fateis to this day a secret. Some think that he perished by his ownhand; some, that he was slain by a private enemy. The most improbablesupposition 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 probablesupposition seems, on the whole, to be that some hotheaded RomanCatholic, driven to frenzy by the lies of Oates and by the insultsof the multitude, and not nicely distinguishing between the perjuredaccuser and the innocent magistrate, had taken a revenge of which thehistory of persecuted sects furnishes but too many examples. If thiswere so, the assassin must have afterwards bitterly execrated his ownwickedness and folly. The capital and the whole nation went mad withhatred and fear. The penal laws, which had begun to lose something oftheir edge, were sharpened anew. Everywhere justices were busied insearching houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were filled withPapists. London had the aspect of a city in a state of siege. Thetrainbands were under arms all night. Preparations were made forbarricading the great thoroughfares. Patrols marched up and down thestreets. Cannon were planted round Whitehall. No citizen thought himselfsafe unless he carried under his coat a small flail loaded with lead tobrain the Popish assassins. The corpse of the murdered magistrate wasexhibited during several days to the gaze of great multitudes, and wasthen committed to the grave with strange and terrible ceremonies, which indicated rather fear and the thirst of vengeance shall sorrow orreligious hope. The Houses insisted that a guard should be placed in thevaults over which they sate, in order to secure them against a secondGunpowder Plot. All their proceedings were of a piece with this demand. Ever since the reign of Elizabeth the oath of supremacy had been exactedfrom members of the House of Commons. Some Roman Catholics, however, had contrived so to interpret this oath that they could take it withoutscruple. A more stringent test was now added: every member of Parliamentwas required to make the Declaration against Transubstantiation; andthus the Roman Catholic Lords were for the first time excluded fromtheir seats. Strong resolutions were adopted against the Queen. TheCommons threw one of the Secretaries of State into prison for havingcountersigned commissions directed to gentlemen who were not goodProtestants. They impeached the Lord Treasurer of high treason. Nay, they so far forgot the doctrine which, while the memory of the civil warwas still recent, they had loudly professed, that they even attemptedto wrest the command of the militia out of the King's hands. To sucha temper had eighteen years of misgovernment brought the most loyalParliament that had ever met in England. 

Yet it may seem strange that, even in that extremity, the King shouldhave ventured to appeal to the people; for the people were more excitedthan their representatives. The Lower House, discontented as it was, contained a larger number of Cavaliers than were likely to find seatsagain. But it was thought that a dissolution would put a stop to theprosecution of the Lord Treasurer, a prosecution which might probablybring to light all the guilty mysteries of the French alliance, andmight thus cause extreme personal annoyance and embarrassment toCharles. Accordingly, in January, 1679, the Parliament, which had beenin existence ever since the beginning of the year 1661, was dissolved;and writs were issued for a general election. 

During some weeks the contention over the whole country was fierce andobstinate beyond example. Unprecedented sums were expended. New tacticswere employed. It was remarked by the pamphleteers of that time assomething extraordinary that horses were hired at a great charge forthe conveyance of electors. The practice of splitting freeholds forthe purpose of multiplying votes dates from this memorable struggle. Dissenting preachers, who had long hidden themselves in quiet nooks frompersecution, now emerged from their retreats, and rode from village tovillage, for the purpose of rekindling the zeal of the scattered peopleof God. The tide ran strong against the government. Most of the newmembers came up to Westminster in a mood little differing from that oftheir predecessors who had sent Strafford and Laud to the Tower. 

Meanwhile the courts of justice, which ought to be, in the midst ofpolitical commotions, sure places of refuge for the innocent of everyparty, were disgraced by wilder passions and fouler corruptions thanwere to be found even on the hustings. The tale of Oates, though it hadsufficed to convulse the whole realm, would not, unless confirmed byother evidence, suffice to destroy the humblest of those whom he hadaccused. For, by the old law of England, two witnesses are necessaryto establish a charge of treason. But the success of the first impostorproduced its natural consequences. In a few weeks he had been raisedfrom penury and obscurity to opulence, to power which made him the dreadof princes and nobles, and to notoriety such as has for low and badminds all the attractions of glory. He was not long without coadjutorsand rivals. A wretch named Carstairs, who had earned a livelihood inScotland by going disguised to conventicles and then informing againstthe preachers, led the way. Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed; and soonfrom all the brothels, gambling houses, and spunging houses of London, false witnesses poured forth to swear away the lives of Roman Catholics. One came with a story about an army of thirty thousand men who were tomuster in the disguise of pilgrims at Corunna, and to sail thence toWales. Another had been promised canonisation and five hundred poundsto murder the King. A third had stepped into an eating house in CoventGarden, and had there heard a great Roman Catholic banker vow, in thehearing of all the guests and drawers, to kill the heretical tyrant. Oates, that he might not be eclipsed by his imitators, soon addeda large supplement to his original narrative. He had the portentousimpudence to affirm, among other things, that he had once stood behind adoor which was ajar, and had there overheard the Queen declare that shehad resolved to give her consent to the assassination of her husband. The vulgar believed, and the highest 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 theprevailing delusion. The most respectable among them, indeed, werethemselves so far deluded as to believe the greater part of the evidenceof the plot to be true. Such men as Shaftesbury and Buckingham doubtlessperceived that the whole was a romance. But it was a romance whichserved their turn; and to their seared consciences the death of aninnocent man gave no more uneasiness than the death of a partridge. Thejuries partook of the feelings then common throughout the nation, and were encouraged by the bench to indulge those feelings withoutrestraint. The multitude applauded Oates and his confederates, hootedand pelted the witnesses who appeared on behalf of the accused, andshouted with joy when the verdict of Guilty was pronounced. It was invain that the sufferers appealed to the respectability of their pastlives: for the public mind was possessed with a belief that the moreconscientious a Papist was, the more likely he must be to plot against aProtestant government. It was in vain that, just before the cart passedfrom under their feet, they resolutely affirmed their innocence: for thegeneral opinion was that a good Papist considered all lies which wereserviceable to his Church as not only excusable but meritorious. 

While innocent blood was shedding under the forms of justice, the newParliament met; and such was the violence of the predominant partythat even men whose youth had been passed amidst revolutions men whoremembered the attainder of Strafford, the attempt on the five members, the abolition of the House of Lords, the execution of the King, stoodaghast at the aspect of public affairs. The impeachment of Danby wasresumed. He pleaded the royal pardon. But the Commons treated theplea with contempt, and insisted that the trial should proceed. Danby, however, was not their chief object. They were convinced that the onlyeffectual way of securing the liberties and religion of the nation wasto exclude the Duke of York from the throne. 

The King was in great perplexity. He had insisted that his brother, thesight of whom inflamed the populace to madness, should retire for atime to Brussels: but this concession did not seem to have produced anyfavourable effect. The Roundhead party was now decidedly preponderant. Towards that party leaned millions who had, at the time of theRestoration, leaned towards the side of prerogative. Of the oldCavaliers many participated in the prevailing fear of Popery, and many, bitterly resenting the ingratitude of the prince for whom they hadsacrificed so much, looked on his distress as carelessly as he hadlooked on theirs. Even the Anglican clergy, mortified and alarmed by theapostasy of the Duke of York, so far countenanced the opposition as tojoin cordially in the outcry against the Roman Catholics. 

The King in this extremity had recourse to Sir William Temple. Of allthe official men of that age Temple had preserved the fairest character. The Triple Alliance had been his work. He had refused to take anypart in the politics of the Cabal, and had, while that administrationdirected affairs, lived in strict privacy. He had quitted his retreat atthe call of Danby, had made peace between England and Holland, and hadborne a chief part in bringing about the marriage of the Lady Mary toher cousin the Prince of Orange. Thus he had the credit of every oneof the few good things which had been done by the government since theRestoration. Of the numerous crimes and blunders of the last eighteenyears none could be imputed to him. His private life, though notaustere, was decorous: his manners were popular; and he was not to becorrupted either by titles or by money. Something, however, was wantingto the character of this respectable statesman. The temperature of hispatriotism was lukewarm. He prized his ease and his personal dignitytoo much, and shrank from responsibility with a pusillanimous fear. Norindeed had his habits fitted him to bear a part in the conflicts of ourdomestic factions. He had reached his fiftieth year without having satein the English Parliament; and his official experience had been almostentirely acquired at foreign courts. He was justly esteemed one of thefirst diplomatists in Europe: but the talents and accomplishments of adiplomatist are widely different from those which qualify a politicianto lead the House of Commons in agitated times. 

The scheme which he proposed showed considerable ingenuity. Though nota profound philosopher, he had thought more than most busy men of theworld on the general principles of government; and his mind had beenenlarged by historical studies and foreign travel. He seems to havediscerned more clearly than most of his contemporaries one cause of thedifficulties by which the government was beset. The character of theEnglish polity was gradually changing. The Parliament was slowly, butconstantly, gaining ground on the prerogative. The line between thelegislative and executive powers was in theory as strongly marked asever, but in practice was daily becoming fainter and fainter. The theoryof the constitution was that the King might name his own ministers. But the House of Commons had driven Clarendon, the Cabal, andDanby successively from the direction of affairs. The theory of theconstitution was that the King alone had the power of making peace andwar. 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 theconstitution was that the King was the sole judge of the cases in whichit might be proper to pardon offenders. Yet he was so much in dreadof the House of Commons that, at that moment, he could not venture torescue from the gallows men whom he well knew to be the innocent victimsof perjury. 

Temple, it should seem, was desirous to secure to the legislature itsundoubted constitutional powers, and yet to prevent it, ifpossible, from encroaching further on the province of the executiveadministration. With this view he determined to interpose between thesovereign and the Parliament a body which might break the shock of theircollision. There was a body ancient, highly honourable, and recognisedby the law, which, he thought, might be so remodelled as to serve thispurpose. He determined to give to the Privy Council a new character andoffice in the government. The number of Councillors he fixed at thirty. Fifteen of them were to be the chief ministers of state, of law, and ofreligion. The other fifteen were to be unplaced noblemen and gentlemenof ample fortune and high character. There was to be no interiorcabinet. All the thirty were to be entrusted with every politicalsecret, and summoned to every meeting; and the King was to declare thathe would, on every occasion, be guided by their advice. 

Temple seems to have thought that, by this contrivance, he could atonce secure the nation against the tyranny of the Crown, and the Crownagainst the encroachments of the Parliament. It was, on one hand, highlyimprobable that schemes such as had been formed by the Cabal wouldbe even propounded for discussion in an assembly consisting of thirtyeminent men, fifteen of whom were bound by no tie of interest to thecourt. On the other hand, it might be hoped that the Commons, contentwith the guarantee against misgovernment which such a Privy Councilfurnished, would confine themselves more than they had of late doneto their strictly legislative functions, and would no longer think itnecessary to pry into every part of the executive administration. 

This plan, though in some respects not unworthy of the abilities of itsauthor, was in principle vicious. The new board was half a cabinet andhalf a Parliament, and, like almost every other contrivance, whethermechanical or political, which is meant to serve two purposes altogetherdifferent, failed of accomplishing either. It was too large and toodivided to be a good administrative body. It was too closely connectedwith the Crown to be a good checking body. It contained just enough ofpopular ingredients to make it a bad council of state, unfit for thekeeping of secrets, for the conducting of delicate negotiations, andfor the administration of war. Yet were these popular ingredients by nomeans sufficient to secure the nation against misgovernment. Theplan, therefore, even if it had been fairly tried, could scarcelyhave succeeded; and it was not fairly tried. The King was fickleand perfidious: the Parliament was excited and unreasonable; and thematerials out of which the new Council was made, though perhaps the bestwhich that age afforded, were still bad. 

The commencement of the new system was, however, hailed with generaldelight; for the people were in a temper to think any change animprovement. They were also pleased by some of the new nominations. Shaftesbury, now their favourite, was appointed Lord President. Russelland some other distinguished members of the Country Party were swornof the Council. But a few days later all was again in confusion. Theinconveniences of having so numerous a cabinet were such that Templehimself consented to infringe one of the fundamental rules which hehad laid down, and to become one of a small knot which really directedeverything. With him were joined three other ministers, Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, George Savile, Viscount Halifax, and Robert Spencer, Earlof Sunderland. 

Of the Earl of Essex, then First Commissioner of the Treasury, it issufficient to say that he was a man of solid, though not brilliantparts, and of grave and melancholy character, that he had been connectedwith the Country Party, and that he was at this time honestly desirousto effect, on terms beneficial to the state, a reconciliation betweenthat 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 ofhis voice, was the delight of the House of Lords. His conversationoverflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His political tracts welldeserve to be studied for their literary merit, and fully entitle himto a place among English classics. To the weight derived from talents sogreat and various he united all the influence which belongs to rank andample possessions. Yet he was less successful in politics than many whoenjoyed smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiaritieswhich make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the contestsof active life. For he always saw passing events, not in the point ofview in which they commonly appear to one who bears a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after the lapse of many years, theyappear to the philosophic historian. With such a turn of mind hecould not long continue to act cordially with any body of men. All theprejudices, all the exaggerations, of both the great parties in thestate moved his scorn. He despised the mean arts and unreasonableclamours of demagogues. He despised still more the doctrines of divineright and passive obedience. He sneered impartially at the bigotry ofthe Churchman and at the bigotry of the Puritan. He was equally unableto comprehend how any man should object to Saints' days and surplices, and how any man should persecute any other man for objecting to them. Intemper he was what, in our time, is called a Conservative: in theoryhe was a Republican. Even when his dread of anarchy and his disdainfor vulgar delusions led him to side for a time with the defenders ofarbitrary power, his intellect was always with Locke and Milton. Indeed, his jests upon hereditary monarchy were sometimes such as would havebetter become a member of the Calf's Head Club than a Privy Councillorof the Stuarts. In religion he was so far from being a zealot thathe was called by the uncharitable an atheist: but this imputation hevehemently repelled; and in truth, though he sometimes gave scandal bythe way in which he exerted his rare powers both of reasoning andof ridicule on serious subjects, he seems to have been by no meansunsusceptible of religious impressions. 

He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great partiescontemptuously called Trimmers. Instead of quarrelling with thisnickname, he assumed it as a title of honour, and vindicated, with greatvivacity, the dignity of the appellation. Everything good, he said, trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims between the climatein which men are roasted and the climate in which they are frozen. The English Church trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papistlethargy. The English constitution trims between Turkish despotism andPolish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensitiesany one of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, theperfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the exactequilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate withoutdisturbing the whole moral and physical order of the world. [20]Thus Halifax was a Trimmer on principle. He was also a Trimmer by theconstitution both of his head and of his heart. His understanding waskeen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in distinctions and objections;his taste refined; his sense of the ludicrous exquisite; his temperplacid and forgiving, but fastidious, and by no means prone either tomalevolence or to enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not longbe constant to any band of political allies. He must not, however, beconfounded with the vulgar crowd of renegades. For though, like them, he passed from side to side, his transition was always in the directionopposite to theirs. He had nothing in common with those who fly fromextreme to extreme, and who regard the party which they have desertedwith all animosity far exceeding that of consistent enemies. Hisplace was on the debatable ground between the hostile divisions of thecommunity, and he never wandered far beyond the frontier of either. Theparty to which he at any moment belonged was the party which, at thatmoment, he liked least, because it was the party of which at that momenthe had the nearest view. He was therefore always severe upon his violentassociates, and was always in friendly relations with his moderateopponents. Every faction in the day of its insolent and vindictivetriumph incurred his censure; and every faction, when vanquished andpersecuted, found in him a protector. To his lasting honour it must bementioned that he attempted to save those victims whose fate has leftthe deepest stain both on the Whig and on the Tory name. 

He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had thus drawnon himself the royal displeasure, which was indeed so strong that he wasnot admitted into the Council of Thirty without much difficulty and longaltercation. 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 andlegitimate authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his fashion, joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was not whollydisinterested. For study and reflection, though they had emancipatedhim 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 obtainedit by any means which, in that age, even severe censors considered asdishonourable; but rank and power had strong attractions for him. Hepretended, indeed, that he considered titles and great offices as baitswhich could allure none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, andpageantry, and that his dearest wish was to escape from the bustle andglitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which surrounded his ancientmansion in Nottinghamshire; but his conduct was not a little at variancewith his professions. In truth he wished to command the respect atonce of courtiers and of philosophers, to be admired for attaining highdignities, and to be at the same time admired for despising them. 

Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the political immoralityof his age was personified in the most lively manner. Nature had givenhim a keen understanding, a restless and mischievous temper, a coldheart, and an abject spirit. His mind had undergone a training bywhich all his vices had been nursed up to the rankest maturity. At hisentrance into public life, he had passed several years in diplomaticposts abroad, and had been, during some time, minister in France. Everycalling has its peculiar temptations. There is no injustice in sayingthat diplomatists, as a class, have always been more distinguished bytheir address, by the art with which they win the confidence of thosewith whom they have to deal, and by the ease with which they catch thetone of every society into which they are admitted, than by generousenthusiasm or austere rectitude; and the relations between Charles andLewis were such that no English nobleman could long reside in France asenvoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderlandcame forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of allprinciples. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but with theCavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous for monarchy, andcondemned in theory all resistance. Yet they had sturdy English heartswhich would never have endured real despotism. He, on the contrary, had a languid speculative liking for republican institutions which wascompatible with perfect readiness to be in practice the most servileinstrument of arbitrary power. Like many other accomplished flatterersand negotiators, he was far more skilful in the art of reading thecharacters and practising on the weaknesses of individuals, than in theart of discerning the feelings of great masses, and of foreseeing theapproach of great revolutions. He was adroit in intrigue; and itwas difficult even for shrewd and experienced men who had been amplyforewarned of his perfidy to withstand the fascination of his manner, and to refuse credit to his professions of attachment. But he was sointent on observing and courting particular persons, that he oftenforgot to study the temper of the nation. He therefore miscalculatedgrossly with respect to some of the most momentous events of his time. More than one important movement and rebound of the public mind tookhim by surprise; and the world, unable to understand how so clever a mancould be blind to what was clearly discerned by the politicians of thecoffee houses, sometimes attributed to deep design what were in truthmere blunders. 

It was only in private conference that his eminent abilities displayedthemselves. In the royal closet, or in a very small circle, he exercisedgreat influence. But at the Council board he was taciturn; and in theHouse of Lords he never opened his lips. 

The four confidential advisers of the crown soon found that theirposition was embarrassing and invidious. The other members of theCouncil murmured at a distinction inconsistent with the King'spromises; and some of them, with Shaftesbury at their head, again betookthemselves to strenuous opposition in Parliament. The agitation, whichhad been suspended by the late changes, speedily became more violentthan ever. It was in vain that Charles offered to grant to the Commonsany security for the Protestant religion which they could devise, provided only that they would not touch the order of succession. Theywould hear of no compromise. They would have the Exclusion Bill, andnothing but the Exclusion Bill. The King, therefore, a few weeks afterhe had publicly promised to take no step without the advice of hisnew Council, went down to the House of Lords without mentioning hisintention in Council, and prorogued the Parliament. 

The day of that prorogation, the twenty-sixth of May, 1679, is a greatera in our history. For on that day the Habeas Corpus Act received theroyal assent. From the time of the Great Charter the substantive lawrespecting the personal liberty of Englishmen had been nearly the sameas at present: but it had been inefficacious for want of a stringentsystem of procedure. What was needed was not a new light, but a promptand searching remedy; and such a remedy the Habeas Corpus Act supplied. The King would gladly have refused his consent to that measure: but hewas about to appeal from his Parliament to his people on the questionof the succession, and he could not venture, at so critical a moment, toreject a bill which was in the highest degree popular. 

On the same day the press of England became for a short time free. Inold times printers had been strictly controlled by the Court of StarChamber. The Long Parliament had abolished the Star Chamber, but had, in spite of the philosophical and eloquent expostulation of Milton, established and maintained a censorship. Soon after the Restoration, anAct had been passed which prohibited the printing of unlicensed books;and it had been provided that this Act should continue in force tillthe end of the first session of the next Parliament. That moment hadnow arrived; and the King, in the very act of dismissing the House, emancipated the Press. 

Shortly after the prorogation came a dissolution and another generalelection. The zeal and strength of the opposition were at the height. The cry for the Exclusion Bill was louder than ever, and with this crywas mingled another cry, which fired the blood of the multitude, butwhich was heard with regret and alarm by all judicious friends offreedom. Not only the rights of the Duke of York, an avowed Papist, but those of his two daughters, sincere and zealous Protestants, wereassailed. It was confidently affirmed that the eldest natural son of theKing had been born in wedlock, and was lawful heir to the crown. 

Charles, while a wanderer on the Continent, had fallen in at theHague with Lucy Walters, a Welsh girl of great beauty, but of weakunderstanding and dissolute manners. She became his mistress, andpresented him with a son. A suspicious lover might have had his doubts;for the lady had several admirers, and was not supposed to be cruel toany. Charles, however, readily took her word, and poured forth on littleJames Crofts, as the boy was then called, an overflowing fondness, suchas seemed hardly to belong to that cool and careless nature. Soon afterthe restoration, the young favourite, who had learned in France theexercises then considered necessary to a fine gentleman, made hisappearance at Whitehall. He was lodged in the palace, attended by pages, and permitted to enjoy several distinctions which had till then beenconfined to princes of the blood royal. He was married, while still intender youth, to Anne Scott, heiress of the noble house of Buccleuch. He took her name, and received with her hand possession of her ampledomains. The estate which he had acquired by this match was popularlyestimated at not less than ten thousand pounds a year. Titles, andfavours more substantial than titles, were lavished on him. He was madeDuke of Monmouth in England, Duke of Buccleuch in Scotland, a Knight ofthe Garter, Master of the Horse, Commander of the first troop of LifeGuards, Chief Justice of Eyre south of Trent, and Chancellor of theUniversity of Cambridge. Nor did he appear to the public unworthy of hishigh fortunes. His countenance was eminently handsome and engaging, histemper sweet, his manners polite and affable. Though a libertine, he wonthe hearts of the Puritans. Though he was known to have been privyto the shameful attack on Sir John Coventry, he easily obtained theforgiveness of the Country Party. Even austere moralists owned that, insuch a court, strict conjugal fidelity was scarcely to be expected fromone who, while a child, had been married to another child. Even patriotswere willing to excuse a headstrong boy for visiting with immoderatevengeance an insult offered to his father. And soon the stain left byloose amours and midnight brawls was effaced by honourable exploits. When Charles and Lewis united their forces against Holland, Monmouthcommanded the English auxiliaries who were sent to the Continent, andapproved himself a gallant soldier and a not unintelligent officer. Onhis return he found himself the most popular man in the kingdom. Nothingwas withheld from him but the crown; nor did even the crown seem tobe absolutely beyond his reach. The distinction which had mostinjudiciously been made between him and the highest nobles had producedevil consequences. When a boy he had been invited to put on his hat inthe presence chamber, while Howards and Seymours stood uncovered roundhim. When foreign princes died, he had mourned for them in the longpurple cloak, which no other subject, except the Duke of York and PrinceRupert, was permitted to wear. It was natural that these things shouldlead him to regard himself as a legitimate prince of the House ofStuart. Charles, even at a ripe age, was devoted to his pleasures andregardless of his dignity. It could hardly be thought incredible that heshould at twenty have secretly gone through the form of espousing a ladywhose beauty had fascinated him. While Monmouth was still a child, andwhile the Duke of York still passed for a Protestant, it was rumouredthroughout the country, and even in circles which ought to have beenwell 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. Muchwas said of a certain black box which, according to the vulgar belief, contained the contract of marriage. When Monmouth had returned from theLow Countries with a high character for valour and conduct, and when theDuke of York was known to be a member of a church detested by the greatmajority of the nation, this idle story became important. For itthere was not the slightest evidence. Against it there was the solemnasseveration of the King, made before his Council, and by his ordercommunicated to his people. But the multitude, always fond of romanticadventures, drank in eagerly the tale of the secret espousals and theblack box. Some chiefs of the opposition acted on this occasion as theyacted with respect to the more odious fables of Oates, and countenanceda story which they must have despised. The interest which the populacetook in him whom they regarded as the champion of the true religion, andthe rightful heir of the British throne, was kept up by every artifice. When Monmouth arrived in London at midnight, the watchmen were orderedby the magistrates to proclaim the joyful event through the streets ofthe City: the people left their beds: bonfires were lighted: the windowswere illuminated: the churches were opened; and a merry peal rose fromall the steeples. When he travelled, he was everywhere received with notless pomp, and with far more enthusiasm, than had been displayed whenKings had made progresses through the realm. He was escorted frommansion to mansion by long cavalcades of armed gentlemen and yeomen. Cities poured forth their whole population to receive him. Electorsthronged round him, to assure him that their votes were at his disposal. To such a height were his pretensions carried, that he not onlyexhibited on his escutcheon the lions of England and the lilies ofFrance without the baton sinister under which, according to the law ofheraldry, they should have been debruised in token of his illegitimatebirth, but ventured to touch for the king's evil. At the same time heneglected no art of condescension by which the love of the multitudecould be conciliated. He stood godfather to the children of thepeasantry, mingled in every rustic sport, wrestled, played atquarterstaff, and won footraces in his boots against fleet runners inshoes. 

It is a curious circumstance that, at two of the greatest conjuncturesin our history, the chiefs of the Protestant party should have committedthe same error, and should by that error have greatly endangered theircountry and their religion. At the death of Edward the Sixth they set upthe Lady Jane, without any show of birthright, in opposition, not onlyto their enemy Mary, but also to Elizabeth, the true hope of Englandand of the Reformation. Thus the most respectable Protestants, withElizabeth at their head, were forced to make common cause with thePapists. In the same manner, a hundred and thirty years later, a partof the opposition, by setting up Monmouth as a claimant of the crown, attacked the rights, not only of James, whom they justly regarded asan implacable foe of their faith and their liberties, but also of thePrince and Princess of Orange, who were eminently marked out, bothby situation and by personal qualities, as the defenders of all freegovernments and of all reformed churches. 

The folly of this course speedily became manifest. At present thepopularity of Monmouth constituted a great part of the strength of theopposition. The elections went against the court: the day fixed forthe meeting of the Houses drew near; and it was necessary that theKing should determine on some line of conduct. Those who advised himdiscerned the first faint signs of a change of public feeling, and hopedthat, by merely postponing the conflict, he would be able to secure thevictory. He therefore, without even asking the opinion of the Council ofthe Thirty, resolved to prorogue the new Parliament before it enteredon business. At the same time the Duke of York, who had returned fromBrussels, was ordered to retire to Scotland, and was placed at the headof the administration of that kingdom. 

Temple's plan of government was now avowedly abandoned and very soonforgotten. The Privy Council again became what 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 gardenand his library. Essex quitted the board of Treasury, and cast in hislot with the opposition. But Halifax, disgusted and alarmed by theviolence of his old associates, and Sunderland, who never quitted placewhile 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 of aspirants. Twostatesmen, who subsequently rose to the highest eminence which a Britishsubject can reach, soon began to attract a large share of the publicattention. These were Lawrence Hyde and Sidney Godolphin. 

Lawrence Hyde was the second son of the Chancellor Clarendon, and wasbrother of the first Duchess of York. He had excellent parts, whichhad been improved by parliamentary and diplomatic experience; but theinfirmities of his temper detracted much from the effective strength ofhis abilities. Negotiator and courtier as he was, he never learned theart of governing or of concealing his emotions. When prosperous, hewas insolent and boastful: when he sustained a check, his undisguisedmortification doubled the triumph of his enemies: very slightprovocations sufficed to kindle his anger; and when he was angry hesaid bitter things which he forgot as soon as he was pacified, but whichothers remembered many years. His quickness and penetration would havemade him a consummate man of business but for his selfsufficiency andimpatience. His writings proved that he had many of the qualities of anorator: but his irritability prevented him from doing himself justicein 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 ofopponents far inferior to him in capacity. 

Unlike most of the leading politicians of that generation he was aconsistent, dogged, and rancorous party man, a Cavalier of the oldschool, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church, and a haterof Republicans and Nonconformists. He had consequently a great body ofpersonal adherents. The clergy especially looked on him as their ownman, and extended to his foibles an indulgence of which, to say thetruth, he stood in some need: for he drank deep; and when he was in arage, --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 theplace of First Lord of the Treasury had not then the importance anddignity which now belong to it. When there was a Lord Treasurer, thatgreat officer was generally prime minister: but, when the white staffwas in commission, the chief commissioner hardly ranked so high as aSecretary of State. It was not till the time of Walpole that the FirstLord of the Treasury became, under a humbler name, all that the LordHigh Treasurer had been. 

Godolphin had been bred a page at Whitehall, and had early acquired allthe flexibility and the selfpossession of a veteran courtier. He waslaborious, clearheaded, and profoundly versed in the details of finance. Every government, therefore, found him an useful servant; and there wasnothing in his opinions or in his character which could prevent him fromserving any government. "Sidney Godolphin, " said Charles, "is neverin the way, and never out of the way. " This pointed remark goes far toexplain Godolphin's extraordinary success in life. 

He acted at different times with both the great political parties: buthe never shared in the passions of either. Like most men of cautioustempers and prosperous fortunes, he had a strong disposition to supportwhatever existed. He disliked revolutions; and, for the same reasonfor which he disliked revolutions, he disliked counter-revolutions. Hisdeportment was remarkably grave and reserved: but his personal tasteswere low and frivolous; and most of the time which he could save frompublic business was spent in racing, cardplaying, and cockfighting. Henow sate below Rochester at the Board of Treasury, and distinguishedhimself there by assiduity and intelligence. 

Before the new Parliament was suffered to meet for the despatch ofbusiness a whole year elapsed, an eventful year, which has leftlasting traces in our manners and language. Never before had politicalcontroversy been carried on with so much freedom. Never before hadpolitical clubs existed with so elaborate an organisation or soformidable an influence. The one question of the Exclusion occupied thepublic mind. All the presses and pulpits of the realm took part inthe conflict. On one side it was maintained that the constitution andreligion of the state could never be secure under a Popish King; on theother, that the right of James to wear the crown in his turn was derivedfrom God, and could not be annulled, even by the consent of all thebranches of the legislature. Every county, every town, every family, was in agitation. The civilities and hospitalities of neighbourhood wereinterrupted. The dearest ties of friendship and of blood were sundered. Even schoolboys were divided into angry parties; and the Duke of Yorkand the Earl of Shaftesbury had zealous adherents on all the forms ofWestminster and Eton. The theatres shook with the roar of the contendingfactions. Pope Joan was brought on the stage by the zealous Protestants. Pensioned poets filled their prologues and epilogues with eulogieson the King and the Duke. The malecontents besieged the throne withpetitions, demanding that Parliament might be forthwith convened. Theroyalists sent up addresses, expressing the utmost abhorrence of all whopresumed to dictate to the sovereign. The citizens of London assembledby tens of thousands to burn the Pope in effigy. The government postedcavalry at Temple Bar, and placed ordnance round Whitehall. In thatyear our tongue was enriched with two words, Mob and Sham, remarkablememorials of a season of tumult and imposture. [21] Opponents of thecourt were called Birminghams, Petitioners, and Exclusionists. Thosewho took the King's side were Antibirminghams, Abhorrers, and Tantivies. These appellations soon become obsolete: but at this time were firstheard two nicknames which, though originally given in insult, were soonassumed with pride, which are still in daily use, which have spread aswidely as the English race, and which will last as long as the Englishliterature. It is a curious circumstance that one of these nicknameswas of Scotch, and the other of Irish, origin. Both in Scotland and inIreland, misgovernment had called into existence bands of desperate menwhose ferocity was heightened by religions enthusiasm. In Scotland someof the persecuted Covenanters, driven mad by oppression, had latelymurdered the Primate, had taken arms against the government, hadobtained some advantages against the King's forces, and had not been putdown till Monmouth, at the head of some troops from England, had routedthem at Bothwell Bridge. These zealots were most numerous among therustics of the western lowlands, who were vulgarly called Whigs. Thusthe appellation of Whig was fastened on the Presbyterian zealots ofScotland, and was transferred to those English politicians who showed adisposition to oppose the court, and to treat Protestant Nonconformistswith indulgence. The bogs of Ireland, at the same time, afforded arefuge to Popish outlaws, much resembling those who were afterwardsknown as Whiteboys. These men were then called Tories. The name of Torywas therefore given to Englishmen who refused to concur in excluding aRoman Catholic prince from the throne. 

The rage of the hostile factions would have been sufficiently violent, if it had been left to itself. But it was studiously exasperated by thecommon enemy of both. Lewis still continued to bribe and flatterboth the court and the opposition. He exhorted Charles to be firm: heexhorted James to raise a civil war in Scotland: he exhorted the Whigsnot to flinch, and to rely with confidence on the protection of France. 

Through all this agitation a discerning eye might have perceived thatthe public opinion was gradually changing. The persecution of the RomanCatholics went on; but convictions were no longer matters of course. Anew brood of false witnesses, among whom a villain named Dangerfield wasthe most conspicuous, infested the courts: but the stories of these men, though better constructed than that of Oates, found less credit. Jurieswere no longer so easy of belief as during the panic which had followedthe murder of Godfrey; and Judges, who, while the popular frenzy was atthe height, had been its most obsequious instruments, now ventured toexpress some part of what they had from the first thought. 

At length, in October 1680, the Parliament met. The Whigs had so greata majority in the Commons that the Exclusion Bill went through all itsstages there without difficulty. The King scarcely knew on what membersof his own cabinet he could reckon. Hyde had been true to his Toryopinions, and had steadily supported the cause of hereditary monarchy. But Godolphin, anxious for quiet, and believing that quiet could berestored only by concession, wished the bill to pass. Sunderland, everfalse, and ever shortsighted, unable to discern the signs of approachingreaction, and anxious to conciliate the party which he believed tobe irresistible, determined to vote against the court. The Duchess ofPortsmouth implored her royal lover not to rush headlong to destruction. If there were any point on which he had a scruple of conscience or ofhonour, it was the question of the succession; but during some daysit seemed that he would submit. He wavered, asked what sum the Commonswould give him if he yielded, and suffered a negotiation to be openedwith the leading Whigs. But a deep mutual distrust which had beenmany years growing, and which had been carefully nursed by the arts ofFrance, made a treaty impossible. Neither side would place confidencein the other. The whole nation now looked with breathless anxiety to theHouse of Lords. The assemblage of peers was large. The King himself waspresent. The debate was long, earnest, and occasionally furious. Somehands were laid on the pommels of swords in a manner which revived therecollection of the stormy Parliaments of Edward the Third and Richardthe Second. Shaftesbury and Essex were joined by the treacherousSunderland. But the genius of Halifax bore down all opposition. Desertedby his most important colleagues, and opposed to a crowd of ableantagonists, he defended the cause of the Duke of York, in a successionof speeches which, many years later, were remembered as masterpieces ofreasoning, of wit, and of eloquence. It is seldom that oratory changesvotes. Yet the attestation of contemporaries leaves no doubt that, on this occasion, votes were changed by the oratory of Halifax. TheBishops, true to their doctrines, supported the principle of hereditaryright, and the bill was rejected by a great majority. [22]

The party which preponderated in the House of Commons, bitterlymortified by this defeat, found some consolation in shedding the bloodof Roman Catholics. William Howard, Viscount Stafford, one of theunhappy men who had been accused of a share in the plot, was impeached;and on the testimony of Oates and of two other false witnesses, Dugdaleand Turberville, was found guilty of high treason, and suffered death. But the circumstances of his trial and execution ought to have given anuseful warning to the Whig leaders. A large and respectable minority ofthe House of Lords pronounced the prisoner not guilty. The multitude, which a few months before had received the dying declarations of Oates'svictims with mockery and execrations, now loudly expressed a belief thatStafford was a murdered man. When he with his last breath protestedhis innocence, the cry was, "God bless you, my Lord! We believe you, myLord. " A judicious observer might easily have predicted that the bloodthen shed would shortly have blood. 

The King determined to try once more the experiment of a dissolution. Anew Parliament was summoned to meet at Oxford, in March, 1681. Since thedays of the Plantagenets the Houses had constantly sat at Westminster, except when the plague was raging in the capital: but so extraordinarya conjuncture seemed to require extraordinary precautions. If theParliament were held in its usual place of assembling, the House ofCommons might declare itself permanent, and might call for aid on themagistrates and citizens of London. The trainbands might rise to defendShaftesbury as they had risen forty years before to defend Pym andHampden. The Guards might be overpowered, the palace forced, the King aprisoner in the hands of his mutinous subjects. At Oxford there was nosuch danger. The University was devoted to the crown; and the gentry ofthe neighbourhood were generally Tories. Here, therefore, the oppositionhad more reason than the King to apprehend violence. 

The elections were sharply contested. The Whigs still composed amajority of the House of Commons: but it was plain that the Toryspirit was fast rising throughout the country. It should seem that thesagacious and versatile Shaftesbury ought to have foreseen the comingchange, and to have consented to the compromise which the court offered:but he appears to have forgotten his old tactics. Instead of makingdispositions which, in the worst event, would have secured his retreat, he took up a position in which it was necessary that he should eitherconquer or perish. Perhaps his head, strong as it was, had been turnedby popularity, by success, and by the excitement of conflict. Perhapshe had spurred his party till he could no longer curb it, and was reallyhurried on headlong by those whom he seemed to guide. 

The eventful day arrived. The meeting at Oxford resembled rather that ofa Polish Diet than that of an English Parliament. The Whig members wereescorted by great numbers of their armed and mounted tenants andserving men, who exchanged looks of defiance with the royal Guards. Theslightest provocation might, under such circumstances, have produceda civil war; but neither side dared to strike the first blow. The Kingagain offered to consent to anything but the Exclusion Bill. The Commonswere determined to accept nothing but the Exclusion Bill. In a few daysthe Parliament was again dissolved. 

The King had triumphed. The reaction, which had begun some months beforethe meeting of the House at Oxford, now went rapidly on. The nation, indeed, was still hostile to Popery: but, when men reviewed the wholehistory of the plot, they felt that their Protestant zeal had hurriedthem into folly and crime, and could scarcely believe that they had beeninduced by nursery tales to clamour for the blood of fellow subjectsand fellow Christians. The most loyal, indeed, could not deny that theadministration of Charles had often been highly blamable. But men whohad not the full information which we possess touching his dealings withFrance, and who were disgusted by the violence of the Whigs, enumeratedthe large concessions which, during the last few years he had made tohis Parliaments, and the still larger concessions which he had declaredhimself willing to make. He had consented to the laws which excludedRoman Catholics from the House of Lords, from the Privy Council, andfrom all civil and military offices. He had passed the Habeas CorpusAct. If securities yet stronger had not been provided against thedangers to which the constitution and the Church might be exposed undera Roman Catholic sovereign, the fault lay, not with Charles who hadinvited the Parliament to propose such securities, but with those Whigswho had refused to hear of any substitute for the Exclusion Bill. Onething only had the King denied to his people. He had refused to takeaway his brother's birthright. And was there not good reason to believethat this refusal was prompted by laudable feelings? What selfish motivecould faction itself impute to the royal mind? The Exclusion Bill didnot curtail the reigning King's prerogatives, or diminish his income. Indeed, by passing it, he might easily have obtained an ample additionto his own revenue. And what was it to him who ruled after him? Nay, ifhe had personal predilections, they were known to be rather in favourof the Duke of Monmouth than of the Duke of York. The most naturalexplanation of the King's conduct seemed to be that, careless as washis temper and loose as were his morals, he had, on this occasion, actedfrom a sense of duty and honour. And, if so, would the nation compelhim to do what he thought criminal and disgraceful? To apply, even bystrictly constitutional means, a violent pressure to his conscience, seemed to zealous royalists ungenerous and undutiful. But strictlyconstitutional means were not the only means which the Whigs weredisposed to employ. Signs were already discernible which portended theapproach of great troubles. Men, who, in the time of the civil war andof the Commonwealth, had acquired an odious notoriety, had emergedfrom the obscurity in which, after the Restoration, they had hiddenthemselves from the general hatred, showed their confident and busyfaces everywhere, and appeared to anticipate a second reign of theSaints. Another Naseby, another High Court of Justice, another usurperon the throne, the Lords again ejected from their hall by violence, theUniversities again purged, the Church again robbed and persecuted, thePuritans again dominant, to such results did the desperate policy of theopposition seem to tend. 

Strongly moved by these apprehensions, the majority of the upper andmiddle classes hastened to rally round the throne. The situation of theKing bore, at this time, a great resemblance to that in which his fatherstood just after the Remonstrance had been voted. But the reaction of1641 had not been suffered to run its course. Charles the First, at thevery moment when his people, long estranged, were returning to him withhearts disposed to reconciliation, had, by a perfidious violation of thefundamental laws of the realm, forfeited their confidence for ever. Had Charles the Second taken a similar course, had he arrested the Whigleaders in an irregular manner, had he impeached them of high treasonbefore a tribunal which had no legal jurisdiction over them, it ishighly probable that they would speedily have regained the ascendancywhich they had lost. Fortunately for himself, he was induced, at thiscrisis, to adopt a policy singularly judicious. He determined to conformto the law, but at the same time to make vigorous and unsparing useof the law against his adversaries. He was not bound to convoke aParliament till three years should have elapsed. He was not muchdistressed for money. The produce of the taxes which had been settled onhim for life exceeded the estimate. He was at peace with all the world. He could retrench his expenses by giving up the costly and uselesssettlement of Tangier; and he might hope for pecuniary aid from France. He had, therefore, ample time and means for a systematic attack onthe opposition under the forms of the constitution. The Judges wereremovable at his pleasure: the juries were nominated by the Sheriffs;and, in almost all the counties of England, the Sheriffs were nominatedby himself. Witnesses, of the same class with those who had recentlysworn away the lives of Papists, were ready to swear away the lives ofWhigs. 

The first victim was College, a noisy and violent demagogue of meanbirth and education. He was by trade a joiner, and was celebrated as theinventor of the Protestant flail. [23] He had been at Oxford when theParliament sate there, and was accused of having planned a rising and anattack on the King's guards. Evidence was given against him by Dugdaleand Turberville, the same infamous men who had, a few months earlier, borne false witness against Stafford. In the sight of a jury ofcountry squires no Exclusionist was likely to find favour. College wasconvicted. The crowd which filled the court house of Oxford received theverdict with a roar of exultation, as barbarous as that which he andhis friends had been in the habit of raising when innocent Papists weredoomed to the gallows. His execution was the beginning of a new judicialmassacre not less atrocious than that in which he had himself borne ashare. 

The government, emboldened by this first victory, now aimed a blow at anenemy of a very different class. It was resolved that Shaftesbury shouldbe brought to trial for his life. Evidence was collected which, it wasthought, would support a charge of treason. But the facts which it wasnecessary to prove were alleged to have been committed in London. TheSheriffs of London, chosen by the citizens, were zealous Whigs. Theynamed a Whig grand jury, which threw out the bill. This defeat, far fromdiscouraging those who advised the King, suggested to them a new anddaring scheme. Since the charter of the capital was in their way, thatcharter must be annulled. It was pretended, therefore, that the Cityhad by some irregularities forfeited its municipal privileges; andproceedings were instituted against the corporation in the Court ofKing's Bench. At the same time those laws which had, soon after theRestoration, been enacted against Nonconformists, and which had remaineddormant during the ascendency of the Whigs, were enforced all over thekingdom with extreme rigour. 

Yet the spirit of the Whigs was not subdued. Though in evil plight, theywere still a numerous and powerful party; and as they mustered strong inthe large towns, and especially in the capital, they made a noise anda show more than proportioned to their real force. Animated by therecollection of past triumphs, and by the sense of present oppression, they overrated both their strength and their wrongs. It was not intheir power to make out that clear and overwhelming case which can alonejustify so violent a remedy as resistance to an established government. Whatever they might suspect, they could not prove that their sovereignhad entered into a treaty with France against the religion and libertiesof England. What was apparent was not sufficient to warrant an appealto the sword. If the Lords had thrown out the Exclusion Bill, they hadthrown it out in the exercise of a right coeval with the constitution. If the King had dissolved the Oxford Parliament, he had done so byvirtue of a prerogative which had never been questioned. If he had, since the dissolution, done some harsh things, still those things werein strict conformity with the letter of the law, and with the recentpractice of the malecontents themselves. If he had prosecuted hisopponents, he had prosecuted them according to the proper forms, andbefore the proper tribunals. The evidence now produced for the crown wasat least as worthy of credit as the evidence on which the noblest bloodof England had lately been shed by the opposition. The treatment whichan accused Whig had now to expect from judges, advocates, sheriffs, juries and spectators, was no worse than the treatment which had latelybeen thought by the Whigs good enough for an accused Papist. If theprivileges of the City of London were attacked, they were attacked, notby military violence or by any disputable exercise of prerogative, but according to the regular practice of Westminster Hall. No tax wasimposed by royal authority. No law was suspended. The Habeas CorpusAct was respected. Even the Test Act was enforced. The opposition, therefore, could not bring home to the King that species ofmisgovernment which alone could justify insurrection. And, even had hismisgovernment been more flagrant than it was, insurrection would stillhave been criminal, because it was almost certain to be unsuccessful. The situation of the Whigs in 1682 differed widely from that of theRoundheads forty years before. Those who took up arms against Charlesthe First acted under the authority of a Parliament which had beenlegally assembled, and which could not, without its own consent, belegally dissolved. The opponents of Charles the Second were private men. Almost all the military and naval resources of the kingdom had been atthe disposal of those who resisted Charles the First. All the militaryand naval resources of the kingdom were at the disposal of Charles theSecond. The House of Commons had been supported by at least half thenation against Charles the First. But those who were disposed to levywar against Charles the Second were certainly a minority. It couldhardly be doubted, therefore, that, if they attempted a rising, theywould fail. Still less could it be doubted that their failure wouldaggravate every evil of which they complained. The true policy of theWhigs was to submit with patience to adversity which was the naturalconsequence and the just punishment of their errors, to wait patientlyfor that turn of public feeling which must inevitably come, to observethe law, and to avail themselves of the protection, imperfect indeed, but by no means nugatory, which the law afforded to innocence. Unhappilythey took a very different course. Unscrupulous and hot-headed chiefs ofthe party formed and discussed schemes of resistance, and were heard, ifnot with approbation, yet with the show of acquiescence, by much bettermen than themselves. It was proposed that there should be simultaneousinsurrections in London, in Cheshire, at Bristol, and at Newcastle. Communications were opened with the discontented Presbyterians ofScotland, who were suffering under a tyranny such as England, in theworst times, had never known. While the leaders of the opposition thusrevolved plans of open rebellion, but were still restrained by fearsor scruples from taking any decisive step, a design of a very differentkind was meditated by some of their accomplices. To fierce spirits, unrestrained by principle, or maddened by fanaticism, it seemed that towaylay and murder the King and his brother was the shortest and surestway of vindicating the Protestant religion and the liberties of England. A place and a time were named; and the details of the butchery werefrequently discussed, if not definitely arranged. This scheme was knownbut to few, and was concealed with especial care from the upright andhumane Russell, and from Monmouth, who, though not a man of delicateconscience, would have recoiled with horror from the guilt of parricide. Thus there were two plots, one within the other. The object of the greatWhig plot was to raise the nation in arms against the government. Thelesser plot, commonly called the Rye House Plot, in which only a fewdesperate men were concerned, had for its object the assassination ofthe King and of the heir presumptive. 

Both plots were soon discovered. Cowardly traitors hastened to savethemselves, by divulging all, and more than all, that had passed inthe deliberations of the party. That only a small minority of thosewho meditated resistance had admitted into their minds the thought ofassassination is fully established: but, as the two conspiracies raninto each other, it was not difficult for the government to confoundthem together. The just indignation excited by the Rye House Plot wasextended for a time to the whole Whig body. The King was now atliberty to exact full vengeance for years of restraint and humiliation. Shaftesbury, indeed, had escaped the fate which his manifold perfidy hadwell deserved. He had seen that the ruin of his party was at hand, hadin vain endeavoured to make his peace with the royal brothers, hadfled to Holland, and had died there, under the generous protection of agovernment which he had cruelly wronged. Monmouth threw himself at hisfather's feet and found mercy, but soon gave new offence, and thoughtit prudent to go into voluntary exile. Essex perished by his own handin the Tower. Russell, who appears to have been guilty of no offencefalling within the definition of high treason, and Sidney, of whoseguilt no legal evidence could be produced, were beheaded in defiance oflaw and justice. Russell died with the fortitude of a Christian, Sidneywith the fortitude of a Stoic. Some active politicians of meanerrank were sent to the gallows. Many quitted the country. Numerousprosecutions for misprision of treason, for libel, and for conspiracywere instituted. Convictions were obtained without difficulty from Toryjuries, and rigorous punishments were inflicted by courtly judges. Withthese criminal proceedings were joined civil proceedings scarcely lessformidable. Actions were brought against persons who had defamedthe Duke of York and damages tantamount to a sentence of perpetualimprisonment were demanded by the plaintiff, and without difficultyobtained. The Court of King's Bench pronounced that the franchises ofthe City of London were forfeited to the Crown. Flushed with this greatvictory, the government proceeded to attack the constitutions of othercorporations which were governed by Whig officers, and which had been inthe habit of returning Whig members to Parliament. Borough after boroughwas compelled to surrender its privileges; and new charters were grantedwhich gave the ascendency everywhere to the Tories. 

These proceedings, however reprehensible, had yet the semblance oflegality. They were also accompanied by an act intended to quiet theuneasiness with which many loyal men looked forward to the accession ofa Popish sovereign. The Lady Anne, younger daughter of the Duke of Yorkby his first wife, was married to George, a prince of the orthodox Houseof Denmark. The Tory gentry and clergy might now flatter themselves thatthe Church of England had been effectually secured without any violationof the order of succession. The King and the heir presumptive werenearly of the same age. Both were approaching the decline of life. TheKing's health was good. It was therefore probable that James, if he cameto the throne, would have but a short reign. Beyond his reign there wasthe gratifying prospect of a long series of Protestant sovereigns. 

The liberty of unlicensed printing was of little or no use to thevanquished party; for the temper of judges and juries was such thatno writer whom the government prosecuted for a libel had any chance ofescaping. The dread of punishment therefore did all that a censorshipcould have done. Meanwhile, the pulpits resounded with harangues againstthe sin of rebellion. The treatises in which Filmer maintained thathereditary despotism was the form of government ordained by God, andthat limited monarchy was a pernicious absurdity, had recently appeared, 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 putto death, adopted by a solemn public act these strange doctrines, and ordered the political works of Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to bepublicly burned in the court of the Schools. 

Thus emboldened, the King at length ventured to overstep the boundswhich he had during some years observed, and to violate the plain letterof the law. The law was that not more than three years should passbetween the dissolving of one Parliament and the convoking of another. But, when three years had elapsed after the dissolution of theParliament which sate at Oxford, no writs were issued for an election. This infraction of the constitution was the more reprehensible, becausethe King had little reason to fear a meeting with a new House ofCommons. The counties were generally on his side; and many boroughs inwhich the Whigs had lately held sway had been so remodelled that theywere certain to return none but courtiers. 

In a short time the law was again violated in order to gratify the Dukeof York. That prince was, partly on account of his religion, and partlyon account of the sternness and harshness of his nature, so unpopularthat it had been thought necessary to keep him out of sight while theExclusion Bill was before Parliament, lest his appearance should givean advantage to the party which was struggling to deprive him of hisbirthright. He had therefore been sent to govern Scotland, where thesavage old tyrant Lauderdale was sinking into the grave. Even Lauderdalewas now outdone. The administration of James was marked by odious laws, by barbarous punishments, and by judgments to the iniquity of which eventhat age furnished no parallel. The Scottish Privy Council had power toput state prisoners to the question. But the sight was so dreadful that, as soon as the boots appeared, even the most servile and hardheartedcourtiers hastened out of the chamber. The board was sometimes quitedeserted: and it was at length found necessary to make an order that themembers should keep their seats on such occasions. The Duke of York, itwas remarked, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle which some ofthe worst men then living were unable to contemplate without pityand horror. He not only came to Council when the torture was to beinflicted, but watched the agonies of the sufferers with that sort ofinterest and complacency with which men observe a curious experiment inscience. Thus he employed himself at Edinburgh, till the event of theconflict between the court and the Whigs was no longer doubtful. He thenreturned to England: but he was still excluded by the Test Act from allpublic employment; nor did the King at first think it safe to violate astatute which the great majority of his most loyal subjects regarded asone of the chief securities of their religion and of their civil rights. When, however, it appeared, from a succession of trials, that the nationhad patience to endure almost anything that the government had courageto do, Charles ventured to dispense with the law in his brother'sfavour. The Duke again took his seat in the Council, and resumed thedirection of naval affairs. 

These breaches of the constitution excited, it is true, some murmursamong the moderate Tories, and were not unanimously approved even by theKing's ministers. Halifax in particular, now a Marquess and Lord PrivySeal, had, from the very day on which the Tories had by his help gainedthe ascendant, begun to turn Whig. As soon as the Exclusion Bill hadbeen thrown out, he had pressed the House of Lords to make provisionagainst the danger to which, in the next reign, the liberties andreligion of the nation might be exposed. He now saw with alarm theviolence of that reaction which was, in no small measure, his ownwork. He did not try to conceal the scorn which he felt for the serviledoctrines of the University of Oxford. He detested the French alliance. He disapproved of the long intermission of Parliaments. He regretted theseverity with which the vanquished party was treated. He who, when theWhigs were predominant, had ventured to pronounce Stafford not guilty, ventured, when they were vanquished and helpless, to intercede forRussell. At one of the last Councils which Charles held a remarkablescene took place. The charter of Massachusetts had been forfeited. Aquestion arose how, for the future, the colony should be governed. Thegeneral opinion of the board was that the whole power, legislative aswell as executive, should abide in the crown. Halifax took the oppositeside, and argued with great energy against absolute monarchy, and infavour of representative government. It was vain, he said, to think thata population, sprung from the English stock, and animated by Englishfeelings, would long bear to be deprived of English institutions. Life, he exclaimed, would not be worth having in a country where liberty andproperty were at the mercy of one despotic master. The Duke of York wasgreatly incensed by this language, and represented to his brother thedanger of retaining in office a man who appeared to be infected with allthe worst notions of Marvell and Sidney. 

Some modern writers have blamed Halifax for continuing in the ministrywhile he disapproved of the manner in which both domestic and foreignaffairs were conducted. But this censure is unjust. Indeed it is to beremarked that the word ministry, in the sense in which we use it, wasthen unknown. [24] The thing itself did not exist; for it belongs to anage in which parliamentary government is fully established. At presentthe chief servants of the crown form one body. They are understood to beon terms of friendly confidence with each other, and to agree as tothe main principles on which the executive administration ought to beconducted. If a slight difference of opinion arises among them, it iseasily compromised: but, if one of them differs from the rest on a vitalpoint, it is his duty to resign. While he retains his office, he is heldresponsible even for steps which he has tried to dissuade his colleaguesfrom taking. In the seventeenth century, the heads of the variousbranches of the administration were bound together in no suchpartnership. Each of them was accountable for his own acts, for theuse which he made of his own official seal, for the documents which hesigned, for the counsel which he gave to the King. No statesman was heldanswerable 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, whenconsulted, he recommended what was right, he was blameless. It wouldhave been thought strange scrupulosity in him to quit his post, becausehis advice as to matters not strictly within his own department wasnot taken by his master; to leave the Board of Admiralty, for example, because the finances were in disorder, or the Board of Treasury becausethe foreign relations of the kingdom were in an unsatisfactory state. Itwas, therefore, by no means unusual to see in high office, at the sametime, men who avowedly differed from one another as widely as everPulteney differed from Walpole, or Fox from Pitt. 

The moderate and constitutional counsels of Halifax were timidly andfeebly seconded by Francis North, Lord Guildford who had lately beenmade Keeper of the Great Seal. The character of Guildford has been drawnat full length by his brother Roger North, a most intolerant Tory, amost affected and pedantic writer, but a vigilant observer of all thoseminute circumstances which throw light on the dispositions of men. It isremarkable that the biographer, though he was under the influence of thestrongest fraternal partiality, and though he was evidently anxious toproduce a flattering likeness, was unable to portray the Lord Keeperotherwise than as the most ignoble of mankind. Yet the intellect ofGuildford was clear, his industry great, his proficiency in letters andscience respectable, and his legal learning more than respectable. Hisfaults were selfishness, cowardice, and meanness. He was not insensibleto the power of female beauty, nor averse from excess in wine. Yetneither wine nor beauty could ever seduce the cautious and frugallibertine, even in his earliest youth, into one fit of indiscreetgenerosity. Though of noble descent, he rose in his profession by payingignominious homage to all who possessed influence in the courts. Hebecame Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and as such was party to someof the foulest judicial murders recorded in our history. He had senseenough to perceive from the first that Oates and Bedloe were impostors:but the Parliament and the country were greatly excited: the governmenthad yielded to the pressure; and North was not a man to risk a goodplace for the sake of justice and humanity. Accordingly, while he was insecret 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 asthe sun in heaven, and was not ashamed to browbeat, from the seat ofjudgment, the unfortunate Roman Catholics who were arraigned before himfor their lives. He had at length reached the highest post in the law. But a lawyer, who, after many years devoted to professional labour, engages in politics for the first time at an advanced period of life, seldom distinguishes himself as a statesman; and Guildford was noexception to the general rule. He was indeed so sensible of hisdeficiencies that he never attended the meetings of his colleagues onforeign affairs. Even on questions relating to his own profession hisopinion had less weight at the Council board than that of any man whohas ever held the Great Seal. Such as his influence was, however, heused it, as far as he dared, on the side of the laws. 

The chief opponent of Halifax was Lawrence Hyde, who had recentlybeen created Earl of Rochester. Of all Tories, Rochester was themost intolerant and uncompromising. The moderate members of his partycomplained that the whole patronage of the Treasury, while he was FirstCommissioner there, went to noisy zealots, whose only claim to promotionwas that they were always drinking confusion to Whiggery, and lightingbonfires to burn the Exclusion Bill. The Duke of York, pleased witha spirit which so much resembled his own supported his brother in lawpassionately and obstinately. 

The attempts of the rival ministers to surmount and supplant each otherkept the court in incessant agitation. Halifax pressed the King tosummon a Parliament, to grant a general amnesty, to deprive the Duke ofYork of all share in the government, to recall Monmouth from banishment, to break with Lewis, and to form a close union with Holland on theprinciples of the Triple Alliance. The Duke of York, on the other hand, dreaded the meeting of a Parliament, regarded the vanquished Whigs withundiminished hatred, still flattered himself that the design formedfourteen years before at Dover might be accomplished, daily representedto his brother the impropriety of suffering one who was at heart aRepublican to hold the Privy Seal, and strongly recommended Rochesterfor the great place of Lord Treasurer. 

While the two factions were struggling, Godolphin, cautious, silent, and laborious, observed a neutrality between them. Sunderland, with hisusual restless perfidy, intrigued against them both. He had been turnedout of office in disgrace for having voted in favour of the ExclusionBill, but had made his peace by employing the good offices of theDuchess of Portsmouth and by cringing to the Duke of York, and was oncemore Secretary of State. 

Nor was Lewis negligent or inactive. Everything at that moment favouredhis designs. He had nothing to apprehend from the German empire, whichwas then contending against the Turks on the Danube. Holland couldnot, unsupported venture to oppose him. He was therefore at libertyto indulge his ambition and insolence without restraint. He seizedStrasburg, Courtray, Luxemburg. He exacted from the republic of Genoathe most humiliating submissions. The power of France at that timereached a higher point than it ever before or ever after attained, during the ten centuries which separated the reign of Charlemagne fromthe reign of Napoleon. It was not easy to say where her acquisitionswould stop, if only England could be kept in a state of vassalage. Thefirst object of the court of Versailles was therefore to prevent thecalling of a Parliament and the reconciliation of English parties. For this end bribes, promises, and menaces were unsparingly employed. Charles was sometimes allured by the hope of a subsidy, and sometimesfrightened by being told that, if he convoked the Houses, the secretarticles of the treaty of Dover should be published. Several PrivyCouncillors were bought; and attempts were made to buy Halifax, but invain. When he had been found incorruptible, all the art and influenceof the French embassy were employed to drive him from office: but hispolished wit and his various accomplishments had made him so agreeableto his master, that the design failed. [25]

Halifax was not content with standing on the defensive. He openlyaccused Rochester of malversation. An inquiry took place. It appearedthat forty thousand pounds had been lost to the public by themismanagement of the First Lord of the Treasury. In consequence of thisdiscovery he was not only forced to relinquish his hopes of the whitestaff, but was removed from the direction of the finances to the moredignified but less lucrative and important post of Lord President. "I have seen people kicked down stairs, " said Halifax; "but my LordRochester is the first person that I ever saw kicked up stairs. "Godolphin, now a peer, became First Commissioner of the Treasury. 

Still, however, the contest continued. The event depended wholly onthe will of Charles; and Charles could not come to a decision. Inhis perplexity he promised everything to everybody. He would standby France: he would break with France: he would never meet anotherParliament: he would order writs for a Parliament to be issued withoutdelay. He assured the Duke of York that Halifax should be dismissed fromoffice, and Halifax that the Duke should be sent to Scotland. In publiche affected implacable resentment against Monmouth, and in privateconveyed to Monmouth assurances of unalterable affection. How long, ifthe King's life had been protracted, his hesitation would have lasted, and what would have been his resolve, can only be conjectured. Earlyin the year 1685, while hostile parties were anxiously awaiting hisdetermination, he died, and a new scene opened. In a few mouths theexcesses of the government obliterated the impression which had beenmade on the public mind by the excesses of the opposition. The violentreaction which had laid the Whig party prostrate was followed by a stillmore violent reaction in the opposite direction; and signs not to bemistaken indicated that the great conflict between the prerogatives ofthe Crown and the privileges of the Parliament, was about to be broughtto a final issue. 

CHAPTER III. 

I INTEND, in this chapter, to give a description of the state in whichEngland was at the time when the crown passed from Charles the Secondto his brother. Such a description, composed from scanty and dispersedmaterials, must necessarily be very imperfect. Yet it may perhapscorrect some false notions which would make the subsequent narrativeunintelligible or uninstructive. 

If we would study with profit the history of our ancestors, we must beconstantly on our guard against that delusion which the well knownnames of families, places, and offices naturally produce, and must neverforget that the country of which we read was a very different countryfrom that in which we live. In every experimental science there is atendency towards perfection. In every human being there is a wish toameliorate his own condition. These two principles have oftensufficed, even when counteracted by great public calamities and bybad institutions, to carry civilisation rapidly forward. No ordinarymisfortune, no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make anation wretched, as the constant progress of physical knowledge and theconstant effort of every man to better himself will do to make a nationprosperous. It has often been found that profuse expenditure, heavytaxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrouswars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, havenot been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of privatecitizens have been able to create it. It can easily be proved that, inour own land, the national wealth has, during at least six centuries, been almost uninterruptedly increasing; that it was greater underthe Tudors than under the Plantagenets; that it was greater under theStuarts than under the Tudors; that, in spite of battles, sieges, andconfiscations, it was greater on the day of the Restoration than on theday when the Long Parliament met; that, in spite of maladministration, of extravagance, of public bankruptcy, of two costly and unsuccessfulwars, of the pestilence and of the fire, it was greater on the day ofthe death of Charles the Second than on the day of his Restoration. Thisprogress, having continued during many ages, became at length, about themiddle of the eighteenth century, portentously rapid, and has proceeded, during the nineteenth, with accelerated velocity. In consequence partlyof our geographical and partly of our moral position, we have, duringseveral generations, been exempt from evils which have elsewhere impededthe efforts and destroyed the fruits of industry. While every part ofthe Continent, from Moscow to Lisbon, has been the theatre of bloodyand devastating wars, no hostile standard has been seen here but as atrophy. While revolutions have taken place all around us, our governmenthas never once been subverted by violence. During more than a hundredyears there has been in our island no tumult of sufficient importance tobe called an insurrection; nor has the law been once borne down eitherby popular fury or by regal tyranny: public credit has been held sacred:the administration of justice has been pure: even in times which mightby Englishmen be justly called evil times, we have enjoyed what almostevery other nation in the world would have considered as an amplemeasure of civil and religious freedom. Every man has felt entireconfidence that the state would protect him in the possession of whathad been earned by his diligence and hoarded by his selfdenial. Underthe benignant influence of peace and liberty, science has flourished, and has been applied to practical purposes on a scale never beforeknown. The consequence is that a change to which the history of the oldworld furnishes no parallel has taken place in our country. Could theEngland of 1685 be, by some magical process, set before our eyes, we should not know one landscape in a hundred or one building in tenthousand. The country gentleman would not recognise his own fields. Theinhabitant of the town would not recognise his own street. Everythinghas been changed, but the great features of nature, and a fewmassive and durable works of human art. We might find out Snowdon andWindermere, the Cheddar Cliffs and Beachy Head. We might find out hereand there a Norman minster, or a castle which witnessed the wars of theRoses. But, with such rare exceptions, everything would be strange tous. Many thousands of square miles which are now rich corn land andmeadow, intersected by green hedgerows and dotted with villages andpleasant country seats, would appear as moors overgrown with furze, orfens abandoned to wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built ofwood and covered with thatch, where we now see manufacturing towns andseaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world. The capital itselfwould shrink to dimensions not much exceeding those of its presentsuburb on the south of the Thames. Not less strange to us would be thegarb and manners of the people, the furniture and the equipages, theinterior of the shops and dwellings. Such a change in the state ofa nation seems to be at least as well entitled to the notice of ahistorian as any change of the dynasty or of the ministry. [26]

One of the first objects of an inquirer, who wishes to form a correctnotion of the state of a community at a given time, must be to ascertainof how many persons that community then consisted. Unfortunately thepopulation of England in 1685, cannot be ascertained with perfectaccuracy. For no great state had then adopted the wise course ofperiodically numbering the people. All men were left to conjecture forthemselves; and, as they generally conjectured without examining facts, and under the influence of strong passions and prejudices, their guesseswere often ludicrously absurd. Even intelligent Londoners ordinarilytalked of London as containing several millions of souls. It wasconfidently asserted by many that, during the thirty-five yearswhich had elapsed between the accession of Charles the First and theRestoration the population of the City had increased by two millions. [27] Even while the ravages of the plague and fire were recent, it wasthe fashion to say that the capital still had a million and a half ofinhabitants. [28] Some persons, disgusted by these exaggerations, ran violently into the opposite extreme. Thus Isaac Vossius, a man ofundoubted parts and learning, strenuously maintained that there wereonly two millions of human beings in England, Scotland, and Irelandtaken together. [29]

We are not, however, left without the means of correcting the wildblunders into which some minds were hurried by national vanity andothers by a morbid love of paradox. There are extant three computationswhich seem to be entitled to peculiar attention. They are entirelyindependent of each other: they proceed on different principles; and yetthere is little difference in the results. 

One of these computations was made in the year 1696 by Gregory King, Lancaster herald, a political arithmetician of great acuteness andjudgment. The basis of his calculations was the number of housesreturned in 1690 by the officers who made the last collection of thehearth money. The conclusion at which he arrived was that the populationof England was nearly five millions and a half. [30]

About the same time King William the Third was desirous to ascertain thecomparative strength of the religious sects into which the communitywas divided. An inquiry was instituted; and reports were laid beforehim from all the dioceses of the realm. According to these reports thenumber of his English subjects must have been about five million twohundred thousand. [31]

Lastly, in our own days, Mr. Finlaison, an actuary of eminent skill, subjected the ancient parochial registers of baptisms, marriages, andburials, to all the tests which the modern improvements in statisticalscience enabled him to apply. His opinion was, that, at the close of theseventeenth century, the population of England was a little under fivemillion two hundred thousand souls. [32]

Of these three estimates, framed without concert by different personsfrom 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 Secondreigned, England contained between five million and five million fivehundred thousand inhabitants. On the very highest supposition she thenhad less than one third of her present population, and less than threetimes the population which is now collected in her gigantic 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 theeighteenth century, in a state of barbarism. Physical and moral causeshad concurred to prevent civilisation from spreading to that region. Theair was inclement; the soil was generally such as required skilful andindustrious cultivation; and there could be little skill or industry ina tract which was often the theatre of war, and which, even whenthere was nominal peace, was constantly desolated by bands of Scottishmarauders. Before the union of the two British crowns, and long afterthat union, there was as great a difference between Middlesex andNorthumberland as there now is between Massachusetts and the settlementsof those squatters who, far to the west of the Mississippi, administer arude justice with the rifle and the dagger. In the reign of Charles theSecond, the traces left by ages of slaughter and pillage were distinctlyperceptible, many miles south of the Tweed, in the face of the countryand in the lawless manners of the people. There was still a large classof mosstroopers, whose calling was to plunder dwellings and to driveaway whole herds of cattle. It was found necessary, soon after theRestoration, to enact laws of great severity for the prevention ofthese outrages. The magistrates of Northumberland and Cumberland wereauthorised to raise bands of armed men for the defence of property andorder; and provision was made for meeting the expense of these levies bylocal taxation. [33] The parishes were required to keep bloodhounds forthe purpose of hunting the freebooters. Many old men who were living inthe middle of the eighteenth century could well remember the time whenthose ferocious dogs were common. [34] Yet, even with such auxiliaries, it was often found impossible to track the robbers to their retreatsamong the hills and morasses. For the geography of that wild country wasvery imperfectly known. Even after the accession of George the Third, the path over the fells from Borrowdale to Ravenglas was still a secretcarefully kept by the dalesmen, some of whom had probably in their youthescaped from the pursuit of justice by that road. [35] The seats of thegentry and the larger farmhouses were fortified. Oxen were penned atnight beneath the overhanging battlements of the residence, which wasknown by the name of the Peel. The inmates slept with arms at theirsides. Huge stones and boiling water were in readiness to crush andscald the plunderer who might venture to assail the little garrison. Notraveller ventured into that country without making his will. The Judgeson circuit, with the whole body of barristers, attorneys, clerks, andserving men, rode on horseback from Newcastle to Carlisle, armed andescorted by a strong guard under the command of the Sheriffs. It wasnecessary to carry provisions; for the country was a wilderness whichafforded no supplies. The spot where the cavalcade halted to dine, underan immense oak, is not yet forgotten. The irregular vigour with whichcriminal justice was administered shocked observers whose lives had beenpassed in more tranquil districts. Juries, animated by hatred and by asense of common danger, convicted housebreakers and cattle stealers withthe promptitude of a court martial in a mutiny; and the convicts werehurried by scores to the gallows. [36] Within the memory of some whomthis generation has seen, the sportsman who wandered in pursuit of gameto the sources of the Tyne found the heaths round Keeldar Castle peopledby a race scarcely less savage than the Indians of California, and heardwith surprise the half naked women chaunting a wild measure, while themen with brandished dirks danced a war dance. [37]

Slowly and with difficulty peace was established on the border. In thetrain of peace came industry and all the arts of life. Meanwhile it wasdiscovered that the regions north of the Trent possessed in their coalbeds a source of wealth far more precious than the gold mines of Peru. It was found that, in the neighbourhood of these beds, almost everymanufacture might be most profitably carried on. A constant stream ofemigrants began to roll northward. It appeared by the returns of 1841that the ancient archiepiscopal province of York contained two-seventhsof the population of England. At the time of the Revolution thatprovince was believed to contain only one seventh of the population. [38] In Lancashire the number of inhabitants appear to have increasedninefold, while in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Northamptonshire it has hardlydoubled. [39]

Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence and precision than ofthe population. The revenue of England, when Charles the Seconddied, was small, when compared with the resources which she even thenpossessed, or with the sums which were raised by the governments of theneighbouring countries. It had, from the time of the Restoration, beenalmost constantly increasing, yet it was little more than three fourthsof the revenue of the United Provinces, and was hardly one fifth of therevenue of France. 

The most important head of receipt was the excise, which, in the lastyear of the reign of Charles, produced five hundred and eighty-fivethousand pounds, clear of all deductions. The net proceeds of thecustoms amounted in the same year to five hundred and thirty thousandpounds. These burdens did not lie very heavy on the nation. The tax onchimneys, though less productive, call forth far louder murmurs. Thediscontent excited by direct imposts is, indeed, almost always out ofproportion to the quantity of money which they bring into the Exchequer;and the tax on chimneys was, even among direct imposts, peculiarlyodious: for it could be levied only by means of domiciliary visits; andof such visits the English have always been impatient to a degree whichthe people of other countries can but faintly conceive. The poorerhouseholders were frequently unable to pay their hearth money to theday. When this happened, their furniture was distrained without mercy:for the tax was farmed; and a farmer of taxes is, of all creditors, proverbially the most rapacious. The collectors were loudly accused ofperforming their unpopular duty with harshness and insolence. It wassaid that, as soon as they appeared at the threshold of a cottage, thechildren began to wail, and the old women ran to hide their earthenware. Nay, the single bed of a poor family had sometimes been carried awayand sold. The net annual receipt from this tax was two hundred thousandpounds. [40]

When to the three great sources of income which have been mentionedwe add the royal domains, then far more extensive than at present, the first fruits and tenths, which had not yet been surrendered to theChurch, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, the forfeitures, and thefines, we shall find that the whole annual revenue of the crown maybe fairly estimated at about fourteen hundred thousand pounds. Of thisrevenue part was hereditary; the rest had been granted to Charles forlife; and he was at liberty to lay out the whole exactly as he thoughtfit. Whatever he could save by retrenching from the expenditure ofthe public departments was an addition to his privy purse. Of the PostOffice more will hereafter be said. The profits of that establishmenthad been appropriated by Parliament to the Duke of York. 

The King's revenue was, or rather ought to have been, charged with thepayment of about eighty thousand pounds a year, the interest of the sumfraudulently destined in the Exchequer by the Cabal. While Danby was atthe head of the finances, the creditors had received dividends, thoughnot with the strict punctuality of modern times: but those who hadsucceeded him at the treasury had been less expert, or less solicitousto maintain public faith. Since the victory won by the court over theWhigs, not a farthing had been paid; and no redress was granted to thesufferers, till a new dynasty had been many years on the throne. Therecan be no greater error than to imagine that the device of meeting theexigencies of the state by loans was imported into our island byWilliam the Third. What really dates from his reign is not the systemof borrowing, but the system of funding. From a period of immemorableantiquity it had been the practice of every English government tocontract debts. What the Revolution introduced was the practice ofhonestly paying them. [41]

By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make an income ofabout fourteen hundred thousand pounds, with some occasional help fromVersailles, support the necessary charges of the government and thewasteful expenditure of the court. For that load which pressed mostheavily on the finances of the great continental states was herescarcely felt. In France, Germany, and the Netherlands, armies, suchas Henry the Fourth and Philip the Second had never employed in timeof war, were kept up in the midst of peace. Bastions and ravelingwere everywhere rising, constructed on principles unknown to Parma andSpinola. Stores of artillery and ammunition were accumulated, such aseven Richelieu, whom the preceding generation had regarded as a workerof prodigies, would have pronounced fabulous. No man could journey manyleagues in those countries without hearing the drums of a regimenton march, or being challenged by the sentinels on the drawbridge of afortress. In our island, on the contrary, it was possible to live longand to travel far without being once reminded, by any martial sight orsound, that the defence of nations had become a science and a calling. The majority of Englishmen who were under twenty-five years of age hadprobably never seen a company of regular soldiers. Of the cities which, in the civil war, had valiantly repelled hostile armies, scarcely onewas now capable of sustaining a siege The gates stood open night andday. The ditches were dry. The ramparts had been suffered to fall intodecay, or were repaired only that the townsfolk might have a pleasantwalk on summer evenings. Of the old baronial keeps many had beenshattered by the cannon of Fairfax and Cromwell, and lay in heaps ofruin, overgrown with ivy. Those which remained had lost their martialcharacter, and were now rural palaces of the aristocracy. The moats wereturned into preserves of carp and pike. The mounds were planted withfragrant shrubs, through which spiral walks ran up to summer housesadorned with mirrors and paintings. [42] On the capes of the sea coast, and on many inland hills, were still seen tall posts, surmounted bybarrels. Once those barrels had been filled with pitch. Watchmen hadbeen set round them in seasons of danger; and, within a few hours aftera Spanish sail had been discovered in the Channel, or after a thousandScottish mosstroopers had crossed the Tweed, the signal fires wereblazing fifty miles off, and whole counties were rising in arms. Butmany years had now elapsed since the beacons had been lighted; and theywere regarded rather as curious relics of ancient manners than as partsof a machinery necessary to the safety of the state. [43]

The only army which the law recognised was the militia. That force hadbeen remodelled by two Acts of Parliament, passed shortly after theRestoration. Every man who possessed five hundred pounds a year derivedfrom land, or six thousand pounds of personal estate, was bound toprovide, equip, and pay, at his own charge, one horseman. Every manwho had fifty pounds a year derived from land, or six hundred poundsof personal estate, was charged in like manner with one pikemen ormusketeer. Smaller proprietors were joined together in a kind ofsociety, for which our language does not afford a special name, butwhich an Athenian would have called a Synteleia; and each society wasrequired to furnish, according to its means, a horse soldier or a footsoldier. The whole number of cavalry and infantry thus maintained waspopularly estimated at a hundred and thirty thousand men. [44]

The King was, by the ancient constitution of the realm, and by therecent and solemn acknowledgment of both Houses of Parliament, the soleCaptain General of this large force. The Lords Lieutenants and theirDeputies held the command under him, and appointed meetings for drillingand inspection. The time occupied by such meetings, however, was notto exceed fourteen days in one year. The Justices of the Peace wereauthorised to inflict severe penalties for breaches of discipline. Ofthe ordinary cost no part was paid by the crown: but when the trainbandswere called out against an enemy, their subsistence became a charge onthe general revenue of the state, and they were subject to the utmostrigour of martial law. 

There were those who looked on the militia with no friendly eye. Menwho had travelled much on the Continent, who had marvelled at the sternprecision with which every sentinel moved and spoke in the citadelsbuilt by Vauban, who had seen the mighty armies which poured along allthe roads of Germany to chase the Ottoman from the Gates of Vienna, andwho had been dazzled by the well ordered pomp of the household troops ofLewis, sneered much at the way in which the peasants of Devonshire andYorkshire marched and wheeled, shouldered muskets and ported pikes. Theenemies of the liberties and religion of England looked with aversion ona force which could not, without extreme risk, be employed againstthose liberties and that religion, and missed no opportunity of throwingridicule on the rustic soldiery. [45] Enlightened patriots, when theycontrasted these rude levies with the battalions which, in time of war, a few hours might bring to the coast of Kent or Sussex, were forcedto acknowledge that, dangerous as it might be to keep up a permanentmilitary establishment, it might be more dangerous still to stakethe honour and independence of the country on the result of a contestbetween plowmen officered by Justices of the Peace, and veteran warriorsled by Marshals of France. In Parliament, however, it was necessaryto express such opinions with some reserve; for the militia was aninstitution eminently popular. Every reflection thrown on it excited theindignation of both the great parties in the state, and especially ofthat party which was distinguished by peculiar zeal for monarchy andfor the Anglican Church. The array of the counties was commanded almostexclusively by Tory noblemen and gentlemen. They were proud of theirmilitary rank, and considered an insult offered to the service to whichthey belonged as offered to themselves. They were also perfectlyaware that whatever was said against a militia was said in favour of astanding army; and the name of standing army was hateful to them. Onesuch army had held dominion in England; and under that dominion the Kinghad been murdered, the nobility degraded, the landed gentry plundered, the Church persecuted. There was scarcely a rural grandee who couldnot tell a story of wrongs and insults suffered by himself, or by hisfather, at the hands of the parliamentary soldiers. One old Cavalier hadseen half his manor house blown up. The hereditary elms of another hadbeen hewn down. A third could never go into his parish church withoutbeing reminded by the defaced scutcheons and headless statues of hisancestry, that Oliver's redcoats had once stabled their horses there. The consequence was that those very Royalists, who were most readyto fight for the King themselves, were the last persons whom he couldventure to ask for the means of hiring regular troops. 

Charles, however, had, a few months after his restoration, begun to forma small standing army. He felt that, without some better protectionthan that of the trainbands and beefeaters, his palace and person wouldhardly be secure, in the vicinity of a great city swarming with warlikeFifth Monarchy men who had just been disbanded. He therefore, carelessand profuse as he was, contrived to spare from his pleasures a sumsufficient to keep up a body of guards. With the increase of trade andof public wealth his revenues increased; and he was thus enabled, in spite of the occasional murmurs of the Commons, to make gradualadditions to his regular forces. One considerable addition was madea few months before the close of his reign. The costly, useless, andpestilential settlement of Tangier was abandoned to the barbarians whodwelt around it; and the garrison, consisting of one regiment of horseand two regiments of foot, was brought to England. 

The little army formed by Charles the Second was the germ of that greatand renowned army which has, in the present century, marched triumphantinto Madrid and Paris, into Canton and Candahar. The Life Guards, whonow form two regiments, were then distributed into three troops, each ofwhich consisted of two hundred carabineers, exclusive of officers. Thiscorps, to which the safety of the King and royal family was confided, had a very peculiar character. Even the privates were designated asgentlemen of the Guard. Many of them were of good families, and had heldcommissions in the civil war. Their pay was far higher than that ofthe most favoured regiment of our time, and would in that age have beenthought a respectable provision for the younger son of a country squire. Their fine horses, their rich housings, their cuirasses, and theirbuff coats adorned with ribands, velvet, and gold lace, made a splendidappearance in Saint James's Park. A small body of grenadier dragoons, who came from a lower class and received lower pay, was attached to eachtroop. Another body of household cavalry distinguished by blue coatsand cloaks, and still called the Blues, was generally quartered in theneighbourhood of the capital. Near the capital lay also the corps whichis now designated as the first regiment of dragoons, but which wasthen the only regiment of dragoons on the English establishment. It hadrecently been formed out of the cavalry which had returned from Tangier. A single troop of dragoons, which did not form part of any regiment, wasstationed near Berwick, for the purpose of keeping, the peace among themosstroopers of the border. For this species of service the dragoonwas then thought to be peculiarly qualified. He has since become amere horse soldier. But in the seventeenth century he was accuratelydescribed by Montecuculi as a foot soldier who used a horse only inorder to arrive with more speed at the place where military service wasto be performed. 

The household infantry consisted of two regiments, which were then, as now, called the first regiment of Foot Guards, and the ColdstreamGuards. They generally did duty near Whitehall and Saint James's Palace. As there were then no barracks, and as, by the Petition of Right, ithad been declared unlawful to quarter soldiers on private families, theredcoats filled all the alehouses of Westminster and the Strand. 

There were five other regiments of foot. One of these, called theAdmiral's Regiment, was especially destined to service on board of thefleet. The remaining four still rank as the first four regiments of theline. Two of these represented two brigades which had long sustained onthe Continent the fame of British valour. The first, or Royal regiment, had, under the great Gustavus, borne a conspicuous part in thedeliverance of Germany. The third regiment, distinguished byfleshcoloured facings, from which it had derived the well known name ofthe Buffs, had, under Maurice of Nassau, fought not less bravely for thedeliverance of the Netherlands. Both these gallant bands had at length, after many vicissitudes, been recalled from foreign service by Charlesthe Second, and had been placed on the English establishment. 

The regiments which now rank as the second and fourth of the linehad, in 1685, just returned from Tangier, bringing with them cruel andlicentious habits contracted in a long course of warfare with theMoors. A few companies of infantry which had not been regimented lay ingarrison at Tilbury Fort, at Portsmouth, at Plymouth, and at some otherimportant stations on or near the coast. 

Since the beginning of the seventeenth century a great change had takenplace in the arms of the infantry. The pike had been gradually givingplace to the musket; and, at the close of the reign of Charles theSecond, most of his foot were musketeers. Still, however, there was alarge intermixture of pikemen. Each class of troops was occasionallyinstructed in the use of the weapon which peculiarly belonged to theother class. Every foot soldier had at his side a sword for close fight. The musketeer was generally provided with a weapon which had, duringmany years, been gradually coming into use, and which the English thencalled a dagger, but which, from the time of William the Third, has beenknown among us by the French name of bayonet. The bayonet seems notto have been then so formidable an instrument of destruction as ithas since become; for it was inserted in the muzzle of the gun; and inaction much time was lost while the soldier unfixed his bayonet inorder to fire, and fixed it again in order to charge. The dragoon, whendismounted, fought as a musketeer. 

The regular army which was kept up in England at the beginning of theyear 1685 consisted, all ranks included, of about seven thousand foot, and about seventeen hundred cavalry and dragoons. The whole chargeamounted to about two hundred and ninety thousand pounds a year, lessthen a tenth part of what the military establishment of France then costin time of peace. The daily pay of a private in the Life Guards wasfour shillings, in the Blues two shillings and sixpence, in the Dragoonseighteen pence, in the Foot Guards tenpence, and in the line eightpence. The discipline was lax, and indeed could not be otherwise. The commonlaw of England knew nothing of courts martial, and made no distinction, in time of peace, between a soldier and any other subject; nor couldthe government then venture to ask even the most loyal Parliament fora Mutiny Bill. A soldier, therefore, by knocking down his colonel, incurred only the ordinary penalties of assault and battery, and byrefusing to obey orders, by sleeping on guard, or by deserting hiscolours, incurred no legal penalty at all. Military punishments weredoubtless inflicted during the reign of Charles the Second; but theywere inflicted very sparingly, and in such a manner as not to attractpublic notice, or to produce an appeal to the courts of WestminsterHall. 

Such an army as has been described was not very likely to enslave fivemillions of Englishmen. It would indeed have been unable to suppressan insurrection in London, if the trainbands of the City had joined theinsurgents. Nor could the King expect that, if a rising took place inEngland, he would obtain effectual help from his other dominions. For, though both Scotland and Ireland supported separate militaryestablishments, those establishments were not more than sufficient tokeep down the Puritan malecontents of the former kingdom and the Popishmalecontents of the latter. The government had, however, an importantmilitary resource which must not be left unnoticed. There were in thepay of the United Provinces six fine regiments, of which three hadbeen raised in England and three in Scotland. Their native prince hadreserved to himself the power of recalling them, if he needed theirhelp against a foreign or domestic enemy. In the meantime they weremaintained without any charge to him, and were kept under an excellentdiscipline to which he could not have ventured to subject them. [46]

If the jealousy of the Parliament and of the nation made it impossiblefor the King to maintain a formidable standing army, no similarimpediment prevented him from making England the first of maritimepowers. Both Whigs and Tories were ready to applaud every step tendingto increase the efficiency of that force which, while it was the bestprotection of the island against foreign enemies, was powerless againstcivil liberty. All the greatest exploits achieved within the memory ofthat generation by English soldiers had been achieved in war againstEnglish princes. The victories of our sailors had been won over foreignfoes, and had averted havoc and rapine from our own soil. By at leasthalf the nation the battle of Naseby was remembered with horror, and thebattle of Dunbar with pride chequered by many painful feelings: but thedefeat of the Armada, and the encounters of Blake with the Hollandersand Spaniards were recollected with unmixed exultation by all parties. Ever since the Restoration, the Commons, even when most discontentedand most parsimonious, had always been bountiful to profusion where theinterest of the navy was concerned. It had been represented to them, while Danby was minister, that many of the vessels in the royal fleetwere old and unfit for sea; and, although the House was, at that time, in no giving mood, an aid of near six hundred thousand pounds had beengranted for the building of thirty new men of war. 

But the liberality of the nation had been made fruitless by the vices ofthe government. The list of the King's ships, it is true, looked well. There were nine first rates, fourteen second rates, thirty-nine thirdrates, and many smaller vessels. The first rates, indeed, were less thanthe third rates of our time; and the third rates would not now rankas very large frigates. This force, however, if it had been efficient, would in those days have been regarded by the greatest potentate asformidable. But it existed only on paper. When the reign of Charlesterminated, his navy had sunk into degradation and decay, such as wouldbe almost incredible if it were not certified to us by the independentand concurring evidence of witnesses whose authority is beyondexception. Pepys, the ablest man in the English Admiralty, drew up, in the year 1684, a memorial on the state of his department, for theinformation of Charles. A few months later Bonrepaux, the ablest man inthe French Admiralty, having visited England for the especial purposeof ascertaining her maritime strength, laid the result of his inquiriesbefore Lewis. The two reports are to the same effect. Bonrepaux declaredthat he found everything in disorder and in miserable condition, thatthe superiority of the French marine was acknowledged with shame andenvy at Whitehall, and that the state of our shipping and dockyardswas of itself a sufficient guarantee that we should not meddle inthe disputes of Europe. [47] Pepys informed his master that the navaladministration was a prodigy of wastefulness, corruption, ignorance, and indolence, that no estimate could be trusted, that no contract wasperformed, that no check was enforced. The vessels which the recentliberality of Parliament had enabled the government to build, and whichhad never been out of harbour, had been made of such wretched timberthat they were more unfit to go to sea than the old hulls which had beenbattered thirty years before by Dutch and Spanish broadsides. Someof the new men of war, indeed, were so rotten that, unless speedilyrepaired, they would go down at their moorings. The sailors were paidwith so little punctuality that they were glad to find some usurer whowould purchase their tickets at forty per cent. Discount. The commanderswho had not powerful friends at court were even worse treated. Someofficers, to whom large arrears were due, after vainly importuning thegovernment 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 notbeen bred to the sea. This, it is true, was not an abuse introduced bythe government of Charles. No state, ancient or modern, had, before thattime, made a complete separation between the naval and military service. In the great civilised nations of antiquity, Cimon and Lysander, Pompeyand Agrippa, had fought battles by sea as well as by land. Nor had theimpulse which nautical science received at the close of the fifteenthcentury produced any new division of labour. At Flodden the right wingof the victorious army was led by the Admiral of England. At Jarnac andMoncontour the Huguenot ranks were marshalled by the Admiral of France. Neither John of Austria, the conqueror of Lepanto, nor Lord Howard ofEffingham, to whose direction the marine of England was confided whenthe Spanish invaders were approaching our shores, had received theeducation 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 valiantdefence of an inland town before he humbled the pride of Holland andof Castile on the ocean. Since the Restoration the same system had beenfollowed. Great fleets had been entrusted to the direction of Rupertand Monk; Rupert, who was renowned chiefly as a hot and daring cavalryofficer, and Monk, who, when he wished his ship to change her course, moved the mirth of his crew by calling out, "Wheel to the left!"

But about this time wise men began to perceive that the rapidimprovement, both of the art of war and of the art of navigation, madeit necessary to draw a line between two professions which had hithertobeen confounded. Either the command of a regiment or the command ofa ship was now a matter quite sufficient to occupy the attention ofa single mind. In the year 1672 the French government determined toeducate young men of good family from a very early age especially forthe sea service. But the English government, instead of following thisexcellent example, not only continued to distribute high naval commandsamong landsmen, but selected for such commands landsmen who, even onland, could not safely have been put in any important trust. Any ladof noble birth, any dissolute courtier for whom one of the King'smistresses would speak a word, might hope that a ship of the line, andwith it the honour of the country and the lives of hundreds of bravemen, would be committed to his care. It mattered not that he had neverin his life taken a voyage except on the Thames, that he could notkeep his feet in a breeze, that he did not know the difference betweenlatitude 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 wassubjected to no discipline, where he was treated with marked respect, and where he lived in a round of revels and amusements. If, in theintervals of feasting, drinking, and gambling, he succeeded in learningthe meaning of a few technical phrases and the names of the pointsof the compass, he was thought fully qualified to take charge of athree-decker. This is no imaginary description. In 1666, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, at seventeen years of age, volunteered to serve at seaagainst the Dutch. He passed six weeks on board, diverting himself, aswell as he could, in the society of some young libertines of rank, andthen returned home to take the command of a troop of horse. After thishe was never on the water till the year 1672, when he again joinedthe fleet, and was almost immediately appointed Captain of a shipof eighty-four guns, reputed the finest in the navy. He was thentwenty-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 madeColonel of a regiment of foot. This is a specimen of the manner in whichnaval commands of the highest importance were then given; and a veryfavourable specimen; for Mulgrave, though he wanted experience, wantedneither parts nor courage. Others were promoted in the same way who notonly were not good officers, but who were intellectually and morallyincapable of ever becoming good officers, and whose only recommendationwas that they had been ruined by folly and vice. The chief bait whichallured these men into the service was the profit of conveying bullionand other valuable commodities from port to port; for both the Atlanticand the Mediterranean were then so much infested by pirates from Barbarythat merchants were not willing to trust precious cargoes to any custodybut that of a man of war. A Captain might thus clear several thousandsof pounds by a short voyage; and for this lucrative business he toooften neglected the interests of his country and the honour of hisflag, made mean submissions to foreign powers, disobeyed the most directinjunctions of his superiors, lay in port when he was ordered to chasea Sallee rover, or ran with dollars to Leghorn when his instructionsdirected him to repair to Lisbon. And all this he did with impunity. The same interest which had placed him in a post for which he was unfitmaintained him there. No Admiral, bearded by these corrupt and dissoluteminions of the palace, dared to do more than mutter something about acourt martial. If any officer showed a higher sense of duty than hisfellows, he soon found out he lost money without acquiring honor. OneCaptain, who, by strictly obeying the orders of the Admiralty, missed acargo which would have been worth four thousand pounds to him, was toldby 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 courtlyCaptain despised the Admiralty, he was in turn despised by his crew. It could not be concealed that he was inferior in Seamanship to everyforemast man on board. It was idle to expect that old sailors, familiarwith the hurricanes of the tropics and with the icebergs of the ArcticCircle, would pay prompt and respectful obedience to a chief who knew nomore of winds and waves than could be learned in a gilded barge betweenWhitehall Stairs and Hampton Court. To trust such a novice with theworking of a ship was evidently impossible. The direction of thenavigation was therefore taken from the Captain and given to the Master;but this partition of authority produced innumerable inconveniences. The line of demarcation was not, and perhaps could not be, drawnwith precision. There was therefore constant wrangling. The Captain, confident in proportion to his ignorance, treated the Master withlordly contempt. The Master, well aware of the danger of disobligingthe powerful, too often, after a struggle, yielded against his betterjudgment; and it was well if the loss of ship and crew was not theconsequence. In general the least mischievous of the aristocraticalCaptains were those who completely abandoned to others the direction ofthe vessels, and thought only of making money and spending it. The wayin which these men lived was so ostentatious and voluptuous that, greedyas they were of gain, they seldom became rich. They dressed as if fora gala at Versailles, ate off plate, drank the richest wines, and keptharems on board, while hunger and scurvy raged among the crews, andwhile corpses were daily flung out of the portholes. 

Such was the ordinary character of those who were then called gentlemenCaptains. Mingled with them were to be found, happily for our country, naval commanders of a very different description, men whose whole lifehad been passed on the deep, and who had worked and fought their wayfrom the lowest offices of the forecastle to rank and distinction. Oneof the most eminent of these officers was Sir Christopher Mings, whoentered the service as a cabin boy, who fell fighting bravely againstthe Dutch, and whom his crew, weeping and vowing vengeance, carried tothe grave. From him sprang, by a singular kind of descent, a line ofvaliant and expert sailors. His cabin boy was Sir John Narborough; andthe cabin boy of Sir John Narborough was Sir Cloudesley Shovel. To thestrong natural sense and dauntless courage of this class of men Englandowes a debt never to be forgotten. It was by such resolute hearts that, in spite of much maladministration, and in spite of the blunders andtreasons of more courtly admirals, our coasts were protected and thereputation of our flag upheld during many gloomy and perilous years. Butto a landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called, seemed a strangeand half savage race. All their knowledge was professional; and theirprofessional knowledge was practical rather than scientific. Off theirown element they were as simple as children. Their deportment wasuncouth. There was roughness in their very good nature; and their talk, where it was not made up of nautical phrases, was too commonly madeup of oaths and curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school wereformed those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age, drewLieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion. But it does not appear thatthere was in the service of any of the Stuarts a single naval officersuch as, according to the notions of our times, a naval officer oughtto be, that is to say, a man versed in the theory and practice of hiscalling, and steeled against all the dangers of battle and tempest, yetof cultivated mind and polished manners. There were gentlemen and therewere seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were notgentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen. 

The English navy at that time might, according to the most exactestimates which have come down to us, have been kept in an efficientstate for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds a year. Four hundredthousand pounds a year was the sum actually expended, but expended, aswe have seen, to very little purpose. The cost of the French marine wasnearly the same the cost of the Dutch marine considerably more. [48]

The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth century was, ascompared with other military and naval charges, much smaller than atpresent. At most of the garrisons there were gunners: and here andthere, at an important post, an engineer was to be found. But there wasno regiment of artillery, no brigade of sappers and miners, no collegein which young soldiers could learn the scientific part of the art ofwar. The difficulty of moving field pieces was extreme. When, a fewyears later, William marched from Devonshire to London, the apparatuswhich he brought with him, though such as had long been in constant useon the Continent, and such as would now be regarded at Woolwich as rudeand cumbrous, excited in our ancestors an admiration resembling thatwhich the Indians of America felt for the Castilian harquebusses. Thestock of gunpowder kept in the English forts and arsenals was boastfullymentioned by patriotic writers as something which might well impressneighbouring nations with awe. It amounted to fourteen or fifteenthousand barrels, about a twelfth of the quantity which it is nowthought necessary to have in store. The expenditure under the head ofordnance was on an average a little above sixty thousand pounds a year. [49]

The whole effective charge of the army, navy, and ordnance, was aboutseven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The noneffective charge, whichis now a heavy part of our public burdens, can hardly be said to haveexisted. A very small number of naval officers, who were not employedin the public service, drew half pay. No Lieutenant was on the list, norany Captain who had not commanded a ship of the first or second rate. Asthe country then possessed only seventeen ships of the first and secondrate that had ever been at sea, and as a large proportion of the personswho had commanded such ships had good posts on shore, the expenditureunder this head must have been small indeed. [50] In the army, half paywas given merely as a special and temporary allowance to a small numberof officers belonging to two regiments, which were peculiarly situated. [51] Greenwich Hospital had not been founded. Chelsea Hospital wasbuilding: but the cost of that institution was defrayed partly bya deduction from the pay of the troops, and partly by privatesubscription. The King promised to contribute only twenty thousandpounds for architectural expenses, and five thousand a year for themaintenance of the invalids. [52] It was no part of the plan that thereshould be outpensioners. The whole noneffective charge, military andnaval, can scarcely have exceeded ten thousand pounds a year. It nowexceeds ten thousand pounds a day. 

Of the expense of civil government only a small portion was defrayed bythe crown. The great majority of the functionaries whose business was toadminister justice and preserve order either gave their services to thepublic gratuitously, or were remunerated in a manner which caused nodrain on the revenue of the state. The Sheriffs, mayors, and aldermenof the towns, the country gentlemen who were in the commission of thepeace, the headboroughs, bailiffs, and petty constables, cost the Kingnothing. The superior courts of law were chiefly supported by fees. 

Our relations with foreign courts had been put on the most economicalfooting. The only diplomatic agent who had the title of Ambassadorresided at Constantinople, and was partly supported by the TurkishCompany. Even at the court of Versailles England had only an Envoy; andshe 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 reignof Charles the Second, have much exceeded twenty thousand pounds. [53]

In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was, as usual, niggardly in the wrong place, and munificent in the wrong place. Thepublic service was starved that courtiers might be pampered. The expenseof the navy, of the ordnance, of pensions to needy old officers, ofmissions to foreign courts, must seem small indeed to the presentgeneration. 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 thenobility, the gentry, the commercial and professional men of that age, will appear enormous. The greatest estates in the kingdom thenvery little exceeded twenty thousand a year. The Duke of Ormond hadtwenty-two thousand a year. [54] The Duke of Buckingham, before hisextravagance had impaired his great property, had nineteen thousandsix hundred a year. [55] George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who had beenrewarded for his eminent services with immense grants of crown land, and who had been notorious both for covetousness and for parsimony, leftfifteen thousand a year of real estate, and sixty thousand pounds inmoney which probably yielded seven per cent. [56] These three Dukeswere supposed to be three of the very richest subjects in England. TheArchbishop of Canterbury can hardly have had five thousand a year. [57] The average income of a temporal peer was estimated, by the bestinformed persons, at about three thousand a year, the average income ofa baronet at nine hundred a year, the average income of a member of theHouse of Commons at less than eight hundred a year. [58] A thousand ayear was thought a large revenue for a barrister. Two thousand a yearwas hardly to be made in the Court of King's Bench, except by the crownlawyers. [59] It is evident, therefore, that an official man would havebeen well paid if he had received a fourth or fifth part of what wouldnow be an adequate stipend. In fact, however, the stipends of thehigher class of official men were as large as at present, and not seldomlarger. The Lord Treasurer, for example, had eight thousand a year, and, when the Treasury was in commission, the junior Lords had sixteenhundred a year each. The Paymaster of the Forces had a poundage, amounting, in time of peace, to about five thousand a year, on all themoney which passed through his hands. The Groom of the Stole had fivethousand a year, the Commissioners of the Customs twelve hundred ayear each, the Lords of the Bedchamber a thousand a year each. [60]The regular salary, however, was the smallest part of the gains of anofficial man at that age. From the noblemen who held the white staff andthe great seal, down to the humblest tidewaiter and gauger, what wouldnow be called gross corruption was practiced without disguise andwithout reproach. Titles, places, commissions, pardons, were daily soldin market overt by the great dignitaries of the realm; and everyclerk in every department imitated, to the best of his power, the evilexample. 

During the last century no prime minister, however powerful, has becomerich in office; and several prime ministers have impaired their privatefortune in sustaining their public character. In the seventeenthcentury, a statesman who was at the head of affairs might easily, andwithout giving scandal, accumulate in no long time an estate amplysufficient to support a dukedom. It is probable that the income of theprime minister, during his tenure of power, far exceeded that of anyother subject. The place of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was popularlyreported to be worth forty thousand pounds a year. [61] The gains of theChancellor Clarendon, of Arlington, of Lauderdale, and of Danby, werecertainly enormous. The sumptuous palace to which the populace of Londongave the name of Dunkirk Mouse, the stately pavilions, the fishponds, the deer park and the orangery of Euston, the more than Italian luxuryof Ham, with its busts, fountains, and aviaries, were among the manysigns which indicated what was the shortest road to boundless wealth. This is the true explanation of the unscrupulous violence with which thestatesmen of that day struggled for office, of the tenacity with which, in spite of vexations, humiliations and dangers, they clung to it, andof the scandalous compliances to which they stooped in order to retainit. Even in our own age, formidable as is the power of opinion, andhigh as is the standard of integrity, there would be great risk of alamentable change in the character of our public men, if the place ofFirst Lord of the Treasury or Secretary of State were worth a hundredthousand pounds a year. Happy for our country the emoluments of thehighest class of functionaries have not only not grown in proportion tothe general growth of our opulence, but have positively diminished. 

The fact that the sum raised in England by taxation has, in a time notexceeding two long lives, been multiplied forty-fold, is strange, andmay at first sight seem appalling. But those who are alarmed by theincrease of the public burdens may perhaps be reassured when they haveconsidered the increase of the public resources. In the year 1685, thevalue of the produce of the soil far exceeded the value of all theother fruits of human industry. Yet agriculture was in what would nowbe considered as a very rude and imperfect state. The arable land andpasture land were not supposed by the best political arithmeticians ofthat age to amount to much more than half the area of the kingdom. [62]The remainder was believed to consist of moor, forest, and fen. Thesecomputations are strongly confirmed by the road books and maps of theseventeenth century. From those books and maps it is clear that manyroutes which now pass through an endless succession of orchards, cornfields, hayfields, and beanfields, then ran through nothing butheath, swamp, and warren. [63] In the drawings of English landscapesmade in that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo, scarce a hedgerow is to beseen, and numerous tracts; now rich with cultivation, appear as bare asSalisbury Plain. [64] At Enfield, hardly out of sight of the smoke ofthe 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. [65] It is to be remarked, that wild animals of large size were then farmore numerous than at present. The last wild boars, indeed, which hadbeen preserved for the royal diversion, and had been allowed to ravagethe cultivated land with their tusks, had been slaughtered by theexasperated rustics during the license of the civil war. The last wolfthat has roamed our island had been slain in Scotland a short timebefore 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 asthat of a human being, was then considered as a mere nuisance. OliverSaint 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 tocountry gentlemen of our time: but in Saint John's days there were notseldom great massacres of foxes to which the peasantry thronged with allthe dogs that could be mustered. Traps were set: nets were spread: noquarter was given; and to shoot a female with cub was considered as afeat which merited the warmest gratitude of the neighbourhood. The reddeer were then as common in Gloucestershire and Hampshire, as they noware among the Grampian Hills. On one occasion Queen Anne, travelling toPortsmouth, saw a herd of no less than five hundred. The wild bull withhis white mane was still to be found wandering in a few of the southernforests. The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of everyhill where the copsewood grew thick. The wild cats were frequently heardby night wailing round the lodges of the rangers of whittlebury andNeedwood. The yellow-breasted martin was still pursued in CranbourneChase for his fur, reputed inferior only to that of the sable. Feneagles, measuring more than nine feet between the extremities of thewings, preyed on fish along the coast of Norfolk. On all the downs, from the British Channel to Yorkshire huge bustards strayed in troopsof fifty or sixty, and were often hunted with greyhounds. The marshes ofCambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were covered during some months of everyyear by immense clouds of cranes. Some of these races the progress ofcultivation has extirpated. Of others the numbers are so much diminishedthat men crowd to gaze at a specimen as at a Bengal tiger, or a Polarbear. [66]

The progress of this great change can nowhere be more clearly tracedthan in the Statute Book. The number of enclosure acts passed since KingGeorge the Second came to the throne exceeds four thousand. The areaenclosed under the authority of those acts exceeds, on a moderatecalculation, ten thousand square miles. How many square miles, whichwere formerly uncultivated or ill cultivated, have, during the sameperiod, been fenced and carefully tilled by the proprietors without anyapplication to the legislature, can only be conjectured. But it seemshighly probable that a fourth part of England has been, in the course oflittle more than a century, turned from a wild into a garden. 

Even in those parts of the kingdom which at the close of the reign ofCharles the Second were the best cultivated, the farming, though greatlyimproved since the civil war, was not such as would now be thoughtskilful. To this day no effectual steps have been taken by publicauthority for the purpose of obtaining accurate accounts of the produceof the English soil. The historian must therefore follow, with somemisgivings, the guidance of those writers on statistics whose reputationfor diligence and fidelity stands highest. At present an average crop ofwheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, is supposed considerably to exceedthirty millions of quarters. The crop of wheat would be thought wretchedif it did not exceed twelve millions of quarters. According to thecomputation made in the year 1696 by Gregory King, the whole quantity ofwheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, then annually grown in the kingdom, was somewhat less than ten millions of quarters. The wheat, which wasthen cultivated only on the strongest clay, and consumed only by thosewho were in easy circumstances, he estimated at less than two millionsof quarters. Charles Davenant, an acute and well informed though mostunprincipled and rancorous politician, differed from King as to someof the items of the account, but came to nearly the same generalconclusions. [67]

The rotation of crops 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 sheepand 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 seasonwhen the grass is scanty. They were killed and salted in great numbersat the beginning of the cold weather; and, during several months, eventhe gentry tasted scarcely any fresh animal food, except game andriver fish, which were consequently much more important articlesin housekeeping than at present. It appears from the NorthumberlandHousehold Book that, in the reign of Henry the Seventh, fresh meat wasnever eaten even by the gentlemen attendant on a great Earl, exceptduring the short interval between Midsummer and Michaelmas. But inthe course of two centuries an improvement had taken place; and underCharles the Second it was not till the beginning of November thatfamilies laid in their stock of salt provisions, then called Martinmasbeef. [68]

The sheep and the ox of that time were diminutive when compared withthe sheep and oxen which are now driven to our markets. [69] Our nativehorses, though serviceable, were held in small esteem, and fetched lowprices. They were valued, one with another, by the ablest of those whocomputed the national wealth, at not more than fifty shillings each. Foreign breeds were greatly preferred. Spanish jennets were regardedas the finest chargers, and were imported for purposes of pageantry andwar. The coaches of the aristocracy were drawn by grey Flemish mares, which trotted, as it was thought, with a peculiar grace, and enduredbetter than any cattle reared in our island the work of dragging aponderous equipage over the rugged pavement of London. Neither themodern dray horse nor the modern race horse was then known. At amuch later period the ancestors of the gigantic quadrupeds, which allforeigners now class among the chief wonders of London, were broughtfrom the marshes of Walcheren; the ancestors of Childers and Eclipsefrom the sands of Arabia. Already, however, there was among our nobilityand gentry a passion for the amusements of the turf. The importance ofimproving our studs by an infusion of new blood was strongly felt; andwith this view a considerable number of barbs had lately been broughtinto the country. Two men whose authority on such subjects was held ingreat esteem, the Duke of Newcastle and Sir John Fenwick, pronouncedthat the meanest hack ever imported from Tangier would produce a dinerprogeny than could be expected from the best sire of our native breed. They would not readily have believed that a time would come when theprinces and nobles of neighbouring lands would be as eager to obtainhorses from England as ever the English had been to obtain horses fromBarbary. [70]

The increase of vegetable and animal produce, though great, seems smallwhen compared with the increase of our mineral wealth. In 1685 the tinof Cornwall, which had, more than two thousand years before, attractedthe Tyrian sails beyond the pillars of Hercules, was still one of themost valuable subterranean productions of the island. The quantityannually extracted from the earth was found to be, some years later, sixteen hundred tons, probably about a third of what it now is. [71] Butthe veins of copper which lie in the same region were, in the time ofCharles the Second, altogether neglected, nor did any landowner takethem into the account in estimating the value of his property. Cornwalland Wales at present yield annually near fifteen thousand tons ofcopper, worth near a million and a half sterling; that is to say, worthabout twice as much as the annual produce of all English mines of alldescriptions in the seventeenth century. [72] The first bed of rock salthad been discovered in Cheshire not long after the Restoration, butdoes not appear to have been worked till much later. The salt whichwas obtained by a rude process from brine pits was held in no highestimation. The pans in which the manufacture was carried on exhaled asulphurous stench; and, when the evaporation was complete, the substancewhich was left was scarcely fit to be used with food. Physiciansattributed the scorbutic and pulmonary complaints which were commonamong the English to this unwholesome condiment. It was thereforeseldom used by the upper and middle classes; and there was a regular andconsiderable importation from France. At present our springs and minesnot only supply our own immense demand, but send annually more thanseven hundred millions of pounds of excellent salt to foreign countries. [73]

Far more important has been the improvement of our iron works. Suchworks had long existed in our island, but had not prospered, and hadbeen regarded with no favourable eye by the government and by thepublic. It was not then the practice to employ coal for smelting theore; and the rapid consumption of wood excited the alarm of politicians. As early as the reign of Elizabeth, there had been loud complaints thatwhole forests were cut down for the purpose of feeding the furnaces; andthe Parliament had interfered to prohibit the manufacturers from burningtimber. The manufacture consequently languished. At the close of thereign of Charles the Second, great part of the iron which was used inthis country was imported from abroad; and the whole quantity cast hereannually seems not to have exceeded ten thousand tons. At present thetrade is thought to be in a depressed state if less than a million oftons are produced in a year. [74]

One mineral, perhaps more important than iron itself, remains to bementioned. Coal, though very little used in any species of manufacture, was already the ordinary fuel in some districts which were fortunateenough to possess large beds, and in the capital, which could easily besupplied by water carriage, It seems reasonable to believe that at leastone half of the quantity then extracted from the pits was consumed inLondon. The consumption of London seemed to the writers of that ageenormous, and was often mentioned by them as a proof of the greatness ofthe imperial city. They scarcely hoped to be believed when they affirmedthat two hundred and eighty thousand chaldrons that is to say, aboutthree hundred and fifty thousand tons, were, in the last year of thereign of Charles the Second, brought to the Thames. At present threemillions and a half of tons are required yearly by the metropolis; andthe whole annual produce cannot, on the most moderate computation, beestimated at less than thirty millions of tons. [75]

While these great changes have been in progress, the rent of land has, as might be expected, been almost constantly rising. In some districtsit has multiplied more than tenfold. In some it has not more thandoubled. It has probably, on the average, quadrupled. 

Of the rent, a large proportion was divided among the country gentlemen, a class of persons whose position and character it is most importantthat we should clearly understand; for by their influence and by theirpassions the fate of the nation was, at several important conjunctures, determined. 

We should be much mistaken if we pictured to ourselves the squires ofthe seventeenth century as men bearing a close resemblance to theirdescendants, the county members and chairmen of quarter sessions withwhom we are familiar. The modern country gentleman generally receives aliberal education, passes from a distinguished school to a distinguishedcollege, and has ample opportunity to become an excellent scholar. Hehas generally seen something of foreign countries. A considerablepart of his life has generally been passed in the capital; and therefinements of the capital follow him into the country. There is perhapsno class of dwellings so pleasing as the rural seats of the Englishgentry. In the parks and pleasure grounds, nature, dressed yet notdisguised by art, wears her most alluring form. In the buildings, goodsense and good taste combine to produce a happy union of the comfortableand the graceful. The pictures, the musical instruments, the library, would in any other country be considered as proving the owner to bean eminently polished and accomplished man. A country gentleman whowitnessed the Revolution was probably in receipt of about a fourthpart of the rent which his acres now yield to his posterity. He was, therefore, as compared with his posterity, a poor man, and was generallyunder the necessity of residing, with little interruption, on hisestate. To travel on the Continent, to maintain an establishment inLondon, or even to visit London frequently, were pleasures in which onlythe great proprietors could indulge. It may be confidently affirmed thatof the squires whose names were then in the Commissions of Peace andLieutenancy not one in twenty went to town once in five years, or hadever in his life wandered so far as Paris. Many lords of manors hadreceived an education differing little from that of their menialservants. The heir of an estate often passed his boyhood and youthat the seat of his family with no better tutors than grooms andgamekeepers, and scarce attained learning enough to sign his name toa Mittimus. If he went to school and to college, he generally returnedbefore he was twenty to the seclusion of the old hall, and there, unless his mind were very happily constituted by nature, soon forgot hisacademical pursuits in rural business and pleasures. His chief seriousemployment was the care of his property. He examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and, on market days, made bargains over a tankard withdrovers and hop merchants. His chief pleasures were commonly derivedfrom field sports and from an unrefined sensuality. His language andpronunciation were such as we should now expect to hear only from themost ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous terms ofabuse, were uttered with the broadest accent of his province. It waseasy to discern, from the first words which he spoke, whether he camefrom Somersetshire or Yorkshire. He troubled himself little aboutdecorating his abode, and, if he attempted decoration, seldom producedanything but deformity. The litter of a farmyard gathered under thewindows of his bedchamber, and the cabbages and gooseberry bushes grewclose to his hall door. His table was loaded with coarse plenty; andguests were cordially welcomed to it. But, as the habit of drinking toexcess was general in the class to which he belonged, and as his fortunedid not enable him to intoxicate large assemblies daily with claretor canary, strong beer was the ordinary beverage. The quantity of beerconsumed in those days was indeed enormous. For beer then was to themiddle 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 ongreat occasions, that foreign drink was placed on the board. The ladiesof the house, whose business it had commonly been to cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes had been devoured, and left the gentlemento their ale and tobacco. The coarse jollity of the afternoon was oftenprolonged till the revellers were laid under the table. 

It was very seldom that the country gentleman caught glimpses of thegreat world; and what he saw of it tended rather to confuse thanto enlighten his understanding. His opinions respecting religion, government, foreign countries and former times, having been derived, not from study, from observation, or from conversation with enlightenedcompanions, but from such traditions as were current in his own smallcircle, were the opinions of a child. He adhered to them, however, withthe obstinacy which is generally found in ignorant men accustomed to befed with flattery. His animosities were numerous and bitter. Hehated Frenchmen and Italians, Scotchmen and Irishmen, Papists andPresbyterians, Independents and Baptists, Quakers and Jews. TowardsLondon and Londoners he felt an aversion which more than once producedimportant political effects. His wife and daughter were in tastes andacquirements below a housekeeper or a stillroom maid of the present day. They stitched and spun, brewed gooseberry wine, cured marigolds, andmade the crust for the venison pasty. 

From this description it might be supposed that the English esquire ofthe seventeenth century did not materially differ from a rustic milleror alehouse keeper of our time. There are, however, some importantparts of his character still to be noted, which will greatly modify thisestimate. Unlettered as he was and unpolished, he was still in some mostimportant points a gentleman. He was a member of a proud and powerfularistocracy, and was distinguished by many both of the good and of thebad qualities which belong to aristocrats. His family pride was beyondthat of a Talbot or a Howard. He knew the genealogies and coats ofarms of all his neighbours, and could tell which of them had assumedsupporters without any right, and which of them were so unfortunate asto be greatgrandsons of aldermen. He was a magistrate, and, assuch, administered gratuitously to those who dwelt around him a rudepatriarchal justice, which, in spite of innumerable blunders and ofoccasional acts of tyranny, was yet better than no justice at all. Hewas an officer of the trainbands; and his military dignity, though itmight 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 everycounty there were elderly gentlemen who had seen service which was nochild's play. One had been knighted by Charles the First, after thebattle of Edgehill. Another still wore a patch over the scar which hehad received at Naseby. A third had defended his old house tillFairfax had blown in the door with a petard. The presence of theseold Cavaliers, with their old swords and holsters, and with their oldstories about Goring and Lunsford, gave to the musters of militia anearnest and warlike aspect which would otherwise have been wanting. Eventhose country gentlemen who were too young to have themselves exchangedblows with the cuirassiers of the Parliament had, from childhood, beensurrounded by the traces of recent war, and fed with stories of themartial exploits of their fathers and uncles. Thus the character ofthe English esquire of the seventeenth century was compounded oftwo elements which we seldom or never find united. His ignorance anduncouthness, his low tastes and gross phrases, would, in our time, beconsidered as indicating a nature and a breeding thoroughly plebeian. Yet he was essentially a patrician, and had, in large measure both thevirtues and the vices which flourish among men set from their birthin high place, and used to respect themselves and to be respected byothers. It is not easy for a generation accustomed to find chivalroussentiments only in company with liberal Studies and polished mannersto image to itself a man with the deportment, the vocabulary, andthe accent of a carter, yet punctilious on matters of genealogy andprecedence, and ready to risk his life rather than see a stain cast onthe honour of his house. It is however only by thus joining togetherthings seldom or never found together in our own experience, that we canform a just idea of that rustic aristocracy which constituted the mainstrength 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 aTory; but, though devotedly attached to hereditary monarchy, he had nopartiality for courtiers and ministers. He thought, not without reason, that Whitehall was filled with the most corrupt of mankind, and that ofthe great sums which the House of Commons had voted to the crown sincethe Restoration part had been embezzled by cunning politicians, and partsquandered on buffoons and foreign courtesans. His stout English heartswelled with indignation at the thought that the government of hiscountry should be subject to French dictation. Being himself generallyan old Cavalier, or the son of an old Cavalier, he reflected with bitterresentment on the ingratitude with which the Stuarts had requited theirbest friends. Those who heard him grumble at the neglect with which hewas treated, and at the profusion with which wealth was lavished on thebastards of Nell Gwynn and Madam Carwell, would have supposed him ripefor rebellion. But all this ill humour lasted only till the throne wasreally in danger. It was precisely when those whom the sovereign hadloaded with wealth and honours shrank from his side that the countrygentlemen, so surly and mutinous in the season of his prosperity, rallied round him in a body. Thus, after murmuring twenty years at themisgovernment of Charles the Second, they came to his rescue in hisextremity, when his own Secretaries of State and the Lords of his ownTreasury had deserted him, and enabled him to gain a complete victoryover the opposition; nor can there be any doubt that they would haveshown equal loyalty to his brother James, if James would, even at thelast moment, have refrained from outraging their strongest feeling. Forthere was one institution, and one only, which they prized even morethan hereditary monarchy; and that institution was the Church ofEngland. Their love of the Church was not, indeed, the effect of studyor meditation. Few among them could have given any reason, drawn fromScripture or ecclesiastical history, for adhering to her doctrines, herritual, and her polity; nor were they, as a class, by any means strictobservers of that code of morality which is common to all Christiansects. But the experience of many ages proves that men may be ready tofight to the death, and to persecute without pity, for a religionwhose creed they do not understand, and whose precepts they habituallydisobey. [76]

The rural clergy were even more vehement in Toryism than the ruralgentry, end were a class scarcely less important. It is to be observed, however, that the individual clergyman, as compared with the individualgentleman, then ranked much lower than in our days. The main support ofthe Church was derived from the tithe; and the tithe bore to the rent amuch smaller ratio than at present. King estimated the whole incomeof the parochial and collegiate clergy at only four hundred and eightythousand pounds a year; Davenant at only five hundred and forty-fourthousand a year. It is certainly now more than seven times as greatas the larger of these two sums. The average rent of the land has not, according to any estimate, increased proportionally. It follows thatthe rectors and vicars must have been, as compared with the neighbouringknights and squires, much poorer in the seventeenth than in thenineteenth century. 

The place of the clergyman in society had been completely changed by theReformation. Before that event, ecclesiastics had formed the majorityof the House of Lords, had, in wealth and splendour, equalled, andsometimes outshone, the greatest of the temporal barons, and hadgenerally held the highest civil offices. Many of the Treasurers, andalmost all the Chancellors of the Plantagenets were Bishops. The LordKeeper of the Privy Seal and the Master of the Rolls were ordinarilychurchmen. Churchmen transacted the most important diplomatic business. Indeed all that large portion of the administration which rude andwarlike nobles were incompetent to conduct was considered as especiallybelonging to divines. Men, therefore, who were averse to the life ofcamps, and who were, at the same time, desirous to rise in the state, commonly received the tonsure. Among them were sons of all the mostillustrious families, and near kinsmen of the throne, Scroops andNevilles, Bourchiers, Staffords and Poles. To the religious housesbelonged the rents of immense domains, and all that large portion ofthe tithe which is now in the hands of laymen. Down to the middle of thereign of Henry the Eighth, therefore, no line of life was so attractiveto ambitious and covetous natures as the priesthood. Then came a violentrevolution. The abolition of the monasteries deprived the Church at onceof the greater part of her wealth, and of her predominance in the UpperHouse of Parliament. There was no longer an Abbot of Glastonbury oran Abbot of Reading, seated among the peers, and possessed of revenuesequal to those of a powerful Earl. The princely splendour of William ofWykeham and of William of Waynflete had disappeared. The scarlet hat ofthe Cardinal, the silver cross of the Legate, were no more. The clergyhad also lost the ascendency which is the natural reward of superiormental cultivation. Once the circumstance that a man could read hadraised a presumption that he was in orders. But, in an age whichproduced such laymen as William Cecil and Nicholas Bacon, Roger Aschamand Thomas Smith, Walter Mildmay and Francis Walsingham, there wasno reason for calling away prelates from their dioceses to negotiatetreaties, to superintend the finances, or to administer justice. Thespiritual character not only ceased to be a qualification for high civiloffice, but began to be regarded as a disqualification. Those worldlymotives, therefore, which had formerly induced so many able, aspiring, and high born youths to assume the ecclesiastical habit, ceased tooperate. Not one parish in two hundred then afforded what a man offamily considered as a maintenance. There were still indeed prizes inthe Church: but they were few; and even the highest were mean, whencompared with the glory which had once surrounded the princes of thehierarchy. The state kept by Parker and Grindal seemed beggarly tothose who remembered the imperial pomp of Wolsey, his palaces, which hadbecome the favorite abodes of royalty, Whitehall and Hampton Court, thethree sumptuous tables daily spread in his refectory, the forty-fourgorgeous copes in his chapel, his running footmen in rich liveries, andhis body guards with gilded poleaxes. Thus the sacerdotal office lostits attraction for the higher classes. During the century which followedthe accession of Elizabeth, scarce a single person of noble descent tookorders. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, two sons ofpeers were Bishops; four or five sons of peers were priests, and heldvaluable preferment: but these rare exceptions did not take away thereproach which lay on the body. The clergy were regarded as, on thewhole, a plebeian class. [77] And, indeed, for one who made the figureof a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants. A large proportion ofthose divines who had no benefices, or whose benefices were too small toafford a comfortable revenue, lived in the houses of laymen. It hadlong been evident that this practice tended to degrade the priestlycharacter. Laud had exerted himself to effect a change; and Charles theFirst had repeatedly issued positive orders that none but men ofhigh rank should presume to keep domestic chaplains. [78] But theseinjunctions had become obsolete. Indeed during the domination of thePuritan, many of the ejected ministers of the Church of England couldobtain bread and shelter only by attaching themselves to the householdsof royalist gentlemen; and the habits which had been formed in thosetimes of trouble continued long after the reestablishment of monarchyand episcopacy. In the mansions of men of liberal sentiments andcultivated understandings, the chaplain was doubtless treated withurbanity and kindness. His conversation, his literary assistance, hisspiritual advice, were considered as an ample return for his food, hislodging, and his stipend. But this was not the general feeling of thecountry gentlemen. The coarse and ignorant squire, who thought that itbelonged to his dignity to have grace said every day at his table by anecclesiastic in full canonicals, found means to reconcile dignity witheconomy. A young Levite--such was the phrase then in use--might be hadfor his board, a small garret, and ten pounds a year, and might notonly perform his own professional functions, might not only be the mostpatient of butts and of listeners, might not only be always ready infine weather for bowls, and in rainy weather for shovelboard, butmight also save the expense of a gardener, or of a groom. Sometimes thereverend man nailed up the apricots; and sometimes he curried the coachhorses. He cast up the farrier's bills. He walked ten miles with amessage or a parcel. He was permitted to dine with the family; but hewas expected to content himself with the plainest fare. He might fillhimself with the corned beef and the carrots: but, as soon as the tartsand cheesecakes made their appearance, he quitted his seat, and stoodaloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast, from a greatpart of which he had been excluded. [79]

Perhaps, after some years of service, he was presented to a livingsufficient to support him; but he often found it necessary to purchasehis preferment by a species of Simony, which furnished an inexhaustiblesubject of pleasantry to three or four generations of scoffers. With hiscure he was expected to take a wife. The wife had ordinarily been in thepatron's service; and it was well if she was not suspected of standingtoo high in the patron's favor. Indeed the nature of the matrimonialconnections which the clergymen of that age were in the habit of formingis the most certain indication of the place which the order held inthe social system. An Oxonian, writing a few months after the deathof Charles the Second, complained bitterly, not only that the countryattorney and the country apothecary looked down with disdain on thecountry clergyman but that one of the lessons most earnestly inculcatedon every girl of honourable family was to give no encouragement to alover in orders, and that, if any young lady forgot this precept, shewas almost as much disgraced as by an illicit amour. [80] Clarendon, whoassuredly bore no ill will to the priesthood, mentions it as a sign ofthe confusion of ranks which the great rebellion had produced, that somedamsels of noble families had bestowed themselves on divines. [81] Awaiting woman was generally considered as the most suitable helpmate fora parson. Queen Elizabeth, as head of the Church, had given what seemedto be a formal sanction to this prejudice, by issuing special ordersthat no clergyman should presume to espouse a servant girl, withoutthe consent of the master or mistress. [82] During several generationsaccordingly the relation between divines and handmaidens was a themefor endless jest; nor would it be easy to find, in the comedy of theseventeenth century, a single instance of a clergyman who wins a spouseabove the rank of cook. [83] Even so late as the time of George theSecond, the keenest of all observers of life and manners, himselfa priest, remarked that, in a great household, the chaplain was theresource of a lady's maid whose character had been blown upon, and whowas therefore forced to give up hopes of catching the steward. [84]

In general the divine who quitted his chaplainship for a benefice anda wife found that he had only exchanged one class of vexations foranother. Hardly one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring upa family comfortably. As children multiplied end grew, the household ofthe priest became more and more beggarly. Holes appeared more and moreplainly in the thatch of his parsonage and in his single cassock. Oftenit was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and by loadingdungcarts, that he could obtain daily bread; nor did his utmostexertions always prevent the bailiffs from taking his concordance andhis inkstand in execution. It was a white day on which he was admittedinto the kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the servants withcold meat and ale. His children were brought up like the children of theneighbouring peasantry. His boys followed the plough; and his girls wentout to service. [85] Study he found impossible: for the advowson of hisliving would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to purchase a goodtheological library; and he might be considered as unusually lucky ifhe had ten or twelve dogeared volumes among the pots and pans on hisshelves. Even a keen and strong intellect might be expected to rust inso unfavourable a situation. 

Assuredly there was at that time no lack in the English Church ofministers distinguished by abilities and learning But it is to beobserved that these ministers were not scattered among the ruralpopulation. They were brought together at a few places where the meansof acquiring knowledge were abundant, and where the opportunities ofvigorous intellectual exercise were frequent. [86] At such places wereto be found divines qualified by parts, by eloquence, by wide knowledgeof literature, of science, and of life, to defend their Churchvictoriously against heretics and sceptics, to command the attentionof frivolous and worldly congregations, to guide the deliberations ofsenates, and to make religion respectable, even in the most dissoluteof courts. Some laboured to fathom the abysses of metaphysical theology:some were deeply versed in biblical criticism; and some threw lighton the darkest parts of ecclesiastical history. Some proved themselvesconsummate masters of logic. Some cultivated rhetoric with suchassiduity and success that their discourses are still justly valued asmodels of style. These eminent men were to be found, with scarcely asingle exception, at the Universities, at the great Cathedrals, or inthe capital. Barrow had lately died at Cambridge; and Pearson had gonethence to the episcopal bench. Cudworth and Henry More were still livingthere. South and Pococke, Jane and Aldrich, were at Oxford, Prideaux wasin the close of Norwich, and Whitby in the close of Salisbury. But itwas chiefly by the London clergy, who were always spoken of as a classapart, that the fame of their profession for learning and eloquence wasupheld. The principal pulpits of the metropolis were occupied about thistime by a crowd of distinguished men, from among whom was selected alarge proportion of the rulers of the Church. Sherlock preached at theTemple, Tillotson at Lincoln's Inn, Wake and Jeremy Collier at Gray'sInn, Burnet at the Rolls, Stillingfleet at Saint Paul's Cathedral, Patrick at Saint Paul's in Covent Garden, Fowler at Saint Giles's, Cripplegate, Sharp at Saint Giles's in the Fields, Tenison at SaintMartin's, Sprat at Saint Margaret's, Beveridge at Saint Peter's inCornhill. Of these twelve men, all of high note in ecclesiasticalhistory, ten became Bishops, and four Archbishops. Meanwhile almost theonly important theological works which came forth from a rural parsonagewere those of George Bull, afterwards Bishop of Saint David's; and Bullnever would have produced those works, had he not inherited an estate, by the sale of which he was enabled to collect a library, such asprobably no other country clergyman in England possessed. [87]

Thus the Anglican priesthood was divided into two sections, which, inacquirements, in manners, and in social position, differed widely fromeach other. One section, trained for cities and courts, comprised menfamiliar with all ancient and modern learning; men able to encounterHobbes or Bossuet at all the weapons of controversy; men who could, intheir sermons, set forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity withsuch justness of thought, and such energy of language, that the indolentCharles roused himself to listen and the fastidious Buckingham forgotto sneer; men whose address, politeness, and knowledge of the worldqualified them to manage the consciences of the wealthy and noble; menwith whom Halifax loved to discuss the interests of empires, and fromwhom Dryden was not ashamed to own that he had learned to write. [88]The other section was destined to ruder and humbler service. It wasdispersed over the country, and consisted chiefly of persons not atall wealthier, and not much more refined, than small farmers or upperservants. Yet it was in these rustic priests, who derived but a scantysubsistence from their tithe sheaves and tithe pigs, and who had not thesmallest chance of ever attaining high professional honours, that theprofessional spirit was strongest. Among those divines who were theboast of the Universities and the delight of the capital, and who hadattained, or might reasonably expect to attain, opulence and lordlyrank, a party, respectable in numbers, and more respectable incharacter, leaned towards constitutional principles of government, livedon friendly terms with Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, wouldgladly have seen a full toleration granted to all Protestant sects, andwould even have consented to make alterations in the Liturgy, for thepurpose of conciliating honest and candid Nonconformists. But suchlatitudinarianism was held in horror by the country parson. He took, indeed, more pride in his ragged gown than his superiors in their lawnand their scarlet hoods. The very consciousness that there was little inhis worldly circumstances to distinguish him from the villagers towhom he preached led him to hold immoderately high the dignity of thatsacerdotal office which was his single title to reverence. Havinglived in seclusion, and having had little opportunity of correcting hisopinions by reading or conversation, he held and taught the doctrinesof indefeasible hereditary right, of passive obedience, and ofnonresistance, in all their crude absurdity. Having been long engaged ina petty war against the neighbouring dissenters, he too often hated themfor the wrong which he had done them, and found no fault with the FiveMile Act and the Conventicle Act, except that those odious laws had nota sharper edge. Whatever influence his office gave him was exerted withpassionate zeal on the Tory side; and that influence was immense. Itwould be a great error to imagine, because the country rector was ingeneral not regarded as a gentleman, because he could not dare to aspireto the hand of one of the young ladies at the manor house, because hewas not asked into the parlours of the great, but was left to drink andsmoke with grooms and butlers, that the power of the clerical bodywas smaller than at present. The influence of a class is by no meansproportioned to the consideration which the members of that classenjoy in their individual capacity. A Cardinal is a much more exaltedpersonage than a begging friar: but it would be a grievous mistake tosuppose that the College of Cardinals has exercised greater dominionover the public mind of Europe than the Order of Saint Francis. InIreland, at present, a peer holds a far higher station in society thana Roman Catholic priest: yet there are in Munster and Connaught fewcounties where a combination of priests would not carry an electionagainst a combination of peers. In the seventeenth century the pulpitwas to a large portion of the population what the periodical press nowis. Scarce any of the clowns who came to the parish church ever saw aGazette or a political pamphlet. Ill informed as their spiritual pastormight be, he was yet better informed than themselves: he had everyweek an opportunity of haranguing them; and his harangues were neveranswered. At every important conjuncture, invectives against the Whigsand exhortations to obey the Lord's anointed resounded at once from manythousands of pulpits; and the effect was formidable indeed. Of all thecauses which, after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, producedthe violent reaction against the Exclusionists, the most potent seems tohave been the oratory of the country clergy. 

The power which the country gentleman and the country clergymanexercised in the rural districts was in some measure counterbalanced bythe power of the yeomanry, an eminently manly and truehearted race. Thepetty proprietors who cultivated their own fields with their own hands, and enjoyed a modest competence, without affecting to have scutcheonsand crests, or aspiring to sit on the bench of justice, then formed amuch more important part of the nation than at present. If we may trustthe best statistical writers of that age, not less than a hundred andsixty thousand proprietors, who with their families must have made upmore than a seventh of the whole population, derived their subsistencefrom little freehold estates. The average income of these smalllandholders, an income mace up of rent, profit, and wages, was estimatedat between sixty and seventy pounds a year. It was computed that thenumber of persons who tilled their own land was greater than the numberof those who farmed the land of others. [89] A large portion ofthe yeomanry had, from the time of the Reformation, leaned towardsPuritanism, had, in the civil war, taken the side of the Parliament, had, after the Restoration, persisted in hearing Presbyterian andIndependent preachers, had, at elections, strenuously supported theExclusionists and had continued even after the discovery of the RyeHouse plot and the proscription of the Whig leaders, to regard Poperyand arbitrary power with unmitigated hostility. 

Great as has been the change in the rural life of England since theRevolution, the change which has come to pass in the cities is stillmore amazing. At present above a sixth part of the nation is crowdedinto provincial towns of more than thirty thousand inhabitants. In thereign of Charles the second no provincial town in the kingdom containedthirty thousand inhabitants; and only four provincial towns contained somany as ten thousand inhabitants. 

Next to the capital, but next at an immense distance, stood Bristol, then the first English seaport, and Norwich, then the first Englishmanufacturing town. Both have since that time been far outstrippedby younger rivals; yet both have made great positive advances. Thepopulation of Bristol has quadrupled. The population of Norwich has morethan doubled. 

Pepys, who visited Bristol eight years after the Restoration, was struckby the splendour of the city. But his standard was not high; for henoted down as a wonder the circumstance that, in Bristol, a man mightlook round him and see nothing but houses. It seems that, in no otherplace with which he was acquainted, except London, did the buildingscompletely shut out the woods and fields. Large as Bristol might thenappear, it occupied but a very small portion of the area on which itnow stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinthof narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach ora cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it would be wedgedbetween the houses, and danger also that it would break in the cellars. Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost exclusively intrucks drawn by dogs; and the richest inhabitants exhibited theirwealth, not by riding in gilded carriages, but by walking the streetswith trains of servants in rich liveries, and by keeping tables loadedwith good cheer. The pomp of the christenings and burials far exceededwhat was seen at any other place in England. The hospitality of the citywas widely renowned, and especially the collations with which the sugarrefiners regaled their visitors. The repast was dressed in the furnace, and was accompanied by a rich beverage made of the best Spanish wine, and celebrated over the whole kingdom as Bristol milk. This luxury wassupported by a thriving trade with the North American plantations andwith the West Indies. The passion for colonial traffic was so strongthat there was scarcely a small shopkeeper in Bristol who had not aventure on board of some ship bound for Virginia or the Antilles. Someof these ventures indeed were not of the most honourable kind. Therewas, in the Transatlantic possessions of the crown, a great demand forlabour; and this demand was partly supplied by a system of crimping andkidnapping at the principal English seaports. Nowhere was this systemin such active and extensive operation as at Bristol. Even the firstmagistrates of that city were not ashamed to enrich themselves by soodious a commerce. The number of houses appears, from the returns of thehearth money, to have been in the year 1685, just five thousand threehundred. We can hardly suppose the number of persons in a house to havebeen greater than in the city of London; and in the city of London welearn from the best authority that there were then fifty-five personsto ten houses. The population of Bristol must therefore have been abouttwenty-nine thousand souls. [90]

Norwich was the capital of a large and fruitful province. It was theresidence of a Bishop and of a Chapter. It was the chief seat of thechief manufacture of the realm. Some men distinguished by learning andscience had recently dwelt there and no place in the kingdom, except thecapital and the Universities, had more attractions for the curious. Thelibrary, the museum, the aviary, and the botanical garden of Sir ThomasBrowne, were thought by Fellows of the Royal Society well worthy of along pilgrimage. Norwich had also a court in miniature. In the heartof the city stood an old palace of the Dukes of Norfolk, said to be thelargest town house in the kingdom out of London. In this mansion, towhich were annexed a tennis court, a bowling green, and a wildernessstretching along the banks of the Wansum, the noble family ofHoward frequently resided, and kept a state resembling that of pettysovereigns. Drink was served to guests in goblets of pure gold. The verytongs and shovels were of silver. Pictures by Italian masters adornedthe walls. The cabinets were filled with a fine collection of gemspurchased by that Earl of Arundel whose marbles are now among theornaments of Oxford. Here, in the year 1671, Charles and his court weresumptuously entertained. Here, too, all comers were annually welcomed, from Christmas to Twelfth Night. Ale flowed in oceans for the populace. Three coaches, one of which had been built at a cost of five hundredpounds to contain fourteen persons, were sent every afternoon roundthe city to bring ladies to the festivities; and the dances were alwaysfollowed by a luxurious banquet. When the Duke of Norfolk came toNorwich, he was greeted like a King returning to his capital. The bellsof the Cathedral and of St. Peter Mancroft were rung: the guns ofthe castle were fired; and the Mayor and Aldermen waited on theirillustrious fellow citizen with complimentary addresses. In the year1693 the population of Norwich was found by actual enumeration, to bebetween twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand souls. [91]

Far below Norwich, but still high in dignity and importance, were someother ancient capitals of shires. In that age it was seldom that acountry gentleman went up with his family to London. The county town washis metropolis. He sometimes made it his residence during part of theyear. At all events, he was often attracted thither by business andpleasure, by assizes, quarter sessions, elections, musters of militia, festivals, and races. There were the halls where the judges, robedin scarlet and escorted by javelins and trumpets, opened the King'scommission twice a year. There were the markets at which the corn, thecattle, the wool, and the hops of the surrounding country were exposedto sale. There were the great fairs to which merchants came clown fromLondon, and where the rural dealer laid in his annual stores of sugar, stationery, cutlery, and muslin. There were the shops at which the bestfamilies of the neighbourhood bought grocery and millinery. Some ofthese places derived dignity from interesting historical recollections, from cathedrals decorated by all the art and magnificence of the middleages, from palaces where a long succession of prelates had dwelt, fromcloses surrounded by the venerable abodes of deans and canons, and fromcastles which had in the old time repelled the Nevilles or de Veres, andwhich bore more recent traces of the vengeance of Rupert or of Cromwell. 

Conspicuous amongst these interesting cities were York, the capitalof the north, and Exeter, the capital of the west. Neither can havecontained much more than ten thousand inhabitants. Worcester, the queenof the cider land had but eight thousand; Nottingham probably as many. Gloucester, renowned for that resolute defence which had been fatal toCharles the First, had certainly between four and five thousand; Derbynot quite four thousand. Shrewsbury was the chief place of an extensiveand 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 toShrewsbury 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 walksalong the side of the Severn. The inhabitants were about seven thousand. [92]

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 tothatch, and brick to timber. The pavements and the lamps, the displayof wealth in the principal shops, and the luxurious neatness of thedwellings occupied by the gentry would, in the seventeenth century, haveseemed miraculous. Yet is the relative importance of the old capitals ofcounties by no means what it was. Younger towns, towns which arerarely or never mentioned in our early history and which sent norepresentatives to our early Parliaments, have, within the memoryof persons still living, grown to a greatness which this generationcontemplates with wonder and pride, not unaccompanied by awe andanxiety. 

The most eminent of these towns were indeed known in the seventeenthcentury as respectable seats of industry. Nay, their rapid progressand their vast opulence were then sometimes described in language whichseems ludicrous to a man who has seen their present grandeur. One of themost populous and prosperous among them was Manchester. Manchesterhad been required by the Protector to send one representative to hisParliament, and was mentioned by writers of the time of Charles theSecond as a busy and opulent place. Cotton had, during half a century, been brought thither from Cyprus and Smyrna; but the manufacture was inits infancy. Whitney had not yet taught how the raw material might befurnished in quantities almost fabulous. Arkwright had not yet taughthow 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 quantity which would now hardlysupply the demand of forty-eight hours. That wonderful emporium, whichin population and wealth far surpassed capitals so much renowned asBerlin, Madrid, and Lisbon, was then a mean and ill built market towncontaining under six thousand people. It then had not a single press. Itnow supports a hundred printing establishments. It then had not a singlecoach. It now Supports twenty coach makers. [93]

Leeds was already the chief seat of the woollen manufactures ofYorkshire; but the elderly inhabitants could still remember the timewhen the first brick house, then and long after called the Red House, was built. They boasted loudly of their increasing wealth, and of theimmense 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 ofone busy market day. The rising importance of Leeds had attractedthe notice of successive governments. Charles the First had grantedmunicipal privileges to the town. Oliver had invited it to send onemember to the House of Commons. But from the returns of the hearth moneyit seems certain that the whole population of the borough, an extensivedistrict which contains many hamlets, did not, in the reign of Charlesthe Second, exceed seven thousand souls. In 1841 there were more than ahundred and fifty thousand. [94]

About a day's journey south of Leeds, on the verge of a wild moorlandtract, lay an ancient manor, now rich with cultivation, then barren andunenclosed, which was known by the name of Hallamshire. Iron aboundedthere; and, from a very early period, the rude whittles fabricated therehad been sold all over the kingdom. They had indeed been mentioned byGeoffrey Chaucer in one of his Canterbury Tales. But the manufactureappears to have made little progress during the three centuries whichfollowed his time. This languor may perhaps be explained by the factthat the trade was, during almost the whole of this long period, subjectto such regulations as the lord and his court feet thought fit toimpose. The more delicate kinds of cutlery were either made in thecapital or brought from the Continent. Indeed it was not till the reignof George the First that the English surgeons ceased to import fromFrance those exquisitely fine blades which are required for operationson the human frame. Most of the Hallamshire forges were collected in amarket town which had sprung up near the castle of the proprietor, andwhich, in the reign of James the First, had been a singularly miserableplace, containing about two thousand inhabitants, of whom a third werehalf starved and half naked beggars. It seems certain from the parochialregisters that the population did not amount to four thousand at theend of the reign of Charles the Second. The effects of a species of toilsingularly unfavourable to the health and vigour of the human frame wereat once discerned by every traveller. A large proportion of thepeople had distorted limbs. This is that Sheffield which now, with itsdependencies, contains a hundred and twenty thousand souls, and whichsends forth its admirable knives, razors, and lancets to the farthestends of the world. [95]

Birmingham had not been thought of sufficient importance to return amember to Oliver's Parliament. Yet the manufacturers of Birmingham werealready a busy and thriving race. They boasted that their hardware washighly esteemed, not indeed as now, at Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara andTimbuctoo, but in London, and even as far off as Ireland. They hadacquired a less honourable renown as coiners of bad money. In allusionto their spurious groats, some Tory wit had fixed on demagogues, who hypocritically affected zeal against Popery, the nickname ofBirminghams. Yet in 1685 the population, which is now little lessthan two hundred thousand, did not amount to four thousand. Birminghambuttons were just beginning to be known: of Birmingham guns nobody hadyet heard; and the place whence, two generations later, the magnificenteditions of Baskerville went forth to astonish all the librariansof Europe, did not contain a single regular shop where a Bible or analmanack could be bought. On Market days a bookseller named MichaelJohnson, the father of the great Samuel Johnson, came over fromLichfield, and opened stall during a few hours. This supply ofliterature was long found equal to the demand. [96]

These four chief seats of our great manufactures deserve especialmention. It would be tedious to enumerate all the populous and opulenthives of industry which, a hundred and fifty years ago, were hamletswithout parish churches, or desolate moors, inhabited only by grouse andwild deer. Nor has the change been less signal in those outlets by whichthe products of the English looms and forges are poured forth overthe whole world. At present Liverpool contains more than three hundredthousand inhabitants. The shipping registered at her port amounts tobetween four and five hundred thousand tons. Into her custom house hasbeen repeatedly paid in one year a sum more than thrice as great asthe whole income of the English crown in 1685. The receipts of her postoffice, even since the great reduction of the duty, exceed the sumwhich the postage of the whole kingdom yielded to the Duke of York. Herendless docks, quays, and warehouses are among the wonders of the world. Yet even those docks and quays and warehouses seem hardly to suffice forthe gigantic trade of the Mersey; and already a rival city is growingfast on the opposite shore. In the days of Charles the Second Liverpoolwas described as a rising town which had recently made great advances, and which maintained a profitable intercourse with Ireland and with thesugar colonies. The customs had multiplied eight-fold within sixteenyears, and amounted to what was then considered as the immense sum offifteen thousand pounds annually. But the population can hardly haveexceeded four thousand: the shipping 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 estimatedat more than two hundred. [97]

Such has been the progress of those towns where wealth is created andaccumulated. Not less rapid has been the progress of towns of avery different kind, towns in which wealth, created and accumulatedelsewhere, is expended for purposes of health and recreation. Some ofthe most remarkable of these gay places have sprung into existence sincethe time of the Stuarts. Cheltenham is now a greater city than any whichthe 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 parishlying under the Cotswold Hills, and affording good ground both fortillage and pasture. Corn grew and cattle browsed over the space nowcovered by that long succession of streets and villas. [98] Brighton wasdescribed as a place which had once been thriving, which had possessedmany small fishing barks, and which had, when at the height ofprosperity, contained above two thousand inhabitants, but which wassinking fast into decay. The sea was gradually gaining on the buildings, which at length almost entirely disappeared. Ninety years ago the ruinsof an old fort were to be seen lying among the pebbles and seaweedon the beach; and ancient men could still point out the traces offoundations on a spot where a street of more than a hundred huts hadbeen swallowed up by the waves. So desolate was the place after thiscalamity, that the vicarage was thought scarcely worth having. A fewpoor fishermen, however, still continued to dry their nets on thosecliffs, on which now a town, more than twice as large and populousas the Bristol of the Stuarts, presents, mile after mile, its gay andfantastic front to the sea. [99]

England, however, was not, in the seventeenth century, destitute ofwatering places. The gentry of Derbyshire and of the neighbouringcounties repaired to Buxton, where they were lodged in low rooms underbare rafters, and regaled with oatcake, and with a viand which the hostscalled mutton, but which the guests suspected to be dog. A single goodhouse stood near the spring. [100] Tunbridge Wells, lying within aday's journey of the capital, and in one of the richest and most highlycivilised parts of the kingdom, had much greater attractions. At presentwe see there a town which would, a hundred and sixty years ago, haveranked, in population, fourth or fifth among the towns of England. Thebrilliancy of the shops and the luxury of the private dwellings farsurpasses anything that England could then show. When the court, soonafter the Restoration, visited Tunbridge Wells, there was no town:but, within a mile of the spring, rustic cottages, somewhat cleaner andneater than the ordinary cottages of that time, were scattered over theheath. Some of these cabins were movable and were carried on sledgesfrom 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 summerto breathe fresh air, and to catch a glimpse of rural life. During theseason a kind of fair was daily held near the fountain. The wives anddaughters of the Kentish farmers came from the neighbouring villageswith cream, cherries, wheatears, and quails. To chaffer with them, to flirt with them, to praise their straw hats and tight heels, was arefreshing pastime to voluptuaries sick of the airs of actresses andmaids of honour. Milliners, toymen, and jewellers came down from London, and opened a bazaar under the trees. In one booth the politician mightfind his coffee and the London Gazette; in another were gamblers playingdeep at basset; and, on fine evenings, the fiddles were in attendanceand there were morris dances on the elastic turf of the bowling green. In 1685 a subscription had just been raised among those who frequentedthe wells for building a church, which the Tories, who then domineeredeverywhere, insisted on dedicating to Saint Charles the Martyr. [101]

But at the head of the English watering places, without a rival. WasBath. The springs of that city had been renowned from the days of theRomans. It had been, during many centuries, the seat of a Bishop. Thesick repaired thither from every part of the realm. The King sometimesheld his court there. Nevertheless, Bath was then a maze of only four orfive hundred houses, crowded within an old wall in the vicinity of theAvon. Pictures of what were considered as the finest of those houses arestill extant, and greatly resemble the lowest rag shops and pothouses ofRatcliffe Highway. Travellers indeed complained loudly of the narrownessand meanness of the streets. That beautiful city which charms even eyesfamiliar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio, and which thegenius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane Austen, has made classic ground, had not begun to exist. Milsom Street itselfwas an open field lying far beyond the walls; and hedgerows intersectedthe space which is now covered by the Crescent and the Circus. The poorpatients to whom the waters had been recommended lay on straw in a placewhich, to use the language of a contemporary physician, was a covertrather than a lodging. As to the comforts and luxuries which were to befound in the interior of the houses of Bath by the fashionable visitorswho resorted thither in search of health or amusement, we possessinformation more complete and minute than can generally be obtainedon such subjects. A writer who published an account of that city aboutsixty years after the Revolution has accurately described the changeswhich had taken place within his own recollection. He assures us that, in his younger days, the gentlemen who visited the springs slept inrooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupiedby footmen. The floors of the dining rooms were uncarpeted, and werecoloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer, in order to hidethe dirt. Not a wainscot was painted. Not a hearth or a chimneypiecewas of marble. A slab of common free-stone and fire irons which had costfrom three to four shillings were thought sufficient for any fireplace. The best-apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and werefurnished with rushbottomed chairs. Readers who take an interest in theprogress of civilisation and of the useful arts will be grateful to thehumble topographer who has recorded these facts, and will perhaps wishthat historians of far higher pretensions had sometimes spared a fewpages from military evolutions and political intrigues, for the purposeof letting us know how the parlours and bedchambers of our ancestorslooked. [102]

The position of London, relatively to the other towns of the empire, was, in the time of Charles the Second, far higher than at present. Forat present the population of London is little more than six times thepopulation of Manchester or of Liverpool. In the days of Charles theSecond the population of London was more than seventeen times thepopulation of Bristol or of Norwich. It may be doubted whether any otherinstance can be mentioned of a great kingdom in which the first citywas more than seventeen times as large as the second. There is reason tobelieve that, in 1685, London had been, during about half a century, themost populous capital in Europe. The inhabitants, who are now at leastnineteen hundred thousand, were then probably little more shall half amillion. [103] London had in the world only one commercial rival, nowlong ago outstripped, the mighty and opulent Amsterdam. English writersboasted of the forest of masts and yardarms which covered the river fromthe Bridge to the Tower, and of the stupendous sums which were collectedat the Custom House in Thames Street. There is, indeed, no doubt thatthe trade of the metropolis then bore a far greater proportion than atpresent to the whole trade of the country; yet to our generation thehonest vaunting of our ancestors must appear almost ludicrous. Theshipping which they thought incredibly great appears not to haveexceeded seventy thousand tons. This was, indeed, then more than a thirdof the whole tonnage of the kingdom, but is now less than a fourth ofthe tonnage of Newcastle, and is nearly equalled by the tonnage of thesteam vessels of the Thames. 

The customs of London amounted, in 1685, to about three hundred andthirty thousand pounds a year. In our time the net duty paid annually, at the same place, exceeds ten millions. [104]

Whoever examines the maps of London which were published towards theclose of the reign of Charles the Second will see that only the nucleusof the present capital then existed. The town did not, as now, fadeby imperceptible degrees into the country. No long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs and laburnums, extended from the great centre ofwealth and civilisation almost to the boundaries of Middlesex and farinto the heart of Kent and Surrey. In the east, no part of the immenseline of warehouses and artificial lakes which now stretches from theTower to Blackwall had even been projected. On the west, scarcely oneof those stately piles of building which are inhabited by the noble andwealthy was in existence; and Chelsea, which is now peopled by more thanforty thousand human beings, was a quiet country village with abouta thousand inhabitants. [105] On the north, cattle fed, and sportsmenwandered 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 boroughsof Finsbury and of the Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude;and poets loved to contrast its silence and repose with the din andturmoil of the monster London. [106] On the south the capital isnow connected with its suburb by several bridges, not inferior inmagnificence and solidity to the noblest works of the Caesars. In 1685, a single line of irregular arches, overhung by piles of mean and crazyhouses, and garnished, after a fashion worthy of the naked barbarians ofDahomy, with scores of mouldering heads, impeded the navigation of theriver. 

Of the metropolis, the City, properly so called, was the most importantdivision. At the time of the Restoration it had been built, for the mostpart, of wood and plaster; the few bricks that were used were ill baked;the booths where goods were exposed to sale projected far into thestreets, and were overhung by the upper stories. A few specimens of thisarchitecture may still be seen in those districts which were not reachedby the great fire. That fire had, in a few days, covered a space oflittle less shall a square mile with the ruins of eighty-nine churchesand of thirteen thousand houses. But the City had risen again with acelerity which had excited the admiration of neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, the old lines of the streets had been to a great extentpreserved; and those lines, originally traced in an age when evenprincesses performed their journeys on horseback, were often too narrowto allow wheeled carriages to pass each other with ease, and weretherefore ill adapted for the residence of wealthy persons in an agewhen a coach and six was a fashionable luxury. The style of buildingwas, however, far superior to that of the City which had perished. Theordinary material was brick, of much better quality than had formerlybeen used. On the sites of the ancient parish churches had arisen amultitude of new domes, towers, and spires which bore the mark of thefertile genius of Wren. In every place save one the traces of the greatdevastation had been completely effaced. But the crowds of workmen, thescaffolds, and the masses of hewn stone were still to be seen where thenoblest of Protestant temples was slowly rising on the ruins of the OldCathedral of Saint Paul. [107]

The whole character of the City has, since that time, undergone acomplete change. At present the bankers, the merchants, and the chiefshopkeepers repair thither on six mornings of every week for thetransaction of business; but they reside in other quarters of themetropolis, or at suburban country seats surrounded by shrubberiesand flower gardens. This revolution in private habits has produceda political revolution of no small importance. The City is no longerregarded by the wealthiest traders with that attachment which every mannaturally feels for his home. It is no longer associated in their mindswith domestic affections and endearments. The fireside, the nursery, the social table, the quiet bed are not there. Lombard Street andThreadneedle Street are merely places where men toil and accumulate. They go elsewhere to enjoy and to expend. On a Sunday, or in an eveningafter the hours of business, some courts and alleys, which a few hoursbefore had been alive with hurrying feet and anxious faces, are assilent as the glades of a forest. The chiefs of the mercantile interestare no longer citizens. They avoid, they almost contemn, municipalhonours and duties. Those honours and duties are abandoned to men who, though useful and highly respectable, seldom belong to the princelycommercial houses of which the names are renowned throughout the world. 

In the seventeenth century the City was the merchant's residence. Thosemansions of the great old burghers which still exist have been turnedinto counting houses and warehouses: but it is evident that they wereoriginally not inferior in magnificence to the dwellings which were theninhabited by the nobility. They sometimes stand in retired and gloomycourts, and are accessible only by inconvenient passages: but theirdimensions are ample, and their aspect stately. The entrances aredecorated with richly carved pillars and canopies. The staircases andlanding places are not wanting in grandeur. The floors are sometimes ofwood tessellated after the fashion of France. The palace of Sir RobertClayton, in the Old Jewry, contained a superb banqueting room wainscotedwith cedar, and adorned with battles of gods and giants in fresco. [108]Sir Dudley North expended four thousand pounds, a sum which would thenhave been important to a Duke, on the rich furniture of his receptionrooms in Basinghall Street. [109] In such abodes, under the lastStuarts, the heads of the great firms lived splendidly and hospitably. To their dwelling place they were bound by the strongest ties ofinterest and affection. There they had passed their youth, had madetheir friendships, had courted their wives had seen their children growup, had laid the remains of their parents in the earth, and expectedthat their own remains would be laid. That intense patriotism which ispeculiar to the members of societies congregated within a narrow spacewas, in such circumstances, strongly developed. London was, to theLondoner, what Athens was to the Athenian of the age of Pericles, whatFlorence was to the Florentine of the fifteenth century. The citizenwas proud of the grandeur of his city, punctilious about her claims torespect, ambitious of her offices, and zealous for her franchises. 

At the close of the reign of Charles the Second the pride of theLondoners was smarting from a cruel mortification. The old charter hadbeen taken away; and the magistracy had been remodelled. All the civicfunctionaries were Tories: and the Whigs, though in numbers and inwealth superior to their opponents, found themselves excluded from everylocal dignity. Nevertheless, the external splendour of the municipalgovernment was not diminished, nay, was rather increased by this change. For, under the administration of some Puritans who had lately bornerule, the ancient fame of the City for good cheer had declined: butunder the new magistrates, who belonged to a more festive party, andat whose boards guests of rank and fashion from beyond Temple Bar wereoften seen, the Guildhall and the halls of the great companies wereenlivened by many sumptuous banquets. During these repasts, odescomposed 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 andthe shouting loud. An observant Tory, who had often shared in theserevels, has remarked that the practice of huzzaing after drinkinghealths dates from this joyous period. [110]

The magnificence displayed by the first civic magistrate was almostregal. The gilded coach, indeed, which is now annually admired by thecrowd, was not yet a part of his state. On great occasions he appearedon horseback, attended by a long cavalcade inferior in magnificenceonly to that which, before a coronation, escorted the sovereign from theTower to Westminster. The Lord Mayor was never seen in public withouthis rich robe, his hood of black velvet, his gold chain, his jewel, anda great attendance of harbingers and guards. [111] Nor did the worldfind anything ludicrous in the pomp which constantly surrounded him. Forit was not more than became the place which, as wielding the strengthand representing the dignity of the City of London, he was entitled tooccupy in the State. That City, being then not only without equal in thecountry, but without second, had, during five and forty years, exercisedalmost as great an influence on the politics of England as Paris has, in our own time, exercised on the politics of France. In intelligenceLondon was greatly in advance of every other part of the kingdom. Agovernment, supported and trusted by London, could in a day obtain suchpecuniary means as it would have taken months to collect from the restof the island. Nor were the military resources of the capital to bedespised. The power which the Lord Lieutenants exercised in otherparts of the kingdom was in London entrusted to a Commission of eminentcitizens. Under the order of this Commission were twelve regiments offoot and two regiments of horse. An army of drapers' apprentices andjourneymen tailors, with common councilmen for captains and aldermen forcolonels, might not indeed have been able to stand its ground againstregular troops; but there were then very few regular troops in thekingdom. A town, therefore, which could send forth, at an hour's notice, thousands of men, abounding in natural courage, provided with tolerableweapons, and not altogether untinctured with martial discipline, couldnot but be a valuable ally and a formidable enemy. It was not forgottenthat Hampden and Pym had been protected from lawless tyranny by theLondon trainbands; that, in the great crisis of the civil war, theLondon trainbands had marched to raise the siege of Gloucester; or that, in the movement against the military tyrants which followed the downfallof Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal part. Intruth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the hostility of theCity, Charles the First would never have been vanquished, and that, without the help of the City, Charles the Second could scarcely havebeen restored. 

These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of thatattraction which had, during a long course of years, gradually drawn thearistocracy westward, a few men of high rank had continued, till avery recent period, to dwell in the vicinity of the Exchange and ofthe Guildhall. Shaftesbury and Buckingham, while engaged in bitter andunscrupulous opposition to the government, had thought that they couldnowhere carry on their intrigues so conveniently or so securely as underthe protection of the City magistrates and the City militia. Shaftesburyhad therefore lived in Aldersgate Street, at a house which may stillbe easily known by pilasters and wreaths, the graceful work of Inigo. Buckingham had ordered his mansion near Charing Cross, once the abodeof the Archbishops of York, to be pulled down; and, while streets andalleys which are still named after him were rising on that site, choseto reside in Dowgate. [112]

These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble families ofEngland had long migrated beyond the walls. The district where most oftheir town houses stood lies between the city and the regions whichare now considered as fashionable. A few great men still retained theirhereditary hotels in the Strand. The stately dwellings on the south andwest of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Piazza of Covent Garden, SouthamptonSquare, which is now called Bloomsbury Square, and King's Square in SohoFields, which is now called Soho Square, were among the favourite spots. Foreign princes were carried to see Bloomsbury Square, as one of thewonders of England. [113] Soho Square, which had just been built, was toour ancestors a subject of pride with which their posterity will hardlysympathise. Monmouth Square had been the name while the fortunes ofthe Duke of Monmouth flourished; and on the southern side towered hismansion. 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. [114] Every trace of this magnificence has long disappeared; and noaristocratical mansion is to be found in that once aristocraticalquarter. A little way north from Holborn, and on the verge of thepastures and corn-fields, rose two celebrated palaces, each withan ample garden. One of them, then called Southampton House, andsubsequently Bedford House, was removed about fifty years ago to makeroom for a new city, which now covers with its squares, streets, andchurches, a vast area, renowned in the seventeenth century for peachesand snipes. The other, Montague House, celebrated for its frescoes andfurniture, was, a few months after the death of Charles the Second, burned to the ground, and was speedily succeeded by a more magnificentMontague House, which, having been long the repository of such variousand precious treasures of art, science, and learning as were scarcelyever before assembled under a single roof, has now given place to anedifice more magnificent still. [115]

Nearer to the Court, on a space called St. James's Fields, had justbeen built St. James's Square and Jermyn Street. St. James's Church hadrecently been opened for the accommodation of the inhabitants of thisnew quarter. [116] Golden Square, which was in the next generationinhabited by lords and ministers of state, had not yet been begun. Indeed the only dwellings to be seen on the north of Piccadilly werethree or four isolated and almost rural mansions, of which the mostcelebrated was the costly pile erected by CIarendon, and nicknamedDunkirk House. It had been purchased after its founder's downfall bythe Duke of Albemarle. The Clarendon Hotel and Albemarle Street stillpreserve the memory of the site. 

He who then rambled to what is now the gayest and most crowded partof Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and, was sometimes sofortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock. [117] On the north the Oxfordroad ran between hedges. Three or four hundred yards to the south werethe garden walls of a few great houses which were considered as quiteout of town. On the west was a meadow renowned for a spring from which, long afterwards, Conduit Street was named. On the east was a field notto be passed without a shudder by any Londoner of that age. There, as ina 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 hadnightly shot corpses by scores. It was popularly believed that the earthwas deeply tainted with infection, and could not be disturbed withoutimminent risk to human life. No foundations were laid there till twogenerations had passed without any return of the pestilence, and tillthe ghastly spot had long been surrounded by buildings. [118]

We should greatly err if we were to suppose that any of the streets andsquares then bore the same aspect as at present. The great majority ofthe houses, indeed have, since that time, been wholly, or in great part, rebuilt. If the most fashionable parts of the capital could be placedbefore us such as they then were, we should be disgusted by theirsqualid appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere. 

In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to thedwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbagestalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of theCountess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham. [119]

The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields was an open space where the rabblecongregated every evening, within a few yards of Cardigan House andWinchester House, to hear mountebanks harangue, to see bears dance, andto set dogs at oxen. Rubbish was shot in every part of the area. Horseswere exercised there. The beggars were as noisy and importunate as inthe worst governed cities of the Continent. A Lincoln's Inn mumper wasa proverb. The whole fraternity knew the arms and liveries of everycharitably disposed grandee in the neighbourhood, and as soon as hislordship's coach and six appeared, came hopping and crawling in crowdsto 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 nearlykilled in the middle of the Square. Then at length palisades were setup, and a pleasant garden laid out. [120]

Saint James's Square was a receptacle for all the offal and cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster. At one time a cudgelplayer kept the ring there. At another time an impudent squatter settledhimself there, and built a shed for rubbish under the windows of thegilded saloons in which the first magnates of the realm, Norfolk, Ormond, Kent, and Pembroke, gave banquets and balls. It was not tillthese nuisances had lasted through a whole generation, and till much hadbeen written about them, that the inhabitants applied to Parliament forpermission to put up rails, and to plant trees. [121]

When such was the state of the region inhabited by the most luxuriousportion of society, we may easily believe that the great body of thepopulation suffered what would now be considered as insupportablegrievances. The pavement was detestable: all foreigners cried shameupon it. The drainage was so bad that in rainy weather the gutters soonbecame torrents. Several facetious poets have commemorated the furywith which these black rivulets roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate Hill, bearing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of animal and vegetable filth fromthe stalls of butchers and greengrocers. This flood was profusely thrownto right and left by coaches and carts. To keep as far from the carriageroad as possible was therefore the wish of every pedestrian. Themild and timid gave the wall. The bold and athletic took it. If tworoisterers met they cocked their hats in each other's faces, and pushedeach other about till the weaker was shoved towards the kennel. If hewas a mere bully he sneaked off, mattering that he should find a time. If he was pugnacious, the encounter probably ended in a duel behindMontague House. [122]

The houses were not numbered. There would indeed have been littleadvantage in numbering them; for of the coachmen, chairmen, porters, and errand boys of London, a very small proportion could read. It wasnecessary to use marks which the most ignorant could understand. Theshops were therefore distinguished by painted or sculptured signs, whichgave a gay and grotesque aspect to the streets. The walk from CharingCross to Whitechapel lay through an endless succession of Saracens'Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears, and Golden Lambs, which disappeared whenthey were no longer required for the direction of the common people. 

When the evening closed in, the difficulty and danger of walking aboutLondon became serious indeed. The garret windows were opened, and pailswere emptied, with little regard to those who were passing below. Falls, bruises and broken bones were of constant occurrence. For, till the lastyear of the reign of Charles the Second, most of the streets wereleft in profound darkness. Thieves and robbers plied their trade withimpunity: yet they were hardly so terrible to peaceable citizens asanother class of ruffians. It was a favourite amusement of dissoluteyoung gentlemen to swagger by night about the town, breaking windows, upsetting sedans, beating quiet men, and offering rude caressesto pretty women. Several dynasties of these tyrants had, since theRestoration, domineered over the streets. The Muns and Tityre Tus hadgiven place to the Hectors, and the Hectors had been recently succeededby the Scourers. At a later period arose the Nicker, the Hawcubite, andthe yet more dreaded name of Mohawk. [123] The machinery for keeping thepeace was utterly contemptible. There was an Act of Common Council whichprovided that more than a thousand watchmen should be constantly on thealert in the city, from sunset to sunrise, and that every inhabitantshould take his turn of duty. But this Act was negligently executed. Few of those who were summoned left their homes; and those few generallyfound it more agreeable to tipple in alehouses than to pace the streets. [124]

It ought to be noticed that, in the last year of the reign of Charlesthe Second, began a great change in the police of London, a change whichhas perhaps added as much to the happiness of the body of the people asrevolutions of much greater fame. An ingenious projector, named EdwardHeming, obtained letters patent conveying to him, for a term of years, the exclusive right of lighting up London. He undertook, for a moderateconsideration, to place a light before every tenth door, on moonlessnights, from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and from six to twelve of theclock. Those who now see the capital all the year round, from dusk todawn, blazing with a splendour beside which the illuminations for LaHogue and Blenheim would have looked pale, may perhaps smile to think ofHeming's lanterns, which glimmered feebly before one house in ten duringa small part of one night in three. But such was not the feeling of hiscontemporaries. His scheme was enthusiastically applauded, and furiouslyattacked. The friends of improvement extolled him as the greatest ofall the benefactors of his city. What, they asked, were the boastedinventions of Archimedes, when compared with the achievement of the manwho had turned the nocturnal shades into noon-day? In spite of theseeloquent eulogies the cause of darkness was not left undefended. Therewere fools in that age who opposed the introduction of what was calledthe new light as strenuously as fools in our age have opposed theintroduction of vaccination and railroads, as strenuously as thefools of an age anterior to the dawn of history doubtless opposed theintroduction of the plough and of alphabetical writing. Many years afterthe date of Heming's patent there were extensive districts in which nolamp was seen. [125]

We may easily imagine what, in such times, must have been the state ofthe quarters of London which were peopled by the outcasts of society. Among those quarters one had attained a scandalous preeminence. On theconfines of the City and the Temple had been founded, in the thirteenthcentury, a House of Carmelite Friars, distinguished by their whitehoods. The precinct of this house had, before the Reformation, been asanctuary for criminals, and still retained the privilege of protectingdebtors from arrest. Insolvents consequently were to be found in everydwelling, from cellar to garret. Of these a large proportion wereknaves and libertines, and were followed to their asylum by women moreabandoned than themselves. The civil power was unable to keep order in adistrict swarming with such inhabitants; and thus Whitefriars became thefavourite resort of all who wished to be emancipated from the restraintsof the law. Though the immunities legally belonging to the placeextended only to cases of debt, cheats, false witnesses, forgers, andhighwaymen found refuge there. For amidst a rabble so desperate nopeace officer's life was in safety. At the cry of "Rescue, " bullieswith swords and cudgels, and termagant hags with spits and broomsticks, poured forth by hundreds; and the intruder was fortunate if he escapedback into Fleet Street, hustled, stripped, and pumped upon. Even thewarrant of the Chief Justice of England could not be executed withoutthe help of a company of musketeers. Such relics of the barbarism of thedarkest ages were to be found within a short walk of the chambers whereSomers was studying history and law, of the chapel where Tillotson waspreaching, of the coffee house where Dryden was passing judgment onpoems and plays, and of the hall where the Royal Society was examiningthe astronomical system of Isaac Newton. [126]

Each of the two cities which made up the capital of England had itsown centre of attraction. In the metropolis of commerce the point ofconvergence was the Exchange; in the metropolis of fashion the Palace. But the Palace did not retain influence so long as the Exchange. TheRevolution completely altered the relations between the Court and thehigher classes of society. It was by degrees discovered that the King, in his individual capacity, had very little to give; that coronetsand garters, bishoprics and embassies, lordships of the Treasury andtellerships of the Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal stud andbedchamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but by his advisers. Every ambitious and covetous man perceived that he would consult his owninterest far better by acquiring the dominion of a Cornish borough, andby rendering good service to the ministry during a critical session, than by becoming the companion, or even the minion, of his prince. Itwas therefore in the antechambers, not of George the First and ofGeorge the Second, but of Walpole and of Pelham, that the daily crowdof courtiers was to be found. It is also to be remarked that the sameRevolution, which made it impossible that our Kings should use thepatronage of the state merely for the purpose of gratifying theirpersonal predilections, gave us several Kings unfitted by theireducation and habits to be gracious and affable hosts. They had beenborn and bred on the Continent. They never felt themselves at home inour island. If they spoke our language, they spoke it inelegantly andwith effort. Our national character they never fully understood. Ournational manners they hardly attempted to acquire. The most importantpart of their duty they performed better than any ruler who precededthem: for they governed strictly according to law: but they could not bethe first gentlemen of the realm, the heads of polite society. If everthey unbent, it was in a very small circle where hardly an English facewas to be seen; and they were never so happy as when they could escapefor a summer to their native land. They had indeed their days ofreception for our nobility and gentry; but the reception was a merematter 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 dweltthere, was the focus of political intrigue and of fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the metropolis went on underhis roof. Whoever could make himself agreeable to the prince, or couldsecure the good offices of the mistress, might hope to rise in the worldwithout rendering any service to the government, without being evenknown 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 pleasurethat a briefless lawyer should be made a judge, or that a libertinebaronet should be made a peer, the gravest counsellors, after a littlemurmuring, submitted. [127] Interest, therefore, drew a constant pressof suitors to the gates of the palace; and those gates always stoodwide. The King kept open house every day, and all day long, for the goodsociety of London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentlemanhad any difficulty in making his way to the royal presence. The leveewas exactly what the word imports. Some men of quality came everymorning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his wigwas combed and his cravat tied, and to accompany him in his early walkthrough the Park. All persons who had been properly introduced might, without any special invitation, go to see him dine, sup, dance, andplay at hazard, 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 prisonerin the hands of the canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanderswhom His Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. Thisproved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his fatheror grandfather had practiced. It was not easy for the most austererepublican of the school of Marvel to resist the fascination of so muchgood humour and affability; and many a veteran Cavalier, in whose heartthe remembrance of unrequited sacrifices and services had been festeringduring twenty years, was compensated in one moment for wounds andsequestrations by his sovereign's kind nod, and "God bless you, my oldfriend!"

Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever there wasa rumour that anything important had happened or was about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence from the fountain head. The galleries presented the appearance of a modern club room at ananxious time. They were full of people enquiring whether the Dutch mailwas in, what tidings the express from France had brought, whether JohnSobiesky had beaten the Turks, whether the Doge of Genoa was reallyat Paris These were matters about which it was safe to talk aloud. Butthere were subjects concerning which information was asked and givenin whispers. Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to be aParliament? Was the Duke of York really going to Scotland? Had Monmouthreally been summoned from the Hague? Men tried to read the countenanceof every minister as he went through the throng to and from the royalcloset. All sorts of auguries were drawn from the tone in which HisMajesty spoke to the Lord President, or from the laugh with which HisMajesty honoured a jest of the Lord Privy Seal; and in a few hours thehopes and fears inspired by such slight indications had spread to allthe coffee houses from Saint James's to the Tower. [128]

The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It mightindeed at that time have been not improperly called a most importantpolitical institution. No Parliament had sat for years The municipalcouncil of the City had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the rest of the modernmachinery of agitation had not yet come into fashion. Nothing resemblingthe modern newspaper existed. In such circumstances the coffee houseswere the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolisvented itself. 

The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their favouritebeverage. The convenience of being able to make appointments in any partof the town, and of being able to pass evenings socially at a very smallcharge, was so great that the fashion spread fast. Every man of theupper or middle class went daily to his coffee house to learn the newsand to discuss it. Every coffee house had one or more orators to whoseeloquence the crowd listened with admiration, and who soon became, whatthe journalists of our time have been called, a fourth Estate of therealm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness the growth of thisnew power in the state. An attempt had been made, during Danby'sadministration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all partiesmissed their usual places of resort so much that there was an universaloutcry. The government did not venture, in opposition to a feeling sostrong and general, to enforce a regulation of which the legality mightwell be questioned. Since that time ten years had elapsed, and duringthose years the number and influence of the coffee houses had beenconstantly increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house wasthat which especially distinguished London from all other cities; thatthe coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who wished tofind a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived in Fleet Streetor Chancery Lane, but whether he frequented the Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody was excluded from these places who laid down his penny at thebar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of religious andpolitical opinion, had its own headquarters. There were houses nearSaint James's Park where fops congregated, their heads and shoulderscovered with black or flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which arenow 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'sornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the tasselwhich upheld his pantaloons. The conversation was in that dialect which, long after it had ceased to be spoken in fashionable circles, continued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington, to excite the mirth of theatres. [129]The atmosphere was like that of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any otherform than that of richly scented snuff was held in abomination. Ifany clown, ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, thesneers of the whole assembly and the short answers of the waiters soonconvinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor, indeed, wouldhe have had far to go. For, in general the coffee rooms reeked withtobacco like a guardroom: and strangers sometimes expressed theirsurprise that so many people should leave their own firesides to sitin the midst of eternal fog and stench. Nowhere was the smoking moreconstant than at Will's. That celebrated house, situated between CoventGarden and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk wasabout poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There wasa faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and theancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not to havebeen in rhyme. To another an envious poetaster demonstrated that VenicePreserved ought to have been hooted from the stage. Under no roof wasa greater variety of figures to be seen. There were Earls in stars andgarters, clergymen in cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish ladsfrom the Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coatsof frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John Drydensate. 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 hearhis opinion of Racine's last tragedy or of Bossu's treatise on epicpoetry, was thought a privilege. A pinch from his snuff box was anhonour sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusaist. There werecoffee houses where the first medical men might be consulted. DoctorJohn Radcliffe, who, in the year 1685, rose to the largest practice inLondon, came daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, fromhis house in Bow Street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons andapothecaries, at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee houseswhere no oath was heard, and where lankhaired men discussed election andreprobation through their noses; Jew coffee houses where darkeyed moneychangers from Venice and Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffeehouses where, as good Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over theircups, another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King. [130]

These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the character ofthe Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a different being from therustic Englishman. There was not then the intercourse which now existsbetween the two classes. Only very great men were in the habit ofdividing the year between town and country. Few esquires came to thecapital thrice in their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of allcitizens in easy circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fieldsand woods during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a ruralvillage, was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraalof Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshireor Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easilydistinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. Hisdress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed at the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters, and stood under thewaterspouts, marked him out as an excellent subject for the operationsof swindlers and barterers. Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackneycoachmen splashed him from head to foot. Thieves explored with perfectsecurity the huge pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stoodentranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sorefrom the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to himthe most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves onhim for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to SaintJames's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, hewas instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser of everything that nobodyelse would buy, of second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watchesthat would not go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, hebecame a mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggeryof Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion, and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of his booncompanions, found consolation for the vexatious and humiliations whichhe had undergone. There he was once more a great man, and saw nothingabove himself except when at the assizes he took his seat on the benchnear the Judge, or when at the muster of the militia he saluted the LordLieutenant. 

The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements ofsociety so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestorsfound in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the alphabetand the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridgedistance have done most for the civilisation of our species. Everyimprovement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally andintellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates theinterchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends toremove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together allthe branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century theinhabitants of London were, for almost every practical purpose, farther from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh, and farther fromEdinburgh than they now are from Vienna. 

The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true, quiteunacquainted with that principle which has, in our own time, produced anunprecedented revolution in human affairs, which has enabled navies toadvance in face of wind and tide, and brigades of troops, attended byall their baggage and artillery, to traverse kingdoms at a pace equal tothat of the fleetest race horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recentlyobserved the expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After manyexperiments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam engine, whichhe called a fire water work, and which he pronounced to be an admirableand most forcible instrument of propulsion. [131] But the Marquess wassuspected to be a madman, and known to be a Papist. His inventions, therefore found no favourable reception. His fire water work might, perhaps, furnish matter for conversation at a meeting of the RoyalSociety, but was not applied to any practical purpose. There were norailways, except a few made of timber, on which coals were carried fromthe mouths of the Northumbrian pits to the banks of the Tyne. [132]There was very little internal communication by water. A few attemptshad been made to deepen and embank the natural streams, but with slendersuccess. Hardly a single navigable canal had been even projected. TheEnglish of that day were in the habit of talking with mingled admirationand despair of the immense trench by which Lewis the Fourteenth hadmade a junction between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They littlethought that their country would, in the course of a few generations, be intersected, at the cost of private adventurers, by artificial riversmaking up more than four times the length of the Thames, the Severn, andthe Trent together. 

It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally passedfrom place to place; and those highways appear to have been far worsethan might have been expected from the degree of wealth and civilisationwhich the nation had even then attained. On the best lines ofcommunication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the wayoften such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, fromthe 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 betweenDoncaster and York. [133] Pepys and his wife, travelling in their owncoach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the course ofthe same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger ofhaving to pass the night on the plain. [134] It was only in fine weatherthat the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left; and only a narrowtrack of firm ground rose above the quagmire. [135] At such timesobstructions and quarrels were frequent, and the path was sometimesblocked up during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would breakthe way. It happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, untila team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm, totug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had toencounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in thehabit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded, inhis Diary, such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for ajourney to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara. On one occasionhe learned that the floods were out between Ware and London, thatpassengers had to swim for their lives, and that a higgler had perishedin the attempt to cross. In consequence of these tidings he turned outof the high road, and was conducted across some meadows, where it wasnecessary for him to ride to the saddle skirts in water. [136] In thecourse of another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by aninundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford fourdays, on account of the state of the roads, and then ventured to proceedonly because fourteen members of the House of Commons, who were goingup in a body to Parliament with guides and numerous attendants, took himinto their company. [137] On the roads of Derbyshire, travellers were inconstant fear for their necks, and were frequently compelled to alightand lead their beasts. [138] The great route through Wales to Holyheadwas in such a state that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was fivehours in travelling fourteen miles, from Saint Asaph to Conway. BetweenConway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part of the way; andhis 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 taken to pieces at Conway, and borne, on the shoulders ofstout Welsh peasants, to the Menai Straits. [139] In some parts of Kentand Sussex, none but the strongest horses could, in winter, get throughthe bog, in which, at every step, they sank deep. The markets were ofteninaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits of theearth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in anotherplace, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far short of thedemand. The wheeled carriages were, in this district, generally pulledby oxen. [140] When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansionof Petworth in wet weather, he was six hours in going nine miles; and itwas necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of hiscoach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinueseveral were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has beenpreserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains that, duringfourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach wasoverturned or stuck fast in the mud. [141]

One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been thedefective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair thehighways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced togive their gratuitous labour six days in the year. If this was notsufficient, hired labour was employed, and the expense was met by aparochial rate. That a route connecting two great towns, which have alarge and thriving trade with each other, should be maintained at thecost of the rural population scattered between them is obviously unjust;and this injustice was peculiarly glaring in the case of the great Northroad, which traversed very poor and thinly inhabited districts, andjoined very rich and populous districts. Indeed it was not in thepower of the parishes of Huntingdonshire to mend a high-way worn by theconstant traffic between the West Riding of Yorkshire and London. Soonafter the Restoration this grievance attracted the notice of Parliament;and an act, the first of our many turnpike acts, was passed imposinga small toll on travellers and goods, for the purpose of keeping someparts of this important line of communication in good repair. [142] Thisinnovation, however, excited many murmurs; and the other great avenuesto the capital were long left under the old system. A change was atlength effected, but not without much difficulty. For unjust and absurdtaxation to which men are accustomed is often borne far more willinglythan the most reasonable impost which is new. It was not till manytoll bars had been violently pulled down, till the troops had in manydistricts been forced to act against the people, and till much bloodhad been shed, that a good system was introduced. [143] By slow degreesreason triumphed over prejudice; and our island is now crossed in everydirection by near thirty thousand miles of turnpike road. 

On the best highways heavy articles were, in the time of Charles theSecond, generally conveyed from place to place by stage waggons. In thestraw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of passengers, who could notafford to travel by coach or on horseback, and who were prevented byinfirmity, or by the weight of their luggage, from going on foot. Theexpense of transmitting heavy goods in this way was enormous. FromLondon to Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London toExeter twelve pounds a ton. [144] This was about fifteen pence a tonfor every mile, more by a third than was afterwards charged on turnpikeroads, and fifteen times what is now demanded by railway companies. The cost of conveyance amounted to a prohibitory tax on many usefularticles. Coal in particular was never seen except in the districtswhere it was produced, or in the districts to which it could be carriedby sea, and was indeed always known in the south of England by the nameof sea coal. 

On byroads, and generally throughout the country north of York and westof Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of packhorses. These strongand patient beasts, the breed of which is now extinct, were attended bya class of men who seem to have borne much resemblance to the Spanishmuleteers. A traveller of humble condition often found it convenient toperform a journey mounted on a packsaddle between two baskets, under thecare of these hardy guides. The expense of this mode of conveyance wassmall. But the caravan moved at a foot's pace; and in winter the coldwas often insupportable. [145]

The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, with at least fourhorses. Cotton, the facetious poet, attempted to go from London to thePeak with a single pair, but found at Saint Albans that the journeywould be insupportably tedious, and altered his Plan. [146] A coachand six is in our time never seen, except as part of some pageant. Thefrequent mention therefore of such equipages in old books is likely tomislead us. We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of avery disagreeable necessity. People, in the time of Charles the Second, travelled with six horses, because with a smaller number there was greatdanger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses alwayssufficient. Vanbrugh, in the succeeding generation, described with greathumour the way in which a country gentleman, newly chosen a member ofParliament, went up to London. On that occasion all the exertions of sixbeasts, two of which had been taken from the plough, could not save thefamily coach from being embedded in a quagmire. 

Public carriages had recently been much improved. During the years whichimmediately followed the Restoration, a diligence ran between London andOxford in two days. The passengers slept at Beaconsfield. At length, inthe spring of 1669, a great and daring innovation was attempted. It wasannounced that a vehicle, described as the Flying Coach, would performthe whole journey between sunrise and sunset. This spirited undertakingwas solemnly considered and sanctioned by the Heads of the University, and appears to have excited the same sort of interest which is excitedin our own time by the opening of a new railway. The Vicechancellor, bya notice affixed in all public places, prescribed the hour and placeof departure. The success of the experiment was complete. At six in themorning the carriage began to move from before the ancient front of AllSouls College; and at seven in the evening the adventurous gentlemenwho had run the first risk were safely deposited at their inn in London. [147] The emulation of the sister University was moved; and soon adiligence was set up which in one day carried passengers from Cambridgeto the capital. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second flyingcarriages ran thrice a week from London to the chief towns. But no stagecoach, indeed no stage waggon, appears to have proceeded further norththan York, or further west than Exeter. The ordinary day's journey ofa flying coach was about fifty miles in the summer; but in winter, whenthe ways were bad and the nights long, little more than thirty. TheChester coach, the York coach, and the Exeter coach generally reachedLondon in four days during the fine season, but at Christmas not tillthe sixth day. The passengers, six in number, were all seated in thecarriage. For accidents were so frequent that it would have beenmost perilous to mount the roof. The ordinary fare was about twopencehalfpenny a mile in summer, and somewhat more in winter. [148]

This mode of travelling, which by Englishmen of the present day would beregarded as insufferably slow, seemed to our ancestors wonderfully andindeed alarmingly rapid. In a work published a few months before thedeath of Charles the Second, the flying coaches are extolled as farsuperior to any similar vehicles ever known in the world. Their velocityis the subject of special commendation, and is triumphantly contrastedwith the sluggish pace of the continental posts. But with boasts likethese was mingled the sound of complaint and invective. The interests oflarge classes had been unfavourably affected by the establishment of thenew diligences; and, as usual, many persons were, from mere stupidityand obstinacy, disposed to clamour against the innovation, simplybecause it was an innovation. It was vehemently argued that this mode ofconveyance would be fatal to the breed of horses and to the noble art ofhorsemanship; that the Thames, which had long been an important nurseryof seamen, would cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London up toWindsor and down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spurriers would beruined by hundreds; that numerous inns, at which mounted travellers hadbeen in the habit of stopping, would be deserted, and would no longerpay any rent; that the new carriages were too hot in summer and too coldin winter; that the passengers were grievously annoyed by invalids andcrying children; that the coach sometimes reached the inn so late thatit was impossible to get supper, and sometimes started so early thatit was impossible to get breakfast. On these grounds it was gravelyrecommended that no public coach should be permitted to have more thanfour horses, to start oftener than once a week, or to go more thanthirty 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 oftravelling. Petitions embodying such opinions as these were presented tothe King in council from several companies of the City of London, fromseveral provincial towns, and from the justices of several counties. WeSmile at these things. It is not impossible that our descendants, when they read the history of the opposition offered by cupidity andprejudice to the improvements of the nineteenth century, may smile intheir turn. [149]

In spite of the attractions of the flying coaches, it was still usualfor men who enjoyed health and vigour, and who were not encumbered bymuch baggage, to perform long journeys on horseback. If the travellerwished to move expeditiously he rode post. Fresh saddle horses andguides were to be procured at convenient distances along all the greatlines of road. The charge was threepence a mile for each horse, andfourpence a stage for the guide. In this manner, when the ways weregood, it was possible to travel, for a considerable time, as rapidlyas by any conveyance known in England, till vehicles were propelled bysteam. There were as yet no post chaises; nor could those who rodein 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, adistance of about fifty-five miles through a level country; and this wasthought by his subjects a proof of great activity. Evelyn performed thesame journey in company with the Lord Treasurer Clifford. The coach wasdrawn by six horses, which were changed at Bishop Stortford and again atChesterford. The travellers reached Newmarket at night. Such a mode ofconveyance seems to have been considered as a rare luxury confined toprinces and ministers. [150]

Whatever might be the way in which a journey was performed, thetravellers, unless they were numerous and well armed, ran considerablerisk of being stopped and plundered. The mounted highwayman, a marauderknown to our generation only from books, was to be found on every mainroad. The waste tracts which lay on the great routes near London wereespecially haunted by plunderers of this class. Hounslow Heath, on theGreat Western Road, and Finchley Common, on the Great Northern Road, were perhaps the most celebrated of these spots. The Cambridge scholarstrembled when they approached Epping Forest, even in broad daylight. Seamen who had just been paid off at Chatham were often compelledto deliver their purses on Gadshill, celebrated near a hundred yearsearlier by the greatest of poets as the scene of the depredations ofFalstaff. The public authorities seem to have been often at a losshow to deal with the plunderers. At one time it was announced in theGazette, that several persons, who were strongly suspected of beinghighwaymen, but against whom there was not sufficient evidence, would beparaded at Newgate in riding dresses: their horses would also be shown;and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to inspect thissingular exhibition. On another occasion a pardon was publicly offeredto 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 afterappeared another proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the eyeof the government was upon them. Their criminal connivance, it wasaffirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with impunity. That thesesuspicions were not without foundation, is proved by the dying speechesof some penitent robbers of that age, who appear to have received fromthe innkeepers services much resembling those which Farquhar's Bonifacerendered to Gibbet. [151]

It was necessary to the success and even to the safety of the highwaymanthat he should be a bold and skilful rider, and that his manners andappearance should be such as suited the master of a fine horse. Hetherefore held an aristocratical position in the community of thieves, appeared at fashionable coffee houses and gaming houses, and betted withmen of quality on the race ground. [152] Sometimes, indeed, he was a manof good family and education. A romantic interest therefore attached, and perhaps still attaches, to the names of freebooters of this class. The vulgar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity and audacity, oftheir occasional acts of generosity and good nature, of their amours, of their miraculous escapes, of their desperate struggles, and of theirmanly bearing at the bar and in the cart. Thus it was related of WilliamNevison, the great robber of Yorkshire, that he levied a quarterlytribute on all the northern drovers, and, in return, not only sparedthem himself, but protected them against all other thieves; that hedemanded purses in the most courteous manner; that he gave largely tothe poor what he had taken from the rich; that his life was once sparedby the royal clemency, but that he again tempted his fate, and at lengthdied, in 1685, on the gallows of York. [153] It was related how ClaudeDuval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took to the road, becamecaptain of a formidable gang, and had the honour to be named first in aroyal proclamation against notorious offenders; how at the head of histroop he stopped a lady's coach, in which there was a booty of fourhundred pounds; how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fairowner to ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath;how his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; howhis dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men; how, atlength, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by wine; how damesof high rank visited him in prison, and with tears interceded for hislife; how the King would have granted a pardon, but for the interferenceof Judge Morton, the terror of highwaymen, who threatened to resign hisoffice unless the law were carried into full effect; and how, after theexecution, the corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, waxlights, black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, whohad intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb theobsequies. [154] In these anecdotes there is doubtless a large mixtureof fable; but they are not on that account unworthy of being recorded;for it is both an authentic and an important fact that such tales, whether false or true, were heard by our ancestors with eagerness andfaith. 

All the various dangers by which the traveller was beset were greatlyincreased by darkness. He was therefore commonly desirous of havingthe shelter of a roof during the night; and such shelter it was notdifficult to obtain. From a very early period the inns of Englandhad been renowned. Our first great poet had described the excellentaccommodation which they afforded to the pilgrims of the fourteenthcentury. Nine and twenty persons, with their horses, found room in thewide chambers and stables of the Tabard in Southwark. The food was ofthe best, and the wines such as drew the company on to drink largely. Two hundred years later, under the reign of Elizabeth, William Harrisongave a lively description of the plenty and comfort of the greathostelries. The Continent of Europe, he said, could show nothing likethem. There were some in which two or three hundred people, with theirhorses, could without difficulty be lodged and fed. The bedding, thetapestry, above all, the abundance of clean and fine linen was matterof wonder. Valuable plate was often set on the tables. Nay, there weresigns which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In the seventeenth centuryEngland abounded with excellent inns of every rank. The travellersometimes, in a small village, lighted on a public house such as Waltonhas described, where the brick floor was swept clean, where the wallswere stuck round with ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, andwhere a blazing fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts freshfrom the neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge. Atthe larger houses of entertainment were to be found beds hung with silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which was drunk in London. [155] The innkeepers too, it was said, were not like other innkeepers. On the Continent the landlord was the tyrant of those who crossed thethreshold. In England he was a servant. Never was an Englishman moreat home than when he took his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, whomight in their own mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often inthe habit of passing their evenings in the parlour of some neighbouringhouse of public entertainment. They seem to have thought that comfortand freedom could in no other place be enjoyed with equal perfection. This feeling continued during many generations to be a nationalpeculiarity. The liberty and jollity of inns long furnished matter toour novelists and dramatists. Johnson declared that a tavern chair wasthe throne of human felicity; and Shenstone gently complained that noprivate roof, however friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome asthat which was to be found at an inn. 

Many conveniences, which were unknown at Hampton Court and Whitehall inthe seventeenth century, are in all modern hotels. Yet on the whole itis certain that the improvement of our houses of public entertainmenthas by no means kept pace with the improvement of our roads and of ourconveyances. Nor is this strange; for it is evident that, all othercircumstances being supposed equal, the inns will be best where themeans of locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, theless important is it that there should be numerous agreeable restingplaces for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago a person whocame up to the capital from a remote county generally required, by theway, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for five or six nights. If hewere 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 bythe light of a single winter's day. At present, therefore, a travellerseldom interrupts his journey merely for the sake of rest andrefreshment. The consequence is that hundreds of excellent innshave fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses of thatdescription will be found, except at places where strangers are likelyto be detained by business or pleasure. 

The mode in which correspondence was carried on between distant placesmay excite the scorn of the present generation; yet it was such as mighthave moved the admiration and envy of the polished nations of antiquity, or of the contemporaries of Raleigh and Cecil. A rude and imperfectestablishment of posts for the conveyance of letters had been set up byCharles the First, and had been swept away by the civil war. Under theCommonwealth the design was resumed. At the Restoration the proceeds ofthe Post Office, after all expenses had been paid, were settled on theDuke of York. On most lines of road the mails went out and came in onlyon the alternate days. In Cornwall, in the fens of Lincolnshire, andamong the hills and lakes of Cumberland, letters were received only oncea week. During a royal progress a daily post was despatched from thecapital to the place where the court sojourned. There was also dailycommunication between London and the Downs; and the same privilege wassometimes extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath at the seasons when thoseplaces were crowded by the great. The bags were carried on horseback dayand night at the rate of about five miles an hour. [156]

The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the chargefor the transmission of letters. The Post Office alone was entitled tofurnish post horses; and, from the care with which this monopoly wasguarded, we may infer that it was found profitable. [157] If, indeed, atraveller had waited half an hour without being supplied he might hire ahorse wherever he could. 

To facilitate correspondence between one part of London and another wasnot originally one of the objects of the Post Office. But, in thereign of Charles the Second, an enterprising citizen of London, WilliamDockwray, set up, at great expense, a penny post, which deliveredletters and parcels six or eight times a day in the busy and crowdedstreets near the Exchange, and four times a day in the outskirts ofthe capital. This improvement was, as usual, strenuously resisted. Theporters complained that their interests were attacked, and tore down theplacards in which the scheme was announced to the public. The excitementcaused by Godfrey's death, and by the discovery of Coleman's papers, wasthen at the height. A cry was therefore raised that the penny post was aPopish contrivance. The great Doctor Oates, it was affirmed, had hinteda suspicion that the Jesuits were at the bottom of the scheme, and thatthe bags, if examined, would be found full of treason. [158] The utilityof the enterprise was, however, so great and obvious that all oppositionproved fruitless. As soon as it became clear that the speculation wouldbe lucrative, the Duke of York complained of it as an infraction of hismonopoly; and the courts of law decided in his favour. [159]

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 twentythousand pounds. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, thenet receipt was little short of fifty thousand pounds; and this was thenthought a stupendous sum. The gross receipt was about seventy thousandpounds. The charge for conveying a single letter was twopence for eightymiles, and threepence for a longer distance. The postage increased inproportion to the weight of the packet. [160] At present a single letteris carried to the extremity of Scotland or of Ireland for a penny; andthe monopoly of post horses has long ceased to exist. Yet the grossannual receipts of the department amount to more than eighteen hundredthousand pounds, and the net receipts to more than seven hundredthousand pounds. It is, therefore, scarcely possible to doubt that thenumber of letters now conveyed by mail is seventy times the number whichwas so conveyed at the time of the accession of James the Second. [161]

No part of the load which the old mails carried out was more importantthan the newsletters. In 1685 nothing like the London daily paper ofour time existed, or could exist. Neither the necessary capital northe necessary skill was to be found. Freedom too was wanting, a want asfatal as that of either capital or skill. The press was not indeed atthat moment under a general censorship. The licensing act, which hadbeen passed soon after the Restoration, had expired in 1679. Any personmight therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a sermon, or a poem, without the previous approbation of any officer; but the Judges wereunanimously of opinion that this liberty did not extend to Gazettes, andthat, by the common law of England, no man, not authorised by the crown, had a right to publish political news. [162] While the Whig party wasstill formidable, the government thought it expedient occasionally toconnive at the violation of this rule. During the great battle of theExclusion Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear, the ProtestantIntelligence, the Current Intelligence, the Domestic Intelligence, theTrue News, the London Mercury. [163] None of these was published oftenerthan twice a week. None exceeded in size a single small leaf. Thequantity of matter which one of them contained in a year was not morethan is often found in two numbers of the Times. After the defeat of theWhigs it was no longer necessary for the King to be sparing in theuse of that which all his Judges had pronounced to be his undoubtedprerogative. At the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered toappear without his allowance: and his allowance was given exclusivelyto the London Gazette. The London Gazette came out only on Mondays andThursdays. The contents generally were a royal proclamation, two orthree Tory addresses, notices of two or three promotions, an accountof a skirmish between the imperial troops and the Janissaries on theDanube, a description of a highwayman, an announcement of a grandcockfight between two persons of honour, and an advertisement offering areward for a strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size. Whatever was communicated respecting matters of the highest moment wascommunicated in the most meagre and formal style. Sometimes, indeed, when the government was disposed to gratify the public curiosityrespecting an important transaction, a broadside was put forth givingfuller details than could be found in the Gazette: but neither theGazette nor any supplementary broadside printed by authority evercontained any intelligence which it did not suit the purposes of theCourt to publish. The most important parliamentary debates, the mostimportant state trials recorded in our history, were passed over inprofound silence. [164] In the capital the coffee houses supplied insome measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, asthe Athenians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whetherthere was any news. There men might learn how brutally a Whig, had beentreated the day before in Westminster Hall, what horrible accounts theletters from Edinburgh gave of the torturing of Covenanters, how grosslythe Navy Board had cheated the crown in the Victualling of the fleet, and what grave charges the Lord Privy Seal had brought against theTreasury in the matter of the hearth money. But people who lived at adistance from the great theatre of political contention could bekept regularly informed of what was passing there only by means ofnewsletters. To prepare such letters became a calling in London, as itnow is among the natives of India. The newswriter rambled from coffeeroom to coffee room, collecting reports, squeezed himself into theSessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an interesting trial, nayperhaps obtained admission to the gallery of Whitehall, and noticed howthe King and Duke looked. In this way he gathered materials for weeklyepistles destined to enlighten some county town or some bench of rusticmagistrates. Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of thelargest provincial cities, and the great body of the gentry and clergy, learned almost all that they knew of the history of their own time. Wemust suppose that at Cambridge there were as many persons curiousto know what was passing in the world as at almost any place in thekingdom, out of London. Yet at Cambridge, during a great part of thereign of Charles the Second, the Doctors of Laws and the Masters ofArts had no regular supply of news except through the London Gazette. At length the services of one of the collectors of intelligence inthe capital were employed. That was a memorable day on which the firstnewsletter from London was laid on the table of the only coffee roomin Cambridge. [165] At the seat of a man of fortune in the country thenewsletter was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had arrivedit had been thumbed by twenty families. It furnished the neighboringsquires with matter for talk over their October, and the neighboringrectors with topics for sharp sermons against Whiggery or Popery. Many of these curious journals might doubtless still be detected by adiligent search in the archives of old families. Some are to be foundin our public libraries; and one series, which is not the least valuablepart of the literary treasures collected by Sir James Mackintosh, willbe occasionally quoted in the course of this work. [166]

It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no provincialnewspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and at the two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom. The only press in Englandnorth of Trent appears to have been at York. [167]

It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the governmentundertook to furnish political instruction to the people. That journalcontained a scanty supply of news without comment. Another journal, published under the patronage of the court, consisted of comment withoutnews. This paper, called the Observator, was edited by an old Torypamphleteer named Roger Lestrange. Lestrange was by no means deficientin readiness and shrewdness; and his diction, though coarse, anddisfigured by a mean and flippant jargon which then passed for wit inthe green room and the tavern, was not without keenness and vigour. Buthis nature, at once ferocious and ignoble, showed itself in every linethat he penned. When the first Observators appeared there was someexcuse for his acrimony. The Whigs were then powerful; and he had tocontend against numerous adversaries, whose unscrupulous violence mightseem to justify unsparing retaliation. But in 1685 all the oppositionhad been crushed. A generous spirit would have disdained to insult aparty which could not reply, and to aggravate the misery of prisoners, of exiles, of bereaved families: but; from the malice of Lestrange thegrave was no hiding place, and the house of mourning no sanctuary. Inthe last month of the reign of Charles the Second, William Jenkyn, anaged dissenting pastor of great note, who had been cruelly persecutedfor no crime but that of worshipping God according to the fashiongenerally followed throughout protestant Europe, died of hardships andprivations at Newgate. The outbreak of popular sympathy could not berepressed. The corpse was followed to the grave by a train of a hundredand fifty coaches. Even courtiers looked sad. Even the unthinking Kingshowed some signs of concern. Lestrange alone set up a howl of savageexultation, laughed at the weak compassion of the Trimmers, proclaimedthat the blasphemous old impostor had met with a most righteouspunishment, and vowed to wage war, not only to the death, but afterdeath, with all the mock saints and martyrs. [168] Such was the spiritof the paper which was at this time the oracle of the Tory party, andespecially of the parochial clergy. 

Literature which could be carried by the post bag then formed thegreater part of the intellectual nutriment ruminated by the countrydivines and country justices. The difficulty and expense of conveyinglarge packets from place to place was so great, that an extensive workwas longer in making its way from Paternoster Row to Devonshire orLancashire than it now is in reaching Kentucky. How scantily a ruralparsonage was then furnished, even with books the most necessary to atheologian, has already been remarked. The houses of the gentry werenot more plentifully supplied. Few knights of the shire had libraries sogood as may now perpetually be found in a servants' hall or in the backparlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his neighboursfor a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's Chronicle, Tarlton's Jestsand the Seven Champions of Christendom, lay in his hall window amongthe fishing rods and fowling pieces. No circulating library, no booksociety, then existed even in the capital: but in the capital thosestudents who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. Theshops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard, werecrowded every day and all day long with readers; and a known customerwas often permitted to carry a volume home. In the country there wasno such accommodation; and every man was under the necessity of buyingwhatever he wished to read. [169]

As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary storesgenerally consisted of a prayer book and receipt book. But in truththey lost little by living in rural seclusion. For, even in the highestranks, and in those situations which afforded the greatest facilitiesfor mental improvement, the English women of that generation weredecidedly worse educated than they have been at any other time sincethe revival of learning. At an early period they had studied themasterpieces of ancient genius. In the present day they seldom bestowmuch attention on the dead languages; but they are familiar with thetongue of Pascal and Moliere, with the tongue of Dante and Tasso, with the tongue of Goethe and Schiller; nor is there any purer or moregraceful English than that which accomplished women now speak and write. But, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, the cultureof the female mind seems to have been almost entirely neglected. Ifa damsel had the least smattering of literature she was regarded as aprodigy. Ladies highly born, highly bred, and naturally quick witted, were unable to write a line in their mother tongue without solecismsand faults of spelling such as a charity girl would now be ashamed tocommit. [170]

The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant licentiousness, the natural effect of extravagant austerity, was now the mode;and licentiousness had produced its ordinary effect, the moral andintellectual degradation of women. To their personal beauty, it was thefashion to pay rude and impudent homage. But the admiration and desirewhich they inspired were seldom mingled with respect, with affection, or with any chivalrous sentiment. The qualities which fit them tobe companions, advisers, confidential friends, rather repelled thanattracted 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 significantly, who danced voluptuously, who excelled in pertrepartee, who was not ashamed to romp with Lords of the Bedchamber andCaptains of the Guards, to sing sly verses with sly expression, or toput on a page's dress for a frolic, was more likely to be followed andadmired, more likely to be honoured with royal attentions, more likelyto win a rich and noble husband than Jane Grey or Lucy Hutchinson wouldhave been. In such circumstances the standard of female attainments wasnecessarily low; and it was more dangerous to be above that standardthan to be beneath it. Extreme ignorance and frivolity were thought lessunbecoming in a lady than the slightest tincture of pedantry. Of thetoo celebrated women whose faces we still admire on the walls of HamptonCourt, few indeed were in the habit of reading anything more valuablethan acrostics, lampoons, and translations of the Clelia and the GrandCyrus. 

The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished gentlemen of thatgeneration, seem to have been somewhat less solid and profound than atan earlier or a later period. Greek learning, at least, did not flourishamong us in the days of Charles the Second, as it had flourished beforethe civil war, or as it again flourished long after the Revolution. There were undoubtedly scholars to whom the whole Greek literature, from Homer to Photius, was familiar: but such scholars were to be foundalmost exclusively among the clergy resident at the Universities, andeven at the Universities were few, and were not fully appreciated. AtCambridge it was not thought by any means necessary that a divine shouldbe able to read the Gospels in the original. [171] Nor was the standardat Oxford higher. When, in the reign of William the Third, ChristChurch rose up as one man to defend the genuineness of the Epistlesof Phalaris, that great college, then considered as the first seatof philology in the kingdom, could not muster such a stock of Atticlearning as is now possessed by several youths at every great publicschool. It may easily be supposed that a dead language, neglected at theUniversities, was not much studied by men of the world. In a former agethe poetry and eloquence of Greece had been the delight of Raleigh andFalkland. In a later age the poetry and eloquence of Greece were thedelight of Pitt and Fox, of Windham and Grenville. But during thelatter part of the seventeenth century there was in England scarcely oneeminent statesman who could read with enjoyment a page of Sophocles orPlato. 

Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language of Rome, indeed, had notaltogether lost its imperial prerogatives, and was still, in many partsof Europe, almost indispensable to a traveller or a negotiator. To speakit well was therefore a much more common accomplishment shall in ourtime; and neither Oxford nor Cambridge wanted poets who, on a greatoccasion, could lay at the foot of the throne happy imitations ofthe verses in which Virgil and Ovid had celebrated the greatness ofAugustus. 

Yet even the Latin was giving way to a younger rival. France united atthat time almost every species of ascendency. Her military glory wasat the height. She had vanquished mighty coalitions. She had dictatedtreaties. She had subjugated great cities and provinces. She had forcedthe Castilian pride to yield her the precedence. She had summonedItalian princes to prostrate themselves at her footstool. Her authoritywas 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 perukemust be, whether his heels must be high or low, and whether the laceon his hat must be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to theworld. The fame of her great writers filled Europe. No other countrycould produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet equal toMoliere, a trifler so agreeable as La Fontaine, a rhetorician so skilfulas Bossuet. The literary glory of Italy and of Spain had set; that ofGermany had not yet dawned. The genius, therefore, of the eminent menwho adorned Paris shone forth with a splendour which was set off to fulladvantage by contrast. France, indeed, had at that time an empire overmankind, such as even the Roman Republic never attained. For, when Romewas politically dominant, she was in arts and letters the humble pupilof Greece. France had, over the surrounding countries, at once theascendency which Rome had over Greece, and the ascendency which Greecehad over Rome. French was fast becoming the universal language, thelanguage of fashionable society, the language of diplomacy. At severalcourts princes and nobles spoke it more accurately and politely thantheir mother tongue. In our island there was less of this servility thanon the Continent. Neither our good nor our bad qualities were those ofimitators. Yet even here homage was paid, awkwardly indeed and sullenly, to the literary supremacy of our neighbours. The melodious Tuscan, sofamiliar to the gallants and ladies of the court of Elizabeth, sank intocontempt. A gentleman who quoted Horace or Terence was considered ingood company as a pompous pedant. But to garnish his conversation withscraps of French was the best proof which he could give of his partsand attainments. [172] New canons of criticism, new models of stylecame into fashion. The quaint ingenuity which had deformed the verses ofDonne, and had been a blemish on those of Cowley, disappeared from ourpoetry. Our prose became less majestic, less artfully involved, lessvariously musical than that of an earlier age, but more lucid, moreeasy, and better fitted for controversy and narrative. In these changesit is impossible not to recognise the influence of French precept and ofFrench example. Great masters of our language, in their most dignifiedcompositions, affected to use French words, when English words, quite asexpressive and sonorous, were at hand: [173] and from France was importedthe tragedy in rhyme, an exotic which, in our soil, drooped, andspeedily died. 

It would have been well if our writers had also copied the decorum whichtheir great French contemporaries, with few exceptions, preserved; forthe profligacy of the English plays, satires, songs, and novels of thatage is a deep blot on our national fame. The evil may easily be tracedto its source. The wits and the Puritans had never been on friendlyterms. There was no sympathy between the two classes. They looked onthe whole system of human life from different points and in differentlights. The earnest of each was the jest of the other. The pleasuresof each were the torments of the other. To the stern precisian even theinnocent sport of the fancy seemed a crime. To light and festive naturesthe solemnity of the zealous brethren furnished copious matter ofridicule. From the Reformation to the civil war, almost every writer, gifted with a fine sense of the ludicrous, had taken some opportunity ofassailing the straighthaired, snuffling, whining saints, who christenedtheir children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit atthe sight of Jack in the Green, and who thought it impious to taste plumporridge on Christmas day. At length a time came when the laughers beganto look grave in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots, after havingfurnished much good sport during two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their feet thewhole crowd of mockers. The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malicewere retaliated with the gloomy and implacable malice peculiar to bigotswho mistake their own rancour for virtue. The theatres were closed. The players were flogged. The press was put under the guardianship ofaustere licensers. The Muses were banished from their own favouritehaunts, Cambridge and Oxford. Cowly, Crashaw, and Cleveland were ejectedfrom their fellowships. The young candidate for academical honours wasno longer required to write Ovidian epistles or Virgilian pastorals, butwas strictly interrogated by a synod of lowering Supralapsarians as tothe day and hour when he experienced the new birth. Such a system wasof course fruitful of hypocrites. Under sober clothing and under visagescomposed to the expression of austerity lay hid during several yearsthe intense desire of license and of revenge. At length that desire wasgratified. The Restoration emancipated thousands of minds from a yokewhich had become insupportable. The old fight recommenced, but with ananimosity altogether new. It was now not a sportive combat, but a war tothe death. The Roundhead had no better quarter to expect from those whomhe had persecuted than a cruel slavedriver can expect from insurgentslaves still bearing the marks of his collars and his scourges. 

The war between wit and Puritanism soon became a war between wit andmorality. The hostility excited by a grotesque caricature of virtue didnot spare virtue herself. Whatever the canting Roundhead had regardedwith reverence was insulted. Whatever he had proscribed was favoured. Because he had been scrupulous about trifles, all scruples were treatedwith derision. Because he had covered his failings with the mask ofdevotion, men were encouraged to obtrude with Cynic impudence all theirmost scandalous vices on the public eye. Because he had punished illicitlove with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conjugal fidelity weremade a jest. To that sanctimonious jargon which was his Shibboleth, wasopposed another jargon not less absurd and much more odious. As he neveropened his mouth except in scriptural phrase, the new breed of wits andfine gentlemen never opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry ofwhich a porter would now be ashamed, and without calling on their Makerto curse them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them. 

It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when itrevived with the revival of the old civil and ecclesiastical polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few eminent men, who belonged toan earlier and better age, were exempt from the general contagion. Theverse of Waller still breathed the sentiments which had animated a morechivalrous generation. Cowley, distinguished as a loyalist and as a manof letters, raised his voice courageously against the immorality whichdisgraced both letters and loyalty. A mightier poet, tried at once bypain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditates, undisturbed bythe obscene tumult which raged all around him, a song so sublime and soholy that it would not have misbecome the lips of those etherealVirtues whom he saw, with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold. The vigourous and fertile genius of Butler, if it did not altogetherescape the prevailing infection, took the disease in a mild form. Butthese were men whose minds had been trained in a world which had passedaway. They gave place in no long time to a younger generation ofwits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the commoncharacteristic was hard-hearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of these writers wasdoubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it would have been had theybeen less depraved. The poison which they administered was so strongthat it was, in no long time, rejected with nausea. None of themunderstood the dangerous art of associating images of unlawful pleasurewith all that is endearing and ennobling. None of them was aware that acertain decorum is essential even to voluptuousness, that drapery maybe more alluring than exposure, and that the imagination may be far morepowerfully moved by delicate hints which impel it to exert itself, thanby gross descriptions which it takes in passively. 

The spirit of the Antipuritan reaction pervades almost the whole politeliterature of the reign of Charles the Second. But the very quintessenceof that spirit will be found in the comic drama. The playhouses, shutby the meddling fanatic in the day of his power, were again crowded. Totheir old attractions new and more powerful attractions had been added. Scenery, dresses, and decorations, such as would now be thought mean orabsurd, but such as would have been esteemed incredibly magnificent bythose who, early in the seventeenth century, sate on the filthy benchesof the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the Rose, dazzled the eyesof the multitude. The fascination of sex was called in to aid thefascination of art: and the young spectator saw, with emotions unknownto the contemporaries of Shakspeare and Johnson, tender and sprightlyheroines personated by lovely women. From the day on which the theatreswere reopened they became seminaries of vice; and the evil propagateditself. The profligacy of the representations soon drove away soberpeople. The frivolous and dissolute who remained required every yearstronger and stronger stimulants. Thus the artists corrupted thespectators, and the spectators the artists, till the turpitude of thedrama became such as must astonish all who are not aware that extremerelaxation is the natural effect of extreme restraint, and that an ageof hypocrisy is, in the regular course of things, followed by all age ofimpudence. 

Nothing is more characteristic of the times than the care with whichthe poets contrived to put all their loosest verses into the mouths ofwomen. The compositions in which the greatest license was taken were theepilogues. They were almost always recited by favourite actresses; andnothing charmed the depraved audience so much as to hear lines grosslyindecent repeated by a beautiful girl, who was supposed to have not yetlost her innocence [174]. 

Our theatre was indebted in that age for many plots and charactersto Spain, to France, and to the old English masters: but whatever ourdramatists touched they tainted. In their imitations the houses ofCalderon's stately and highspirited Castilian gentlemen became sties ofvice, Shakspeare's Viola a procuress, Moliere's Misanthrope a ravisher, Moliere's Agnes an adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic butthat it became foul and ignoble by transfusion through those foul andignoble minds. 

Such was the state of the drama; and the drama was the department ofpolite literature in which a poet had the best chance of obtaining asubsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so small that a man of thegreatest name could hardly expect more than a pittance for the copyrightof the best performance. There cannot be a stronger instance than thefate of Dryden's last production, the Fables. That volume was publishedwhen he was universally admitted to be the chief of living Englishpoets. It contains about twelve thousand lines. The versification isadmirable, the narratives and descriptions full of life. To this dayPalamon and Arcite, Cymon and Iphigenia, Theodore and Honoria, arethe delight both of critics and of schoolboys. The collection includesAlexander's Feast, the noblest ode in our language. For the copyrightDryden received two hundred and fifty pounds, less than in our days hassometimes been paid for two articles in a review. [175] Nor does thebargain seem to have been a hard one. For the book went off slowly; andthe second edition was not required till the author had been ten yearsin his grave. By writing for the theatre it was possible to earn a muchlarger sum with much less trouble. Southern made seven hundred pounds byone play. [176] Otway was raised from beggary to temporary affluenceby the success of his Don Carlos. [177] Shadwell cleared a hundred andthirty pounds by a single representation of the Squire of Alsatia. [178]The consequence was that every man who had to live by his wit wroteplays, whether he had any internal vocation to write plays or not. It was thus with Dryden. As a satirist he has rivalled Juvenal. As adidactic poet he perhaps might, with care and meditation, have rivalledLucretius. Of lyric poets he is, if not the most sublime, the mostbrilliant and spiritstirring. But nature, profuse to him of many raregifts, had withheld from him the dramatic faculty. Nevertheless all theenergies of his best years were wasted on dramatic composition. Hehad too much judgment not to be aware that in the power of exhibitingcharacter by means of dialogue he was deficient. That deficiency hedid his best to conceal, sometimes by surprising and amusing incidents, sometimes by stately declamation, sometimes by harmonious numbers, sometimes by ribaldry but too well suited to the taste of a profane andlicentious pit. Yet he never obtained any theatrical success equal tothat which rewarded the exertions of some men far inferior to him ingeneral powers. He thought himself fortunate if he cleared a hundredguineas by a play; a scanty remuneration, yet apparently larger than hecould have earned in any other way by the same quantity of labour. [179]

The recompense which the wits of that age could obtain from the publicwas so small, that they were under the necessity of eking outtheir incomes by levying contributions on the great. Every richand goodnatured lord was pestered by authors with a mendicancyso importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in our time seemincredible. The patron to whom a work was inscribed was expected toreward the writer with a purse of gold. The fee paid for the dedicationof a book was often much larger than the sum which any publisher wouldgive for the copyright. Books were therefore frequently printed merelythat they might be dedicated. This traffic in praise produced the effectwhich might have been expected. Adulation pushed to the verge, sometimesof nonsense, and sometimes of impiety, was not thought to disgrace apoet. Independence, veracity, selfrespect, were things not requiredby the world from him. In truth, he was in morals something between apandar and a beggar. 

To the other vices which degraded the literary character was added, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the most savageintemperance of party spirit. The wits, as a class, had been impelledby their old hatred of Puritanism to take the side of the court, and hadbeen found useful allies. Dryden, in particular, had done good serviceto the government. His Absalom and Achitophel, the greatest satire ofmodern times had amazed the town, had made its way with unprecedentedrapidity even into rural districts, and had, wherever it appearedbitterly annoyed the Exclusionists and raised the courage of the Tories. But we must not, in the admiration which we naturally feel for noblediction and versification, forget the great distinctions of good andevil. The spirit by which Dryden and several of his compeers were atthis time animated against the Whigs deserves to be called fiendish. Theservile Judges and Sheriffs of those evil days could not shed bloodas fast as the poets cried out for it. Calls for more victims, hideousjests on hanging, bitter taunts on those who, having stood by the Kingin the hour of danger, now advised him to deal mercifully and generouslyby his vanquished enemies, were publicly recited on the stage, and, thatnothing might be wanting to the guilt and the shame, were recited bywomen, who, having long been taught to discard all modesty, were nowtaught to discard all compassion. [180]

It is a remarkable fact that, while the lighter literature of Englandwas thus becoming a nuisance and a national disgrace, the English geniuswas effecting in science a revolution which will, to the end of time, be reckoned among the highest achievements of the human intellect. Baconhad sown the good seed in a sluggish soil and an ungenial season. Hehad not expected an early crop, and in his last testament had solemnlybequeathed his fame to the next age. During a whole generation hisphilosophy had, amidst tumults wars, and proscriptions, been slowlyripening in a few well constituted minds. While factions were strugglingfor dominion over each other, a small body of sages had turned away withbenevolent disdain from the conflict, and had devoted themselves to thenobler work of extending the dominion of man over matter. As soonas tranquillity was restored, these teachers easily found attentiveaudience. For the discipline through which the nation had passed hadbrought the public mind to a temper well fitted for the reception of theVerulamian doctrine. The civil troubles had stimulated the faculties ofthe educated classes, and had called forth a restless activity and aninsatiable curiosity, such as had not before been known among us. Yetthe effect of those troubles was that schemes of political and religiousreform were generally regarded with suspicion and contempt. Duringtwenty years the chief employment of busy and ingenious men had been toframe constitutions with first magistrates, without first magistrates, with hereditary senates, with senates appointed by lot, with annualsenates, with perpetual senates. In these plans nothing was omitted. Allthe detail, all the nomenclature, all the ceremonial of the imaginarygovernment was fully set forth, Polemarchs and Phylarchs, Tribes andGalaxies, the Lord Archon and the Lord Strategus. Which ballot boxeswere to be green and which red, which balls were to be of gold and whichof silver, which magistrates were to wear hats and which black velvetcaps with peaks, how the mace was to be carried and when the heraldswere to uncover, these, and a hundred more such trifles, were gravelyconsidered and arranged by men of no common capacity and learning. [181] But the time for these visions had gone by; and, if any steadfastrepublican still continued to amuse himself with them, fear of publicderision and of a criminal information generally induced him to keephis fancies to himself. It was now unpopular and unsafe to mutter a wordagainst the fundamental laws of the monarchy: but daring and ingeniousmen might indemnify themselves by treating with disdain what had latelybeen considered as the fundamental laws of nature. The torrent whichhad been dammed up in one channel rushed violently into another. Therevolutionary spirit, ceasing to operate in politics, began to exertitself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in every departmentof physics. The year 1660, the era of the restoration of the oldconstitution, is also the era from which dates the ascendency of the newphilosophy. In that year the Royal Society, destined to be a chief agentin a long series of glorious and salutary reforms, began to exist. [182] In a few months experimental science became all the mode. Thetransfusion of blood, the ponderation of air, the fixation of mercury, succeeded to that place in the public mind which had been latelyoccupied by the controversies of the Rota. Dreams of perfect forms ofgovernment made way for dreams of wings with which men were to fly fromthe Tower to the Abbey, and of doublekeeled ships which were never tofounder in the fiercest storm. All classes were hurried along by theprevailing sentiment. Cavalier and Roundhead, Churchman and Puritan, were for once allied. Divines, jurists, statesmen, nobles, princes, swelled the triumph of the Baconian philosophy. Poets sang with emulousfervour the approach of the golden age. Cowley, in lines weightywith thought and resplendent with wit, urged the chosen seed to takepossession of the promised land flowing with milk and honey, that landwhich their great deliverer and lawgiver had seen, as from the summitof Pisgah, but had not been permitted to enter. [183] Dryden, with morezeal than knowledge, joined voice to the general acclamation to enter, and foretold things which neither he nor anybody else understood. TheRoyal Society, he predicted, would soon lead us to the extreme verge ofthe globe, and there delight us with a better view of the moon. [184]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 risingto high distinction in his profession, Thomas Sprat, afterwards Bishopof Rochester. Both Chief Justice Hale and Lord Keeper Guildford stolesome hours from the business of their courts to write on hydrostatics. Indeed it was under the immediate direction of Guildford that thefirst barometers ever exposed to sale in London were constructed. [185]Chemistry divided, for a time, with wine and love, with the stage andthe gaming table, with the intrigues of a courtier and the intriguesof a demagogue, the attention of the fickle Buckingham. Rupert has thecredit of having invented mezzotinto; from him is named that curiousbubble of glass which has long amused children and puzzled philosophers. Charles himself had a laboratory at Whitehall, and was far more activeand attentive there than at the council board. It was almost necessaryto the character of a fine gentleman to have something to say about airpumps and telescopes; and even fine ladies, now and then, thought itbecoming to affect a taste for science, went in coaches and six tovisit the Gresham curiosities, and broke forth into cries of delight atfinding that a magnet really attracted a needle, and that a microscopereally made a fly loom as large as a sparrow. [186]

In this, as in every great stir of the human mind, there was doubtlesssomething which might well move a smile. It is the universal law thatwhatever pursuit, whatever doctrine, becomes fashionable, shall lose aportion of that dignity which it had possessed while it was confined toa small but earnest minority, and was loved for its own sake alone. Itis true that the follies of some persons who, without any realaptitude for science, professed a passion for it, furnished matter ofcontemptuous mirth to a few malignant satirists who belonged to thepreceding generation, and were not disposed to unlearn the lore of theiryouth. [187] But it is not less true that the great work of interpretingnature was performed by the English of that age as it had never beforebeen performed in any age by any nation. The spirit of Francis Bacon wasabroad, a spirit admirably compounded of audacity and sobriety. Therewas a strong persuasion that the whole world was full of secrets of highmoment to the happiness of man, and that man had, by his Maker, beenentrusted with the key which, rightly used, would give access tothem. There was at the same time a conviction that in physics it wasimpossible to arrive at the knowledge of general laws except by thecareful observation of particular facts. Deeply impressed with thesegreat truths, the professors of the new philosophy applied themselvesto their task, and, before a quarter of a century had expired, they hadgiven ample earnest of what has since been achieved. Already a reformof agriculture had been commenced. New vegetables were cultivated. Newimplements of husbandry were employed. New manures were applied to thesoil. [188] Evelyn had, under the formal sanction of the Royal Society, given instruction to his countrymen in planting. Temple, in hisintervals of leisure, had tried many experiments in horticulture, andhad proved that many delicate fruits, the natives of more favouredclimates, might, with the help of art, be grown on English ground. Medicine, which in France was still in abject bondage, and afforded aninexhaustible subject of just ridicule to Moliere, had in England becomean experimental and progressive science, and every day made somenew advance in defiance of Hippocrates and Galen. The attention ofspeculative men had been, for the first time, directed to the importantsubject of sanitary police. The great plague of 1665 induced them toconsider with care the defective architecture, draining, and ventilationof the capital. The great fire of 1666 afforded an opportunity foreffecting extensive improvements. The whole matter was diligentlyexamined by the Royal Society; and to the suggestions of that body mustbe partly attributed the changes which, though far short of what thepublic welfare required, yet made a wide difference between the newand the old London, and probably put a final close to the ravages ofpestilence in our country. [189] At the same time one of the foundersof the Society, Sir William Petty, created the science of politicalarithmetic, the humble but indispensable handmaid of politicalphilosophy. No kingdom of nature was left unexplored. To that periodbelong the chemical discoveries of Boyle, and the earliest botanicalresearches of Sloane. It was then that Ray made a new classificationof birds and fishes, and that the attention of Woodward was first drawntowards fossils and shells. One after another phantoms which had hauntedthe world through ages of darkness fled before the light. Astrology andalchymy became jests. Soon there was scarcely a county in which some ofthe Quorum did not smile contemptuously when an old woman was broughtbefore them for riding on broomsticks or giving cattle the murrain. Butit was in those noblest and most arduous departments of knowledgein which induction and mathematical demonstration cooperate for thediscovery of truth, that the English genius won in that age the mostmemorable triumphs. John Wallis placed the whole system of statics ona new foundation. Edmund Halley investigated the properties of theatmosphere, the ebb and flow of the sea, the laws of magnetism, and thecourse of the comets; nor did he shrink from toil, peril and exile inthe cause of science. While he, on the rock of Saint Helena, mapped theconstellations of the southern hemisphere, our national observatory wasrising at Greenwich: and John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, was commencing that long series of observations which is never mentionedwithout respect and gratitude in any part of the globe. But the gloryof these men, eminent as they were, is cast into the shade by thetranscendent lustre of one immortal name. In Isaac Newton two kinds ofintellectual power, which have little in common, and which are not oftenfound together in a very high degree of vigour, but which neverthelessare equally necessary in the most sublime departments of physics, wereunited as they have never been united before or since. There may havebeen minds as happily constituted as his for the cultivation of puremathematical science: there may have been minds as happily constitutedfor the cultivation of science purely experimental; but in no other mindhave the demonstrative faculty and the inductive faculty coexisted insuch supreme excellence and perfect harmony. Perhaps in the days ofScotists and Thomists even his intellect might have run to waste, asmany intellects ran to waste which were inferior only to his. Happilythe spirit of the age on which his lot was cast, gave the rightdirection to his mind; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on thespirit of the age. In the year 1685 his fame, though splendid, was onlydawning; but his genius was in the meridian. His great work, that workwhich effected a revolution in the most important provinces of naturalphilosophy, had been completed, but was not yet published, and was justabout to be submitted to the consideration of the Royal Society. 

It is not very easy to explain why the nation which was so far beforeits neighbours in science should in art have been far behind them. Yetsuch was the fact. It is true that in architecture, an art which is halfa science, an art in which none but a geometrician can excel, an artwhich has no standard of grace but what is directly or indirectlydependent on utility, an art of which the creations derive a part, atleast, of their majesty from mere bulk, our country could boast of onetruly great man, Christopher Wren; and the fire which laid London inruins had given him an opportunity, unprecedented in modern history, ofdisplaying his powers. The austere beauty of the Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he was like almost allhis contemporaries, incapable of emulating, and perhaps incapable ofappreciating; but no man born on our side of the Alps, has imitated withso much success the magnificence of the palacelike churches of Italy. Even the superb Lewis has left to posterity no work which can bear acomparison with Saint Paul's. But at the close of the reign of Charlesthe Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose nameis now remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious; for paintersand statuaries were by no means a despised or an ill paid class. Theirsocial position was at least as high as at present. Their gains, whencompared with the wealth of the nation and with the remuneration ofother descriptions of intellectual labour, were even larger than atpresent. Indeed the munificent patronage which was extended to artistsdrew them to our shores in multitudes. Lely, who has preserved to usthe rich curls, the full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frailbeauties 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 permission in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and was sold by auction for the almost incredible sum of twenty-sixthousand pounds, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunesof the rich men of that day than a hundred thousand pounds would bearto the fortunes of the rich men of our time. [190] Lely was succeeded byhis countryman Godfrey Kneller, who was made first a knight and then abaronet, and who, after keeping up a sumptuous establishment, and afterlosing much money by unlucky speculations, was still able to bequeatha large fortune to his family. The two Vandeveldes, natives of Holland, had been tempted by English liberality to settle here, and had producedfor the King and his nobles some of the finest sea pieces in the world. Another Dutchman, Simon Varelst, painted glorious sunflowers and tulipsfor prices such as had never before been known. Verrio, a Neapolitan, covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and Muses, Nymphs andSatyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing nectar, and laurelled princesriding in triumph. The income which he derived from his performancesenabled him to keep one of the most expensive tables in England. For hispieces at Windsor alone he received seven thousand pounds, a sum thensufficient to make a gentleman of moderate wishes perfectly easy forlife, a sum greatly exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life offorty years, obtained from the booksellers. [191] Verrio's assistantand successor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most celebratedsculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber, whose patheticemblems 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, itwas not till the reign of George the Second that our country could gloryin a great painter; and George the Third was on the throne before shehad reason to be proud of any of her sculptors. 

It is time that this description of the England which Charles the Secondgoverned should draw to a close. Yet one subject of the highest momentstill remains untouched. Nothing has yet been said of the great bodyof the people, of those who held the ploughs, who tended the oxen, whotoiled at the looms of Norwich, and squared the Portland stone for SaintPaul's. Nor can very much be said. The most numerous class is preciselythe class respecting which we have the most meagre information. In thosetimes philanthropists did not yet regard it as a sacred duty, nor haddemagogues yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk and write about thedistress of the labourer. History was too much occupied with courts andcamps to spare a line for the hut of the peasant or the garret of themechanic. The press now often sends forth in a day a greater quantity ofdiscussion and declamation about the condition of the working man thanwas published during the twenty-eight years which elapsed between theRestoration and the Revolution. But it would be a great error to inferfrom the increase of complaint that there has been any increase ofmisery. 

The great criterion of the state of the common people is the amountof their wages; and as four-fifths of the common people were, in theseventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is especially importantto ascertain what were then the wages of agricultural industry. On thissubject we have the means of arriving at conclusions sufficiently exactfor our purpose. 

Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight, informs usthat a labourer was by no means in the lowest state who received fora day's work fourpence with food, or eightpence without food. Fourshillings a week therefore were, according to Petty's calculation, fairagricultural wages. [192]

That this calculation was not remote from the truth we haveabundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the justices ofWarwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by an Act ofElizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions, a scale of wages forthe county, and notified that every employer who gave more than theauthorised sum, and every working man who received more, would be liableto punishment. The wages of the common agricultural labourer, fromMarch to September, were fixed at the precise amount mentioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week without food. From September to March thewages were to be only three and sixpence a week. [193]

But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasant were verydifferent in different parts of the kingdom. The wages of Warwickshirewere probably about the average, and those of the counties near theScottish border below it: but there were more favoured districts. Inthe same year, 1685, a gentleman of Devonshire, named Richard Dunning, published a small tract, in which he described the condition of the poorof that county. That he understood his subject well it is impossible todoubt; for a few months later his work was reprinted, and was, bythe magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, stronglyrecommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According tohim, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food, about fiveshillings a week. [194]

Still better was the condition of the labourer in the neighbourhood ofBury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates of Suffolk met there in the springof 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and resolved that, where the labourerwas not boarded, he should have five shillings a week in winter, and sixin summer. [195]

In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages of the Essexlabourer, who was not boarded, at six shillings in winter and seven insummer. This seems to have been the highest remuneration given inthe kingdom for agricultural labour between the Restoration and theRevolution; and it is to be observed that, in the year in which thisorder was made, the necessaries of life were immoderately dear. Wheatwas at seventy shillings the quarter, which would even now be consideredas almost a famine price. [196]

These facts are in perfect accordance with another fact which seems todeserve consideration. It is evident that, in a country where no man canbe compelled to become a soldier, the ranks of an army cannot be filledif the government offers much less than the wages of common rusticlabour. At present the pay and beer money of a private in a regiment ofthe line amount to seven shillings and sevenpence a week. This stipend, coupled with the hope of a pension, does not attract the Englishyouth in sufficient numbers; and it is found necessary to supply thedeficiency by enlisting largely from among the poorer population ofMunster and Connaught. The pay of the private foot soldier in 1685 wasonly four shillings and eightpence a week; yet it is certain that thegovernment in that year found no difficulty in obtaining many thousandsof English recruits at very short notice. The pay of the private footsoldier in the army of the Commonwealth had been seven shillings aweek, that is to say, as much as a corporal received under Charles theSecond; [197] and seven shillings a week had been found sufficient to fillthe ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality of the people. On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that, in thereign of Charles the Second, the ordinary wages of the peasant did notexceed four shillings a week; but that, in some parts of the kingdom, five shillings, six shillings, and, during the summer months, even sevenshillings were paid. At present a district where a labouring man earnsonly seven shillings a week is thought to be in a state shocking tohumanity. The average is very much higher; and in prosperous counties, the weekly wages of husbandmen amount to twelve, fourteen, and evensixteen shillings. The remuneration of workmen employed in manufactureshas always been higher than that of the tillers of the soil. In the year1680, a member of the House of Commons remarked that the high wagespaid in this country made it impossible for our textures to maintain acompetition with the produce of the Indian looms. An English mechanic, he said, instead of slaving like a native of Bengal for a piece ofcopper, exacted a shilling a day. [198] Other evidence is extant, which proves that a shilling a day was the pay to which the Englishmanufacturer then thought himself entitled, but that he was often forcedto work for less. The common people of that age were not in the habitof meeting for public discussion, of haranguing, or of petitioningParliament. No newspaper pleaded their cause. It was in rude rhymethat their love and hatred, their exultation and their distress, foundutterance. A great part of their history is to be learned only fromtheir ballads. One of the most remarkable of the popular lays chauntedabout the streets of Norwich and Leeds in the time of Charles the Secondmay still be read on the original broadside. It is the vehement andbitter cry of labour against capital. It describes the good old timeswhen every artisan employed in the woollen manufacture lived as wellas a farmer. But those times were past. Sixpence a day was now all thatcould be earned by hard labour at the loom. If the poor complained thatthey could not live on such a pittance, they were told that they werefree to take it or leave it. For so miserable a recompense were theproducers of wealth compelled to toil rising early and lying down late, while the master clothier, eating, sleeping, and idling, became rich bytheir exertions. A shilling a day, the poet declares, is what the weaverwould have if justice were done. [199] We may therefore conclude that, in the generation which preceded the Revolution, a workman employed inthe great staple manufacture of England thought himself fairly paid ifhe gained six shillings a week. 

It may here be noticed that the practice of setting children prematurelyto work, a practice which the state, the legitimate protector of thosewho cannot protect themselves, has, in our time, wisely and humanelyinterdicted, prevailed in the seventeenth century to an extent which, when compared with the extent of the manufacturing system, seems almostincredible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a littlecreature of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writersof that time, and among them some who were considered as eminentlybenevolent, mention, with exultation, the fact that, in that singlecity, boys and girls of very tender age created wealth exceeding whatwas necessary for their own subsistence by twelve thousand pounds ayear. [200] The more carefully we examine the history of the past, themore reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our agehas been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligencewhich 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. Duringseveral generations, the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital have kept aregister of the wages paid to different classes of workmen who have beenemployed in the repairs of the building. From this valuable record itappears that, in the course of a hundred and twenty years, the dailyearnings of the bricklayer have risen from half a crown to four andtenpence, those of the mason from half a crown to five and threepence, those of the carpenter from half a crown to five and fivepence, andthose of the plumber from three shillings to five and sixpence. 

It seems clear, therefore, that the wages of labour, estimated in money, were, in 1685, not more than half of what they now are; and there werefew 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 muchcheaper in that age than at present. Meat was also cheaper, but wasstill so dear that hundreds of thousands of families scarcely knewthe taste of it. [201] In the cost of wheat there has been very littlechange. The average price of the quarter, during the last twelve yearsof Charles the Second, was fifty shillings. Bread, therefore, such as isnow given to the inmates of a workhouse, was then seldom seen, even onthe trencher of a yeoman or of a shopkeeper. The great majority of thenation lived almost entirely on rye, barley, and oats. 

The produce of tropical countries, the produce of the mines, theproduce of machinery, was positively dearer than at present. Among thecommodities for which the labourer would have had to pay higher in1685 than his posterity now pay were sugar, salt, coals, candles, soap, shoes, stockings, and generally all articles of clothing and allarticles of bedding. It may be added, that the old coats and blanketswould have been, not only more costly, but less serviceable than themodern fabrics. 

It must be remembered that those labourers who were able to maintainthemselves and their families by means of wages were not the mostnecessitous members of the community. Beneath them lay a large classwhich could not subsist without some aid from the parish. There canhardly be a more important test of the condition of the common peoplethan the ratio which this class bears to the whole society. At present, the men, women, and children who receive relief appear from the officialreturns to be, in bad years, one tenth of the inhabitants of England, and, in good years, one thirteenth. Gregory King estimated them in histime at about a fourth; and this estimate, which all our respect forhis authority will scarcely prevent us from calling extravagant, waspronounced by Davenant eminently 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 inthose days. It was computed, in the reign of Charles the Second, at nearseven hundred thousand pounds a year, much more than the produce eitherof the excise or of the customs, and little less than half the entirerevenue of the crown. The poor rate went on increasing rapidly, andappears to have risen in a short time to between eight and nine hundredthousand a year, that is to say, to one sixth of what it now is. Thepopulation was then less than a third of what it now is. The minimumof wages, estimated in money, was half of what it now is; and we cantherefore hardly suppose that the average allowance made to a pauper canhave been more than half of what it now is. It seems to follow that theproportion of the English people which received parochial relief thenmust have been larger than the proportion which receives relief now. Itis good to speak on such questions with diffidence: but it has certainlynever yet been proved that pauperism was a less heavy burden or a lessserious social evil during the last quarter of the seventeenth centurythan it is in our own time. [202]

In one respect it must be admitted that the progress of civilization hasdiminished the physical comforts of a portion of the poorest class. Ithas already been mentioned that, before the Revolution, many thousandsof square miles, now enclosed and cultivated, were marsh, forest, andheath. Of this wild land much was, by law, common, and much of what wasnot common by law was worth so little that the proprietors suffered itto be common in fact. In such a tract, squatters and trespassers weretolerated to an extent now unknown. The peasant who dwelt there could, at little or no charge, procure occasionally some palatable addition tohis hard fare, and provide himself with fuel for the winter. He kept aflock of geese on what is now an orchard rich with apple blossoms. He snared wild fowl on the fell which has long since been drained anddivided into corn-fields and turnip fields. He cut turf among the furzebushes on the moor which is now a meadow bright with clover and renownedfor butter and cheese. The progress of agriculture and the increase ofpopulation necessarily deprived him of these privileges. But againstthis disadvantage a long list of advantages is to be set off. Of theblessings which civilisation and philosophy bring with them a largeproportion is common to all ranks, and would, if withdrawn, be missedas painfully by the labourer as by the peer. The market-place which therustic can now reach with his cart in an hour was, a hundred and sixtyyears ago, a day's journey from him. The street which now affords tothe artisan, during the whole night, a secure, a convenient, and abrilliantly lighted walk was, a hundred and sixty years ago, so darkafter sunset that he would not have been able to see his hand, so illpaved that he would have run constant risk of breaking his neck, and soill watched that he would have been in imminent danger of being knockeddown and plundered of his small earnings. Every bricklayer who fallsfrom a scaffold, every sweeper of a crossing who is run over by acarriage, may now have his wounds dressed and his limbs set with a skillsuch as, a hundred and sixty years ago, all the wealth of a greatlord like Ormond, or of a merchant prince like Clayton, could not havepurchased. Some frightful diseases have been extirpated by science;and some have been banished by police. The term of human life has beenlengthened over the whole kingdom, and especially in the towns. The year1685 was not accounted sickly; yet in the year 1685 more than one intwenty-three of the inhabitants of the capital died. [203] At presentonly one inhabitant of the capital in forty dies annually. Thedifference in salubrity between the London of the nineteenth centuryand the London of the seventeenth century is very far greater than thedifference between London in an ordinary year and London in a year ofcholera. 

Still more important is the benefit which all orders of society, andespecially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying influenceof civilisation on the national character. The groundwork of thatcharacter has indeed been the same through many generations, in thesense in which the groundwork of the character of an individual may besaid to be the same when he is a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and whenhe is a refined and accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that thepublic mind of England has softened while it has ripened, and that wehave, in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser, but also a kinderpeople. There is scarcely a page of the history or lighter literatureof the seventeenth century which does not contain some proof that ourancestors were less humane than their posterity. The discipline ofworkshops, of schools, of private families, though not more efficientthan at present, was infinitely harsher. Masters, well born and bred, were in the habit of beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way ofimparting knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands, of decentstation, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The implacability ofhostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs weredisposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die without seeinghis bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled and insulted Russellas his coach passed from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's InnFields. [204] As little mercy was shown by the populace to sufferers ofa humbler rank. If an offender was put into the pillory, it was wellif he escaped with life from the shower of brickbats and paving stones. [205] If he was tied to the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl. [206] Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell on courtdays for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp therewhipped. [207] A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, a womanburned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a galledhorse or an overdriven ox. Fights compared with which a boxing match isa refined and humane spectacle were among the favourite diversions of alarge part of the town. Multitudes assembled to see gladiators hack eachother to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with delight when oneof the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells onearth, seminaries of every crime and of every disease. At the assizesthe lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to thedock an atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged themsignally on bench, bar, and jury. But on all this misery society lookedwith profound indifference. Nowhere could be found that sensitiveand restless compassion which has, in our time, extended a powerfulprotection to the factory child, to the Hindoo widow, to the negroslave, which pries into the stores and watercasks of every emigrantship, which winces at every lash laid on the back of a drunkensoldier, which will not suffer the thief in the hulks to be ill fed oroverworked, and which has repeatedly endeavoured to save the lifeeven of the murderer. It is true that compassion ought, like all otherfeelings, to be under the government of reason, and has, for want ofsuch government, produced some ridiculous and some deplorable effects. But the more we study the annals of the past, the more shall we rejoicethat we live in a merciful age, in an age in which cruelty is abhorred, and in which pain, even when deserved, is inflicted reluctantly and froma sense of duty. Every class doubtless has gained largely by this greatmoral change: but the class which has gained most is the poorest, themost dependent, and the most defenceless. 

The general effect of the evidence which has been submitted to thereader seems hardly to admit of doubt. Yet, in spite of evidence, manywill still image to themselves the England of the Stuarts as a morepleasant country than the England in which we live. It may at firstsight seem strange that society, while constantly moving forward witheager speed, should be constantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easilybe resolved into the same principle. Both spring from our impatience ofthe state in which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulatesus to surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate theirhappiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in us to beconstantly discontented with a condition which is constantly improving. But, in truth, there is constant improvement precisely because there isconstant discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied with the present, we should cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to thefuture. And it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, weshould form a too favourable estimate of the past. 

In truth we are under a deception similar to that which misleads thetraveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is dry andbare: but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the semblance ofrefreshing waters. The pilgrims hasten forward and find nothing but sandwhere an hour before they had seen a lake. They turn their eyes and seea lake where, an hour before, they were toiling through sand. A similarillusion seems to haunt nations through every stage of the long progressfrom poverty and barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence andcivilisation. But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shallfind it recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. Itis now the fashion to place the golden age of England in timeswhen noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which wouldbe intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepersbreakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in amodern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was a privilegereserved for the higher class of gentry, when men died faster in thepurest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes ofour towns, and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns thanthey now die on the coast of Guiana. We too shall, in our turn, beoutstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may well be, in the twentiethcentury, that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserablypaid with twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich mayreceive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little used todine without meat as they now are to eat rye bread; that sanitary policeand medical discoveries may have added several more years to the averagelength of human life; that numerous comforts and luxuries which are nowunknown, or confined to a few, may be within the reach of every diligentand thrifty working man. And yet it may then be the mode to assert thatthe increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefitedthe few at the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of QueenVictoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when allclasses were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich didnot grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy thesplendour of the rich. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE death of King Charles the Second took the nation by surprise. Hisframe was naturally strong, and did not appear to have suffered fromexcess. He had always been mindful of his 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, [208] and was, even in the decline oflife, an indefatigable walker. His ordinary pace was such that those whowere admitted to the honour of his society found it difficult to keep upwith him. He rose early, and generally passed three or four hours a dayin the open air. He might be seen, before the dew was off the grass inSt. James's Park, striding among the trees, playing with his spaniels, and flinging corn to his ducks; and these exhibitions endeared him tothe common people, who always love to See the great unbend. [209]

At length, towards the close of the year 1684, he was prevented, by aslight attack of what was supposed to be gout, from rambling as usual. He now spent his mornings in his laboratory, where he amused himselfwith experiments on the properties of mercury. His temper seemed to havesuffered from confinement. He had no apparent cause for disquiet. Hiskingdom was tranquil: he was not in pressing want of money: his powerwas greater than it had ever been: the party which had long thwartedhim had been beaten down; but the cheerfulness which had supported himagainst adverse fortune had vanished in this season of prosperity. Atrifle now sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which had borneup against defeat, exile, and penury. His irritation frequently showeditself by looks and words such as could hardly have been expected from aman so eminently distinguished by good humour and good breeding. It wasnot supposed however that his constitution was seriously impaired. [210]

His palace had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous appearancethan on the evening of Sunday the first of February 1685. [211] Somegrave persons who had gone thither, after the fashion of that age, topay their duty to their sovereign, and who had expected that, on such aday, his court would wear a decent aspect, were struck with astonishmentand horror. The great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of themagnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and gamblers. Theking sate there chatting and toying with three women, whose charms werethe boast, and whose vices were the disgrace, of three nations. BarbaraPalmer, Duchess of Cleveland, was there, no longer young, but stillretaining some traces of that superb and voluptuous loveliness whichtwenty years before overcame the hearts of all men. There too was theDuchess of Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted upwith the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, andniece of the great Cardinal, completed the group. She had been earlyremoved from her native Italy to the court where her uncle was supreme. His power and her own attractions had drawn a crowd of illustrioussuitors round her. Charles himself, during his exile, had sought herhand in vain. No gift of nature or of fortune seemed to be wantingto her. Her face was beautiful with the rich beauty of the South, her understanding quick, her manners graceful, her rank exalted, herpossessions immense; but her ungovernable passions had turned all theseblessings into curses. She had found the misery of an ill assortedmarriage intolerable, had fled from her husband, had abandoned hervast wealth, and, after having astonished Rome and Piedmont by heradventures, had fixed her abode in England. Her house was the favouriteresort of men of wit and pleasure, who, for the sake of her smilesand her table, endured her frequent fits of insolence and ill humour. Rochester and Godolphin sometimes forgot the cares of state inher company. Barillon and Saint Evremond found in her drawing roomconsolation for their long banishment from Paris. The learning ofVossius, the wit of Waller, were daily employed to flatter and amuseher. But her diseased mind required stronger stimulants, and sought themin gallantry, in basset, and in usquebaugh. [212] While Charles. Flirtedwith his three sultanas, Hortensia's French page, a handsome boy, whosevocal performances were the delight of Whitehall, and were rewarded bynumerous presents of rich clothes, ponies, and guineas, warbled someamorous verses. [213] A party of twenty courtiers was seated at cardsround a large table on which gold was heaped in mountains. [214] Eventhen the King had complained that he did not feel quite well. He hadno appetite for his supper: his rest that night was broken; but on thefollowing morning he rose, as usual, early. 

To that morning the contending factions in his council had, during somedays, looked forward with anxiety. The struggle between Halifax andRochester seemed to be approaching a decisive crisis. Halifax, notcontent with having already driven his rival from the Board of Treasury, had undertaken to prove him guilty of such dishonesty or neglect in theconduct of the finances as ought to be punished by dismission from thepublic service. It was even whispered that the Lord President wouldprobably be sent to the Tower. The King had promised to enquire into thematter. The second of February had been fixed for the investigation; andseveral officers of the revenue had been ordered to attend with theirbooks on that day. [215] But a great turn of fortune was at hand. 

Scarcely had Charles risen from his bed when his attendants perceivedthat his utterance was indistinct, and that his thoughts seemed to bewandering. Several men of rank had, as usual, assembled to see theirsovereign shaved and dressed. He made an effort to converse with themin his usual gay style; but his ghastly look surprised and alarmed them. Soon his face 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 whohad charge of the royal retorts and crucibles happened to be present. He had no lances; but he opened a vein with a penknife. The blood flowedfreely; but the King was still insensible. 

He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess ofPortsmouth hung over him with the familiarity of a wife. But the alarmhad been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were hastening tothe room. The favourite concubine was forced to retire to her ownapartments. Those apartments had been thrice pulled down and thricerebuilt by her lover to gratify her caprice. The very furniture ofthe chimney was massy silver. Several fine paintings, which properlybelonged to the Queen, had been transferred to the dwelling of themistress. The sideboards were piled with richly wrought plate. Inthe niches stood cabinets, the masterpieces of Japanese art. On thehangings, fresh from the looms of Paris, were depicted, in tints whichno English tapestry could rival, birds of gorgeous plumage, landscapes, hunting matches, the lordly terrace of Saint Germains, the statues andfountains of Versailles. [216] In the midst of this splendour, purchasedby guilt and shame, the unhappy woman gave herself up to an agony ofgrief, which, to do her justice, was not wholly selfish. 

And now the gates of Whitehall, which ordinarily stood open to allcomers, were closed. But persons whose faces were known were stillpermitted to enter. The antechambers and galleries were soon filledto overflowing; and even the sick room was crowded with peers, privycouncillors, and foreign ministers. All the medical men of note inLondon were summoned. So high did political animosities run that thepresence of some Whig physicians was regarded as an extraordinarycircumstance. [217] One Roman Catholic, whose skill was then widelyrenowned, Doctor Thomas Short, was in attendance. Several of theprescriptions have been preserved. One of them is signed by fourteenDoctors. The patient was bled largely. Hot iron was applied to his head. A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced intohis mouth. He recovered his senses; but he was evidently in a situationof extreme danger. 

The Queen was for a time assiduous in her attendance. The Duke of Yorkscarcely left his brother's bedside. The Primate and four other bishopswere then in London. They remained at Whitehall all day, and took itby turns to sit up at night in the King's room. The news of his illnessfilled the capital with sorrow and dismay. For his easy temper andaffable manners had won the affection of a large part of the nation;and those who most disliked him preferred his unprincipled levity to thestern and earnest bigotry of his brother. 

On the morning of Thursday the fifth of February, the London Gazetteannounced that His Majesty was going on well, and was thought by thephysicians to be out of danger. The bells of all the churches rangmerrily; and preparations for bonfires were made in the streets. But inthe evening it was known that a relapse had taken place, and that themedical attendants had given up all hope. The public mind was greatlydisturbed; but there was no disposition to tumult. The Duke of York, whohad already taken on himself to give orders, ascertained that the Citywas perfectly quiet, and that he might without difficulty be proclaimedas soon as his brother should expire. 

The King was in great pain, and complained that he felt as if a firewas burning within him. Yet he bore up against his sufferings with afortitude which did not seem to belong to his soft and luxurious nature. The sight of his misery affected his wife so much that she fainted, andwas carried senseless to her chamber. The prelates who were in waitinghad from the first exhorted him to prepare for his end. They now thoughtit their duty to address him in a still more urgent manner. WilliamSancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, an honest and pious, thoughnarrowminded, man, used great freedom. "It is time, " he said, "tospeak out; for, Sir, you are about to appear before a Judge who is norespecter of persons. " The King answered not a word. 

Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, then tried his powers ofpersuasion. He was a man of parts and learning, of quick sensibility andstainless virtue. His elaborate works have long been forgotten; buthis morning and evening hymns are still repeated daily in thousands ofdwellings. Though, like most of his order, zealous for monarchy, he wasno sycophant. Before he became a Bishop, he had maintained the honour ofhis gown by refusing, when the court was at Winchester, to let EleanorGwynn lodge in the house which he occupied there as a prebendary. [218]The King had sense enough to respect so manly a spirit. Of all theprelates he liked Ken the best. It was to no purpose, however, that thegood Bishop now put forth all his eloquence. His solemn and patheticexhortation awed and melted the bystanders to such a degree that someamong them believed him to be filled with the same spirit which, in theold time, had, by the mouths of Nathan and Elias, called sinful princesto repentance. Charles however was unmoved. He made no objection indeedwhen the service for the visitation of the sick was read. In reply tothe pressing questions of the divines, he said that he was sorry forwhat he had done amiss; and he suffered the absolution to be pronouncedover him according to the forms of the Church of England: but, when hewas urged to declare that he died in the communion of that Church, heseemed not to hear what was said; and nothing could induce him to takethe Eucharist from the hands of the Bishops. A table with bread and winewas brought to his bedside, but in vain. Sometimes he said that therewas no hurry, and sometimes that he was too weak. 

Many attributed this apathy to contempt for divine things, and many tothe stupor which often precedes death. But there were in the palace afew persons who knew better. Charles had never been a sincere member ofthe Established Church. His mind had long oscillated between Hobbism andPopery. 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 Yorkwas aware of this, but was entirely occupied with the care of his owninterests. He had ordered the outports to be closed. He had posteddetachments of the Guards in different parts of the city. He had alsoprocured the feeble signature of the dying King to an instrument bywhich some duties, granted only till the demise of the Crown, were letto farm for a term of three years. These things occupied the attentionof James to such a degree that, though, on ordinary occasions, he wasindiscreetly and unseasonably eager to bring over proselytes to hisChurch, he never reflected that his brother was in danger of dyingwithout the last sacraments. This neglect was the more extraordinarybecause the Duchess of York had, at the request of the Queen, suggested, on the morning on which the King was taken ill, the propriety ofprocuring spiritual assistance. For such assistance Charles was at lastindebted to an agency very different from that of his pious wife andsister-in-law. A life of frivolty and vice had not extinguished in theDuchess of Portsmouth all sentiments of religion, or all that kindnesswhich is the glory of her sex. The French ambassador Barillon, who hadcome to the palace to enquire after the King, paid her a visit. He foundher in an agony of sorrow. She took him into a secret room, and pouredout her whole heart to him. "I have, " she said, "a thing of great momentto tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The King isreally and truly a Catholic; but he will die without being reconciledto the Church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant clergymen. I cannotenter it without giving scandal. The Duke is thinking only of himself. Speak to him. Remind him that there is a soul at stake. He is masternow. He can clear the room. Go this instant, or it will be too late. "

Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took the Duke aside, and deliveredthe message of the mistress. The conscience of James smote him. Hestarted as if roused from sleep, and declared that nothing shouldprevent him from discharging the sacred duty which had been too longdelayed. Several schemes were discussed and rejected. At last the Dukecommanded the crowd to stand aloof, went to the bed, stooped down, andwhispered something which none of the spectators could hear, but whichthey supposed to be some question about affairs of state. Charlesanswered in an audible voice, "Yes, yes, with all my heart. " None ofthe bystanders, except the French Ambassador, guessed that the King wasdeclaring 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 Sickman. "For God's sake do, and lose no time. But no; you will get intotrouble. " "If it costs me my life, " said the Duke, "I will fetch apriest. "

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 aproselyte into the Roman Catholic Church was guilty of a capital crime. The Count of Castel Melhor, a Portuguese nobleman, who, driven bypolitical troubles from his native land, had been hospitably received atthe English court, undertook to procure a confessor. He had recourse tohis countrymen who belonged to the Queen's household; but he found thatnone of her chaplains knew English or French enough to shrive the King. The Duke and Barillon were about to send to the Venetian Minister fora clergyman when they heard that a Benedictine monk, named JohnHuddleston, happened to be at Whitehall. This man had, with great riskto himself, saved the King's life after the battle of Worcester, andhad, on that account, been, ever since the Restoration, a privilegedperson. In the sharpest proclamations which had been put forth againstPopish priests, when false witnesses had inflamed the nation to fury, Huddleston had been excepted by name. [219] He readily consented to puthis life a second time in peril for his prince; but there was still adifficulty. The honest monk was so illiterate that he did not know whathe ought to say on an occasion of such importance. He however obtainedsome hints, through the intervention of Castel Melhor, from a Portugueseecclesiastic, and, thus instructed, was brought up the back stairs byChiffinch, a confidential servant, who, if the satires of that ageare to be credited, had often introduced visitors of a very differentdescription 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 Feversham, and John Granville, Earl of Bath. Both these Lordsprofessed the Protestant religion; but James conceived that he couldcount on their fidelity. Feversham, a Frenchman of noble birth, andnephew of the great Turenne, held high rank in the English army, and wasChamberlain to the Queen. Bath was Groom of the Stole. 

The Duke's orders were obeyed; and even the physicians withdrew. Theback door was then opened; and Father Huddleston entered. A cloakhad been thrown over his sacred vestments; and his shaven crown wasconcealed by a flowing wig. "Sir, " said the Duke, "this good man oncesaved your life. He now comes to save your soul. " Charles faintlyanswered, "He is welcome. " Huddleston went through his part better thanhad been expected. He knelt by the bed, listened to the confession, pronounced the absolution, and administered extreme unction. He askedif the King wished to receive the Lord's supper. "Surely, " said Charles, "if I am not unworthy. " The host was brought in. Charles feebly stroveto rise and kneel before it. The priest made him lie still, and assuredhim that God would accept the humiliation of the soul, and would notrequire the humiliation of the body. The King found so much difficultyin swallowing the bread that it was necessary to open the door andprocure a glass of water. This rite ended, the monk held up a crucifixbefore the penitent, charged him to fix his last thoughts on thesufferings of the Redeemer, and withdrew. The whole ceremony hadoccupied about three quarters of an hour; and, during that time, thecourtiers who filled the outer room had communicated their suspicions toeach other by whispers and significant glances. The door was at lengththrown open, and the crowd again filled the chamber of death. 

It was now late in the evening. The King seemed much relieved by whathad passed. His natural children were brought to his bedside, the Dukesof Grafton, Southampton, and Northumberland, sons of the Duchess ofCleveland, the Duke of Saint Albans, son of Eleanor Gwynn, and the Dukeof Richmond, son of the Duchess of Portsmouth. Charles blessed them all, but spoke with peculiar tenderness to Richmond. One face which shouldhave been there was wanting. The eldest and best loved child was anexile and a wanderer. His name was not once mentioned by his father. 

During the night Charles earnestly recommended the Duchess of Portsmouthand 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 byHalifax. She said that she was too much disordered to resume her postby the couch, and implored pardon for any offence which she mightunwittingly 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; andCharles desired the attendants to pull aside the curtains, that he mighthave one more look at the day. He remarked that it was time to wind upa clock which stood near his bed. These little circumstances were longremembered because they proved beyond dispute that, when he declaredhimself a Roman Catholic, he was in full possession of his faculties. He apologised to those who had stood round him all night for the troublewhich he had caused. He had been, he said, a most unconscionable timedying; but he hoped that they would excuse it. This was the last glimpseof the exquisite urbanity, so often found potent to charm away theresentment of a justly incensed nation. Soon after dawn the speech ofthe dying man failed. Before ten his senses were gone. Great numbers hadrepaired to the churches at the hour of morning service. When the prayerfor the King was read, loud groans and sobs showed how deeply his peoplefelt for him. At noon on Friday, the sixth of February, he passed awaywithout a struggle. [220]

At that time the common people throughout Europe, and nowhere morethan in England, were in the habit of attributing the death of princes, especially when the prince was popular and the death unexpected, to thefoulest and darkest kind of assassination. Thus James the First hadbeen accused of poisoning Prince Henry. Thus Charles the First had beenaccused of poisoning James the First. Thus when, in the time of theCommonwealth, the Princess Elizabeth died at Carisbrook, it was loudlyasserted that Cromwell had stooped to the senseless and dastardlywickedness of mixing noxious drugs with the food of a young girl whom hehad no conceivable motive to injure. [221] A few years later, the rapiddecomposition of Cromwell's own corpse was ascribed by many to a deadlypotion administered in his medicine. The death of Charles the Secondcould scarcely fail to occasion similar rumours. The public ear had beenrepeatedly abused by stories of Popish plots against his life. Therewas, therefore, in many minds, a strong predisposition to suspicion; andthere were some unlucky circumstances which, to minds so predisposed, might seem to indicate that a crime had been perpetrated. The fourteenDoctors who deliberated on the King's case contradicted each other andthemselves. Some of them thought that his fit was epileptic, and thathe should be suffered to have his doze out. The majority pronouncedhim apoplectic, and tortured him during some hours like an Indian ata stake. Then it was determined to call his complaint a fever, and toadminister doses of bark. One physician, however, protested againstthis course, and assured the Queen that his brethren would kill theKing among them. Nothing better than dissension and vacillation could beexpected from such a multitude of advisers. But many of the vulgar notunnaturally concluded, from the perplexity of the great masters of thehealing art, that the malady had some extraordinary origin. There isreason to believe that a horrible suspicion did actually cross the mindof Short, who, though skilful in his profession, seems to have been anervous and fanciful man, and whose perceptions were probably confusedby dread of the odious imputations to which he, as a Roman Catholic, was peculiarly exposed. We cannot, therefore, wonder that wild storieswithout number were repeated and believed by the common people. HisMajesty's tongue had swelled to the size of a neat's tongue. A cake ofdeleterious powder had been found in his brain. There were blue spots onhis breast, There were black spots on his shoulder. Something had been, put in his snuff-box. Something had been put into his broth. Somethinghad been put into his favourite dish of eggs and ambergrease. TheDuchess of Portsmouth had poisoned him in a cup of chocolate. TheQueen had poisoned him in a jar of dried pears. Such tales ought to bepreserved; for they furnish us with a measure of the intelligence andvirtue of the generation which eagerly devoured them. That no rumour ofthe same kind has ever, in the present age, found credit among us, evenwhen lives on which great interest depended have been terminatedby unforeseen attacks of disease, is to be attributed partly to theprogress of medical and chemical science, but partly also, it may behoped, to the progress which the nation has made in good sense, justice, and humanity. [222]

When all was over, James retired from the bedside to his closet, where, during a quarter of an hour, he remained alone. Meanwhile the PrivyCouncillors who were in the palace assembled. The new King cameforth, and took his place at the head of the board. He commenced hisadministration, according to usage, by a speech to the Council. Heexpressed his regret for the loss which he had just sustained, and hepromised to imitate the singular lenity which had distinguished the latereign. He was aware, he said, that he had been accused of a fondness forarbitrary power. But that was not the only falsehood which had been toldof him. He was resolved to maintain the established government both inChurch and State. The Church of England he knew to be eminently loyal. It should therefore always be his care to support and defend her. Thelaws of England, he also knew, were sufficient to make him as great aKing as he could wish to be. He would not relinquish his own rights; buthe would respect the rights of others. He had formerly risked his lifein defense of his country; and he would still go as far as any man insupport of her just liberties. 

This speech was not, like modern speeches on similar occasions, carefully prepared by the advisers of the sovereign. It was theextemporaneous expression of the new King's feelings at a moment ofgreat excitement. The members of the Council broke forth into clamoursof delight and gratitude. The Lord President, Rochester, in the nameof his brethren, expressed a hope that His Majesty's most welcomedeclaration would be made public. The Solicitor General, Heneage Finch, offered to act as clerk. He was a zealous churchman, and, as such, wasnaturally desirous that there should be some permanent record of thegracious promises which had just been uttered. "Those promises, " hesaid, "have made so deep an impression on me that I can repeat them wordfor 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 hadtaken this step without due consideration, that his unpremeditatedexpressions touching the Church of England were too strong, and thatFinch had, with a dexterity which at the time escaped notice, made themstill stronger. [223]

The King had been exhausted by long watching and by many violentemotions. He now retired to rest. The Privy Councillors, havingrespectfully accompanied him to his bedchamber, returned to their seats, and issued orders for the ceremony of proclamation. The Guards wereunder arms; the heralds appeared in their gorgeous coats; and thepageant proceeded without any obstruction. Casks of wine were broken upin the streets, and all who passed were invited to drink to the healthof the new sovereign. But, though an occasional shout was raised, thepeople were not in a joyous mood. Tears were seen in many eyes; and itwas remarked that there was scarcely a housemaid in London who had notcontrived to procure some fragment of black crepe in honour of KingCharles. [224]

The funeral called forth much censure. It would, indeed, hardly havebeen accounted worthy of a noble and opulent subject. The Tories gentlyblamed the new King's parsimony: the Whigs sneered at his want ofnatural affection; and the fiery Covenanters of Scotland exultinglyproclaimed that the curse denounced of old against wicked princes hadbeen signally fulfilled, and that the departed tyrant had been buriedwith the burial of an ass. [225] Yet James commenced his administrationwith a large measure of public good will. His speech to the Councilappeared in print, and the impression which it produced was highlyfavourable to him. This, then, was the prince whom a faction had driveninto exile and had tried to rob of his birthright, on the ground thathe was a deadly enemy to the religion and laws of England. He hadtriumphed: he was on the throne; and his first act was to declare thathe would defend the Church, and would strictly respect the rights ofhis people. The estimate which all parties had formed of his character, added weight to every word that fell from him. The Whigs called himhaughty, implacable, obstinate, regardless of public opinion. TheTories, while they extolled his princely virtues, had often lamented hisneglect of the arts which conciliate popularity. Satire itself had neverrepresented him as a man likely to court public favour by professingwhat he did not feel, and by promising what he had no intention ofperforming. On the Sunday which followed his accession, his speech wasquoted in many pulpits. "We have now for our Church, " cried one loyalpreacher, "the word of a King, and of a King who was never worse thanhis word. " This pointed sentence was fast circulated through town andcountry, and was soon the watchword of the whole Tory party. [226]

The great offices of state had become vacant by the demise of the crownand 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 hisfavour. Sunderland, who was Secretary of State, and Godolphin, who wasFirst Lord of the Treasury, had supported the Exclusion Bill. Halifax, who held the Privy Seal, had opposed that bill with unrivalled powersof argument and eloquence. But Halifax was the mortal enemy of despotismand of Popery. He saw with dread the progress of the French arms on theContinent and the influence of French gold in the counsels of England. Had his advice been followed, the laws would have been strictlyobserved: clemency would have been extended to the vanquished Whigs: theParliament would have been convoked in due season: an attempt would havebeen made to reconcile our domestic factions; and the principles ofthe Triple Alliance would again have guided our foreign policy. Hehad therefore incurred the bitter animosity of James. The Lord KeeperGuildford could hardly be said to belong to either of the parties intowhich the court was divided. He could by no means be called a friend ofliberty; and yet he had so great a reverence for the letter of thelaw that he was not a serviceable tool of arbitrary power. He wasaccordingly designated by the vehement Tories as a Trimmer, and was toJames 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 superiorto those of any other subject. He had fought bravely for Charles theFirst: he had shared the exile of Charles the Second; and, since theRestoration, he had, in spite of many provocations, kept his loyaltyunstained. Though he had been disgraced during the predominance of theCabal, he had never gone into factious opposition, and had, in thedays of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, been foremost among thesupporters of the throne. He was now old, and had been recently tried bythe most cruel of all calamities. He had followed to the grave a son whoshould have been his own chief mourner, the gallant Ossory. The eminentservices, the venerable age, and the domestic misfortunes of Ormond madehim an object of general interest to the nation. The Cavaliers regardedhim 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 ofmonarchy, 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 expectfrom his new master. James, indeed, while still a subject, had urged hisbrother to make a complete change in the Irish administration. Charleshad assented; and it had been arranged that, in a few months, thereshould be a new Lord Lieutenant. [227]

Rochester was the only member of the cabinet who stood high in thefavour of the King. The general expectation was that he would beimmediately placed at the head of affairs, and that all the other greatofficers of the state would be changed. This expectation proved to bewell founded in part only. Rochester was declared Lord Treasurer, andthus became prime minister. Neither a Lord High Admiral nor a Board ofAdmiralty was appointed. The new King, who loved the details of navalbusiness, and would have made a respectable clerk in a dockyard atChatham, determined to be his own minister of marine. Under him themanagement of that important department was confided to Samuel Pepys, whose library and diary have kept his name fresh to our time. No servantof the late sovereign was publicly disgraced. Sunderland exerted so muchart and address, employed so many intercessors, and was in possession ofso many secrets, that he was suffered to retain his seals. Godolphin'sobsequiousness, industry, experience and taciturnity, could illbe spared. As he was no longer wanted at the Treasury, he was madeChamberlain to the Queen. With these three Lords the King took counselon all important questions. As to Halifax, Ormond, and Guildford, hedetermined 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 thePresidency of the Council. He submitted with extreme reluctance. For, though the President of the Council had always taken precedence ofthe Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Privy Seal was, in that age a much moreimportant officer than the Lord President. Rochester had not forgottenthe jest which had been made a few months before on his own removal fromthe Treasury, and enjoyed in his turn the pleasure of kicking his rivalup stairs. The Privy Seal was delivered to Rochester's elder brother, Henry Earl of Clarendon. 

To Barillon James expressed the strongest dislike of Halifax. "Iknow him well, I never can trust him. He shall have no share in themanagement of public business. As to the place which I have given him, it will just serve to show how little influence he has. " But to Halifaxit was thought convenient to hold a very different language. "All thepast is forgotten, " said the King, "except the service which you did mein the debate on the Exclusion Bill. " This speech has often been citedto prove that James was not so vindictive as he had been called byhis enemies. It seems rather to prove that he by no means deserved thepraises which have been bestowed on his sincerity by his friends. [228]

Ormond was politely informed that his services were no longer neededin Ireland, and was invited to repair to Whitehall, and to perform thefunctions of Lord Steward. He dutifully submitted, but did not affect todeny that the new arrangement wounded his feelings deeply. On the eve ofhis departure he gave a magnificent banquet at Kilmainham Hospital, thenjust completed, to the officers of the garrison of Dublin. After dinnerhe rose, filled a goblet to the brim with wine, and, holding it up, asked whether he had spilt one drop. "No, gentlemen; whatever thecourtiers may say, I am not yet sunk into dotage. My hand does not failme yet: and my hand is not steadier than my heart. To the health of KingJames!" Such was the last farewell of Ormond to Ireland. He left theadministration in the hands of Lords Justices, and repaired to London, where he was received with unusual marks of public respect. Many personsof rank went forth to meet him on the road. A long train of eguipagesfollowed him into Saint James's Square, where his mansion stood; andthe Square was thronged by a multitude which greeted him with loudacclamations. [229]

The Great Seal was left in Guildford's custody; but a marked indignitywas at the same time offered to him. It was determined that anotherlawyer of more vigour and audacity should be called to assist in theadministration. The person selected was Sir George Jeffreys, ChiefJustice of the Court of King's Bench. The depravity of this man haspassed into a proverb. Both the great English parties have attacked hismemory with emulous violence: for the Whigs considered him as their mostbarbarous enemy; and the Tories found it convenient to throw on him theblame of all the crimes which had sullied their triumph. A diligent andcandid enquiry will show that some frightful stories which have beentold concerning him are false or exaggerated. Yet the dispassionatehistorian will be able to make very little deduction from the vast massof infamy with which the memory of the wicked judge has been loaded. 

He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but constitutionally prone toinsolence and to the angry passions. When just emerging from boyhoodhe had risen into practice at the Old Bailey bar, a bar where advocateshave always used a license of tongue unknown in Westminster Hall. Here, during many years his chief business was to examine and crossexaminethe most hardened miscreants of a great capital. Daily conflictswith prostitutes and thieves called out and exercised his powers soeffectually that he became the most consummate bully ever known in hisprofession. Tenderness for others and respect for himself were feelingsalike unknown to him. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoricin which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion ofmaledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his vocabularycould hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or the beargarden. His countenance and his voice must always have been unamiable. But thesenatural advantages, --for such he seems to have thought them, --he hadimproved to such a degree that there were few who, in his paroxysms ofrage, could see or hear him without emotion. Impudence and ferocity sateupon his brow. The glare of his eyes had a fascination for the unhappyvictim on whom they were fixed. Yet his brow and his eye were lessterrible than the savage lines of his mouth. His yell of fury, as wassaid by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder of thejudgment day. These qualifications he carried, while still a young man, from the bar to the bench. He early became Common Serjeant, and thenRecorder of London. As a judge at the City sessions he exhibited thesame propensities which afterwards, in a higher post, gained for him anunenviable immortality. Already might be remarked in him the most odiousvice which is incident to human nature, a delight in misery merelyas misery. There was a fiendish exultation in the way in which hepronounced sentence on offenders. Their weeping and imploring seemedto titillate him voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits bydilating with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what theywere to suffer. Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an unluckyadventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, "Hangman, " he wouldexclaim, "I charge you to pay particular attention to this lady! Scourgeher soundly man! Scourge her till the blood runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to strip in! See that you warm her shouldersthoroughly!" [230] He was hardly less facetious when he passed judgmenton poor Lodowick Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied himself aprophet. "Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy, easy, easy punishment!" One part of this easy punishment was thepillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with brickbats. [231]

By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to that temperwhich tyrants require in their worst implements. He had hitherto lookedfor professional advancement to the corporation of London. He hadtherefore professed himself a Roundhead, and had always appeared to bein a higher state of exhilaration when he explained to Popish prieststhat they were to be cut down alive, and were to see their own bowelsburned, than when he passed ordinary sentences of death. But, as soonas he had got all that the city could give, he made haste to sell hisforehead of brass and his tongue of venom to the Court. Chiffinch, whowas accustomed to act as broker in infamous contracts of more than onekind, lent his aid. He had conducted many amorous and many politicalintrigues; but he assuredly never rendered a more scandalous service tohis masters than when he introduced Jeffreys to Whitehall. The renegadesoon found a patron in the obdurate and revengeful James, but was alwaysregarded with scorn and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as theywere, had no affinity with insolence and cruelty. "That man, " said theKing, "has no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence thanten carted street-walkers. " [232] Work was to be done, however, whichcould be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was sensible ofshame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at which a barrister thinks himselffortunate if he is employed to conduct an important cause, was madeChief Justice of the King's Bench. 

His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the qualities ofa great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was merely such as he hadpicked up in practice of no very high kind. But he had one of thosehappily constituted intellects which, across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial facts, go straight to the true point. Of his intellect, however, he seldom had the full use. Even in civilcauses his malevolent and despotic temper perpetually disordered hisjudgment. To enter his court was to enter the den of a wild beast, which none could tame, and which was as likely to be roused to rage bycaresses as by attacks. He frequently poured forth on plaintiffs anddefendants, barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen, torrents offrantic abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses. His looks and toneshad inspired terror when he was merely a young advocate struggling intopractice. Now that he was at the head of the most formidable tribunalin the realm, there were few indeed who did not tremble before him. Even when he was sober, his violence was sufficiently frightful. But ingeneral his reason was overclouded and his evil passions stimulatedby the fumes of intoxication. His evenings were ordinarily given torevelry. People who saw him only over his bottle would have supposed himto be a man gross indeed, sottish, and addicted to low company and lowmerriment, but social and goodhumoured. He was constantly surrounded onsuch occasions by buffoons selected, for the most part, from among thevilest pettifoggers who practiced before him. These men bantered andabused each other for his entertainment. He joined in their ribald talk, sang catches with them, and, when his head grew hot, hugged and kissedthem in an ecstasy of drunken fondness. But though wine at first seemedto soften his heart, the effect a few hours later was very different. Heoften came to the judgment seat, having kept the court waiting long, andyet having but half slept off his debauch, his cheeks on fire, his eyesstaring like those of a maniac. When he was in this state, his booncompanions of the preceding night, if they were wise, kept out of hisway: for the recollection of the familiarity to which he had admittedthem inflamed his malignity; and he was sure to take every opportunityof overwhelming them with execration and invective. Not the least odiousof his many odious peculiarities was the pleasure which he took inpublicly browbeating and mortifying those whom, in his fits of maudlintenderness, 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 and triumphantly. His firstexploit was the judicial murder of Algernon Sidney. What followed wasin perfect harmony with this beginning. Respectable Tories lamented thedisgrace which the barbarity and indecency of so great a functionarybrought upon the administration of justice. But the excesses whichfilled such men with horror were titles to the esteem of James. Jeffreys, therefore, very soon after the death of Charles, obtained aseat in the cabinet and a peerage. This last honour was a signal mark ofroyal approbation. For, since the judicial system of the realm had beenremodelled in the thirteenth century, no Chief Justice had been a Lordof Parliament. [233]

Guildford now found himself superseded in all his political functions, and restricted to his business as a judge in equity. At Council he wastreated by Jeffreys with marked incivility. The whole legal patronagewas in the hands of the Chief Justice; and it was well known by the barthat the surest way to propitiate the Chief Justice was to treat theLord Keeper with disrespect. 

James had not been many hours King when a dispute arose between the twoheads of the law. The customs had been settled on Charles for life only, and could not therefore be legally exacted by the new sovereign. Someweeks must elapse before a House of Commons could be chosen. If, inthe meantime, the duties were suspended, the revenue would suffer; theregular course of trade would be interrupted; the consumer would deriveno benefit, and the only gainers would be those fortunate speculatorswhose cargoes might happen to arrive during the interval between thedemise of the crown and the meeting of the Parliament. The Treasury wasbesieged by merchants whose warehouses were filled with goods on whichduty had been paid, and who were in grievous apprehension of beingundersold and ruined. Impartial men must admit that this was one ofthose cases in which a government may be justified in deviating from thestrictly constitutional course. But when it is necessary to deviate fromthe strictly constitutional course, the deviation clearly ought to beno greater than the necessity requires. Guildford felt this, and gaveadvice which did him honour. He proposed that the duties should belevied, but should be kept in the Exchequer apart from other sums tillthe Parliament should meet. In this way the King, while violatingthe letter of the laws, would show that he wished to conform to theirspirit, Jeffreys gave very different counsel. He advised James to putforth an edict declaring it to be His Majesty's will and pleasure thatthe customs should continue to be paid. This advice was well suitedto the King's temper. The judicious proposition of the Lord Keeperwas rejected as worthy only of a Whig, or of what was still worse, a Trimmer. A proclamation, such as the Chief Justice had suggested, appeared. Some people had expected that a violent outbreak of publicindignation would be the consequence; but they were deceived. The spiritof opposition had not yet revived; and the court might safely venture totake steps which, five years before, would have produced a rebellion. In the City of London, lately so turbulent, scarcely a murmur was heard. [234]

The proclamation, which announced that the customs would still belevied, announced also that a Parliament would shortly meet. It was notwithout many misgivings that James had determined to call the Estates ofhis realm together. The moment was, indeed most auspicious for a generalelection. Never since the accession of the House of Stuart had theconstituent bodies been so favourably disposed towards the Court. But the new sovereign's mind was haunted by an apprehension not to bementioned even at this distance of time, without shame and indignation. He was afraid that by summoning his Parliament he might incur thedispleasure of the King of France. 

To the King of France it mattered little which of the two Englishfactions triumphed at the elections: for all the Parliaments which hadmet since the Restoration, whatever might have been their temper as todomestic politics, had been jealous of the growing power of the House ofBourbon. On this subject there was little difference between the Whigsand the sturdy country gentlemen who formed the main strength of theTory party. Lewis had therefore spared neither bribes nor menaces toprevent Charles from convoking the Houses; and James, who had from thefirst been in the secret of his brother's foreign politics, had, inbecoming King of England, become also a hireling and vassal of France. 

Rochester, Godolphin, and Sunderland, who now formed the interiorcabinet, were perfectly aware that their late master had been inthe habit of receiving money from the court of Versailles. They wereconsulted by James as to the expediency of convoking the legislature. They acknowledged the importance of keeping Lewis in good humour: butit seemed to them that the calling of a Parliament was not a matter ofchoice. Patient as the nation appeared to be, there were limits to itspatience. The principle, that the money of the subject could not belawfully taken by the King without the assent of the Commons, was firmlyrooted in the public mind; and though, on all extraordinary emergencyeven Whigs might be willing to pay, during a few weeks, duties notimposed by statute, it was certain that even Tories would becomerefractory if such irregular taxation should continue longer than thespecial circumstances which alone justified it. The Houses then mustmeet; and since it was so, the sooner they were summoned the better. Even the short delay which would be occasioned by a reference toVersailles might produce irreparable mischief. Discontent and suspicionwould spread fast through society. Halifax would complain that thefundamental principles of the constitution were violated. The LordKeeper, like a cowardly pedantic special pleader as he was, would takethe same side. What might have been done with a good grace would at lastbe done with a bad grace. Those very ministers whom His Majesty mostwished to lower in the public estimation would gain popularity at hisexpense. The ill temper of the nation might seriously affect the resultof the elections. These arguments were unanswerable. The King thereforenotified to the country his intention of holding a Parliament. But hewas painfully anxious to exculpate himself from the guilt of havingacted undutifully and disrespectfully towards France. He led Barilloninto a private room, and there apologised for having dared to take soimportant a step without the previous sanction of Lewis. "Assure yourmaster, " said James, "of my gratitude and attachment. I know thatwithout his protection I can do nothing. I know what troubles my brotherbrought on himself by not adhering steadily to France. I will take goodcare not to let the Houses meddle with foreign affairs. If I see in themany disposition to make mischief, I will send them about their business. Explain this to my good brother. I hope that he will not take itamiss that I have acted without consulting him. He has a right to beconsulted; and it is my wish to consult him about everything. Butin this case the delay even of a week might have produced seriousconsequences. "

These ignominious excuses were, on the following morning, repeated byRochester. Barillon received them civilly. Rochester, grown bolder, proceeded to ask for money. "It will be well laid out, " he said: "yourmaster cannot employ his revenues better. Represent to him strongly howimportant it is that the King of England should be dependent, not on hisown people, but on the friendship of France alone. " [235]

Barillon hastened to communicate to Lewis the wishes of the Englishgovernment; but Lewis had already anticipated them. His first act, after he was apprised of the death of Charles, was to collect bills ofexchange on England to the amount of five hundred thousand livres, a sumequivalent to about thirty-seven thousand five hundred pounds sterlingSuch bills were not then to be easily procured in Paris at day's notice. In a few hours, however, the purchase was effected, and a courierstarted for London. [236] As soon as Barillon received the remittance, he flew to Whitehall, and communicated the welcome news. James was notashamed to shed, or pretend to shed, tears of delight and gratitude. "Nobody but your King, " he said, "does such kind, such noble things. Inever can be grateful enough. Assure him that my attachment will lastto the end of my days. " Rochester, Sunderland, and Godolphin came, oneafter another, to embrace the ambassador, and to whisper to him that hehad given new life to their royal master. [237]

But though James and his three advisers were pleased with thepromptitude which Lewis had shown, they were by no means satisfied withthe amount of the donation. As they were afraid, however, that theymight give offence by importunate mendicancy, they merely hinted theirwishes. They declared that they had no intention of haggling with sogenerous a benefactor as the French King, and that they were willing totrust entirely to his munificence. They, at the same time, attemptedto propitiate him by a large sacrifice of national honour. It waswell known that one chief end of his politics was to add the Belgianprovinces to his dominions. England was bound by a treaty which hadbeen concluded with Spain when Danby was Lord Treasurer, to resist anyattempt which France might make on those provinces. The three ministersinformed Barillon that their master considered that treaty as no longerobligatory. It had been made, they said, by Charles: it might, perhaps, have been binding on him; but his brother did not think himself boundby it. The most Christian King might, therefore, without any fear ofopposition from England, proceed to annex Brabant and Hainault to hisempire. [238]

It was at the same time resolved that an extraordinary embassy should besent to assure Lewis of the gratitude and affection of James. For thismission was selected a man who did not as yet occupy a very eminentposition, 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 havebeen celebrated by the lively pen of Hamilton, James, young and ardentin the pursuit of pleasure, had been attracted to Arabella Churchill, one of the maids of honour who waited on his first wife. The younglady was plain: but the taste of James was not nice: and she becamehis avowed mistress. She was the daughter of a poor Cavalier knight whohaunted Whitehall, and made himself ridiculous by publishing a dull andaffected folio, long forgotten, in praise of monarchy and monarchs. Thenecessities of the Churchills were pressing: their loyalty was ardent:and their only feeling about Arabella's seduction seems to have beenjoyful surprise that so homely a girl should have attained such highpreferment. 

Her interest was indeed of great use to her relations: but none of themwas so fortunate as her eldest brother John, a fine youth, who carried apair of colours in the foot guards. He rose fast in the court and in thearmy, and was early distinguished as a man of fashion and of pleasure. His stature was commanding, his face handsome, his address singularlywinning, yet of such dignity that the most impertinent fops neverventured to take any liberty with him; his temper, even in the mostvexatious and irritating circumstances, always under perfect command. His education had been so much neglected that he could not spell themost common words of his own language: but his acute and vigorousunderstanding amply supplied the place of book learning. He was nottalkative: but when he was forced to speak in public, his naturaleloquence moved the envy of practiced rhetoricians. [239] His couragewas singularly cool and imperturbable. During many years of anxiety andperil, he never, in any emergency, lost even for a moment, the perfectuse of his admirable judgment. 

In his twenty-third year he was sent with his regiment to join theFrench forces, then engaged in operations against Holland. His sereneintrepidity distinguished him among thousands of brave soldiers. Hisprofessional skill commanded the respect of veteran officers. He waspublicly thanked at the head of the army, and received many marksof esteem and confidence from Turenne, who was then at the height ofmilitary glory. 

Unhappily the splendid qualities of John Churchill were mingled withalloy of the most sordid kind. Some propensities, which in youth aresingularly ungraceful, began very early to show themselves in him. Hewas thrifty in his very vices, and levied ample contributions on ladiesenriched by the spoils of more liberal lovers. He was, during a shorttime, the object of the violent but fickle fondness of the Duchess ofCleveland. On one occasion he was caught with her by the King, and wasforced to leap out of the window. She rewarded this hazardous feat ofgallantry with a present of five thousand pounds. With this sum theprudent young hero instantly bought an annuity of five hundred a year, well secured on landed property. [240] Already his private drawercontained a hoard of broad pieces which, fifty years later, when hewas a Duke, a Prince of the Empire, and the richest subject in Europe, remained untouched. [241]

After the close of the war he was attached to the household of the Dukeof York, accompanied his patron to the Low Countries and to Edinburgh, and was rewarded for his services with a Scotch peerage and with thecommand of the only regiment of dragoons which was then on the Englishestablishment. [242] His wife had a post in the family of James'syounger 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 Englishgovernment for the money which had been so generously bestowed. It hadbeen originally intended that he should at the same time ask Lewis fora much larger sum; but, on full consideration, it was apprehendedthat such indelicate greediness might disgust the benefactor whosespontaneous liberality had been so signally displayed. Churchill wastherefore directed to confine himself to thanks for what was past, andto say nothing about the future. [243]

But James and his ministers, even while protesting that they did notmean to be importunate, contrived to hint, very intelligibly, what theywished and expected. In the French ambassador they had a dexterous, azealous, and perhaps, not a disinterested intercessor. Lewis made somedifficulties, probably with the design of enhancing the value of hisgifts. In a very few weeks, however, Barillon received from Versaillesfifteen hundred thousand livres more. This sum, equivalent to about ahundred and twelve thousand pounds sterling, he was instructed to doleout cautiously. He was authorised to furnish the English government withthirty thousand pounds, for the purpose of corrupting members of the NewHouse of Commons. The rest he was directed to keep in reserve for someextraordinary emergency, such as a dissolution or an insurrection. [244]

The turpitude of these transactions is universally acknowledged: buttheir real nature seems to be often misunderstood: for though theforeign policy of the 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 toexcuse their domestic policy. Yet it is certain that between theirdomestic policy and their foreign policy there was a necessary andindissoluble connection. If they had upheld, during a single year, thehonour of the country abroad, they would have been compelled to changethe whole system of their administration at home. To praise them forrefusing to govern in conformity with the sense of Parliament, and yetto blame them for submitting to the dictation of Lewis, is inconsistent. For they had only one choice, to be dependent on Lewis, or to bedependent on Parliament. 

James, to do him justice, would gladly have found out a third way: butthere was none. He became the slave of France: but it would be incorrectto represent him as a contented slave. He had spirit enough to be attimes angry with himself for submitting to such thraldom, and impatientto break loose from it; and this disposition was studiously encouragedby the agents of many foreign powers. 

His accession had excited hopes and fears in every continental court:and the commencement of his administration was watched by strangerswith interest scarcely less deep than that which was felt by his ownsubjects. One government alone wished that the troubles which had, during three generations, distracted England, might be eternal. Allother governments, whether republican or monarchical, whether Protestantor Roman Catholic, wished to see those troubles happily terminated. 

The nature of the long contest between the Stuarts and their Parliamentswas indeed very imperfectly apprehended by foreign statesmen: but nostatesman could fail to perceive the effect which that contest hadproduced on the balance of power in Europe. In ordinary circumstances, the sympathies of the courts of Vienna and Madrid would doubtless havebeen with a prince struggling against subjects, and especially with aRoman Catholic prince struggling against heretical subjects: but allsuch sympathies were now overpowered by a stronger feeling. The fear andhatred inspired by the greatness, the injustice, and the arrogance ofthe French King were at the height. His neighbours might well doubtwhether it were more dangerous to be at war or at peace with him. Forin peace he continued to plunder and to outrage them; and they had triedthe chances of war against him in vain. In this perplexity they lookedwith intense anxiety towards England. Would she act on the principles ofthe Triple Alliance or on the principles of the treaty of Dover? On thatissue depended the fate of all her neighbours. With her help Lewis mightyet be withstood: but no help could be expected from her till she wasat unity with herself. Before the strife between the throne and theParliament began, she had been a power of the first rank: on the day onwhich that strife terminated she became a power of the first rank again:but while the dispute remained undecided, she was condemned to inactionand to vassalage. She had been great under the Plantagenets and Tudors:she was again great under the princes who reigned after the Revolution:but, under the Kings of the House of Stuart, she was a blank in the mapof Europe. She had lost one class of energies, and had not yet acquiredanother. That species of force, which, in the fourteenth century hadenabled her to humble France and Spain, had ceased to exist. Thatspecies of force, which, in the eighteenth century, humbled France andSpain once more, had not yet been called into action. The government wasno longer a limited monarchy after the fashion of the middle ages. Ithad not yet become a limited monarchy after the modern fashion. Withthe vices of two different systems it had the strength of neither. Theelements of our polity, instead of combining in harmony, counteractedand neutralised each other All was transition, conflict, and disorder. The chief business of the sovereign was to infringe the privileges ofthe legislature. The chief business of the legislature was to encroachon the prerogatives of the sovereign. The King readily accepted foreignaid, which relieved him from the misery of being dependent on a mutinousParliament. The Parliament refused to the King the means of supportingthe national honor abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded, thatthose means might be employed in order to establish despotism at home. The effect of these jealousies was that our country, with all her vastresources, was of as little weight in Christendom as the duchy of Savoyor the duchy of Lorraine, and certainly of far less weight than thesmall province of Holland. 

France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of things. [245]All other powers were deeply interested in bringing it to a close. Thegeneral wish of Europe was that James would govern in conformity withlaw and with public opinion. From the Escurial itself came letters, expressing an earnest hope that the new King of England would be on goodterms with his Parliament and his people. [246] From the Vatican itselfcame cautions against immoderate zeal for the Roman Catholic faith. Benedict Odescalchi, who filled the papal chair under the name ofInnocent the Eleventh, felt, in his character of temporal sovereign, allthose apprehensions with which other princes watched the progress of theFrench power. He had also grounds of uneasiness which were peculiar tohimself. It was a happy circumstance for the Protestant religion that, at the moment when the last Roman Catholic King of England mounted thethrone, the Roman Catholic Church was torn by dissension, and threatenedwith a new schism. A quarrel similar to that which had raged in theeleventh century between the Emperors and the Supreme Pontiffs hadarisen between Lewis and Innocent. Lewis, zealous even to bigotryfor the doctrines of the Church of Rome, but tenacious of his regalauthority, accused the Pope of encroaching on the secular rights of theFrench Crown, and was in turn accused by the Pope of encroaching on thespiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty as he was, encountered aspirit even more determined than his own. Innocent was, in all privaterelations, the meekest and gentlest of men: but when he spoke officiallyfrom the chair of St. Peter, he spoke in the tones of Gregory theSeventh and of Sixtus the Fifth. The dispute became serious. Agents ofthe King were excommunicated. Adherents of the Pope were banished. TheKing made the champions of his authority Bishops. The Pope refused theminstitution. They took possession of the Episcopal palaces and revenues:but they were incompetent to perform the Episcopal functions. Before thestruggle terminated, there were in France thirty prelates who could notconfirm or ordain. [247]

Had any prince then living, except Lewis, been engaged in such a disputewith the Vatican, he would have had all Protestant governments on hisside. But the fear and resentment which the ambition and insolence ofthe French King had inspired were such that whoever had the couragemanfully to oppose him was sure of public sympathy. Even Lutherans andCalvinists, who had always detested the Pope, could not refrain fromwishing him success against a tyrant who aimed at universal monarchy. It was thus that, in the present century, many who regarded Pius theSeventh as Antichrist were well pleased to see Antichrist confront thegigantic power of Napoleon. 

The resentment which Innocent felt towards France disposed him to takea mild and liberal view of the affairs of England. The return ofthe English people to the fold of which he was the shepherd wouldundoubtedly have rejoiced his soul. But he was too wise a man to believethat a nation so bold and stubborn, could be brought back to the Churchof Rome by the violent and unconstitutional exercise of royal authority. It was not difficult to foresee that, if James attempted to promote theinterests of his religion by illegal and unpopular means, the attemptwould fail; the hatred with which the heretical islanders regardedthe true faith would become fiercer and stronger than ever; and anindissoluble association would be created in their minds betweenProtestantism and civil freedom, between Popery and arbitrary power. Inthe meantime the King would be an object of aversion and suspicion tohis people. England would still be, as she had been under James theFirst, under Charles the First, and under Charles the Second, a power ofthe third rank; and France would domineer unchecked beyond the Alps andthe Rhine. On the other hand, it was probable that James, by acting withprudence and moderation, by strictly observing the laws and by exertinghimself to win the confidence of his Parliament, might be able toobtain, for the professors of his religion, a large measure of relief. Penal statutes would go first. Statutes imposing civil incapacitieswould soon follow. In the meantime, the English King and the Englishnation united might head the European coalition, and might oppose aninsuperable barrier to the cupidity of Lewis. 

Innocent was confirmed in his judgment by the principal Englishmen whoresided at his court. Of these the most illustrious was Philip Howard, sprung from the noblest houses of Britain, grandson, on one side, of anEarl of Arundel, on the other, of a Duke of Lennox. Philip had longbeen a member of the sacred college: he was commonly designated as theCardinal of England; and he was the chief counsellor of the Holy See inmatters relating to his country. He had been driven into exile by theoutcry of Protestant bigots; and a member of his family, the unfortunateStafford, had fallen a victim to their rage. But neither the Cardinal'sown wrongs, nor those of his house, had so heated his mind as to makehim a rash adviser. Every letter, therefore, which went from the Vaticanto Whitehall, recommended patience, moderation, and respect for theprejudices of the English people. [248]

In the mind of James there was a great conflict. We should do himinjustice if we supposed that a state of vassalage was agreeable to histemper. He loved authority and business. He had a high sense of his ownpersonal dignity. Nay, he was not altogether destitute of a sentimentwhich bore some affinity to patriotism. It galled his soul to think thatthe kingdom which he ruled was of far less account in the world thanmany states which possessed smaller natural advantages; and he listenedeagerly to foreign ministers when they urged him to assert the dignityof his rank, to place himself at the head of a great confederacy, tobecome the protector of injured nations, and to tame the pride of thatpower which held the Continent in awe. Such exhortations made his heartswell with emotions unknown to his careless and effeminate brother. But those emotions were soon subdued by a stronger feeling. A vigorousforeign policy necessarily implied a conciliatory domestic policy. Itwas impossible at once to confront the might of France and to trampleon the liberties of England. The executive government could undertakenothing great without the support of the Commons, and could obtain theirsupport only by acting in conformity with their opinion. Thus Jamesfound that the two things which he most desired could not be enjoyedtogether. His second wish was to be feared and respected abroad. But hisfirst wish was to be absolute master at home. Between the incompatibleobjects on which his heart was set he, for a time, went irresolutelyto and fro. The conflict in his own breast gave to his public acts astrange appearance of indecision and insincerity. Those who, withoutthe clue, attempted to explore the maze of his politics were unable tounderstand how the same man could be, in the same week, so haughty andso mean. Even Lewis was perplexed by the vagaries of an ally who passed, in a few hours, from homage to defiance, and from defiance tohomage. Yet, now that the whole conduct of James is before us, thisinconsistency seems to admit of a simple explanation. 

At the moment of his accession he was in doubt whether the kingdomwould peaceably submit to his authority. The Exclusionists, lately sopowerful, might rise in arms against him. He might be in great needof French money and French troops. He was therefore, during some days, content to be a sycophant and a mendicant. He humbly apologised fordaring to call his Parliament together without the consent of the Frenchgovernment. He begged hard for a French subsidy. He wept with joy overthe French bills of exchange. He sent to Versailles a special embassycharged with assurances of his gratitude, attachment, and submission. But scarcely had the embassy departed when his feelings underwent achange. He had been everywhere proclaimed without one riot, withoutone seditions outcry. From all corners of the island he receivedintelligence that his subjects were tranquil and obedient. His spiritrose. The degrading relation in which he stood to a foreign power seemedintolerable. He became proud, punctilious, boastful, quarrelsome. Heheld such high language about the dignity of his crown and the balanceof power that his whole court fully expected a complete revolution inthe foreign politics of the realm. He commanded Churchill to send home aminute report of the ceremonial of Versailles, in order that the honourswith which the English embassy was received there might be repaid, andnot more than repaid, to the representative of France at Whitehall. Thenews of this change was received with delight at Madrid, Vienna, andthe Hague. [249] Lewis was at first merely diverted. "My good ally talksbig, " he said; "but he is as fond of my pistoles as ever his brotherwas. " Soon, however, the altered demeanour of James, and the hopes withwhich that demeanour inspired both the branches of the House of Austria, began to call for more serious notice. A remarkable letter is stillextant, in which the French King intimated a strong suspicion that hehad been duped, and that the very money which he had sent to Westminsterwould be employed against him. [250]

By this time England had recovered from the sadness and anxiety causedby the death of the goodnatured Charles. The Tories were loud inprofessions of attachment to their new master. The hatred of the Whigswas kept down by fear. That great mass which is not steadily Whig orTory, but which inclines alternately to Whiggism and to Toryism, wasstill on the Tory side. The reaction which had followed the dissolutionof 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 withclosed 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 cameto pay their duty to him might see the ceremony. When the host waselevated there was a strange confusion in the antechamber. The RomanCatholics fell on their knees: the Protestants hurried out of the room. Soon a new pulpit was erected in the palace; and, during Lent, aseries of sermons was preached there by Popish divines, to the greatdiscomposure of zealous churchmen. [251]

A more serious innovation followed. Passion week came; and the Kingdetermined to hear mass with the same pomp with which his predecessorshad been surrounded when they repaired to the temples of the establishedreligion. He announced his intention to the three members of theinterior cabinet, and requested them to attend him. Sunderland, towhom all religions were the same, readily consented. Godolphin, asChamberlain of the Queen, had already been in the habit of giving herhis hand when she repaired to her oratory, and felt no scruple aboutbowing himself officially in the house of Rimmon. But Rochester wasgreatly disturbed. His influence in the country arose chiefly from theopinion entertained by the clergy and by the Tory gentry, that he was azealous and uncompromising friend of the Church. His orthodoxy had beenconsidered as fully atoning for faults which would otherwise have madehim the most unpopular man in the kingdom, for boundless arrogance, for extreme violence of temper, and for manners almost brutal. [252] Hefeared that, by complying with the royal wishes, he should greatlylower himself in the estimation of his party. After some altercationhe obtained permission to pass the holidays out of town. All the othergreat civil dignitaries were ordered to be at their posts on EasterSunday. The rites of the Church of Rome were once more, after aninterval of a hundred and twenty-seven years, performed at Westminsterwith regal splendour. The Guards were drawn out. The Knights of theGarter wore their collars. The Duke of Somerset, second in rank amongthe temporal nobles of the realm, carried the sword of state. A longtrain of great lords accompanied the King to his seat. But it wasremarked that Ormond and Halifax remained in the antechamber. A fewyears before they had gallantly defended the cause of James against someof those who now pressed past them. Ormond had borne no share in theslaughter of Roman Catholics. Halifax had courageously pronouncedStafford not guilty. As the timeservers who had pretended to shudder atthe thought of a Popish king, and who had shed without pity the innocentblood of a Popish peer, now elbowed each other to get near a Popishaltar, the accomplished Trimmer might, with some justice, indulge hissolitary pride in that unpopular nickname. [253]

Within a week after this ceremony James made a far greater sacrificeof his own religious prejudices than he had yet called on any of hisProtestant subjects to make. He was crowned on the twenty-third ofApril, the feast of the patron saint of the realm. The Abbey and theHall were splendidly decorated. The presence of the Queen and of thepeeresses gave to the solemnity a charm which had been wanting to themagnificent inauguration of the late King. Yet those who remembered thatinauguration pronounced that there was a great falling off. The ancientusage was that, before a coronation, the sovereign, with all hisheralds, judges, councillors, lords, and great dignitaries, should ridein state from the Tower of Westminster. Of these cavalcades the last andthe most glorious was that which passed through the capital while thefeelings excited by the Restoration were still in full vigour. Arches oftriumph overhung the road. All Cornhill, Cheapside, Saint Paul's ChurchYard, Fleet Street, and the Strand, were lined with scaffolding. The whole city had thus been admitted to gaze on royalty in the mostsplendid and solemn form that royalty could wear. James ordered anestimate to be made of the cost of such a procession, and found that itwould amount to about half as much as he proposed to expend in coveringhis wife with trinkets. He accordingly determined to be profuse where heought to have been frugal, and niggardly where he might pardonablyhave been profuse. More than a hundred thousand pounds were laid out indressing the Queen, and the procession from the Tower was omitted. Thefolly of this course is obvious. If pageantry be of any use in politics, it is of use as a means of striking the imagination of the multitude. Itis surely the height of absurdity to shut out the populace from a showof which the main object is to make an impression on the populace. James would have shown a more judicious munificence and a more judiciousparsimony, if he had traversed London from east to west with theaccustomed pomp, and had ordered the robes of his wife to be somewhatless thickly set with pearls and diamonds. His example was, however, long followed by his successors; and sums, which, well employed, wouldhave afforded exquisite gratification to a large part of the nation, were squandered on an exhibition to which only three or four thousandprivileged persons were admitted. At length the old practice waspartially revived. On the day of the coronation of Queen Victoria therewas a procession in which many deficiencies might be noted, but whichwas seen with interest and delight by half a million of her subjects, and which undoubtedly gave far greater pleasure, and called forth fargreater enthusiasm, than the more costly display which was witnessed bya select circle within the Abbey. 

James had ordered Sancroft to abridge the ritual. The reason publiclyassigned 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 thereal object was to remove some things highly offensive to the religiousfeelings of a zealous Roman Catholic. The Communion Service was notread. The ceremony of presenting the sovereign with a richly bound copyof the English Bible, and of exhorting him to prize above all earthlytreasures a volume which he had been taught to regard as adulteratedwith false doctrine, was omitted. What remained, however, after all thiscurtailment, might well have raised scruples in the mind of a man whosincerely believed the Church of England to be a heretical society, within the pale of which salvation was not to be found. The King madean oblation on the altar. He appeared to join in the petitions of theLitany which was chaunted by the Bishops. He received from those falseprophets the unction typical of a divine influence, and knelt with thesemblance of devotion, while they called down upon him that Holy Spiritof which they were, in his estimation, the malignant and obdurate foes. Such are the inconsistencies of human nature that this man, who, from afanatical zeal for his religion, threw away three kingdoms, yet chose tocommit what was little short of an act of apostasy, rather than foregothe childish pleasure of being invested with the gewgaws symbolical ofkingly power. [254]

Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, preached. He was one of those writerswho still affected the obsolete style of Archbishop Williams and BishopAndrews. The sermon was made up of quaint conceits, such as seventyyears earlier might have been admired, but such as moved the scorn of ageneration accustomed to the purer eloquence of Sprat, of South, and ofTillotson. King Solomon was King James. Adonijah was Monmouth. Joab wasa Rye House conspirator; Shimei, a Whig libeller; Abiathar, an honestbut misguided old Cavalier. One phrase in the Book of Chronicles wasconstrued to mean that the King was above the Parliament; and anotherwas cited to prove that he alone ought to command the militia. Towardsthe close of the discourse the orator very timidly alluded to the newand embarrassing position in which the Church stood with reference tothe sovereign, and reminded his hearers that the Emperor ConstantiusChlorus, though not himself a Christian, had held in honour thoseChristians who remained true to their religion, and had treated withscorn those who sought to earn his favour by apostasy. The service inthe Abbey was followed by a stately banquet in the Hall, the banquet bybrilliant fireworks, and the fireworks by much bad poetry. [255]

This may be fixed upon as the moment at which the enthusiasm of theTory party reached the zenith. Ever since the accession of the new King, addresses had been pouring in which expressed profound veneration forhis person and office, and bitter detestation of the vanquished Whigs. The magistrates of Middlesex thanked God for having confounded thedesigns of those regicides and exclusionists who, not content withhaving murdered one blessed monarch, were bent on destroying thefoundations of monarchy. The city of Gloucester execrated thebloodthirsty villains who had tried to deprive His Majesty of his justinheritance. The burgesses of Wigan assured their sovereign thatthey would defend him against all plotting Achitophels and rebellionsAbsaloms. The grand jury of Suffolk expressed a hope that the Parliamentwould proscribe all the exclusionists. Many corporations pledgedthemselves never to return to the House of Commons any person who hadvoted for taking away the birthright of James. Even the capital wasprofoundly obsequious. The lawyers and the traders vied with eachother in servility. Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery sent up ferventprofessions of attachment and submission. All the great commercialsocieties, the East India Company, the African Company, the TurkeyCompany, the Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the MarylandMerchants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant Adventurers, declaredthat they most cheerfully complied with the royal edict which requiredthem still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city of the island, echoedthe voice of London. But nowhere was the spirit of loyalty stronger thanin the two Universities. Oxford declared that she would never swervefrom those religious principles which bound her to obey the King withoutany restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe terms, the violence and treachery of those turbulent men who had maliciouslyendeavoured to turn the stream of succession out of the ancient channel. [256]

Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time, every numberof the London Gazette. But it was not only by addressing that the Toriesshowed their zeal. The writs for the new Parliament had gone forth, and the country was agitated by the tumult of a general election. Noelection had ever taken place under circumstances so favourable tothe Court. Hundreds of thousands whom the Popish plot had scared intoWhiggism had been scared back by the Rye House plot into Toryism. In thecounties the government could depend on an overwhelming majority of thegentlemen of three hundred a year and upwards, and on the clergy almostto a man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels of Whiggismhad recently been deprived of their charters by legal sentence, orhad prevented the sentence by voluntary surrender. They had now beenreconstituted in such a manner that they were certain to return membersdevoted to the crown. Where the townsmen could not be trusted, thefreedom had been bestowed on the neighbouring squires. In some of thesmall western corporations, the constituent bodies were in great partcomposed of Captains and Lieutenants of the Guards. The returningofficers were almost everywhere in the interest of the court. In everyshire the Lord Lieutenant and his deputies formed a powerful, active, and vigilant committee, for the purpose of cajoling and intimidating thefreeholders. The people were solemnly warned from thousands of pulpitsnot to vote for any Whig candidate, as they should answer it to Him whohad ordained the powers that be, and who had pronounced rebellion a sinnot less deadly than witchcraft. All these advantages the predominantparty not only used to the utmost, but abused in so shameless a mannerthat grave and reflecting men, who had been true to the monarchy inperil, and who bore no love to republicans and schismatics, stoodaghast, and augured from such beginnings the approach of evil times. [257]

Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishment of their errors, though defeated, disheartened, and disorganized, did not yield withoutan effort. They were still numerous among the traders and artisans ofthe towns, and among the yeomanry and peasantry of the open country. Insome districts, in Dorsetshire for example, and in Somersetshire, theywere the great majority of the population. In the remodelled boroughsthey could do nothing: but, in every county where they had a chance, they struggled desperately. In Bedfordshire, which had lately beenrepresented by the virtuous and unfortunate Russell, they werevictorious on the show of hands, but were beaten at the poll. [258] InEssex they polled thirteen hundred votes to eighteen hundred. [259] Atthe election for Northamptonshire the common people were so violent intheir hostility to the court candidate that a body of troops was drawnout in the marketplace of the county town, and was ordered to load withball. [260] The history of the contest for Buckinghamshire is still moreremarkable. The whig candidate, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of PhilipLord Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity and byaudacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always arespectable, part in the politics of several reigns. He had been one ofthose members of the House of Commons who had carried up the ExclusionBill to the bar of the Lords. The court was therefore bent on throwinghim out by fair or foul means. The Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys himselfcame down into Buckinghamshire, for the purpose of assisting a gentlemannamed Hacket, who stood on the high Tory interest. A stratagem wasdevised which, it was thought, could not fail of success. It was givenout that the polling would take place at Ailesbury; and Wharton, whose skill in all the arts of electioneering was unrivalled, made hisarrangements on that supposition. At a moment's warning the Sheriffadjourned the poll to Newport Pagnell. Wharton and his friends hurriedthither, and found that Hacket, who was in the secret, had alreadysecured every inn and lodging. The Whig freeholders were compelled totie their horses to the hedges, and to sleep under the open sky inthe meadows which surround the little town. It was with the greatestdifficulty that refreshments could be procured at such short notice forso large a number of men and beasts, though Wharton, who was utterlyregardless of money when his ambition and party spirit were roused, disbursed fifteen hundred pounds in one day, an immense outlay for thosetimes. Injustice seems, however, to have animated the courage of thestouthearted yeomen of Bucks, the sons of the constituents of JohnHampden. Not only was Wharton at the head of the poll; but he was ableto spare his second votes to a man of moderate opinions, and to throwout the Chief Justice's candidate. [261]

In Cheshire the contest lasted six days. The Whigs polled aboutseventeen hundred votes, the Tories about two thousand. The commonpeople were vehement on the Whig side, raised the cry of "Down with theBishops, " insulted the clergy in the streets of Chester, knockeddown one gentleman of the Tory party, broke the windows and beat theconstables. The militia was called out to quell the riot, and was keptassembled, in order to protect the festivities of the conquerors. Whenthe poll closed, a salute of five great guns from the castle proclaimedthe triumph of the Church and the Crown to the surrounding country. Thebells 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 andsquires. The procession, as it marched, sang "Joy to Great Caesar, " aloyal ode, which had lately been written by Durfey, and which, thoughlike all Durfey's writings, utterly contemptible, was, at that time, almost as popular as Lillibullero became a few years later. [262] Roundthe Cross the trainbands were drawn up in order: a bonfire was lighted:the Exclusion Bill was burned: and the health of King James was drunkwith loud acclamations. The following day was Sunday. In the morning themilitia lined the streets leading to the Cathedral. The two knights ofthe shire were escorted with great pomp to their choir by the magistracyof the city, heard the Dean preach a sermon, probably on the duty ofpassive obedience, and were afterwards feasted by the Mayor. [263]

In Northumberland the triumph of Sir John Fenwick, a courtier whosename afterwards obtained a melancholy celebrity, was attended bycircumstances which excited interest in London, and which were thoughtnot unworthy of being mentioned in the despatches of foreign ministers. Newcastle was lighted up with great piles of coal. The steeples sentforth a joyous peal. A copy of the Exclusion Bill, and a black box, resembling that which, according to the popular fable, contained thecontract between Charles the Second and Lucy Walters, were publiclycommitted to the flames, with loud acclamations. [264]

The general result of the elections exceeded the most sanguineexpectations of the court. James found with delight that it would beunnecessary for him to expend a farthing in buying votes. He Said that, with the exception of about forty members, the House of Commons was justsuch as he should himself have named. [265] And this House of Commonsit was in his power, as the law then stood, to keep to the end of hisreign. 

Secure of parliamentary support, he might now indulge in the luxury ofrevenge. His nature was not placable; and, while still a subject, he hadsuffered some injuries and indignities which might move even a placablenature to fierce and lasting resentment. One set of men in particularhad, with a baseness and cruelty beyond all example and all description, attacked his honour and his life, the witnesses of the plot. He maywell be excused for hating them; since, even at this day, the mention oftheir 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. [266] Dugdale had followed, driven mad, men said, by the Furies of anevil conscience, and with loud shrieks imploring those who stood roundhis bed to take away Lord Stafford. [267] Carstairs, too, was gone. Hisend had been all horror and despair; and, with his last breath, he hadtold his attendants to throw him into a ditch like a dog, for that hewas not fit to sleep in a Christian burial ground. [268] But Oates andDangerfield were still within the reach of the stern prince whom theyhad wronged. James, a short time before his accession, had instituteda civil suit against Oates for defamatory words; and a jury had givendamages to the enormous amount of a hundred thousand pounds. [269] Thedefendant had been taken in execution, and was lying in prison as adebtor, without hope of release. Two bills of indictment against himfor perjury had been found by the grand jury of Middlesex, a few weeksbefore the death of Charles. Soon after the close of the elections thetrial came on. 

Among the upper and middle classes Oates had few friends left. The mostrespectable Whigs were now convinced that, even if his narrative hadsome foundation in fact, he had erected on that foundation a vastsuperstructure of romance. A considerable number of low fanatics, however, still regarded him as a public benefactor. These people wellknew that, if he were convicted, his sentence would be one of extremeseverity, and were therefore indefatigable in their endeavours to managean escape. Though he was as yet in confinement only for debt, he was putinto irons by the authorities of the King's Bench prison; and even so hewas with difficulty kept in safe custody. The mastiff that guarded hisdoor was poisoned; and, on the very night preceding the trial, a ladderof ropes was introduced into the cell. 

On the day in which Titus was brought to the bar, Westminster Hall wascrowded with spectators, among whom were many Roman Catholics, eager tosee the misery and humiliation of their persecutor. [270] A few yearsearlier his short neck, his legs uneven, the vulgar said, as those of abadger, his forehead low as that of a baboon, his purple cheeks, and hismonstrous length of chin, had been familiar to all who frequented thecourts of law. He had then been the idol of the nation. Wherever he hadappeared, men had uncovered their heads to him. The lives and estates ofthe 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 on which villany seemedto be written by the hand of God. [271]

It was proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that this man had byfalse testimony deliberately murdered several guiltless persons. Hecalled in vain on the most eminent members of the Parliaments which hadrewarded and extolled him to give evidence in his favour. Some of thosewhom he had summoned absented themselves. None of them said anythingtending to his vindication. One of them, the Earl of Huntingdon, bitterly reproached him with having deceived the Houses and drawn onthem the guilt of shedding innocent blood. The Judges browbeat andreviled the prisoner with an intemperance which, even in the mostatrocious cases, ill becomes the judicial character. He betrayed, however, no sign of fear or of shame, and faced the storm of invectivewhich burst upon him from bar, bench, and witness box, with theinsolence of despair. He was convicted on both indictments. His offence, though, in a moral light, murder of the most aggravated kind, was, inthe eye of the law, merely a misdemeanour. The tribunal, however, wasdesirous to make his punishment more severe than that of felons ortraitors, and not merely to put him to death, but to put him to deathby frightful torments. He was sentenced to be stripped of his clericalhabit, to be pilloried in Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hallwith an inscription declaring his infamy over his head, to be pilloriedagain in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate toNewgate, and, after an interval of two days, to be whipped from Newgateto Tyburn. If, against all probability, he should happen to survive thishorrible infliction, he was to be kept close prisoner during life. Fivetimes every year he was to be brought forth from his dungeon and exposedon the pillory in different parts of the capital. [272] This rigoroussentence was rigorously executed. On the day on which Oates waspilloried in Palace Yard he was mercilessly pelted and ran some risk ofbeing pulled in pieces. [273] But in the City his partisans musteredin great force, raised a riot, and upset the pillory. [274] They were, however, unable to rescue their favourite. It was supposed that he wouldtry to escape the horrible doom which awaited him by swallowing poison. All that he ate and drank was therefore carefully inspected. On thefollowing morning he was brought forth to undergo his first flogging. At an early hour an innumerable multitude filled all the streets fromAldgate to the Old Bailey. The hangman laid on the lash with suchunusual severity as showed that he had received special instructions. The blood ran down in rivulets. For a time the criminal showed a strangeconstancy: but at last his stubborn fortitude gave way. His bellowingswere frightful to hear. He swooned several times; but the scourge stillcontinued to descend. When he was unbound, it seemed that he had borneas much as the human frame can bear without dissolution. James wasentreated 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 attemptwas made to obtain the Queen's intercession; but she indignantly refusedto say a word in favour of such a wretch. After an interval of onlyforty-eight hours, Oates was again brought out of his dungeon. He wasunable to stand, and it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn on asledge. He seemed quite insensible; and the Tories reported that he hadstupified himself with strong drink. A person who counted the stripeson the second day said that they were seventeen hundred. The badman escaped with life, but so narrowly that his ignorant and bigotedadmirers thought his recovery miraculous, and appealed to it as a proofof his innocence. The doors of the prison closed upon him. During manymonths he remained ironed in the darkest hole of Newgate. It was saidthat in his cell he gave himself up to melancholy, and sate whole daysuttering deep groans, his arms folded, and his hat pulled over his eyes. It was not in England alone that these events excited strong interest. Millions of Roman Catholics, who knew nothing of our institutions orof our factions, had heard that a persecution of singular barbarity hadraged in our island against the professors of the true faith, that manypious men had suffered martyrdom, and that Titus Oates had been thechief murderer. There was, therefore, great joy in distant countrieswhen it was known that the divine justice had overtaken him. Engravingsof him, looking out from the pillory, and writhing at the cart's tail, were circulated all over Europe; and epigrammatists, in many languages, made merry with the doctoral title which he pretended to have receivedfrom the University of Salamanca, and remarked that, since his foreheadcould not be made to blush, it was but reasonable that his back shoulddo so. [275]

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, asa murderer. [276] This was wise and righteous; for such a witness is, intruth, the worst of murderers. To the guilt of shedding innocent bloodhe has added the guilt of violating the most solemn engagement intowhich man can enter with his fellow men, and of making institutions, to which it is desirable that the public should look with respectand confidence, instruments of frightful wrong and objects of generaldistrust. The pain produced by ordinary murder bears no proportion tothe pain produced by murder of which the courts of justice are made theagents. The mere extinction of life is a very small part of what makesan execution horrible. The prolonged mental agony of the sufferer, theshame and misery of all connected with him, the stain abiding even tothe third and fourth generation, are things far more dreadful than deathitself. In general it may be safely affirmed that the father of a largefamily would rather be bereaved of all his children by accident or bydisease than lose one of them by the hands of the hangman. Murder byfalse testimony is therefore the most aggravated species of murder; andOates had been guilty of many such murders. Nevertheless the punishmentwhich was inflicted upon him cannot be justified. In sentencing him tobe stripped of his ecclesiastical habit and imprisoned for life, thejudges exceeded their legal power. They were undoubtedly competent toinflict whipping; nor had the law assigned a limit to the number ofstripes. But the spirit of the law clearly was that no misdemeanourshould be punished more severely than the most atrocious felonies. The worst felon could only be hanged. The judges, as they believed, sentenced Oates to be scourged to death. That the law was defective isnot a sufficient excuse: for defective laws should be altered by thelegislature, and not strained by the tribunals; and least of all shouldthe law be strained for the purpose of inflicting torture and destroyinglife. That Oates was a bad man is not a sufficient excuse; for theguilty are almost always the first to suffer those hardships which areafterwards used as precedents against the innocent. Thus it was in thepresent case. Merciless flogging soon became an ordinary punishment forpolitical misdemeanours of no very aggravated kind. Men were sentenced, for words spoken against the government, to pains so excruciating thatthey, with unfeigned earnestness, begged to be brought to trial oncapital charges, and sent to the gallows. Happily the progress of thisgreat evil was speedily stopped by the Revolution, and by that articleof the Bill of Rights which condemns all cruel and unusual punishments. 

The villany of Dangerfield had not, like that of Oates, destroyedmany innocent victims; for Dangerfield had not taken up the trade ofa witness till the plot had been blown upon and till juries had becomeincredulous. [277] He was brought to trial, not for perjury, but for theless heinous offense of libel. He had, during the agitation caused bythe Exclusion Bill, put forth a narrative containing some false andodious imputations on the late and on the present King. For thispublication he was now, after the lapse of five years, suddenly takenup, brought before the Privy Council, committed, tried, convicted, andsentenced to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate toTyburn. The wretched man behaved with great effrontery during the trial;but, when he heard his doom, he went into agonies of despair, gavehimself up for dead, and chose a text for his funeral sermon. Hisforebodings were just. He was not, indeed, scourged quite so severely asOates 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 wastaken back to prison. As he passed the corner of Hatton Garden, a Torygentleman of Gray's Inn, named Francis, stopped the carriage, and criedout with brutal levity, "Well, friend, have you had your heat thismorning?" The bleeding prisoner, maddened by this insult, answered witha curse. Francis instantly struck him in the face with a cane whichinjured the eye. Dangerfield was carried dying into Newgate. Thisdastardly outrage roused the indignation of the bystanders. They seizedFrancis, and were with difficulty restrained from tearing him topieces. The appearance of Dangerfield's body, which had been frightfullylacerated by the whip, inclined many to believe that his death waschiefly, if not wholly, caused by the stripes which he had received. Thegovernment and the Chief Justice thought it convenient to lay the wholeblame on Francis, who; though he seems to have been at worst guilty onlyof aggravated manslaughter, was tried and executed for murder. His dyingspeech is one of the most curious monuments of that age. The savagespirit which had brought him to the gallows remained with him to thelast. Boasts of his loyalty and abuse of the Whigs were mingled with theparting ejaculations in which he commended his soul to the divinemercy. An idle rumour had been circulated that his wife was in love withDangerfield, who was eminently handsome and renowned for gallantry. The fatal blow, it was said, had been prompted by jealousy. The dyinghusband, with an earnestness, half ridiculous, half pathetic, vindicatedthe lady's character. She was, he said, a virtuous woman: she came ofa loyal stock, and, if she had been inclined to break her marriage vow, would at least have selected a Tory and a churchman for her paramour. [278]

About the same time a culprit, who bore very little resemblance to Oatesor Dangerfield, appeared on the floor of the Court of King's Bench. Noeminent chief of a party has ever passed through many years of civiland religious dissension with more innocence than Richard Baxter. Hebelonged 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 theright was on the side of the Houses; and he had no scruple about actingas chaplain to a regiment in the parliamentary army: but his clearand somewhat sceptical understanding, and his strong sense of justice, preserved him from all excesses. He exerted himself to check thefanatical violence of the soldiery. He condemned the proceedings ofthe High Court of Justice. In the days of the Commonwealth he had theboldness to express, on many occasions, and once even in Cromwell'spresence, love and reverence for the ancient institutions of thecountry. While the royal family was in exile, Baxter's life was chieflypassed at Kidderminster in the assiduous discharge of parochial duties. He heartily concurred in the Restoration, and was sincerely desirous tobring about an union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. For, witha liberty rare in his time, he considered questions of ecclesiasticalpolity as of small account when compared with the great principles ofChristianity, and had never, even when prelacy was most odious to theruling powers, joined in the outcry against Bishops. The attempt toreconcile the contending factions failed. Baxter cast in his lot withhis proscribed friends, refused the mitre of Hereford, quitted theparsonage of Kidderminster, and gave himself up almost wholly to study. His theological writings, though too moderate to be pleasing to thebigots of any party, had an immense reputation. Zealous Churchmen calledhim a Roundhead; and many Nonconformists accused him of Erastianism andArminianism. But the integrity of his heart, the purity of his life, the vigour of his faculties, and the extent of his attainments wereacknowledged by the best and wisest men of every persuasion. Hispolitical opinions, in spite of the oppression which he and his brethrenhad suffered, were moderate. He was friendly to that small party whichwas hated by both Whigs and Tories. He could not, he said, join incursing the Trimmers, when he remembered who it was that had blessed thepeacemakers. [279]

In a Commentary on the New Testament he had complained, with somebitterness, of the persecution which the Dissenters suffered. That menwho, for not using the Prayer Book, had been driven from their homes, stripped of their property, and locked up in dungeons, should dare toutter a murmur, was then thought a high crime against the State and theChurch. Roger Lestrange, the champion of the government and the oracleof the clergy, sounded the note of war in the Observator. An informationwas filed. Baxter begged that he might be allowed some time to preparefor his defence. It was on the day on which Oates was pilloried inPalace Yard that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed by ageand infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to make this request. Jeffreysburst into a storm of rage. "Not a minute, " he cried, "to save his life. I can deal with saints as well as with sinners. There stands Oates onone side of the pillory; and, if Baxter stood on the other, the twogreatest rogues in the kingdom would stand together. "

When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved andhonoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor WilliamBates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist divines. TwoWhig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop, appeared for thedefendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his address to the jury, whenthe Chief Justice broke forth: "Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set amark 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 thenhis Lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to singthrough his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's styleof praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dearpeople. " Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late Majestyhad thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the oldblockhead then, " cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it?" His fury nowrose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it wouldbe no more than justice to whip such a villain through the whole City. 

Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. "You are in allthese dirty causes, Mr. Wallop, " said the Judge. "Gentlemen of the longrobe ought to be ashamed to assist such factious knaves. " The advocatemade another attempt to obtain a hearing, but to no purpose. "If you donot know your duty, " said Jeffreys, "I will teach it you. "

Wallop sate down; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word. Butthe Chief Justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of ribaldry andinvective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. "My Lord, " said the oldman, "I have been much blamed by Dissenters for speaking respectfully ofBishops. " "Baxter for Bishops!" cried the Judge, "that's a merryconceit indeed. I know what you mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself, Kidderminster Bishops, factious snivelling Presbyterians!" Again Baxteressayed to speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed "Richard, Richard, dostthou think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an oldknave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book asfull of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace of God, I'lllook after thee. I see a great many of your brotherhood waiting to knowwhat will befall their mighty Don. And there, " he continued, fixing hissavage 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 defencemade a last effort, and undertook to show that the words of whichcomplaint was made would not bear the construction put on them by theinformation. With this view he began to read the context. In a momenthe 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 severalclergymen of the Established Church. But the Chief Justice would hearnothing. "Does your Lordship think, " said Baxter, "that any jury willconvict 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, selectedby the Sheriffs from among the fiercest zealots 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 whowould have treated me very differently. " He alluded to his learnedand virtuous friend Sir Matthew Hale. "There is not an honest man inEngland, " answered Jeffreys, "but looks on thee as a knave. " [280]

The sentence was, for those times, a lenient one. What passed inconference among the judges cannot be certainly known. It was believedamong the Nonconformists, and is highly probable, that the Chief Justicewas overruled by his three brethren. He proposed, it is said, thatBaxter should be whipped through London at the cart's tail. The majoritythought that an eminent divine, who, a quarter of a century before, hadbeen offered a mitre, and who was now in his seventieth year, would besufficiently punished for a few sharp words by fine and imprisonment. [281]

The manner in which Baxter was treated by a judge, who was a member ofthe cabinet and a favourite of the Sovereign, indicated, in a mannernot to be mistaken, the feeling with which the government at this timeregarded the Protestant Nonconformists. But already that feeling hadbeen indicated by still stronger and more terrible signs. The Parliamentof Scotland had met. James had purposely hastened the session of thisbody, and had postponed the session of the English Houses, in thehope that the example set at Edinburgh would produce a good effectat Westminster. For the legislature of his northern kingdom was asobsequious as those provincial Estates which Lewis the Fourteenth stillsuffered to play at some of their ancient functions in Britanny andBurgundy. None but an Episcopalian could sit in the Scottish Parliament, or could even vote for a member, and in Scotland an Episcopalian wasalways a Tory or a timeserver. From an assembly thus constituted, littleopposition to the royal wishes was to be apprehended; and eventhe assembly thus constituted could pass no law which had not beenpreviously approved by a committee of courtiers. 

All that the government asked was readily granted. In a financial pointof view, indeed, the liberality of the Scottish Estates was of littleconsequence. They gave, however, what their scanty means permitted. Theyannexed in perpetuity to the crown the duties which had been grantedto the late King, and which in his time had been estimated at fortythousand pounds sterling a year. They also settled on James for lifean additional annual income of two hundred and sixteen thousand poundsScots, equivalent to eighteen thousand pounds sterling. The whole Sumwhich they were able to bestow was about sixty thousand a year, littlemore than what was poured into the English Exchequer every fortnight. [282]

Having little money to give, the Estates supplied the defect by loyalprofessions and barbarous statutes. The King, in a letter which wasread to them at the opening of their session, called on them in vehementlanguage to provide new penal laws against the refractory Presbyterians, and expressed his regret that business made it impossible for him topropose such laws in person from the throne. His commands were obeyed. A statute framed by his ministers was promptly passed, a statute whichstands forth even among the statutes of that unhappy country at thatunhappy period, preeminent in atrocity. It was enacted, in few butemphatic words, that whoever should preach in a conventicle under aroof, or should attend, either as preacher or as hearer, a conventiclein the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation ofproperty. [283]

This law, passed at the King's instance by an assembly devoted to hiswill, deserves especial notice. For he has been frequently representedby ignorant writers as a prince rash, indeed, and injudicious in hischoice of means, but intent on one of the noblest ends which a rulercan pursue, the establishment of entire religious liberty. Nor can it bedenied that some portions of his life, when detached from the rest andsuperficially considered, seem to warrant this favourable view of hischaracter. 

While a subject he had been, during many years, a persecuted man; andpersecution had produced its usual effect on him. His mind, dull andnarrow as it was, had profited under that sharp discipline. While he wasexcluded from the Court, from the Admiralty, and from the Council, andwas in danger of being also excluded from the throne, only because hecould not help believing in transubstantiation and in the authorityof the see of Rome, he made such rapid progress in the doctrines oftoleration that he left Milton and Locke behind. What, he often said, could be more unjust, than to visit speculations with penalties whichought to be reserved for acts? What more impolitic than to reject theservices of good soldiers, seamen, lawyers, diplomatists, financiers, because they hold unsound opinions about the number of the sacraments orthe pluripresence of saints? He learned by rote those commonplaces whichall sects repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppression, andforget so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsedhis lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this subjectgave him credit for much more sense and much readier elocution than hereally possessed. His professions imposed on some charitable persons, and perhaps imposed on himself. But his zeal for the rights ofconscience ended with the predominance of the Whig party. When fortunechanged, when he was no longer afraid that others would persecute him, when he had it in his power to persecute others, his real propensitiesbegan to show themselves. He hated the Puritan sects with a manifoldhatred, theological and political, hereditary and personal. He regardedthem as the foes of Heaven, as the foes of all legitimate authority inChurch 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. He, who hadcomplained so fondly of the laws against Papists, now declared himselfunable to conceive how men could have the impudence to propose therepeal of the laws against Puritans. [284] He, whose favourite theme hadbeen the injustice of requiring civil functionaries to take religioustests, established in Scotland, when he resided there as Viceroy, themost rigorous religious test that has ever been known in the empire. [285] He, who had expressed just indignation when the priests of his ownfaith were hanged and quartered, amused himself with hearing Covenantersshriek and seeing them writhe while their knees were beaten flat in theboots. [286] In this mood he became King; and he immediately demandedand obtained from the obsequious Estates of Scotland as the surestpledge of their loyalty, the most sanguinary law that has ever in ourisland been enacted against Protestant Nonconformists. 

With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in perfectharmony. The fiery persecution, which had raged when he ruled Scotlandas vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever from the day on which he becamesovereign. Those shires in which the Covenanters were most numerouswere given up to the license of the army. With the army was mingled amilitia, composed of the most violent and profligate of those who calledthemselves Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which oppressedand wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons commanded by JohnGraham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men used in theirrevels to play at the torments of hell, and to call each other by thenames of devils and damned souls. [287] The chief of this Tophet, asoldier of distinguished courage and professional skill, but rapaciousand profane, of violent temper and of obdurate heart, has left a namewhich, wherever the Scottish race is settled on the face of the globe, is mentioned with a peculiar energy of hatred. To recapitulate all thecrimes, by which this man, and men like him, goaded the peasantry of theWestern Lowlands into madness, would be an endless task. A few instancesmust suffice; and all those instances shall be taken from the historyof a single fortnight, that very fortnight in which the ScottishParliament, at the urgent request of James, enacted a new law ofunprecedented severity against Dissenters. 

John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular piety, commonly called the Christian carrier. Many years later, when Scotlandenjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious freedom, old men who rememberedthe evil days described him as one versed in divine things, blamelessin life, and so peaceable that the tyrants could find no offence inhim except that he absented himself from the public worship of theEpiscopalians. On the first of May he was cutting turf, when he wasseized by Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted ofnonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even among thesoldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. For the wife of thepoor man was present; she led one little child by the hand: it was easyto see that she was about to give birth to another; and even those wildand hardhearted men, who nicknamed one another Beelzebub and Apollyon, shrank from the great wickedness of butchering her husband before herface. The prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the nearprospect of eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, tillClaverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by crediblewitnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well, sir, well; theday of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer replied, "To man Ican answer for what I have done; and as for God, I will take him intomine own hand. " Yet it was rumoured that even on his seared conscienceand adamantine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim made animpression which was never effaced. [288]

On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce, weretried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting of fifteen soldiers. The indictment is still extant. The prisoners were charged, not with anyact of rebellion, but with holding the same pernicious doctrines whichhad impelled others to rebel, and with wanting only opportunity to actupon those doctrines. The proceeding was summary. In a few hours the twoculprits were convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole underthe gallows. [289]

The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great crime. Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of reprobation drawn theconsequence that to pray for any person who had been predestined toperdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal decrees of theSupreme Being. Three poor labouring men, deeply imbued with thisunamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer in the neighbourhoodof Glasgow. They were asked whether they would pray for King James theSeventh. They refused to do so except under the condition that he wasone of the elect. A file of musketeers was drawn out. The prisonersknelt down; they were blindfolded; and within an hour after they hadbeen arrested, their blood was lapped up by the dogs. [290]

While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible wasperpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenanters, overcome bysickness, had found shelter in the house of a respectable widow, andhad died there. The corpse was discovered by the Laird of Westerhall, apetty tyrant who had, in the days of the Covenant, professed inordinatezeal for the Presbyterian Church, who had, since the Restoration, purchased the favour of the government by apostasy, and who felt towardsthe party which he had deserted the implacable hatred of an apostate. This man pulled down the house of the poor woman, carried away herfurniture, and, leaving her and her younger children to wander in thefields, dragged her son Andrew, who was still a lad, before Claverhouse, who happened to be marching through that part of the country. Claverhouse was just then strangely lenient. Some thought that he hadnot been quite himself since the death of the Christian carrier, tendays before. But Westerhall was eager to signalise his loyalty, andextorted a sullen consent. The guns were loaded, and the youth was toldto pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and stood confronting hismurderers with the Bible in his hand. "I can look you in the face, " hesaid; "I have done nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will youlook in that day when you shall be judged by what is written in thisbook?" He fell dead, and was buried in the moor. [291]

On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Margaret Wilson, theformer an aged widow, the latter a maiden of eighteen, suffered deathfor their religion in Wigtonshire. They were offered their lives if theywould consent to abjure the cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and toattend the Episcopal worship. They refused; and they were sentenced tobe drowned. They were carried to a spot which the Solway overflows twicea day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand between high andlow water mark. The elder sufferer was placed near to the advancingflood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify the younger intosubmission. The sight was dreadful. But the courage of the survivorwas sustained by an enthusiasm as lofty as any that is recorded inmartyrology. She saw the sea draw nearer and nearer, but gave no signof alarm. She prayed and sang verses of psalms till the waves choked hervoice. After she had tasted the bitterness of death, she was, by a cruelmercy unbound and restored to life. When she came to herself, pityingfriends and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say, God save the King!" The poor girl, true to her stern theology, gaspedout, "May God save him, if it be God's will!" Her friends crowded roundthe 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 lasttime. [292]

Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignorant men haverepresented as a friend of religious liberty, whose misfortune it was tobe too wise and too good for the age in which he lived. Nay, eventhose laws which authorised him to govern thus were in his judgmentreprehensibly lenient. While his officers were committing the murderswhich have just been related, he was urging the Scottish Parliamentto pass a new Act compared with which all former Acts might be calledmerciful. 

In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by ancientand noble laws which even the Tories would not patiently have seen himinfringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before military tribunals, or enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them swoon in the boots. Herehe could not drown young girls for refusing to take the abjuration, orshoot poor countrymen for doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yeteven in England he continued to persecute the Puritans as far as hispower extended, till events which will hereafter be related induced himto form the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition forthe humiliation and spoliation of the established Church. 

One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early periodof his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the Society of Friends. His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be attributed toreligious sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the divine mission ofJesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ most widely. It may seemparadoxical to say that this very circumstance constituted a tie betweenthe Roman Catholic and the Quaker; yet such was really the case. Forthey deviated in opposite directions so far from what the great body ofthe nation regarded as right, that even liberal men generally consideredthem both as lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration. Thus thetwo extreme sects, precisely because they were extreme sects, had acommon interest distinct from the interest of the intermediate sects. The Quakers were also guiltless of all offence against James and hisHouse. They had not been in existence as a community till the warbetween his father and the Long Parliament was drawing towards aclose. They had been cruelly persecuted by some of the revolutionarygovernments. They had, since the Restoration, in spite of much illusage, submitted themselves meekly to the royal authority. For theyhad, though reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded asheterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion, that no excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify activeresistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the government had everbeen traced to a Quaker. [293] In no conspiracy against the governmenthad a Quaker been implicated. The society had not joined in the clamourfor the Exclusion Bill, and had solemnly condemned the Rye House plot asa hellish design and a work of the devil. [294] Indeed, the friends thentook very little part in civil contentions; for they were not, as now, congregated in large towns, but were generally engaged in agriculture, a pursuit from which they have been gradually driven by the vexationsconsequent on their strange scruple about paying tithe. They were, therefore, far removed from the scene of political strife. Theyalso, even in domestic privacy, avoided on principle all politicalconversation. For such conversation was, in their opinion, unfavourableto their spirituality of mind, and tended to disturb the austerecomposure of their deportment. The yearly meetings of that agerepeatedly admonished the brethren not to hold discourse touchingaffairs of state. [295] Even within the memory of persons now livingthose grave elders who retained the habits of an earlier generationsystematically discouraged such worldly talk. [296] It was natural thatJames should make a wide distinction between these harmless people andthose fierce and reckless sects which considered resistance to tyrannyas a Christian duty which had, in Germany, France, and Holland, madewar on legitimate princes, and which had, during four generations, bornepeculiar enmity to the House of Stuart. 

It happened, moreover, that it was possible to grant large relief to theRoman Catholic and to the Quaker without mitigating the sufferings ofthe Puritan sects. A law was in force which imposed severe penalties onevery person who refused to take the oath of supremacy when required todo so. This law did not affect Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists;for they were all ready to call God to witness that they renounced allspiritual connection with foreign prelates and potentates. But the RomanCatholic would not swear that the Pope had no jurisdiction in England, and the Quaker would not swear to anything. On the other hand, neitherthe Roman Catholic nor the Quaker was touched by the Five Mile Act, which, of all the laws in the Statute Book, was perhaps the mostannoying to the Puritan Nonconformists. [297]

The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate at court. Though, asa class, they mixed little with the world, and shunned politics as apursuit dangerous to their spiritual interests, one of them, widelydistinguished from the rest by station and fortune, lived in thehighest circles, and had constant access to the royal ear. This was thecelebrated William Penn. His father had held great naval commands, had been a Commissioner of the Admiralty, had sate in Parliament, hadreceived the honour of knighthood, and had been encouraged to expect apeerage. The son had been liberally educated, and had been designedfor the profession of arms, but had, while still young, injured hisprospects and disgusted his friends by joining what was then generallyconsidered as a gang of crazy heretics. He had been sent sometimes tothe Tower, and sometimes to Newgate. He had been tried at the Old Baileyfor preaching in defiance of the law. After a time, however, he had beenreconciled to his family, and had succeeded in obtaining such powerfulprotection that, while all the gaols of England were filled with hisbrethren, he was permitted, during many years, to profess his opinionswithout molestation. Towards the close of the late reign he hadobtained, in satisfaction of an old debt due to him from the crown, thegrant of an immense region in North America. In this tract, then peopledonly 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 acquaintance. TheQuaker now became a courtier, and almost a favourite. He was everyday summoned from the gallery into the closet, and sometimes had longaudiences while peers were kept waiting in the antechambers. It wasnoised abroad that he had more real power to help and hurt than manynobles who filled high offices. He was soon surrounded by flatterers andsuppliants. His house at Kensington was sometimes thronged, at hishour of rising, by more than two hundred suitors. [298] He paid dear, however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked coldlyon him, and requited his services with obloquy. He was loudly accused ofbeing a Papist, nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed that he had been educatedat St. Omers, and others that he had been ordained at Rome. Thesecalumnies, indeed, could find credit only with the undiscerningmultitude; but with these calumnies were mingled accusations much betterfounded. 

To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which requires somecourage; for he is rather a mythical than a historical person. Rivalnations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising him. England isproud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards himwith a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus, and the Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society of which he was amember honours him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions heis generally regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhileadmirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The Frenchphilosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded ashis superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all racesand to all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civilisedcountries, a synonyme for probity and philanthropy. 

Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was without doubta man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of religious duty and afervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind. On one or two pointsof high importance, he had notions more correct than were, in his day, common even among men of enlarged minds: and as the proprietor andlegislator of a province which, being almost uninhabited when it cameinto his possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments, he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories intopractice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to existinginstitutions. He will always be mentioned with honour as a founder ofa colony, who did not, in his dealings with a savage people, abuse thestrength derived from civilisation, and as a lawgiver who, in an age ofpersecution, made religious liberty the cornerstone of a polity. But hiswritings and his life furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man ofstrong sense. He had no skill in reading the characters of others. Hisconfidence in persons less virtuous than himself led him into greaterrors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle sometimesimpelled him to violate other great principles which he ought tohave held sacred. Nor was his rectitude altogether proof against thetemptations to which it was exposed in that splendid and polite, butdeeply corrupted society, with which he now mingled. The whole court wasin a ferment with intrigues of gallantry and intrigues of ambition. Thetraffic in honours, places, and pardons was incessant. It was naturalthat a man who was daily seen at the palace, and who was known to havefree access to majesty, should be frequently importuned to use hisinfluence for purposes which a rigid morality must condemn. Theintegrity of Penn had stood firm against obloquy and persecution. But now, attacked by royal smiles, by female blandishments, by theinsinuating eloquence and delicate flattery of veteran diplomatists andcourtiers, his resolution began to give way. Titles and phrases againstwhich he had often borne his testimony dropped occasionally from hislips and his pen. It would be well if he had been guilty of nothingworse than such compliances with the fashions of the world. Unhappilyit cannot be concealed that he bore a chief part in some transactionscondemned, not merely by the rigid code of the society to which hebelonged, but by the general sense of all honest men. He afterwardssolemnly protested that his hands were pure from illicit gain, andthat he had never received any gratuity from those whom he had obliged, though he might easily, while his influence at court lasted, have made ahundred and twenty thousand pounds. [299] To this assertion full creditis due. But bribes may be offered to vanity as well as to cupidity; andit is impossible to deny that Penn was cajoled into bearing a part insome unjustifiable transactions of which others enjoyed the profits. 

The first use which he made of his credit was highly commendable. Hestrongly represented the sufferings of his brethren to the new King, who saw with pleasure that it was possible to grant indulgence to thesequiet sectaries and to the Roman Catholics, without showing similarfavour to other classes which were then under persecution. A list wasframed of prisoners against whom proceedings had been instituted fornot taking the oaths, or for not going to church, and of whose loyaltycertificates had been produced to the government. These persons weredischarged, and orders were given that no similar proceeding should beinstituted till the royal pleasure should be further signified. In thisway about fifteen hundred Quakers, and a still greater number of RomanCatholics, regained their liberty. [300]

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 wereso numerous that there was much doubt whether their chamber, as it wasthen fitted up, would afford sufficient accommodation for them. Theyemployed the days which immediately preceded the opening of the sessionin talking over public affairs with each other and with the agentsof the government. A great meeting of the loyal party was held at theFountain Tavern in the Strand; and Roger Lestrange, who had recentlybeen knighted by the King, and returned to Parliament by the city ofWinchester, took a leading part in their consultations. [301]

It soon appeared that a large portion of the Commons had views which didnot altogether agree with those of the Court. The Tory country gentlemenwere, with scarcely one exception, desirous to maintain the Test Act andthe Habeas Corpus Act; and some among them talked of voting the revenueonly for a term of years. But they were perfectly ready to enact severelaws against the Whigs, and would gladly have seen all the supportersof the Exclusion Bill made incapable of holding office. The King, on theother hand, desired to obtain from the Parliament a revenue for life, the admission of Roman Catholics to office, and the repeal of the HabeasCorpus Act. On these three objects his heart was set; and he was by nomeans disposed to accept as a substitute for them a penal law againstExclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have been positively unpleasingto him; for one class of Exclusionists stood high in his favour, thatclass of which Sunderland was the representative, that class which hadjoined the Whigs in the days of the plot, merely because the Whigs werepredominant, and which had changed with the change of fortune. Jamesjustly regarded these renegades as the most serviceable tools that hecould employ. It was not from the stouthearted Cavaliers, who hadbeen true to him in his adversity, that he could expect abject andunscrupulous obedience in his prosperity. The men who, impelled, notby zeal for liberty or for religion, but merely by selfish cupidity andselfish fear, had assisted to oppress him when he was weak, were thevery men who, impelled by the same cupidity and the same fear, wouldassist him to oppress his people now that he was strong. [302] Thoughvindictive, he was not indiscriminately vindictive. Not a singleinstance can be mentioned in which he showed a generous compassionto those who had opposed him honestly and on public grounds. But hefrequently spared and promoted those whom some vile motive had inducedto injure him. For that meanness which marked them out as fit implementsof tyranny was so precious in his estimation that he regarded it withsome indulgence even when it was exhibited at his own expense. 

The King's wishes were communicated through several channels to the Torymembers of the Lower House. The majority was easily persuaded to foregoall thoughts of a penal law against the Exclusionists, and to consentthat His Majesty should have the revenue for life. But about the TestAct and the Habeas Corpus Act the emissaries of the Court could obtainno satisfactory assurances. [303]

On the nineteenth of May the session was opened. The benches of theCommons presented a singular spectacle. That great party, which, inthe last three Parliaments, had been predominant, had now dwindled to apitiable minority, and was indeed little more than a fifteenth part ofthe House. Of the five hundred and thirteen knights and burgesses onlya hundred and thirty-five had ever sate in that place before. It isevident that a body of men so raw and inexperienced must have been, insome important qualities, far below the average of our representativeassemblies. [304]

The management of the House was confided by James to two peers of thekingdom of Scotland. One of them, Charles Middleton, Earl of Middleton, after holding high office at Edinburgh, had, shortly before the deathof the late King, been sworn of the English Privy Council, and appointedone 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 shouldbe the man, was a question which had been much debated in the cabinet. Guildford had recommended Sir Thomas Meres, who, like himself, rankedamong the Trimmers. Jeffreys, who missed no opportunity of crossing theLord Keeper, had pressed the claims of Sir John Trevor. Trevor had beenbred half a pettifogger and half a gambler, had brought to politicallife sentiments and principles worthy of both his callings, had becomea parasite of the Chief Justice, and could, on occasion, imitate, notunsuccessfully, the vituperative style of his patron. The minion ofJeffreys was, as might have been expected, preferred by James, wasproposed by Middleton, and was chosen without opposition. [305]

Thus far all went smoothly. But an adversary of no common prowess waswatching his time. This was Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy Castle, member for the city of Exeter. Seymour's birth put him on a level withthe noblest subjects in Europe. He was the right heir male of the bodyof that Duke of Somerset who had been brother-in-law of King Henry theEighth, and Protector of the realm of England. In the limitation of thedukedom of Somerset, the elder Son of the Protector had been postponedto the younger son. From the younger son the Dukes of Somerset weredescended. From the elder son was descended the family which dwelt atBerry Pomeroy. Seymour's fortune was large, and his influence in theWest of England extensive. Nor was the importance derived from descentand wealth the only importance which belonged to him. He was one of themost skilful debaters and men of business in the kingdom. He had satemany years in the House of Commons, had studied all its rules andusages, and thoroughly understood its peculiar temper. He had beenelected speaker in the late reign under circumstances which made thatdistinction peculiarly honourable. During several generations nonebut lawyers had been called to the chair; and he was the first countrygentleman whose abilities and acquirements had enabled him to break thatlong prescription. He had subsequently held high political office, andhad sate in the Cabinet. But his haughty and unaccommodating temper hadgiven so much disgust that he had been forced to retire. He was a Toryand a Churchman: he had strenuously opposed the Exclusion Bill: he hadbeen persecuted by the Whigs in the day of their prosperity; and hecould therefore safely venture to hold language for which any personsuspected of republicanism would have been sent to the Tower. He hadlong been at the head of a strong parliamentary connection, whichwas called the Western Alliance, and which included many gentlemen ofDevonshire, Somersetshire, and Cornwall. [306]

In every House of Commons, a member who unites eloquence, knowledge, andhabits of business, to opulence and illustrious descent, must be highlyconsidered. But in a House of Commons from which many of the mosteminent orators and parliamentary tacticians of the age were excluded, and which was crowded with people who had never heard a debate, theinfluence of such a man was peculiarly formidable. Weight of moralcharacter was indeed wanting to Edward Seymour. He was licentious, profane, corrupt, too proud to behave with common politeness, yet nottoo proud to pocket illicit gain. But he was so useful an ally, and somischievous an enemy that he was frequently courted even by those whomost detested him. [307]

He was now in bad humour with the government. His interest had beenweakened in some places by the remodelling of the western boroughs: hispride had been wounded by the elevation of Trevor to the chair; and hetook an early opportunity of revenging himself. 

On the twenty-second of May the Commons were summoned to the bar of theLords; and the King, seated on his throne, made a speech to both Houses. He declared himself resolved to maintain the established governmentin Church and State. But he weakened the effect of this declarationby addressing an extraordinary admonition to the Commons. He wasapprehensive, he said, that they might be inclined to dole out money tohim from time to time, in the hope that they should thus force him tocall them frequently together. But he must warn them that he was not tobe so dealt with, and that, if they wished him to meet them often theymust use him well. As it was evident that without money the governmentcould not be carried on, these expressions plainly implied that, if theydid not give him as much money as he wished, he would take it. Strangeto say, this harangue was received with loud cheers by the Torygentlemen at the bar. Such acclamations were then usual. It has nowbeen, during many years, the grave and decorous usage of Parliamentsto hear, in respectful silence, all expressions, acceptable orunacceptable, which are uttered from the throne. [308]

It was then the custom that, after the King had concisely explained hisreasons for calling Parliament together, the minister who held the GreatSeal should, at more length, explain to the Houses the state of publicaffairs. Guildford, in imitation of his predecessors, Clarendon, Bridgeman, Shaftesbury, and Nottingham, had prepared an elaborateoration, but found, to his great mortification, that his services werenot wanted. [309]

As soon as the Commons had returned to their own chamber, it wasproposed that they should resolve themselves into a Committee, for thepurpose of settling a revenue on the King. 

Then Seymour stood up. How he stood, looking like what he was, the chiefof a dissolute and high spirited gentry, with the artificial ringletsclustering in fashionable profusion round his shoulders, and a mingledexpression of voluptuousness and disdain in his eye and on his lip, thelikenesses of him which still remain enable us to imagine. It was not, the haughty Cavalier said, his wish that the Parliament should withholdfrom the crown the means of carrying on the government. But was thereindeed a Parliament? Were there not on the benches many men who had, asall the world knew, no right to sit there, many men whose electionswere tainted by corruption, many men forced by intimidation on reluctantvoters, and many men returned by corporations which had no legalexistence? Had not constituent bodies been remodelled, in defianceof royal charters and of immemorial prescription? Had not returningofficers been everywhere the unscrupulous agents of the Court? Seeingthat the very principle of representation had been thus systematicallyattacked, he knew not how to call the throng of gentlemen which he sawaround him by the honourable name of a House of Commons. Yet never wasthere a time when it more concerned the public weal that the characterof Parliament should stand high. Great dangers impended over theecclesiastical and civil constitution of the realm. It was matter ofvulgar notoriety, it was matter which required no proof, that the TestAct, the rampart of religion, and the Habeas Corpus Act, the rampartof liberty, were marked out for destruction. "Before we proceed tolegislate on questions so momentous, let us at least ascertain whetherwe really are a legislature. Let our first proceeding be to enquire intothe manner in which the elections have been conducted. And let us lookto it that the enquiry be impartial. For, if the nation shall find thatno redress is to be obtained by peaceful methods, we may perhaps erelong suffer the justice which we refuse to do. " He concluded bymoving that, before any supply was granted, the House would take intoconsideration petitions against returns, and that no member whose rightto 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 withimpunity. The proposition fell to the ground, and was not even enteredon the journals. But a mighty effect had been produced. Barilloninformed his master that many who had not dared to applaud thatremarkable speech had cordially approved of it, that it was theuniversal subject of conversation throughout London, and that theimpression made on the public mind seemed likely to be durable. [310]

The Commons went into committee without delay, and voted to the King, for life, the whole revenue enjoyed by his brother. [311]

The zealous churchmen who formed the majority of the House seem to havebeen of opinion that the promptitude with which they had met the wish ofJames, touching the revenue, entitled them to expect some concessionon his part. They said that much had been done to gratify him, and thatthey must now do something to gratify the nation. The House, therefore, resolved itself into a Grand Committee of Religion, in order to considerthe best means of providing for the security of the ecclesiasticalestablishment. In that Committee two resolutions were unanimouslyadopted. The first expressed fervent attachment to the Church ofEngland. The second called on the King to put in execution the penallaws against all persons who were not members of that Church. [312]

The Whigs would doubtless have wished to see the Protestant dissenterstolerated, and the Roman Catholics alone persecuted. But the Whigs werea small and a disheartened minority. They therefore kept themselves asmuch as possible out of sight, dropped their party name, abstained fromobtruding their peculiar opinions on a hostile audience, and steadilysupported every proposition tending to disturb the harmony which as yetsubsisted between the Parliament and the Court. 

When the proceedings of the Committee of Religion were known atWhitehall, the King's anger was great. Nor can we justly blame him forresenting the conduct of the Tories If they were disposed to requirethe rigorous execution of the penal code, they clearly ought to havesupported the Exclusion Bill. For to place a Papist on the throne, andthen to insist on his persecuting to the death the teachers of thatfaith in which alone, on his principles, salvation could be found, wasmonstrous. In mitigating by a lenient administration the severity of thebloody laws of Elizabeth, the King violated no constitutional principle. He only exerted a power which has always belonged to the crown. Nay, heonly did what was afterwards done by a succession of sovereigns zealousfor Protestantism, by William, by Anne, and by the princes of the Houseof Brunswick. Had he suffered Roman Catholic priests, whose liveshe could save without infringing any law, to be hanged, drawn, andquartered for discharging what he considered as their first duty, hewould have drawn on himself the hatred and contempt even of those towhose prejudices he had made so shameful a concession, and, had hecontented himself with granting to the members of his own Church apractical toleration by a large exercise of his unquestioned prerogativeof mercy, posterity would have unanimously 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 lookedup with superstitious reverence, was greatly provoked. They made haste, therefore, to atone for their offence. In the House, they unanimouslyreversed the decision which, in the Committee, they had unanimouslyadopted and passed a resolution importing that they relied with entireconfidence on His Majesty's gracious promise to protect that religionwhich was dearer to them than life itself. [313]

Three days later the King informed the House that his brother had leftsome debts, and that the stores of the navy and ordnance were nearlyexhausted. It was promptly resolved that new taxes should be imposed. The person on whom devolved the task of devising ways and means was SirDudley North, younger brother of the Lord Keeper. Dudley North was oneof the ablest men of his time. He had early in life been sent to theLevant, and had there been long engaged in mercantile pursuits. Most menwould, in such a situation, have allowed their faculties to rust. Forat Smyrna and Constantinople there were few books and few intelligentcompanions. But the young factor had one of those vigorousunderstandings which are independent of external aids. In his solitudehe meditated deeply on the philosophy of trade, and thought out bydegrees a complete and admirable theory, substantially the same withthat which, a century later, was expounded by Adam Smith. After an exileof 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 speculative and practical, of commercialmatters, and the perspicuity and liveliness with which he explainedhis views, speedily introduced him to the notice of statesmen. The government found in him at once an enlightened adviser and anunscrupulous slave. For with his rare mental endowments were joined laxprinciples and an unfeeling heart. When the Tory reaction was in fullprogress, he had consented to be made Sheriff for the express purposeof assisting the vengeance of the court. His juries had never failedto find verdicts of Guilty; and, on a day of judicial butchery, carts, loaded with the legs and arms of quartered Whigs, were, to the greatdiscomposure of his lady, driven to his fine house in BasinghallStreet for orders. His services had been rewarded with the honour ofknighthood, with an Alderman's gown, and with the office of Commissionerof the Customs. He had been brought into Parliament for Banbury, andthough a new member, was the person on whom the Lord Treasurer chieflyrelied for the conduct of financial business in the Lower House. [314]

Though the Commons were unanimous in their resolution to grant a furthersupply to the crown, they were by no means agreed as to the sources fromwhich that supply should be drawn. It was speedily determined that partof the sum which was required should be raised by laying an additionalimpost, for a term of eight years, on wine and vinegar: but somethingmore than this was needed. Several absurd schemes were suggested. Manycountry gentlemen were disposed to put a heavy tax on all new buildingsin the capital. Such a tax, it was hoped, would check the growth ofa city which had long been regarded with jealousy and aversion by therural aristocracy. Dudley North's plan was that additional duties shouldbe imposed, for a term of eight years, on sugar and tobacco. A greatclamour was raised Colonial merchants, grocers, sugar bakers andtobacconists, petitioned the House and besieged the public offices. Thepeople of Bristol, who were deeply interested in the trade with Virginiaand Jamaica, sent up a deputation which was heard at the bar of theCommons. Rochester was for a moment staggered; but North's ready wit andperfect knowledge of trade prevailed, both in the Treasury and in theParliament, against all opposition. The old members were amazed atseeing a man who had not been a fortnight in the House, and whose lifehad been chiefly passed in foreign countries, assume with confidence, and discharge with ability, all the functions of a Chancellor of theExchequer. [315]

His plan was adopted; and thus the Crown was in possession of a clearincome of about nineteen hundred thousand pounds, derived from Englandalone. Such an income was then more than sufficient for the support ofthe government in time of peace. [316]

The Lords had, in the meantime, discussed several important questions. The Tory party had always been strong among the peers. It included thewhole bench of Bishops, and had been reinforced during the fouryears which had elapsed since the last dissolution, by several freshcreations. Of the new nobles, the most conspicuous were the LordTreasurer Rochester, the Lord Keeper Guildford, the Lord Chief JusticeJeffreys, the Lord Godolphin, and the Lord Churchill, who, after hisreturn from Versailles, had been made a Baron of England. 

The peers early took into consideration the case of four members oftheir body who had been impeached in the late reign, but had never beenbrought to trial, and had, after a long confinement, been admitted tobail by the Court of King's Bench. Three of the noblemen who were thusunder recognisances were Roman Catholics. The fourth was a Protestantof great note and influence, the Earl of Danby. Since he had fallen frompower and had been accused of treason by the Commons, four Parliamentshad 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 adissolution. They had resolved, after long debate and full examinationof precedents, that the impeachment was still pending. That resolutionthey now rescinded. A few Whig nobles protested against this step, butto little purpose. The Commons silently acquiesced in the decision ofthe Upper House. Danby again took his seat among his peers, and becamean active and powerful member of the Tory party. [317]

The constitutional question on which the Lords thus, in the short spaceof six years, pronounced two diametrically opposite decisions, sleptduring more than a century, and was at length revived by the dissolutionwhich took place during the long trial of Warren Hastings. It wasthen necessary to determine whether the rule laid down in 1679, or theopposite rule laid down in 1685, was to be accounted the law of theland. The point was long debated in both houses; and the best legal andparliamentary abilities which an age preeminently fertile both inlegal and in parliamentary ability could supply were employed in thediscussion. The lawyers were not unequally divided. Thurlow, Kenyon, Scott, and Erskine maintained that the dissolution had put an end tothe impeachment. The contrary doctrine was held by Mansfield, Camden, Loughborough, and Grant. But among those statesmen who grounded theirarguments, not on precedents and technical analogies, but on deep andbroad constitutional principles, there was little difference of opinion. Pitt and Grenville, as well as Burke and Fox, held that the impeachmentwas still pending Both Houses by great majorities set aside the decisionof 1685, and pronounced the decision of 1679 to be in conformity withthe law of Parliament. 

Of the national crimes which had been committed during the panic excitedby the fictions of Oates, the most signal had been the judicial murderof Stafford. The sentence of that unhappy nobleman was now regardedby all impartial persons as unjust. The principal witness for theprosecution had been convicted of a series of foul perjuries. It wasthe duty of the legislature, in such circumstances, to do justice to thememory of a guiltless sufferer, and to efface an unmerited stain from aname long illustrious in our annals. A bill for reversing the attainderof Stafford was passed by the Upper House, in spite of the murmurs of afew peers who were unwilling to admit that they had shed innocent blood. The Commons read the bill twice without a division, and ordered it tobe committed. But, on the day appointed for the committee, arrived newsthat a formidable rebellion had broken out in the West of England. Itwas consequently necessary to postpone much important business. Theamends due to the memory of Stafford were deferred, as was supposed, only for a short time. But the misgovernment of James in a few monthscompletely turned the tide of public feeling. During several generationsthe Roman Catholics were in no condition to demand reparation forinjustice, and accounted themselves happy if they were permitted to liveunmolested in obscurity and silence. At length, in the reign of KingGeorge the Fourth, more than a hundred and forty years after the day onwhich the blood of Stafford was shed on Tower Hill, the tardy expiationwas accomplished. A law annulling the attainder and restoring theinjured family to its ancient dignities was presented to Parliament bythe ministers of the crown, was eagerly welcomed by public men of allparties, and was passed without one dissentient voice. [318]

It is now necessary that I should trace the origin and progress ofthat rebellion by which the deliberations of the Houses were suddenlyinterrupted. 

CHAPTER V. 

TOWARDS the close of the reign of Charles the Second, some Whigs who hadbeen deeply implicated in the plot so fatal to their party, and who knewthemselves to be marked out for destruction, had sought an asylum in theLow Countries. 

These refugees were in general men of fiery temper and weak judgment. They were also under the influence of that peculiar illusion which seemsto belong to their situation. A politician driven into banishment by ahostile faction generally sees the society which he has quitted througha false medium. Every object is distorted and discoloured by hisregrets, his longings, and his resentments. Every little discontentappears to him to portend a revolution. Every riot is a rebellion. Hecannot be convinced that his country does not pine for him as much ashe pines for his country. He imagines that all his old associates, whostill dwell at their homes and enjoy their estates, are tormented bythe same feelings which make life a burden to himself. The longer hisexpatriation, the greater does this hallucination become. The lapse oftime, which cools the ardour of the friends whom he has left behind, inflames his. Every month his impatience to revisit his native landincreases; and every month his native land remembers and misses himless. This delusion becomes almost a madness when many exiles whosuffer in the same cause herd together in a foreign country. Their chiefemployment is to talk of what they once were, and of what they may yetbe, to goad each other into animosity against the common enemy, to feedeach other with extravagant hopes of victory and revenge. Thus theybecome ripe for enterprises which would at once be pronounced hopelessby any man whose passions had not deprived him of the power ofcalculating chances. 

In this mood were many of the outlaws who had assembled on theContinent. The correspondence which they kept up with England was, forthe most part, such as tended to excite their feelings and to misleadtheir judgment. Their information concerning the temper of the publicmind was chiefly derived from the worst members of the Whig party, frommen who were plotters and libellers by profession, who were pursued bythe officers of justice, who were forced to skulk in disguise throughback streets, and who sometimes lay hid for weeks together in cockloftsand cellars. The statesmen who had formerly been the ornaments of theCountry Party, the statesmen who afterwards guided the councils of theConvention, would have given advice very different from that which wasgiven by such men as John Wildman and Henry Danvers. 

Wildman had served forty years before in the parliamentary army, but hadbeen more distinguished there as an agitator than as a soldier, and hadearly quitted the profession of arms for pursuits better suited tohis temper. His hatred of monarchy had induced him to engage in a longseries of conspiracies, first against the Protector, and then againstthe Stuarts. But with Wildman's fanaticism was joined a tender care forhis own safety. He had a wonderful skill in grazing the edge oftreason. No man understood better how to instigate others to desperateenterprises by words which, when repeated to a jury, might seeminnocent, or, at worst, ambiguous. Such was his cunning that, thoughalways plotting, though always known to be plotting, and though longmalignantly watched by a vindictive government, he eluded everydanger, and died in his bed, after having seen two generations of hisaccomplices die on the gallows. [319] Danvers was a man of the sameclass, hotheaded, but fainthearted, constantly urged to the brink ofdanger by enthusiasm, and constantly stopped on that brink by cowardice. He had considerable influence among a portion of the Baptists, hadwritten largely in defence of their peculiar opinions, and had drawndown on himself the severe censure of the most respectable Puritans byattempting to palliate the crimes of Matthias and John of Leyden. It isprobable that, had he possessed a little courage, he would have troddenin the footsteps of the wretches whom he defended. He was, at this time, concealing himself from the officers of justice; for warrants wereout against him on account of a grossly calumnious paper of which thegovernment had discovered him to be the author. [320]

It is easy to imagine what kind of intelligence and counsel men, suchas have been described, were likely to send to the outlaws in theNetherlands. Of the general character of those outlaws an estimate maybe formed from a few samples. 

One of the most conspicuous among them was John Ayloffe, a lawyerconnected by affinity with the Hydes, and through the Hydes, with James. Ayloffe had early made himself remarkable by offering a whimsicalinsult to the government. At a time when the ascendancy of the courtof Versailles had excited general uneasiness, he had contrived to put awooden shoe, the established type, among the English, of French tyranny, into the chair of the House of Commons. He had subsequently beenconcerned in the Whig plot; but there is no reason to believe that hewas a party to the design of assassinating the royal brothers. He wasa man of parts and courage; but his moral character did not stand high. The Puritan divines whispered that he was a careless Gallio or somethingworse, and that, whatever zeal he might profess for civil liberty, theSaints would do well to avoid all connection with him. [321]

Nathaniel Wade was, like Ayloffe, a lawyer. He had long resided atBristol, and had been celebrated in his own neighbourhood as a vehementrepublican. At one time he had formed a project of emigrating to NewJersey, where he expected to find institutions better suited tohis taste than those of England. His activity in electioneering hadintroduced him to the notice of some Whig nobles. They had employed himprofessionally, and had, at length, admitted him to their most secretcounsels. He had been deeply concerned in the scheme of insurrection, and had undertaken to head a rising in his own city. He had also beenprivy 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, andhad attempted to dissuade his associates from carrying their design intoeffect. For a man bred to civil pursuits, Wade seems to have had, in anunusual degree, that sort of ability and that sort of nerve which make agood soldier. Unhappily his principles and his courage proved to be notof sufficient force to support him when the fight was over, and when ina prison, he had to choose between death and infamy. [322]

Another fugitive was Richard Goodenough, who had formerly been UnderSheriff of London. On this man his party had long relied for servicesof no honourable kind, and especially for the selection of jurymen notlikely to be troubled with scruples in political cases. He had beendeeply concerned in those dark and atrocious parts of the Whig plotwhich had been carefully concealed from the most respectable Whigs. Noris it possible to plead, in extenuation of his guilt, that he was misledby inordinate zeal for the public good. For it will be seen that afterhaving disgraced a noble cause by his crimes, he betrayed it in order toescape from his well merited punishment. [323]

Very different was the character of Richard Rumbold. He had held acommission in Cromwell's own regiment, had guarded the scaffold beforethe Banqueting House on the day of the great execution, had fought atDunbar and Worcester, and had always shown in the highest degree thequalities which distinguished the invincible army in which he served, courage of the truest temper, fiery enthusiasm, both political andreligious, and with that enthusiasm, all the power of selfgovernmentwhich is characteristic of men trained in well disciplined camps tocommand and to obey. When the Republican troops were disbanded, Rumboldbecame a maltster, and carried on his trade near Hoddesdon, in thatbuilding from which the Rye House plot derives its name. It had beensuggested, though not absolutely determined, in the conferences of themost violent and unscrupulous of the malecontents, that armed men shouldbe stationed in the Rye House to attack the Guards who were to escortCharles and James from Newmarket to London. In these conferences Rumboldhad borne a part from which he would have shrunk with horror, if hisclear understanding had not been overclouded, and his manly heartcorrupted, by party spirit. [324]

A more important exile was Ford Grey, Lord Grey of Wark. He had been azealous Exclusionist, had concurred in the design of insurrection, andhad been committed to the Tower, but had succeeded in making his keepersdrunk, and in effecting his escape to the Continent. His parliamentaryabilities were great, and his manners pleasing: but his life had beensullied by a great domestic crime. His wife was a daughter of the noblehouse of Berkeley. Her sister, the Lady Henrietta Berkeley, was allowedto associate and correspond with him as with a brother by blood. Afatal attachment sprang up. The high spirit and strong passions ofLady Henrietta broke through all restraints of virtue and decorum. Ascandalous elopement disclosed to the whole kingdom the shame of twoillustrious families. Grey and some of the agents who had served himin his amour were brought to trial on a charge of conspiracy. A sceneunparalleled in our legal history was exhibited in the Court of King'sBench. The seducer appeared with dauntless front, accompanied by hisparamour. Nor did the great Whig lords flinch from their friend's sideeven in that extremity. Those whom he had wronged stood over againsthim, and were moved to transports of rage by the sight of him. The oldEarl of Berkeley poured forth reproaches and curses on the wretchedHenrietta. The Countess gave evidence broken by many sobs, and at lengthfell down in a swoon. The jury found a verdict of Guilty. When the courtrose Lord Berkeley called on all his friends to help him to seize hisdaughter. The partisans of Grey rallied round her. Swords were drawn onboth sides; a skirmish took place in Westminster Hall; and it was withdifficulty that the Judges and tipstaves parted the combatants. In ourtime such a trial would be fatal to the character of a public man; butin that age the standard of morality among the great was so low, and party spirit was so violent, that Grey still continued to haveconsiderable influence, though the Puritans, who formed a strong sectionof the Whig party, looked somewhat coldly on him. [325]

One part of the character, or rather, it may be, of the fortune, of Greydeserves notice. It was admitted that everywhere, except on the fieldof battle, he showed a high degree of courage. More than once, inembarrassing circumstances, when his life and liberty were at stake, thedignity of his deportment and his perfect command of all his facultiesextorted praise from those who neither loved nor esteemed him. But asa soldier he incurred, less perhaps by his fault than by mischance, thedegrading 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 everywhereelse effeminate and irresolute. The accident of his birth, his personalcourage, and his superficial graces, had placed him in a post for whichhe was altogether unfitted. After witnessing the ruin of the partyof which he had been the nominal head, he had retired to Holland. ThePrince and Princess of Orange had now ceased to regard him as a rival. They received him most hospitably; for they hoped that, by treating, him with kindness, they should establish a claim to the gratitude of hisfather. They knew that paternal affection was not yet wearied out, thatletters and supplies of money still came secretly from Whitehall toMonmouth's retreat, and that Charles frowned on those who sought to paytheir court to him by speaking ill of his banished son. The Duke hadbeen encouraged to expect that, in a very short time, if he gave nonew cause of displeasure, he would be recalled to his native land, and restored to all his high honours and commands. Animated by suchexpectations he had been the life of the Hague during the late winter. He had been the most conspicuous figure at a succession of balls inthat splendid Orange Hall, which blazes on every side with the mostostentatious colouring of Jordæns and Hondthorst. [326] He had taughtthe English country dance to the Dutch ladies, and had in his turnlearned from them to skate on the canals. The Princess had accompaniedhim in his expeditions on the ice; and the figure which she made there, poised on one leg, and clad in petticoats shorter than are generallyworn by ladies so strictly decorous, had caused some wonder and mirth tothe foreign ministers. The sullen gravity which had been characteristicof the Stadtholder's court seemed to have vanished before the influenceof the fascinating Englishman. Even the stern and pensive Williamrelaxed into good humour when his brilliant guest appeared. [327]

Monmouth meanwhile carefully avoided all that could give offence in thequarter to which he looked for protection. He saw little of any Whigs, and nothing of those violent men who had been concerned in the worstpart of the Whig plot. He was therefore loudly accused, by his oldassociates, of fickleness and ingratitude. [328]

By none of the exiles was this accusation urged with more vehemence andbitterness than by Robert Ferguson, the Judas of Dryden's great satire. Ferguson was by birth a Scot; but England had long been his residence. At the time of the Restoration, 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 whichthe Dissenters had set up at Islington as a rival to Westminster Schooland the Charter House; and he had preached to large congregations ata meeting house in Moorfields. He had also published some theologicaltreatises which may still be found in the dusty recesses of a few oldlibraries; but, though texts of Scripture were always on his lips, thosewho had pecuniary transactions with him soon found him to be a mereswindler. 

At length he turned his attention almost entirely from theology to theworst part of politics. He belonged to the class whose office it isto render in troubled times to exasperated parties those services fromwhich honest men shrink in disgust and prudent men in fear, the class offanatical knaves. Violent, malignant, regardless of truth, insensibleto shame, insatiable of notoriety, delighting in intrigue, in tumult, in mischief for its own sake, he toiled during many years in the darkestmines of faction. He lived among libellers and false witnesses. Hewas the keeper of a secret purse from which agents too vile to beacknowledged received hire, and the director of a secret press whencepamphlets, bearing no name, were daily issued. He boasted that he hadcontrived to scatter lampoons about the terrace of Windsor, and even tolay them under the royal pillow. In this way of life he was put tomany shifts, was forced to assume many names, and at one time had fourdifferent lodgings in different corners of London. He was deeply engagedin the Rye House plot. There is, indeed, reason to believe that he wasthe original author of those sanguinary schemes which brought so muchdiscredit on the whole Whig party. When the conspiracy was detected andhis associates were in dismay, he 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 plottingwhile he lived. He escaped to the Continent. But it seemed that even onthe Continent he was not secure. The English envoys at foreign courtswere directed to be on the watch for him. The French government offereda reward of five hundred pistoles to any who would seize him. Nor was iteasy for him to escape notice; for his broad Scotch accent, his tall andlean figure, his lantern jaws, the gleam of his sharp eyes which werealways overhung by his wig, his cheeks inflamed by an eruption, hisshoulders deformed by a stoop, and his gait distinguished from thatof other men by a peculiar shuffle, made him remarkable wherever heappeared. But, though he was, as it seemed, pursued with peculiaranimosity, it was whispered that this animosity was feigned, and thatthe officers of justice had secret orders not to see him. That he wasreally a bitter malecontent can scarcely be doubted. But there is strongreason to believe that he provided for his own safety by pretending atWhitehall to be a spy on the Whigs, and by furnishing the governmentwith just so much information as sufficed to keep up his credit. This hypothesis furnishes a simple explanation of what seemed to hisassociates to be his unnatural recklessness and audacity. Being himselfout of danger, he always gave his vote for the most violent and perilouscourse, and sneered very complacently at the pusillanimity of men who, not having taken the infamous precautions on which he relied, weredisposed to think twice before they placed life, and objects dearer thanlife, on a single hazard. [329]

As soon as he was in the Low Countries he began to form new projectsagainst the English government, and found among his fellow emigrantsmen ready to listen to his evil counsels. Monmouth, however, stoodobstinately aloof; and, without the help of Monmouth's immensepopularity, it was impossible to effect anything. Yet such was theimpatience and rashness of the exiles that they tried to find anotherleader. They sent an embassy to that solitary retreat on the shores ofLake Leman where Edmund Ludlow, once conspicuous among the chiefs of theparliamentary army and among the members of the High Court of Justice, had, during many years, hidden himself from the vengeance of therestored Stuarts. The stern old regicide, however, refused to quithis hermitage. His work, he said, was done. If England was still to besaved, she must be saved by younger men. [330]

The unexpected demise of the crown changed the whole aspect of affairs. Any hope which the proscribed Whigs might have cherished of returningpeaceably to their native land was extinguished by the death of acareless and goodnatured prince, and by the accession of a princeobstinate in all things, and especially obstinate in revenge. Fergusonwas in his element. Destitute of the talents both of a writer and of astatesman, he had in a high degree the unenviable qualifications of atempter; and now, with the malevolent activity and dexterity of anevil spirit, he ran from outlaw to outlaw, chattered in every ear, andstirred up in every bosom savage animosities and wild desires. 

He no longer despaired of being able to seduce Monmouth. The situationof that unhappy young man was completely changed. While he was dancingand skating at the Hague, and expecting every day a summons to London, he was overwhelmed with misery by the tidings of his father's death andof his uncle's accession. During the night which followed the arrival ofthe news, those who lodged near him could distinctly hear his sobs andhis piercing cries. He quitted the Hague the next day, having solemnlypledged his word both to the Prince and to the Princess of Orange notto attempt anything against the government of England, and having beensupplied by them with money to meet immediate demands. [331]

The prospect which lay before Monmouth was not a bright one. There wasnow no probability that he would be recalled from banishment. On theContinent his life could no longer be passed amidst the splendour andfestivity of a court. His cousins at the Hague seem to have reallyregarded him with kindness; but they could no longer countenance himopenly without serious risk of producing a rupture between England andHolland. William offered a kind and judicious suggestion. The war whichwas then raging in Hungary, between the Emperor and the Turks, waswatched by all Europe with interest almost as great as that which theCrusades had excited five hundred years earlier. Many gallant gentlemen, both Protestant and Catholic, were fighting as volunteers in the commoncause of Christendom. The Prince advised Monmouth to repair to theImperial camp, and assured him that, if he would do so, he should notwant the means of making an appearance befitting an English nobleman. [332] This counsel was excellent: but the Duke could not make uphis mind. He retired to Brussels accompanied by Henrietta Wentworth, Baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede, a damsel of high rank and amplefortune, who loved him passionately, who had sacrificed for his sake hermaiden honour and the hope of a splendid alliance, who had followed himinto exile, and whom he believed to be his wife in the sight of heaven. Under the soothing influence of female friendship, his lacerated mindhealed fast. He seemed to have found happiness in obscurity and repose, and to have forgotten that he had been the ornament of a splendid courtand the head of a great party, that he had commanded armies, and that hehad aspired to a throne. 

But he was not suffered to remain quiet. Ferguson employed all hispowers of temptation. Grey, who knew not where to turn for a pistole, and was ready for any undertaking, however desperate, lent his aid. No art was spared which could draw Monmouth from retreat. To the firstinvitations which he received from his old associates he returnedunfavourable answers. He pronounced the difficulties of a descent onEngland insuperable, protested that he was sick of public life, andbegged to be left in the enjoyment of his newly found happiness. But hewas little in the habit of resisting skilful and urgent importunity. It is said, too, that he was induced to quit his retirement by thesame powerful influence which had made that retirement delightful. LadyWentworth wished to see him a King. Her rents, her diamonds, her creditwere put at his disposal. Monmouth's judgment was not convinced; but hehad not the firmness to resist such solicitations. [333]

By the English exiles he was joyfully welcomed, and unanimouslyacknowledged as their head. But there was another class of emigrants whowere not disposed to recognise his supremacy. Misgovernment, such ashad never been known in the southern part of our island, had drivenfrom Scotland to the Continent many fugitives, the intemperance of whosepolitical and religious zeal was proportioned to the oppression whichthey had undergone. These men were not willing to follow an Englishleader. Even in destitution and exile they retained their punctiliousnational pride, and would not consent that their country should be, intheir persons, degraded into a province. They had a captain of theirown, Archibald, ninth Earl of Argyle, who, as chief of the great tribeof Campbell, was known among the population of the Highlands by theproud name of Mac Callum More. His father, the Marquess of Argyle, hadbeen the head of the Scotch Covenanters, had greatly contributed to theruin of Charles the First, and was not thought by the Royalists to haveatoned for this offence by consenting to bestow the empty title of King, and a state prison in a palace, on Charles the Second. After the returnof the royal family the Marquess was put to death. His marquisate becameextinct; but his son was permitted to inherit the ancient earldom, and was still among the greatest if not the greatest, of the nobles ofScotland. The Earl's conduct during the twenty years which followed theRestoration had been, as he afterwards thought, criminally moderate. Hehad, on some occasions, opposed the administration which afflictedhis country: but his opposition had been languid and cautious. Hiscompliances in ecclesiastical matters had given scandal to rigidPresbyterians: and so far had he been from showing any inclinationto resistance that, when the Covenanters had been persecuted intoinsurrection, he had brought into the field a large body of hisdependents to support the government. 

Such had been his political course until the Duke of York came down toEdinburgh armed with the whole regal authority The despotic viceroy soonfound that he could not expect entire support from Argyle. Since themost powerful chief in the kingdom could not be gained, it was thoughtnecessary that he should be destroyed. On grounds so frivolous that eventhe spirit of party and the spirit of chicane were ashamed of them, hewas brought to trial for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. Thepartisans of the Stuarts afterwards asserted that it was never meantto carry this sentence into effect, and that the only object of theprosecution was to frighten him into ceding his extensive jurisdictionin the Highlands. Whether James designed, as his enemies suspected, tocommit murder, or only, as his friends affirmed, to commit extortion bythreatening to commit murder, cannot now be ascertained. "I know nothingof the Scotch law, " said Halifax to King Charles; "but this I know, thatwe should not hang a dog here on the grounds on which my Lord Argyle hasbeen sentenced. " [334]

Argyle escaped in disguise to England, and thence passed over toFriesland. In that secluded province his father had bought a smallestate, as a place of refuge for the family in civil troubles. It wassaid, among the Scots that this purchase had been made in consequence ofthe predictions of a Celtic seer, to whom it had been revealed that MacCallum More would one day be driven forth from the ancient mansion ofhis race at Inverary. [335] But it is probable that the politic Marquesshad been warned rather by the signs of the times than by the visionsof any prophet. In Friesland Earl Archibald resided during some time soquietly that it was not generally known whither he had fled. Fromhis retreat he carried on a correspondence with his friends in GreatBritain, was a party to the Whig conspiracy, and concerted with thechiefs of that conspiracy a plan for invading Scotland. [336] This planhad been dropped upon the detection of the Rye House plot, but becameagain the Subject of his thoughts after the demise of the crown. 

He had, during his residence on the Continent, reflected much moredeeply on religious questions than in the preceding years of his life. In one respect the effect of these reflections on his mind had beenpernicious. His partiality for the synodical form of church governmentnow amounted to bigotry. When he remembered how long he had conformed tothe established worship, he was overwhelmed with shame and remorse, andshowed too many signs of a disposition to atone for his defectionby violence and intolerance. He had however, in no long time, anopportunity of proving that the fear and love of a higher Power hadnerved him for the most formidable conflicts by which human nature canbe 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 mostpowerful subject in the British dominions. In wealth, even before hisattainder, he was probably inferior, not only to the great Englishnobles, but to some of the opulent esquires of Kent and Norfolk. But hispatriarchal authority, an authority which no wealth could give and whichno attainder could take away, made him, as a leader of an insurrection, truly formidable. No southern lord could feel any confidence that, if heventured to resist the government, even his own gamekeepers and huntsmenwould stand by him. An Earl of Bedford, an Earl of Devonshire, could notengage to bring ten men into the field. Mac Callum More, penniless anddeprived of his earldom, might at any moment, raise a serious civil war. He bad only to show himself on the coast of Lorn; and an army would, in a few days, gather round him. The force which, in favourablecircumstances, he could bring into the field, amounted to five thousandfighting, men, devoted to his service accustomed to the use of targetand broadsword, not afraid to encounter regular troops even in the openplain, and perhaps superior to regular troops in the qualificationsrequisite for the defence of wild mountain passes, hidden in mist, and torn by headlong torrents. What such a force, well directed, couldeffect, even against veteran regiments and skilful commanders, wasproved, a few years later, at Killiecrankie. 

But, strong as was the claim of Argyle to the confidence of the exiledScots, there was a faction among them which regarded him with nofriendly feeling, and which wished to make use of his name andinfluence, without entrusting to him any real power. The chief of thisfaction was a lowland gentleman, who had been implicated in the Whigplot, and had with difficulty eluded the vengeance of the court, SirPatrick Hume, of Polwarth, in Berwickshire. Great doubt has been thrownon his integrity, but without sufficient reason. It must, however, beadmitted that he injured his cause by perverseness as much as he couldhave done by treachery. He was a man incapable alike of leading and offollowing, conceited, captious, and wrongheaded, an endless talker, asluggard in action against the enemy and active only against his ownallies. With Hume was closely connected another Scottish exile of greatnote, who had many, of the same faults, Sir John Cochrane, second son ofthe Earl of Dundonald. 

A far higher character belonged to Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a mandistinguished by learning and eloquence, distinguished also bycourage, disinterestedness, and public spirit but of an irritable andimpracticable temper. Like many of his most illustrious contemporaries, Milton for example, Harrington, Marvel, and Sidney, Fletcher had, fromthe misgovernment of several successive princes, conceived a strongaversion to hereditary monarchy. Yet he was no democrat. He was the headof an ancient Norman house, and was proud of his descent. He was afine speaker and a fine writer, and was proud of his intellectualsuperiority. Both in his character of gentleman, and in his characterof scholar, he looked down with disdain on the common people, and wasso little disposed to entrust them with political power that he thoughtthem unfit even to enjoy personal freedom. It is a curious circumstancethat this man, the most honest, fearless, and uncompromising republicanof his time, should have been the author of a plan for reducing a largepart of the working classes of Scotland to slavery. He bore, in truth, a lively resemblance to those Roman Senators who, while they hated thename of King, guarded the privileges of their order with inflexiblepride against the encroachments of the multitude, and governed theirbondmen 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 fromBrabant. It soon appeared that the fugitives had scarcely anything incommon except hatred of James and impatience to return from banishment. The Scots were jealous of the English, the English of the Scots. Monmouth's high pretensions were offensive to Argyle, who, proud ofancient nobility and of a legitimate descent from kings, was by no meansinclined to do homage to the offspring of a vagrant and ignoble love. But of all the dissensions by which the little band of outlaws wasdistracted the most serious was that which arose between Argyle and aportion of his own followers. Some of the Scottish exiles had, in a longcourse of opposition to tyranny, been excited into a morbid stateof understanding and temper, which made the most just and necessaryrestraint insupportable to them. They knew that without Argyle theycould do nothing. They ought to have known that, unless they wished torun headlong to ruin, they must either repose full confidence in theirleader, or relinquish all thoughts of military enterprise. Experiencehas fully proved that in war every operation, from the greatest to thesmallest, ought to be under the absolute direction of one mind, andthat every subordinate agent, in his degree, ought to obey implicitly, strenuously, and with the show of cheerfulness, orders which hedisapproves, or of which the reasons are kept secret from him. Representative assemblies, public discussions, and all the other checksby which, in civil affairs, rulers are restrained from abusing power, are out of place in a camp. Machiavel justly imputed many of thedisasters of Venice and Florence to the jealousy which led thoserepublics to interfere with every one of their generals. [337] The Dutchpractice of sending to an army deputies, without whose consent no greatblow could be struck, was almost equally pernicious. It is undoubtedlyby no means certain that a captain, who has been entrusted withdictatorial power in the hour of peril, will quietly surrender thatpower in the hour of triumph; and this is one of the many considerationswhich ought to make men hesitate long before they resolve to vindicatepublic liberty by the sword. But, if they determine to try the chanceof war, they will, if they are wise, entrust to their chief that plenaryauthority without which war cannot be well conducted. It is possiblethat, if they give him that authority, he may turn out a Cromwell or aNapoleon. But it is almost certain that, if they withhold from him thatauthority, 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 greataffairs, employed all their industry and ingenuity, not in collectingmeans for the attack which they were about to make on a formidableenemy, but in devising restraints on their leader's power and securitiesagainst his ambition. The selfcomplacent stupidity with which theyinsisted on Organising an army as if they had been organising acommonwealth would be incredible if it had not been frankly and evenboastfully recorded by one of themselves. [338]

At length all differences were compromised. It was determined that anattempt should be forthwith made on the western coast of Scotland, andthat it should be promptly followed by a descent on England. 

Argyle was to hold the nominal command in Scotland: but he was placedunder the control of a Committee which reserved to itself all the mostimportant parts of the military administration. This committee wasempowered to determine where the expedition should land, to appointofficers, to superintend the levying of troops, to dole out provisionsand ammunition. All that was left to the general was to direct theevolutions of the army in the field, and he was forced to promise thateven in the field, except in the case of a surprise, he would do nothingwithout the assent of a council of war. 

Monmouth was to command in England. His soft mind had as usual, takenan impress from the society which surrounded him. Ambitious hopes, whichhad seemed to be extinguished, revived in his bosom. He remembered theaffection with which he had been constantly greeted by the common peoplein town and country, and expected that they would now rise by hundredsof thousands to welcome him. He remembered the good will which thesoldiers had always borne him, and flattered himself that they wouldcome over to him by regiments. Encouraging messages reached him in quicksuccession from London. He was assured that the violence and injusticewith which the elections had been carried on had driven the nation mad, that the prudence of the leading Whigs had with difficulty prevented asanguinary outbreak on the day of the coronation, and that all the greatLords who had supported the Exclusion Bill were impatient to rally roundhim. Wildman, who loved to talk treason in parables, sent to say thatthe Earl of Richmond, just two hundred years before, had landed inEngland with a handful of men, and had a few days later been crowned, onthe field of Bosworth, with the diadem taken from the head of Richard. Danvers undertook to raise the City. The Duke was deceived intothe belief that, as soon as he set up his standard, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Cheshire would rise in arms. [339] Heconsequently became eager for the enterprise from which a few weeksbefore he had shrunk. His countrymen did not impose on him restrictionsso elaborately absurd as those which the Scotch emigrants had devised. All that was required of him was to promise that he would not assume theregal title till his pretensions has been submitted to the judgment of afree Parliament. 

It was determined that two Englishmen, Ayloffe and Rumbold, shouldaccompany Argyle to Scotland, and that Fletcher should go with Monmouthto England. Fletcher, from the beginning, had augured ill of theenterprise: but his chivalrous spirit would not suffer him to declinea risk which his friends seemed eager to encounter. When Grey repeatedwith approbation what Wildman had said about Richmond and Richard, thewell read and thoughtful Scot justly remarked that there was a greatdifference between the fifteenth century and the seventeenth. Richmondwas assured of the support of barons, each of whom could bring an armyof feudal retainers into the field; and Richard had not one regiment ofregular soldiers. [340]

The exiles were able to raise, partly from their own resources andpartly from the contributions of well wishers in Holland, a sumsufficient for the two expeditions. Very little was obtained fromLondon. Six thousand pounds had been expected thence. But instead of themoney came excuses from Wildman, which ought to have opened the eyesof all who were not wilfully blind. The Duke made up the deficiency bypawning his own jewels and those of Lady Wentworth. Arms, ammunition, and provisions were bought, and several ships which lay at Amsterdamwere freighted. [341]

It is remarkable that the most illustrious and the most grossly injuredman among the British exiles stood far aloof from these rash counsels. John Locke hated tyranny and persecution as a philosopher; but hisintellect and his temper preserved him from the violence of a partisan. He had lived on confidential terms with Shaftesbury, and had thusincurred the displeasure of the court. Locke's prudence had, however, been such that it would have been to little purpose to bring him evenbefore the corrupt and partial tribunals of that age. In one point, however, he was vulnerable. He was a student of Christ Church in theUniversity of Oxford. It was determined to drive from that celebratedcollege the greatest man of whom it could ever boast. But this was noteasy. Locke had, at Oxford, abstained from expressing any opinion on thepolitics of the day. Spies had been set about him. Doctors of Divinityand Masters of Arts had not been ashamed to perform the vilest of alloffices, that of watching the lips of a companion in order to reporthis words to his ruin. The conversation in the hall had been purposelyturned to irritating topics, to the Exclusion Bill, and to the characterof the Earl of Shaftesbury, but in vain. Locke neither broke out nordissembled, but maintained such steady silence and composure as forcedthe tools of power to own with vexation that never man was so completea master of his tongue and of his passions. When it was found thattreachery could do nothing, arbitrary power was used. After vainlytrying to inveigle Locke into a fault, the government resolved to punishhim 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 learnedthat he had been deprived of his home and of his bread without a trialor even a notice. The injustice with which he had been treated wouldhave excused him if he had resorted to violent methods of redress. Buthe was not to be blinded by personal resentment he augured no good fromthe schemes of those who had assembled at Amsterdam; and he quietlyrepaired to Utrecht, where, while his partners in misfortune wereplanning their own destruction, he employed himself in writing hiscelebrated letter on Toleration. [342]

The English government was early apprised that something was inagitation among the outlaws. An invasion of England seems not to havebeen at first expected; but it was apprehended that Argyle would shortlyappear in arms among his clansmen. A proclamation was accordingly issueddirecting that Scotland should be put into a state of defence. Themilitia was ordered to be in readiness. All the clans hostile to thename of Campbell were set in motion. John Murray, Marquess of Athol, wasappointed Lord Lieutenant of Argyleshire, and, at the head of a greatbody of his followers, occupied the castle of Inverary. Some suspectedpersons were arrested. Others were compelled to give hostages. Ships ofwar were sent to cruise near the isle of Bute; and part of the army ofIreland was moved to the coast of Ulster. [343]

While these preparations were making in Scotland, James called into hiscloset Arnold Van Citters, who had long resided in England as Ambassadorfrom the United Provinces, and Everard Van Dykvelt, who, after the deathof Charles, had been sent by the State General on a special mission ofcondolence and congratulation. The King said that he had receivedfrom unquestionable sources intelligence of designs which were formingagainst the throne by his banished subjects in Holland. Some of theexiles were cutthroats, whom nothing but the special providence of Godhad prevented from committing a foul murder; and among them was theowner of the spot which had been fixed for the butchery. "Of all menliving, " said the King, "Argyle has the greatest means of annoyingme; and of all places Holland is that whence a blow may be best aimedagainst me. " The Dutch envoys assured his Majesty that what he hadsaid should instantly be communicated to the government which theyrepresented, and expressed their full confidence that every exertionwould be made to satisfy him. [344]

They were justified in expressing this confidence. Both the Prince ofOrange and the States General, were, at this time, most desirous thatthe hospitality of their country should not be abused for purposes ofwhich the English government could justly complain. James had latelyheld language which encouraged the hope that he would not patientlysubmit to the ascendancy of France. It seemed probable that he wouldconsent to form a close alliance with the United Provinces and the Houseof Austria. There was, therefore, at the Hague, an extreme anxiety toavoid all that could give him offence. The personal interest of Williamwas also on this occasion identical with the interest of his father inlaw. 

But the case was one which required rapid and vigorous action; and thenature 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 beendeliberately revised and perfected in a time of tranquillity. Every oneof the seven commonwealths which that Union had bound together retainedalmost all the rights of sovereignty, and asserted those rightspunctiliously against the central government. As the federal authoritieshad not the means of exacting prompt obedience from the provincialauthorities, so the provincial authorities had not the means of exactingprompt obedience from the municipal authorities. Holland alone containedeighteen cities, each of which was, for many purposes, an independentstate, jealous of all interference from without. If the rulers of such acity received from the Hague an order which was unpleasing to them, theyeither neglected it altogether, or executed it languidly and tardily. In some town councils, indeed, the influence of the Prince of Orange wasall powerful. But unfortunately the place where the British exiles hadcongregated, and where their ships had been fitted out, was the rich andpopulous Amsterdam; and the magistrates of Amsterdam were the headsof the faction hostile to the federal government and to the House ofNassau. The naval administration of the United Provinces was conductedby five distinct boards of Admiralty. One of those boards sate atAmsterdam, was partly nominated by the authorities of that city, andseems to have been entirely animated by their spirit. 

All the endeavours of the federal government to effect what Jamesdesired were frustrated by the evasions of the functionaries ofAmsterdam, and by the blunders of Colonel Bevil Skelton, who had justarrived at the Hague as envoy from England. Skelton had been born inHolland during the English troubles, and was therefore supposed to bepeculiarly qualified for his post; [345] but he was, in truth, unfit forthat and for every other diplomatic situation. Excellent judges ofcharacter pronounced him to be the most shallow, fickle, passionate, presumptuous, and garrulous of men. [346] He took no serious noticeof the proceedings of the refugees till three vessels which had beenequipped for the expedition to Scotland were safe out of the Zuyder Zee, till the arms, ammunition, and provisions were on board, and till thepassengers had embarked. Then, instead of applying, as he should havedone, to the States General, who sate close to his own door, he senta messenger to the magistrates of Amsterdam, with a request that thesuspected ships might be detained. The magistrates of Amsterdam answeredthat the entrance of the Zuyder Zee was out of their jurisdiction, andreferred him to the federal government. It was notorious that this was amere excuse, and that, if there had been any real wish at the Stadthouseof Amsterdam to prevent Argyle from sailing, no difficulties would havebeen made. Skelton now addressed himself to the States General. Theyshowed every disposition to comply with his demand, and, as the case wasurgent, departed from the course which they ordinarily observed inthe transaction of business. On the same day on which he made hisapplication to them, an order, drawn in exact conformity with hisrequest, was despatched to the Admiralty of Amsterdam. But this order, in consequence of some misinformation, did not correctly describe thesituation of the ships. They were said to be in the Texel. They were inthe Vlie. The Admiralty of Amsterdam made this error a plea for doingnothing; and, before the error could be rectified, the three ships hadsailed. [347]

The last hours which Argyle passed on the coast of Holland were hours ofgreat anxiety. Near him lay a Dutch man of war whose broadside wouldin a moment have put an end to his expedition. Round his little fleeta boat was rowing, in which were some persons with telescopes whom hesuspected to be spies. But no effectual step was taken for the purposeof detaining him; and on the afternoon of the second of May he stood outto 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 hisfollowers to go on shore there. The Bishop ordered them to be arrested. The refugees proceeded to hold a long and animated debate on thismisadventure: for, from the beginning to the end of their expedition, however languid and irresolute their conduct might be, they neverin debate wanted spirit or perseverance. Some were for an attack onKirkwall. Some were for proceeding without delay to Argyleshire. At lastthe Earl seized some gentlemen who lived near the coast of the island, and proposed to the Bishop an exchange of prisoners. The Bishop returnedno answer; and the fleet, after losing three days, sailed away. 

This delay was full of danger. It was speedily known at Edinburgh thatthe rebel squadron had touched at the Orkneys. Troops were instantlyput in motion. When the Earl reached his own province, he found thatpreparations had been made to repel him. At Dunstaffnage he sent hissecond son Charles on Shore to call the Campbells to arms. But Charlesreturned with gloomy tidings. The herdsmen and fishermen were indeedready to rally round Mac Callum More; but, of the heads of the clan, some were in confinement, and others had fled. Those gentlemen whoremained at their homes were either well affected to the government orafraid of moving, and refused even to see the son of their chief. FromDunstaffnage the small armament proceeded to Campbelltown, near thesouthern extremity of the peninsula of Kintyre. Here the Earl publisheda manifesto, drawn up in Holland, under the direction of the Committee, by James Stewart, a Scotch advocate, whose pen was, a few months later, employed in a very different way. In this paper were set forth, with astrength of language sometimes approaching to scurrility, many real andsome imaginary grievances. It was hinted that the late King had died bypoison. A chief object of the expedition was declared to be the entiresuppression, not only of Popery, but of Prelacy, which was termed themost bitter root and offspring of Popery; and all good Scotchmen wereexhorted to do valiantly for the cause of their country and of theirGod. 

Zealous as Argyle was for what he considered as pure religion, hedid not scruple to practice one rite half Popish and half Pagan. Themysterious cross of yew, first set on fire, and then quenched in theblood of a goat, was sent forth to summon all the Campbells, fromsixteen to sixty. The isthmus of Tarbet was appointed for the place ofgathering. The muster, though small indeed when compared with whatit would have been if the spirit and strength of the clan had beenunbroken, was still formidable. The whole force assembled amounted toabout eighteen hundred men. Argyle divided his mountaineers into threeregiments, and proceeded to appoint officers. 

The bickerings which had begun in Holland had never been intermittedduring the whole course of the expedition; but at Tarbet they becamemore violent than ever. The Committee wished to interfere even with thepatriarchal dominion of the Earl over the Campbells, and would not allowhim to settle the military rank of his kinsmen by his own authority. While these disputatious meddlers tried to wrest from him his powerover the Highlands, they carried on their own correspondence with theLowlands, and received and sent letters which were never communicatedto the nominal General. Hume and his confederates had reserved tothemselves the superintendence of the Stores, and conducted thisimportant part of the administration of war with a laxity hardly to bedistinguished from dishonesty, suffered the arms to be spoiled, wastedthe provisions, and lived riotously at a time when they ought to haveset to all beneath them an example of abstemiousness. 

The great question was whether the Highlands or the Lowlands should bethe seat of war. The Earl's first object was to establish his authorityover his own domains, to drive out the invading clans which had beenpoured from Perthshire into Argyleshire, and to take possession of theancient seat of his family at Inverary. He might then hope to have fouror five thousand claymores at his command. With such a force he would beable to defend that wild country against the whole power of the kingdomof Scotland, and would also have secured an excellent base for offensiveoperations. This seems to have been the wisest course open to him. Rumbold, who had been trained in an excellent military school, and who, as an Englishman, might be supposed to be an impartial umpire betweenthe Scottish factions, did all in his power to strengthen the Earl'shands. But Hume and Cochrane were utterly impracticable. Their jealousyof Argyle was, in truth, stronger than their wish for the success of theexpedition. They saw that, among his own mountains and lakes, and at thehead of an army chiefly composed of his own tribe, he would be ableto bear down their opposition, and to exercise the full authority of aGeneral. They muttered that the only men who had the good cause at heartwere the Lowlanders, and that the Campbells took up arms neither forliberty nor for the Church of God, but for Mac Callum More alone. 

Cochrane declared that he would go to Ayrshire if he went by himself, and with nothing but a pitchfork in his hand. Argyle, after longresistance, consented, against his better judgment, to divide his littlearmy. He remained with Rumbold in the Highlands. Cochrane and Hume wereat the head of the force which sailed to invade the Lowlands. 

Ayrshire was Cochrane's object: but the coast of Ayrshire was guardedby English frigates; and the adventurers were under the necessity ofrunning up the estuary of the Clyde to Greenock, then a small fishingvillage consisting of a single row of thatched hovels, now a great andflourishing port, of which the customs amount to more than fivetimes the whole revenue which the Stuarts derived from the kingdom ofScotland. A party of militia lay at Greenock: but Cochrane, whowanted provisions, was determined to land. Hume objected. Cochrane wasperemptory, and ordered an officer, named Elphinstone, to take twentymen in a boat to the shore. But the wrangling spirit of the leaders hadinfected all ranks. Elphinstone answered that he was bound to obey onlyreasonable commands, that he considered this command as unreasonable, and, in short, that he would not go. Major Fullarton, a brave man, esteemed by all parties, but peculiarly attached to Argyle, undertook toland with only twelve men, and did so in spite of a fire from the coast. A slight skirmish followed. The militia fell back. Cochrane enteredGreenock and procured a supply of meal, but found no disposition toinsurrection among the people. 

In fact, the state of public feeling in Scotland was not such as theexiles, misled by the infatuation common in all ages to exiles, hadsupposed it to be. The government was, indeed, hateful and hated. Butthe malecontents were divided into parties which were almost as hostileto one another as to their rulers; nor was any of those parties eager tojoin the invaders. Many thought that the insurrection had no chanceof success. The spirit of many had been effectually broken by long andcruel oppression. There was, indeed, a class of enthusiasts who werelittle in the habit of calculating chances, and whom oppression had nottamed but maddened. But these men saw little difference between Argyleand James. Their wrath had been heated to such a temperature that whateverybody else would have called boiling zeal seemed to them Laodiceanlukewarmness. The Earl's past life had been stained by what theyregarded as the vilest apostasy. The very Highlanders whom he nowsummoned to extirpate Prelacy he had a few years before summoned todefend it. And were slaves who knew nothing and cared nothing aboutreligion, who were ready to fight for synodical government, forEpiscopacy, for Popery, just as Mac Callum More might be pleased tocommand, fit allies for the people of God? The manifesto, indecentand intolerant as was its tone, was, in the view of these fanatics, acowardly and worldly performance. A settlement such as Argyle would havemade, such as was afterwards made by a mightier and happier deliverer, seemed to them not worth a struggle. They wanted not only freedom ofconscience for themselves, but absolute dominion over the consciences ofothers; not only the Presbyterian doctrine, polity, and worship, but theCovenant in its utmost rigour. Nothing would content them but thatevery end for which civil society exists should be sacrificed to theascendency of a theological system. One who believed no form ofchurch government to be worth a breach of Christian charity, and whorecommended comprehension and toleration, was in their phrase, haltingbetween Jehovah and Baal. One who condemned such acts as the murder ofCardinal Beatoun and Archbishop Sharpe fell into the same sin for whichSaul had been rejected from being King over Israel. All the rules, by which, among civilised and Christian men, the horrors of war aremitigated, were abominations in the sight of the Lord. Quarter was to beneither taken nor given. A Malay running a muck, a mad dog pursued bya crowd, were the models to be imitated by warriors fighting in justself-defence. To reasons such as guide the conduct of statesmen andgenerals the minds of these zealots were absolutely impervious. That aman should venture to urge such reasons was sufficient evidence thathe was not one of the faithful. If the divine blessing were withheld, little would be effected by crafty politicians, by veteran captains, bycases of arms from Holland, or by regiments of unregenerate Celts fromthe mountains of Lorn. If, on the other hand, the Lord's time wereindeed come, he could still, as of old, cause the foolish things of theworld to confound the wise, and could save alike by many and by few. The broadswords of Athol and the bayonets of Claverhouse would be put torout by weapons as insignificant as the sling of David or the pitcher ofGideon. [348]

Cochrane, having found it impossible to raise the population on thesouth of the Clyde, rejoined Argyle, who was in the island of Bute. The Earl now again proposed to make an attempt upon Inverary. Again heencountered a pertinacious opposition. The seamen sided with Humeand Cochrane. The Highlanders were absolutely at the command of theirchieftain. There was reason to fear that the two parties would come toblows; and the dread of such a disaster induced the Committee to makesome concession. The castle of Ealan Ghierig, situated at the mouth ofLoch Riddan, was selected to be the chief place of arms. The militarystores were disembarked there. The squadron was moored close to thewalls in a place where it was protected by rocks and shallows suchas, it was thought, no frigate could pass. Outworks were thrown up. A battery was planted with some small guns taken from the ships. Thecommand of the fort was most unwisely given to Elphinstone, who hadalready proved himself much more disposed to argue with his commandersthan to fight the enemy. 

And now, during a few hours, there was some show of vigour. Rumbold tookthe castle of Ardkinglass. The Earl skirmished successfully with Athol'stroops, and was about to advance on Inverary, when alarming news fromthe ships and factions in the Committee forced him to turn back. TheKing's frigates had come nearer to Ealan Ghierig than had been thoughtpossible. The Lowland gentlemen positively refused to advance furtherinto the Highlands. Argyle hastened back to Ealan Ghierig. There heproposed to make an attack on the frigates. His ships, indeed, were illfitted for such an encounter. But they would have been supported bya flotilla of thirty large fishing boats, each well manned with armedHighlanders. The Committee, however, refused to listen to this plan, andeffectually counteracted it by raising a mutiny among the sailors. 

All was now confusion and despondency. The provisions had been so illmanaged by the Committee that there was no longer food for the troops. The Highlanders consequently deserted by hundreds; and the Earl, brokenhearted by his misfortunes, yielded to the urgency of those whostill pertinaciously insisted that he should march into the Lowlands. 

The little army therefore hastened to the shore of Loch Long, passedthat inlet by night in boats, and landed in Dumbartonshire. Hither, onthe following morning, came news that the frigates had forced a passage, that all the Earl's ships had been taken, and that Elphinstone had fledfrom Ealan Ghierig without a blow, leaving the castle and stores to theenemy. 

All that remained was to invade the Lowlands under every disadvantage. Argyle resolved to make a bold push for Glasgow. But, as soon as thisresolution 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 ascheme for seizing the boats, making their own escape, and leavingtheir General and his clansmen to conquer or perish unaided. This schemefailed; and the poltroons who had formed it were compelled to share withbraver men the risks of the last venture. 

During the march through the country which lies between Loch Long andLoch Lomond, the insurgents were constantly infested by partiesof militia. Some skirmishes took place, in which the Earl had theadvantage; but the bands which he repelled, falling back before him, spread the tidings of his approach, and, soon after he had crossed theriver Leven, he found a strong body of regular and irregular troopsprepared to encounter him. 

He was for giving battle. Ayloffe was of the same opinion. Hume, on theother hand, declared that to fight would be madness. He saw one regimentin scarlet. More might be behind. To attack such a force was to rush oncertain death The best course was to remain quiet till night, and thento give the enemy the slip. 

A sharp altercation followed, which was with difficulty quieted by themediation of Rumbold. It was now evening. The hostile armies encamped atno great distance from each other. The Earl ventured to propose a nightattack, and was again overruled. 

Since it was determined not to fight, nothing was left but to take thestep which Hume had recommended. There was a chance that, by decampingsecretly, and hastening all night across heaths and morasses, the Earlmight gain many miles on the enemy, and might reach Glasgow withoutfurther obstruction. The watch fires were left burning; and the marchbegan. And now disaster followed disaster fast. The guides mistook thetrack across the moors, and led the army into boggy ground. Militaryorder could not be preserved by undisciplined and disheartened soldiersunder a dark sky, and on a treacherous and uneven soil. Panic afterpanic spread through the broken ranks. Every sight and sound was thoughtto indicate the approach of pursuers. Some of the officers contributedto spread the terror which it was their duty to calm. The army hadbecome a mob; and the mob melted fast away. Great numbers fled undercover of the night. Rumbold and a few other brave men whom no dangercould have scared lost their way, and were unable to rejoin the mainbody. When the day broke, only five hundred fugitives, wearied anddispirited, assembled at Kilpatrick. 

All thought of prosecuting the war was at an end: and it was plainthat the chiefs of the expedition would have sufficient difficultyin escaping with their lives. They fled in different directions. Humereached the Continent in safety. Cochrane was taken and sent up toLondon. Argyle hoped to find a secure asylum under the roof of oneof his old servants who lived near Kilpatrick. But this hope wasdisappointed; and he was forced to cross the Clyde. He assumed the dressof a peasant and pretended to be the guide of Major Fullarton, whosecourageous fidelity was proof to all danger. The friends journeyedtogether through Renfrewshire as far as Inchinnan. At that place theBlack Cart and the White Cart, two streams which now flow throughprosperous towns, and turn the wheels of many factories, but which thenheld their quiet course through moors and sheepwalks, mingle before theyjoin the Clyde. The only ford by which the travellers could cross wasguarded by a party of militia. Some questions were asked. Fullartontried to draw suspicion on himself, in order that his companion mightescape unnoticed. But the minds of the questioners misgave them that theguide was not the rude clown that he seemed. They laid hands on him. He broke loose and sprang into the water, but was instantly chased. Hestood at bay for a short time against five assailants. But he had noarms except his pocket pistols, and they were so wet, in consequence ofhis plunge, that they would not go off. He was struck to the ground witha broadsword, and secured. 

He owned himself to be the Earl of Argyle, probably in the hope that hisgreat name would excite the awe and pity of those who had seized him. And indeed they were much moved. For they were plain Scotchmen of humblerank, and, though in arms for the crown, probably cherished a preferencefor the Calvinistic church government and worship, and had beenaccustomed to reverence their captive as the head of an illustrioushouse and as a champion of the Protestant religion But, though theywere evidently touched, and though some of them even wept, they were notdisposed to relinquish a large reward and to incur the vengeance ofan implacable government. They therefore conveyed their prisonerto Renfrew. The man who bore the chief part in the arrest was namedRiddell. On this account the whole race of Riddells was, during morethan a century, held in abhorrence by the great tribe of Campbell. Within living memory, when a Riddell visited a fair in Argyleshire, hefound it necessary to assume a false name. 

And now commenced the brightest part of Argyle's career. His enterprisehad hitherto brought on him nothing but reproach and derision. His greaterror was that he did not resolutely refuse to accept the name withoutthe power of a general. Had he remained quietly at his retreat inFriesland, he would in a few years have been recalled with honour tohis country, and would have been conspicuous among the ornaments andthe props of constitutional monarchy. Had he conducted his expeditionaccording to his own views, and carried with him no followers but suchas were prepared implicitly to obey all his orders, he might possiblyhave effected something great. For what he wanted as a captain seems tohave been, not courage, nor activity, nor skill, but simply authority. He should have known that of all wants this is the most fatal. Armies have triumphed under leaders who possessed no very eminentqualifications. But what army commanded by a debating club ever escapeddiscomfiture and disgrace?

The great calamity which had fallen on Argyle had this advantage, thatit enabled him to show, by proofs not to be mistaken, what manner ofman he was. From the day when he quitted. Friesland to the day when hisfollowers separated at Kilpatrick, he had never been a free agent. Hehad borne the responsibility of a long series of measures which hisjudgment disapproved. Now at length he stood alone. Captivity hadrestored to him the noblest kind of liberty, the liberty of governinghimself in all his words and actions according to his own sense of theright and of the becoming. From that moment he became as one inspiredwith new wisdom and virtue. His intellect seemed to be strengthened andconcentrated, his moral character to be at once elevated and softened. The insolence of the conquerors spared nothing that could try the temperof a man proud of ancient nobility and of patriarchal dominion. Theprisoner was dragged through Edinburgh in triumph. He walked onfoot, bareheaded, up the whole length of that stately street which, overshadowed by dark and gigantic piles of stone, leads from HolyroodHouse to the Castle. Before him marched the hangman, bearing the ghastlyinstrument which was to be used at the quartering block. The victoriousparty had not forgotten that, thirty-five years before this time, thefather of Argyle had been at the head of the faction which put Montroseto death. Before that event the houses of Graham and Campbell had borneno love to each other; and they had ever since been at deadly feud. Carewas taken that the prisoner should pass through the same gate and thesame streets through which Montrose had been led to the same doom. [349]When the Earl reached the Castle his legs were put in irons, and he wasinformed that he had but a few days to live. It had been determined notto bring him to trial for his recent offence, but to put him to deathunder the sentence pronounced against him several years before, asentence so flagitiously unjust that the most servile and obduratelawyers of that bad age could not speak of it without shame. 

But neither the ignominious procession up the High Street, nor the nearview of death, had power to disturb the gentle and majestic patience ofArgyle. His fortitude was tried by a still more severe test. A paper ofinterrogatories was laid before him by order of the Privy Council. Hereplied to those questions to which he could reply without danger toany of his friends, and refused to say more. He was told that unless hereturned fuller answers he should be put to the torture. James, who wasdoubtless sorry that he could not feast his own eyes with the sight ofArgyle in the boots, sent down to Edinburgh positive orders that nothingshould be omitted which could wring out of the traitor informationagainst all who had been concerned in the treason. But menaces werevain. With torments and death in immediate prospect Mac Callum Morethought far less of himself than of his poor clansmen. "I was busy thisday, " he wrote from his cell, "treating for them, and in some hopes. Butthis evening orders came that I must die upon Monday or Tuesday; and Iam to be put to the torture if I answer not all questions upon oath. YetI hope God shall support me. "

The torture was not inflicted. Perhaps the magnanimity of the victim hadmoved the conquerors to unwonted compassion. He himself remarked that atfirst they had been very harsh to him, but that they soon began to treathim with respect and kindness. God, he said, had melted their hearts. Itis certain that he did not, to save himself from the utmost cruelty ofhis enemies, betray any of his friends. On the last morning of his lifehe wrote these words: "I have named none to their disadvantage. I thankGod he hath supported me wonderfully!"

He composed his own epitaph, a short poem, full of meaning and spirit, simple and forcible in style, and not contemptible in versification. Inthis little piece he complained that, though his enemies had repeatedlydecreed his death, his friends had been still more cruel. A comment onthese expressions is to be found in a letter which he addressed to alady residing in Holland. She had furnished him with a large sumof money for his expedition, and he thought her entitled to a fullexplanation of the causes which had led to his failure. He acquitted hiscoadjutors of treachery, but described their folly, their ignorance, and their factious perverseness, in terms which their own testimony hassince proved to have been richly deserved. He afterwards doubted whetherhe had not used language too severe to become a dying Christian, and, in a separate paper, begged his friend to suppress what he had said ofthese men "Only this I must acknowledge, " he mildly added; "they werenot governable. "

Most of his few remaining hours were passed in devotion, and inaffectionate intercourse with some members of his family. He professedno repentance on account of his last enterprise, but bewailed, withgreat emotion, his former compliance in spiritual things with thepleasure of the government He had, he said, been justly punished. Onewho had so long been guilty of cowardice and dissimulation was notworthy to be the instrument of salvation to the State and Church. Yetthe cause, he frequently repeated, was the cause of God, and wouldassuredly triumph. "I do not, " he said, "take on myself to be a prophet. But I have a strong impression on my spirit, that deliverance will comevery suddenly. " It is not strange that some zealous Presbyterians shouldhave laid up his saying 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 naturalcourage and equanimity, composed his spirits, that, on the very day onwhich he was to die, he dined with appetite, conversed with gaiety attable, and, after his last meal, lay down, as he was wont, to take ashort slumber, in order that his body and mind might be in full vigourwhen he should mount the scaffold. At this time one of the Lords of theCouncil, who had probably been bred a Presbyterian, and had been seducedby interest to join in oppressing the Church of which he had once beena member, came to the Castle with a message from his brethren, anddemanded admittance to the Earl. It was answered that the Earl wasasleep. The Privy Councillor thought that this was a subterfuge, andinsisted on entering. The door of the cell was softly opened; and therelay Argyle, on the bed, sleeping, in his irons, the placid sleep ofinfancy. The conscience of the renegade smote him. He turned away sickat heart, ran out of the Castle, and took refuge in the dwelling of alady 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 withsudden illness, and begged him to drink a cup of sack. "No, no, " hesaid; "that will do me no good. " She prayed him to tell her what haddisturbed him. "I have been, " he said, "in Argyle's prison. I have seenhim within an hour of eternity, sleeping as sweetly as ever man did. Butas for me -------"

And now the Earl had risen from his bed, and had prepared himself forwhat was yet to be endured. He was first brought down the High Streetto the Council House, where he was to remain during the short intervalwhich was still to elapse before the execution. During that intervalhe asked for pen and ink, and wrote to his wife: "Dear heart, God isunchangeable: He hath always been good and gracious to me: and no placealters it. Forgive me all my faults; and now comfort thyself in Him, inwhom only true comfort is to be found. The Lord be with thee, bless andcomfort thee, my dearest. Adieu. "

It was now time to leave the Council House. The divines who attended theprisoner were not of his own persuasion; but he listened to them withcivility, and exhorted them to caution their flocks against thosedoctrines which all Protestant churches unite in condemning. He mountedthe scaffold, where the rude old guillotine of Scotland, called theMaiden, awaited him, and addressed the people in a speech, tincturedwith the peculiar phraseology of his sect, but breathing the spiritof serene piety. His enemies, he said, he forgave, as he hoped to beforgiven. Only a single acrimonious expression escaped him. One of theepiscopal clergymen who attended him went to the edge of the scaffold, and called out in a loud voice, "My Lord dies a Protestant. " "Yes, " saidthe Earl, stepping forward, "and not only a Protestant, but with a hearthatred of Popery, of Prelacy, and of all superstition. " He then embracedhis friends, put into their hands some tokens of remembrance for hiswife and children, kneeled down, laid his head on the block, prayedduring a few minutes, and gave the signal to the executioner. His headwas fixed on the top of the Tolbooth, where the head of Montrose hadformerly decayed. [350]

The head of the brave and sincere, though not blameless Rumbold, wasalready on the West Port of Edinburgh. Surrounded by factious andcowardly associates, he had, through the whole campaign, behaved himselflike a soldier trained in the school of the great Protector, had incouncil strenuously supported the authority of Argyle, and had in thefield been distinguished by tranquil intrepidity. After the dispersionof the army he was set upon by a party of militia. He defended himselfdesperately, and would have cut his way through them, had they nothamstringed his horse. He was brought to Edinburgh mortally wounded. Thewish of the government was that he should be executed in England. But hewas so near death, that, if he was not hanged in Scotland, he couldnot be hanged at all; and the pleasure of hanging him was one which theconquerors could not bear to forego. It was indeed not to be expectedthat they would show much lenity to one who was regarded as the chiefof the Rye House plot, and who was the owner of the building from whichthat plot took its name: but the insolence with which they treated thedying man seems to our more humane age almost incredible. One of theScotch Privy Councillors told him that he was a confounded villain. "I am at peace with God, " answered Rumbold, calmly; "how then can I beconfounded?"

He was hastily tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged andquartered within a few hours, near the City Cross in the High Street. Though unable to stand without the support of two men, he maintainedhis fortitude to the last, and under the gibbet raised his feeble voiceagainst Popery and tyranny with such vehemence that the officers orderedthe drums to strike up, lest the people should hear him. He was afriend, he said, to limited monarchy. But he never would believe thatProvidence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred toride, 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 standhere, not for any wrong that I have done, but for adhering to his causein an evil day. If every hair of my head were a man, in this quarrel Iwould venture them all. "

Both at his trial and at his execution he spoke of assassination withthe abhorrence which became a good Christian and a brave soldier. He hadnever, he protested, on the faith of a dying man, harboured the thoughtof committing such villany. But he frankly owned that, in conversationwith his fellow conspirators, he had mentioned his own house as a placewhere Charles and James might with advantage be attacked, and that muchhad been said on the subject, though nothing had been determined. It mayat first sight seem that this acknowledgment is inconsistent with hisdeclaration that he had always regarded assassination with horror. Butthe truth appears to be that he was imposed upon by a distinction whichdeluded many of his contemporaries. Nothing would have induced him toput poison into the food of the two princes, or to poinard them in theirsleep. But to make an unexpected onset on the troop of Life Guards whichsurrounded 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 theordinary incidents of war. Every old soldier, Cavalier or Roundhead, had been engaged in such enterprises. If in the skirmish the King shouldfall, he would fall by fair fighting and not by murder. Precisely thesame reasoning was employed, after the Revolution, by James himself andby some of his most devoted followers, to justify a wicked attempt onthe life of William the Third. A band of Jacobites was commissioned toattack the Prince of Orange in his winter quarters. The meaning latentunder this specious phrase was that the Prince's throat was to be cutas he went in his coach from Richmond to Kensington. It may seem strangethat such fallacies, the dregs of the Jesuitical casuistry, should havehad power to seduce men of heroic spirit, both Whigs and Tories, into acrime on which divine and human laws have justly set a peculiar note ofinfamy. But no sophism is too gross to delude minds distempered by partyspirit. [351]

Argyle, who survived Rumbold a few hours, left a dying testimony to thevirtues of the gallant Englishman. "Poor Rumbold was a great support tome, and a brave man, and died Christianly. " [352]

Ayloffe showed as much contempt of death as either Argyle or Rumbold:but his end did not, like theirs, edify pious minds. Though politicalsympathy had drawn him towards the Puritans, he had no religioussympathy with them, and was indeed regarded by them as little betterthan an atheist. He belonged to that section of the Whigs which soughtfor models rather among the patriots of Greece and Rome than among theprophets and judges of Israel. He was taken prisoner, and carried toGlasgow. There he attempted to destroy himself with a small penknife:but though he gave himself several wounds, none of them proved mortal, and he had strength enough left to bear a journey to London. He wasbrought before the Privy Council, and interrogated by the King, but hadtoo much elevation of mind to save himself by informing against others. A story was current among the Whigs that the King said, "You had betterbe frank with me, Mr. Ayloffe. You know that it is in my power to pardonyou. " Then, it was rumoured, the captive broke his sullen silence, andanswered, "It may be in your power; but it is not in your nature. " Hewas executed under his old outlawry before the gate of the Temple, anddied with stoical composure. [353]

In the meantime the vengeance of the conquerors was mercilessly wreakedon the people of Argyleshire. Many of the Campbells were hanged by Atholwithout a trial; and he was with difficulty restrained by the PrivyCouncil from taking more lives. The country to the extent of thirtymiles round Inverary was wasted. Houses were burned: the stones of millswere broken to pieces: fruit trees were cut down, and the very rootsseared with fire. The nets and fishing boats, the sole means by whichmany inhabitants of the coast subsisted, were destroyed. More than threehundred rebels and malecontents were transported to the colonies. Manyof them were also Sentenced to mutilation. On a single day the hangmanof Edinburgh cut off the ears of thirty-five prisoners. Several womenwere sent across the Atlantic after being first branded in the cheekwith a hot iron. It was even in contemplation to obtain an act ofParliament proscribing the name of Campbell, as the name of Macgregorhad been proscribed eighty years before. [354]

Argyle's expedition appears to have produced little sensation in thesouth of the island. The tidings of his landing reached London justbefore the English Parliament met. The King mentioned the news from thethrone; and the Houses assured him that they would stand by him againstevery enemy. Nothing more was required of them. Over Scotland they hadno authority; and a war of which the theatre was so distant, and ofwhich 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 wasagitated by the news that a more formidable invader had landed on herown shores. It had been agreed among the refugees that Monmouth shouldsail from Holland six days after the departure of the Scots. He haddeferred his expedition a short time, probably in the hope that mostof the troops in the south of the island would be moved to the north assoon as war broke out in the Highlands, and that he should find no forceready to oppose him. When at length he was desirous to proceed, the windhad become adverse and violent. 

While his small fleet lay tossing in the Texel, a contest was going onamong the Dutch authorities. The States General and the Prince of Orangewere on one side, the Town Council and Admiralty of Amsterdam on theother. 

Skelton had delivered to the States General a list of the refugees whoseresidence in the United Provinces caused uneasiness to his master. TheStates General, anxious to grant every reasonable request which Jamescould make, sent copies of the list to the provincial authorities. Theprovincial authorities sent copies to the municipal authorities. Themagistrates of all the towns were directed to take such measuresas might prevent the proscribed Whigs from molesting the Englishgovernment. In general those directions were obeyed. At Rotterdamin particular, where the influence of William was all powerful, suchactivity was shown as called forth warm acknowledgments from James. ButAmsterdam was the chief seat of the emigrants; and the governing bodyof Amsterdam would see nothing, hear nothing, know of nothing. TheHigh Bailiff of the city, who was himself in daily communication withFerguson, reported to the Hague that he did not know where to find asingle one of the refugees; and with this excuse the federal governmentwas forced to be content. The truth was that the English exiles wereas well known at Amsterdam, and as much stared at in the streets, as ifthey had been Chinese. [355]

A few days later, Skelton received orders from his Court to requestthat, in consequence of the dangers which threatened his master'sthrone, the three Scotch regiments in the service of the UnitedProvinces might be sent to Great Britain without delay. He applied tothe Prince of Orange; and the prince undertook to manage the matter, but predicted that Amsterdam would raise some difficulty. The predictionproved correct. The deputies of Amsterdam refused to consent, andsucceeded in causing some delay. But the question was not one of thoseon which, by the constitution of the republic, a single city couldprevent the wish of the majority from being carried into effect. Theinfluence of William prevailed; and the troops were embarked with greatexpedition. [356]

Skelton was at the same time exerting himself, not indeed veryjudiciously or temperately, to stop the ships which the English refugeeshad fitted out. He expostulated in warm terms with the Admiralty ofAmsterdam. The negligence of that board, he said, had already enabledone band of rebels to invade Britain. For a second error of the samekind there could be no excuse. He peremptorily demanded that a largevessel, named the Helderenbergh, might be detained. It was pretendedthat this vessel was bound for the Canaries. But in truth, she had beenfreighted by Monmouth, carried twenty-six guns, and was loaded with armsand ammunition. The Admiralty of Amsterdam replied that the liberty oftrade and navigation was not to be restrained for light reasons, andthat the Helderenbergh could not be stopped without an order from theStates General. Skelton, whose uniform practice seems to have been tobegin at the wrong end, now had recourse to the States General. The States General gave the necessary orders. Then the Admiralty ofAmsterdam pretended that there was not a sufficient naval force inthe Texel to seize so large a ship as the Helderenbergh, and sufferedMonmouth to sail unmolested. [357]

The weather was bad: the voyage was long; and several English men-of-warwere cruising in the channel. But Monmouth escaped both the sea andthe enemy. As he passed by the cliffs of Dorsetshire, it was thoughtdesirable to send a boat to the beach with one of the refugees namedThomas Dare. This man, though of low mind and manners, had greatinfluence at Taunton. He was directed to hasten thither across thecountry, and to apprise his friends that Monmouth would soon be onEnglish ground. [358]

On the morning of the eleventh of June the Helderenbergh, accompanied bytwo smaller vessels, appeared off the port of Lyme. That town is asmall knot of steep and narrow alleys, lying on a coast wild, rocky, andbeaten by a stormy sea. The place was then chiefly remarkable for a pierwhich, 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 fishermencould take refuge from the tempests of the Channel. 

The appearance of the three ships, foreign built and without colours, perplexed the inhabitants of Lyme; and the uneasiness increased when itwas found that the Customhouse officers, who had gone on board accordingto usage, did not return. The town's people repaired to the cliffs, andgazed long and anxiously, but could find no solution of the mystery. Atlength seven boats put off from the largest of the strange vessels, androwed to the shore. From these boats landed about eighty men, well armedand appointed. Among them were Monmouth, Grey, Fletcher, Ferguson, Wade, and Anthony Buyse, an officer who had been in the service of the Electorof Brandenburg. [359]

Monmouth commanded silence, kneeled down on the shore, thanked Godfor having preserved the friends of liberty and pure religion from theperils of the sea, and implored the divine blessing on what was yet tobe done by land. He then drew his sword, and led his men over the cliffsinto the town. 

As soon as it was known under what leader and for what purpose theexpedition came, the enthusiasm of the populace burst through allrestraints. The little town was in an uproar with men running to andfro, and shouting "A Monmouth! a Monmouth! the Protestant religion!"Meanwhile the ensign of the adventurers, a blue flag, was set up in themarketplace. The military stores were deposited in the town hall; anda Declaration setting forth the objects of the expedition was read fromthe Cross. [360]

This Declaration, the masterpiece of Ferguson's genius, was not a gravemanifesto such as ought to be put forth by a leader drawing the swordfor a great public cause, but a libel of the lowest class, both insentiment and language. [361] It contained undoubtedly many just chargesagainst the government. But these charges were set forth in the prolixand inflated style of a bad pamphlet; and the paper contained othercharges of which the whole disgrace falls on those who made them. TheDuke of York, it was positively affirmed, had burned down London, hadstrangled Godfrey, had cut the throat of Essex, and had poisoned thelate King. On account of those villanous and unnatural crimes, butchiefly of that execrable fact, the late horrible and barbarousparricide, --such was the copiousness and such the felicity of Ferguson'sdiction, --James was declared a mortal and bloody enemy, a tyrant, amurderer, and an usurper. No treaty should be made with him. The swordshould not be sheathed till he had been brought to condign punishment asa traitor. The government should be settled on principles favourableto liberty. All Protestant sects should be tolerated. The forfeitedcharters should be restored. Parliament should be held annually, andshould no longer be prorogued or dissolved by royal caprice. The onlystanding force should be the militia: the militia should be commandedby the Sheriffs; and the Sheriffs should be chosen by the freeholders. Finally Monmouth declared that he could prove himself to have been bornin lawful wedlock, and to be, by right of blood, King of England, butthat, for the present, he waived his claims, that he would leave them tothe judgment of a free Parliament, and that, in the meantime, he desiredto be considered only as the Captain General of the English Protestants, who were in arms against tyranny and Popery. 

Disgraceful as this manifesto was to those who put it forth, it was notunskilfully framed for the purpose of stimulating the passions of thevulgar. In the West the effect was great. The gentry and clergy ofthat part of England were indeed, with few exceptions, Tories. But theyeomen, the traders of the towns, the peasants, and the artisans weregenerally animated by the old Roundhead spirit. Many of them wereDissenters, and had been goaded by petty persecution into a temper fitfor desperate enterprise. The great mass of the population abhorredPopery and adored Monmouth. He was no stranger to them. His progressthrough Somersetshire and Devonshire in the summer of 1680 was stillfresh in the memory of all men. 

He was on that occasion sumptuously entertained by Thomas Thynne atLongleat Hall, then, and perhaps still, the most magnificent countryhouse in England. From Longleat to Exeter the hedges were lined withshouting spectators. The roads were strewn with boughs and flowers. Themultitude, in their eagerness to see and touch their favourite, brokedown the palings of parks, and besieged the mansions where he wasfeasted. When he reached Chard his escort consisted of five thousandhorsemen. At Exeter all Devonshire had been gathered together to welcomehim. One striking part of the show was a company of nine hundred youngmen who, clad in a white uniform, marched before him into the city. [362] The turn of fortune which had alienated the gentry from his causehad produced no effect on the common people. To them he was still thegood Duke, the Protestant Duke, the rightful heir whom a vile conspiracykept out of his own. They came to his standard in crowds. All theclerks whom he could employ were too few to take down the names of therecruits. Before he had been twenty-four hours on English ground he wasat the head of fifteen hundred men. Dare arrived from Taunton withforty horsemen of no very martial appearance, and brought encouragingintelligence as to the state of public feeling in Somersetshire. As Yetall seemed to promise well. [363]

But a force was collecting at Bridport to oppose the insurgents. On thethirteenth of June the red regiment of Dorsetshire militia came pouringinto that town. The Somersetshire, or yellow regiment, of which SirWilliam Portman, a Tory gentleman of great note, was Colonel, wasexpected to arrive on the following day. [364] The Duke determined tostrike an immediate blow. A detachment of his troops was preparing tomarch to Bridport when a disastrous event threw the whole camp intoconfusion. 

Fletcher of Saltoun had been appointed to command the cavalry underGrey. Fletcher was ill mounted; and indeed there were few chargers inthe camp which had not been taken from the plough. When he was orderedto Bridport, he thought that the exigency of the case warranted him inborrowing, without asking permission, a fine horse belonging to Dare. Dare resented this liberty, and assailed Fletcher with gross abuse. Fletcher kept his temper better than any one who knew him expected. Atlast Dare, presuming on the patience with which his insolence had beenendured, ventured to shake a switch at the high born and high spiritedScot Fletcher's blood boiled. He drew a pistol and shot Dare dead. Such sudden and violent revenge would not have been thought strange inScotland, where the law had always been weak, where he who did not righthimself by the strong hand was not likely to be righted at all, andwhere, consequently, human life was held almost as cheap as in the worstgoverned provinces of Italy. But the people of the southern part of theisland were not accustomed to see deadly weapons used and blood spilledon account of a rude word or gesture, except in duel between gentlemenwith equal arms. There was a general cry for vengeance on the foreignerwho had murdered an Englishman. Monmouth could not resist the clamour. Fletcher, who, when his first burst of rage had spent itself, wasoverwhelmed with remorse and sorrow, took refuge on board of theHelderenbergh, escaped to the Continent, and repaired to Hungary, wherehe fought bravely against the common enemy of Christendom. [365]

Situated as the insurgents were, the loss of a man of parts and energywas not easily to be repaired. Early on the morning of the followingday, the fourteenth of June, Grey, accompanied by Wade, marched withabout five hundred men to attack Bridport. A confused and indecisiveaction took place, such as was to be expected when two bands ofploughmen, officered by country gentlemen and barristers, were opposedto each other. For a time Monmouth's men drove the militia before them. Then the militia made a stand, and Monmouth's men retreated in someconfusion. Grey and his cavalry never stopped till they were safe atLyme again: but Wade rallied the infantry and brought them off in goodorder. [366]

There was a violent outcry against Grey; and some of the adventurerspressed Monmouth to take a severe course. Monmouth, however, would notlisten to this advice. His lenity has been attributed by some writersto his good nature, which undoubtedly often amounted to weakness. Othershave supposed that he was unwilling to deal harshly with the only peerwho served in his army. It is probable, however, that the Duke, who, though not a general of the highest order, understood war very muchbetter than the preachers and lawyers who were always obtruding theiradvice on him, made allowances which people altogether inexpert inmilitary affairs never thought of making. In justice to a man who hashad few defenders, it must be observed that the task, which, throughoutthis campaign, was assigned to Grey, was one which, if he had been theboldest and most skilful of soldiers, he would scarcely have performedin 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 afoot soldier, and that the war horse requires a longer training than hisrider. Something may be done with a raw infantry which has enthusiasmand animal courage: but nothing can be more helpless than a raw cavalry, consisting of yeomen and tradesmen mounted on cart horses and posthorses; and such was the cavalry which Grey commanded. The wonder is, not that his men did not stand fire with resolution, not that they didnot use their weapons with vigour, but that they were able to keep theirseats. 

Still recruits came in by hundreds. Arming and drilling went on all day. Meantime the news of the insurrection had spread fast and wide. Onthe evening on which the Duke landed, Gregory Alford, Mayor of Lyme, azealous Tory, and a bitter persecutor of Nonconformists, sent offhis servants to give the alarm to the gentry of Somersetshire andDorsetshire, and himself took horse for the West. Late at night hestopped at Honiton, and thence despatched a few hurried lines to Londonwith the ill tidings. [367] He then pushed on to Exeter, where he foundChristopher Monk, Duke of Albemarle. This nobleman, the son and heirof George Monk, the restorer of the Stuarts, was Lord Lieutenant ofDevonshire, and was then holding a muster of militia. Four thousand menof the trainbands were actually assembled under his command. He seems tohave thought that, with this force, he should be able at once to crushthe rebellion. He therefore marched towards Lyme. 

But when, on the afternoon of Monday the fifteenth of June, he reachedAxminster, he found the insurgents drawn up there to encounter him. Theypresented a resolute front. Four field pieces were pointed against theroyal troops. The thick hedges, which on each side overhung the narrowlanes, were lined with musketeers. Albemarle, however, was less alarmedby the preparations of the enemy than by the spirit which appeared inhis own ranks. Such was Monmouth's popularity among the common peopleof Devonshire that, if once the trainbands had caught sight of his wellknown face and figure, they would have probably gone over to him in abody. 

Albemarle, therefore, though he had a great superiority of force, thought it advisable to retreat. The retreat soon became a rout. Thewhole country was strewn with the arms and uniforms which the fugitiveshad thrown away; and, had Monmouth urged the pursuit with vigour, hewould probably have taken Exeter without a blow. But he was satisfiedwith the advantage which he had gained, and thought it desirable thathis recruits should be better trained before they were employed inany hazardous service. He therefore marched towards Taunton, where hearrived on the eighteenth of June, exactly a week after his landing. [368]

The Court and the Parliament had been greatly moved by the news fromthe West. At five in the morning of Saturday the thirteenth of June, theKing had received the letter which the Mayor of Lyme had despatched fromHoniton. The Privy Council was instantly called together. Orders weregiven that the strength of every company of infantry and of every troopof cavalry should be increased. Commissions were issued for the levyingof new regiments. Alford's communication was laid before the Lords; andits substance was communicated to the Commons by a message. The Commonsexamined the couriers who had arrived from the West, and instantlyordered a bill to be brought in for attainting Monmouth of high treason. Addresses were voted assuring the King that both his peers and hispeople were determined to stand by him with life and fortune againstall his enemies. At the next meeting of the Houses they ordered theDeclaration of the rebels to be burned by the hangman, and passed thebill of attainder through all its stages. That bill received theroyal assent on the same day; and a reward of five thousand pounds waspromised for the apprehension of Monmouth. [369]

The fact that Monmouth was in arms against the government was sonotorious that the bill of attainder became a law with only a faintshow of opposition from one or two peers, and has seldom been severelycensured even by Whig historians. Yet, when we consider how important itis that legislative and judicial functions should be kept distinct, howimportant it is that common fame, however strong and general, should notbe received as a legal proof of guilt, how important it is to maintainthe rule that no man shall be condemned to death without an opportunityof defending himself, and how easily and speedily breaches in greatprinciples, when once made, are widened, we shall probably be disposedto think that the course taken by the Parliament was open to someobjection. Neither House had before it anything which even so corrupta judge as Jeffreys could have directed a jury to consider as proof ofMonmouth's crime. The messengers examined by the Commons were not onoath, and might therefore have related mere fictions without incurringthe penalties of perjury. The Lords, who might have administered anoath, appeared not to have examined any witness, and to have had noevidence before them except the letter of the Mayor of Lyme, which, inthe eye of the law, was no evidence at all. Extreme danger, it is true, justifies extreme remedies. But the Act of Attainder was a remedy whichcould not operate till all danger was over, and which would becomesuperfluous at the very moment at which it ceased to be null. WhileMonmouth was in arms it was impossible to execute him. If he shouldbe vanquished and taken, there would be no hazard and no difficulty intrying him. It was afterwards remembered as a curious circumstance that, among zealous Tories who went up with the bill from the House ofCommons to the bar of the Lords, was Sir John Fenwick, member forNorthumberland. This gentleman, a few years later, had occasion toreconsider the whole subject, and then came to the conclusion that actsof attainder are altogether unjustifiable. [370]

The Parliament gave other proofs of loyalty in this hour of peril. The Commons authorised the King to raise an extraordinary sum of fourhundred thousand pounds for his present necessities, and that hemight have no difficulty in finding the money, proceeded to devise newimposts. The scheme of taxing houses lately built in the capital wasrevived and strenuously supported by the country gentlemen. It wasresolved not only that such houses should be taxed, but that a billshould be brought in prohibiting the laying of any new foundationswithin the bills of mortality. The resolution, however, was not carriedinto effect. Powerful men who had land in the suburbs and who hoped tosee new streets and squares rise on their estates, exerted all theirinfluence against the project. It was found that to adjust the detailswould be a work of time; and the King's wants were so pressing that hethought it necessary to quicken the movements of the House by a gentleexhortation to speed. The plan of taxing buildings was thereforerelinquished; and new duties were imposed for a term of five years onforeign silks, linens, and spirits. [371]

The Tories of the Lower House proceeded to introduce what they calleda bill for the preservation of the King's person and government. They proposed that it should be high treason to say that Monmouth waslegitimate, to utter any words tending to bring the person or governmentof the sovereign into hatred or contempt, or to make any motionin Parliament for changing the order of succession. Some of theseprovisions excited general disgust and alarm. The Whigs, few and weakas they were, attempted to rally, and found themselves reinforced by aconsiderable number of moderate and sensible Cavaliers. Words, it wassaid, may easily be misunderstood by a dull man. They may be easilymisconstrued by a knave. What was spoken metaphorically may beapprehended literally. What was spoken ludicrously may be apprehendedseriously. A particle, a tense, a mood, an emphasis, may make the wholedifference between guilt and innocence. The Saviour of mankind himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no acts to impeach, had beencalled in question for words spoken. False witnesses had suppresseda syllable which would have made it clear that those words werefigurative, and had thus furnished the Sanhedrim with a pretext underwhich the foulest of all judicial murders had been perpetrated. Withsuch an example on record, who could affirm that, if mere talk weremade a substantive treason, the most loyal subject would be safe? Thesearguments produced so great an effect that in the committee amendmentswere introduced which greatly mitigated the severity of the bill. Butthe clause which made it high treason in a member of Parliament topropose the exclusion of a prince of the blood seems to have raised nodebate, and was retained. That clause was indeed altogether unimportant, except as a proof of the ignorance and inexperience of the hotheadedRoyalists who thronged the House of Commons. Had they learned the firstrudiments of legislation, they would have known that the enactmentto which they attached so much value would be superfluous while theParliament was disposed to maintain the order of succession, and wouldbe repealed as soon as there was a Parliament bent on changing the orderof succession. [372]

The bill, as amended, was passed and carried up to the Lords, butdid not become law. The King had obtained from the Parliament all thepecuniary assistance that he could expect; and he conceived that, whilerebellion was actually raging, the loyal nobility and gentry would beof more use in their counties than at Westminster. He therefore hurriedtheir deliberations to a close, and, on the second of July, dismissedthem. On the same day the royal assent was given to a law reviving thatcensorship of the press which had terminated in 1679. This object wasaffected by a few words at the end of a miscellaneous statute whichcontinued several expiring acts. The courtiers did not think that theyhad gained a triumph. The Whigs did not utter a murmur. Neither in theLords nor in the Commons was there any division, or even, as far ascan now be learned, any debate on a question which would, in our age, convulse the whole frame of society. In truth, the change was slight andalmost imperceptible; for, since the detection of the Rye House plot, the liberty of unlicensed printing had existed only in name. During manymonths scarcely one Whig pamphlet had been published except by stealth;and by stealth such pamphlets might be published still. [373]

The Houses then rose. They were not prorogued, but only adjourned, in order that, when they should reassemble, they might take up theirbusiness in the exact state in which they had left it. [374]

While the Parliament was devising sharp laws against Monmouth and hispartisans, he found at Taunton a reception which might well encouragehim to hope that his enterprise would have a prosperous issue. Taunton, like most other towns in the south of England, was, in that age, moreimportant than at present. Those towns have not indeed declined. On thecontrary, they are, with very few exceptions, larger and richer, betterbuilt and better peopled, than in the seventeenth century. But, thoughthey have positively advanced, they have relatively gone back. They havebeen far outstripped in wealth and population by the great manufacturingand commercial cities of the north, cities which, in the time of theStuarts, were but beginning to be known as seats of industry. WhenMonmouth marched into Taunton it was an eminently prosperous place. Its markets were plentifully supplied. It was a celebrated seat ofthe woollen manufacture. The people boasted that they lived in a landflowing with milk and honey. Nor was this language held only by partialnatives; for every stranger who climbed the graceful tower of St. MaryMagdalene owned that he saw beneath him the most fertile of Englishvalleys. It was a country rich with orchards and green pastures, amongwhich were scattered, in gay abundance, manor houses, cottages, andvillage spires. The townsmen had long leaned towards Presbyteriandivinity and Whig politics. In the great civil war Taunton had, throughall vicissitudes, adhered to the Parliament, had been twice closelybesieged by Goring, and had been twice defended with heroic valour byRobert Blake, afterwards the renowned Admiral of the Commonwealth. Whole streets had been burned down by the mortars and grenades ofthe Cavaliers. Food had been so scarce that the resolute governor hadannounced his intention of putting the garrison on rations of horseflesh. But the spirit of the town had never been subdued either by fireor by hunger. [375]

The Restoration had produced no effect on the temper of the Taunton men. They had still continued to celebrate the anniversary of the happy dayon 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 fearand resentment at Whitehall that, by a royal order, their moat hadbeen filled up, and their wall demolished to the foundation. [376] Thepuritanical spirit had been kept up to the height among them by theprecepts and example of one of the most celebrated of the dissentingclergy, Joseph Alleine. Alleine was the author of a tract, entitled, AnAlarm to the Unconverted, which is still popular both in England andin America. From the gaol to which he was consigned by the victoriousCavaliers, he addressed to his loving friends at Taunton many epistlesbreathing the spirit of a truly heroic piety. His frame soon sank underthe effects of study, toil, and persecution: but his memory was longcherished with exceeding love and reverence by those whom he hadexhorted and catechised. [377]

The children of the men who, forty years before, had manned the rampartsof Taunton against the Royalists, now welcomed Monmouth with transportsof joy and affection. Every door and window was adorned with wreathsof flowers. No man appeared in the streets without wearing in his hata green bough, the badge of the popular cause. Damsels of the bestfamilies in the town wove colours for the insurgents. One flag inparticular was embroidered gorgeously with emblems of royal dignity, andwas offered to Monmouth by a train of young girls. He received the giftwith the winning courtesy which distinguished him. The lady who headedthe 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 thetruths contained in this book, and to seal them, if it must be so, withmy blood. " [378]

But while Monmouth enjoyed the applause of the multitude, he could notbut perceive, with concern and apprehension, that the higher classeswere, with scarcely an exception, hostile to his undertaking, and thatno rising had taken place except in the counties where he had himselfappeared. He had been assured by agents, who professed to have derivedtheir information from Wildman, that the whole Whig aristocracy waseager to take arms. Nevertheless more than a week had now elapsed sincethe blue standard had been set up at Lyme. Day labourers, small farmers, shopkeepers, apprentices, dissenting preachers, had flocked to the rebelcamp: but not a single peer, baronet, or knight, not a single memberof the House of Commons, and scarcely any esquire of sufficient note tohave ever been in the commission of the peace, had joined the invaders. Ferguson, who, ever since the death of Charles, had been Monmouth's evilangel, had a suggestion ready. The Duke had put himself into a falseposition by declining the royal title. Had he declared himself sovereignof England, his cause would have worn a show of legality. At present itwas impossible to reconcile his Declaration with the principles ofthe constitution. It was clear that either Monmouth or his unclewas rightful King. Monmouth did not venture to pronounce himself therightful King, and yet denied that his uncle was so. Those who foughtfor James fought for the only person who ventured to claim the throne, and were therefore clearly in their duty, according to the laws of therealm. Those who fought for Monmouth fought for some unknown polity, which was to be set up by a convention not yet in existence. None couldwonder that men of high rank and ample fortune stood aloof froman enterprise which threatened with destruction that system in thepermanence of which they were deeply interested. If the Duke wouldassert his legitimacy and assume the crown, he would at once remove thisobjection. The question would cease to be a question between the oldconstitution and a new constitution. It would be merely a question ofhereditary right between two princes. 

On such grounds as these Ferguson, almost immediately after the landing, had earnestly pressed the Duke to proclaim himself King; and Grey hadseconded 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. AtTaunton the subject was revived. Monmouth talked in private with thedissentients, assured them that he saw no other way of obtaining thesupport of any portion of the aristocracy, and succeeded in extortingtheir reluctant consent. On the morning of the twentieth of June he wasproclaimed in the market place of Taunton. His followers repeated hisnew title with affectionate delight. But, as some confusion might havearisen if he had been called King James the Second, they commonly usedthe strange appellation of King Monmouth: and by this name their unhappyfavourite was often mentioned in the western counties, within the memoryof persons still living. [379]

Within twenty-four hours after he had assumed the regal title, he putforth several proclamations headed with his sign manual. By one of thesehe set a price on the head of his rival. Another declared the Parliamentthen sitting at Westminster an unlawful assembly, and commanded themembers to disperse. A third forbade the people to pay taxes to theusurper. A fourth pronounced Albemarle a traitor. [380]

Albemarle transmitted these proclamations to London merely as specimensof folly and impertinence. They produced no effect, except wonder andcontempt; nor had Monmouth any reason to think that the assumption ofroyalty had improved his position. Only a week had elapsed since hehad solemnly bound himself not to take the crown till a free Parliamentshould have acknowledged his rights. By breaking that engagement he hadincurred the imputation of levity, if not of perfidy. The class which hehad hoped to conciliate still stood aloof. The reasons which preventedthe great Whig lords and gentlemen from recognising him as their Kingwere at least as strong as those which had prevented them from rallyinground him as their Captain General. They disliked indeed the person, thereligion, and the politics of James. But James was no longer young. Hiseldest daughter was justly popular. She was attached to the reformedfaith. She was married to a prince who was the hereditary chief ofthe Protestants of the Continent, to a prince who had been bred in arepublic, and whose sentiments were supposed to be such as became aconstitutional King. Was it wise to incur the horrors of civil war, forthe mere chance of being able to effect immediately what naturewould, without bloodshed, without any violation of law, effect, in allprobability, before many years should have expired? Perhaps there mightbe reasons for pulling down James. But what reason could be given forsetting up Monmouth? To exclude a prince from the throne on account ofunfitness was a course agreeable to Whig principles. But on no principlecould it be proper to exclude rightful heirs, who were admitted tobe, not only blameless, but eminently qualified for the highest publictrust. That Monmouth was legitimate, nay, that he thought himselflegitimate, intelligent men could not believe. He was therefore notmerely an usurper, but an usurper of the worst sort, an impostor. Ifhe made out any semblance of a case, he could do so only by means offorgery and perjury. All honest and sensible persons were unwilling tosee a fraud which, if practiced to obtain an estate, would have beenpunished with the scourge and the pillory, rewarded with the Englishcrown. To the old nobility of the realm it seemed insupportable thatthe bastard of Lucy Walters should be set up high above the lawfuldescendants of the Fitzalans and De Veres. Those who were capable oflooking forward must have seen that, if Monmouth should succeed inoverpowering the existing government, there would still remain a warbetween him and the House of Orange, a war which might last longerand produce more misery than the war of the Roses, a war which mightprobably break up the Protestants of Europe into hostile parties, mightarm England and Holland against each other, and might make both thosecountries an easy prey to France. The opinion, therefore, of almost allthe leading Whigs seems to have been that Monmouth's enterprise couldnot fail to end in some great disaster to the nation, but that, on thewhole, his defeat would be a less disaster than his victory. 

It was not only by the inaction of the Whig aristocracy that theinvaders were disappointed. The wealth and power of London had sufficedin the preceding generation, and might again suffice, to turn the scalein a civil conflict. The Londoners had formerly given many proofs oftheir hatred of Popery and of their affection for the Protestant Duke. He had too readily believed that, as soon as he landed, there would bea rising in the capital. But, though advices came down to him that manythousands of the citizens had been enrolled as volunteers for the goodcause, nothing was done. The plain truth was that the agitators whohad urged him to invade England, who had promised to rise on the firstsignal, and who had perhaps imagined, while the danger was remote, thatthey should have the courage to keep their promise, lost heart when thecritical time drew near. Wildman's fright was such that he seemed tohave lost his understanding. The craven Danvers at first excused hisinaction by saying that he would not take up arms till Monmouth wasproclaimed King, and when Monmouth had been proclaimed King, turnedround and declared that good republicans were absolved from allengagements to a leader who had so shamefully broken faith. In every agethe vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues. [381]

On the day following that on which Monmouth had assumed the regaltitle he marched from Taunton to Bridgewater. His own spirits, it wasremarked, were not high. The acclamations of the devoted thousands whosurrounded him wherever he turned could not dispel the gloom whichsate on his brow. Those who had seen him during his progress throughSomersetshire five years before could not now observe without pity thetraces of distress and anxiety on those soft and pleasing features whichhad won so many hearts. [382]

Ferguson was in a very different temper. With this man's knavery wasstrangely mingled an eccentric vanity which resembled madness. Thethought that he had raised a rebellion and bestowed a crown had turnedhis head. He swaggered about, brandishing his naked sword, and crying tothe crowd of spectators who had assembled to see the army march out ofTaunton, "Look at me! You have heard of me. I am Ferguson, the famousFerguson, the Ferguson for whose head so many hundred pounds have beenoffered. " And this man, at once unprincipled and brainsick, had in hiskeeping the understanding and the conscience of the unhappy Monmouth. [383]

Bridgewater was one of the few towns which still had some Whigmagistrates. The Mayor and Aldermen came in their robes to welcomethe Duke, walked before him in procession to the high cross, and thereproclaimed him King. His troops found excellent quarters, and werefurnished with necessaries at little or no cost by the people of thetown and neighbourhood. He took up his residence in the Castle, abuilding which had been honoured by several royal visits. In the CastleField his army was encamped. It now consisted of about six thousand men, and might easily have been increased to double the number, but for thewant of arms. The Duke had brought with him from the Continent buta scanty supply of pikes and muskets. Many of his followers had, therefore, no other weapons than such as could be fashioned out ofthe tools which they had used in husbandry or mining. Of these rudeimplements of war the most formidable was made by fastening the bladeof a scythe erect on a strong pole. [384] The tithing men of the countryround Taunton and Bridgewater received orders to search everywherefor scythes and to bring all that could be found to the camp. It wasimpossible, however, even with the help of these contrivances, to supplythe demand; and great numbers who were desirous to enlist were sentaway. [385]

The foot were divided into six regiments. Many of the men had been inthe militia, and still wore their uniforms, red and yellow. The cavalrywere about a thousand in number; but most of them had only large colts, such as were then bred in great herds on the marshes of Somersetshirefor the purpose of supplying London with coach horses and cart horses. These animals were so far from being fit for any military purpose thatthey had not yet learned to obey the bridle, and became ungovernable assoon as they heard a gun fired or a drum beaten. A small body guard offorty young men, well armed, and mounted at their own charge, attendedMonmouth. The people of Bridgewater, who were enriched by a thrivingcoast trade, furnished him with a small sum of money. [386]

All this time the forces of the government were fast assembling. On thewest of the rebel army, Albemarle still kept together a large bodyof Devonshire militia. On the east, the trainbands of Wiltshire hadmustered under the command of Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. On thenorth east, Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, was in arms. The power ofBeaufort bore some faint resemblance to that of the great barons of thefifteenth century. He was President of Wales and Lord Lieutenant of fourEnglish counties. His official tours through the extensive region inwhich he represented the majesty of the throne were scarcely inferior inpomp to royal progresses. His household at Badminton was regulated afterthe fashion of an earlier generation. The land to a great extentround his pleasure grounds was in his own hands; and the labourers whocultivated it formed part of his family. Nine tables were every dayspread under his roof for two hundred persons. A crowd of gentlemen andpages were under the orders of the steward. A whole troop of cavalryobeyed the master of the horse. The fame of the kitchen, the cellar, thekennel, and the stables was spread over all England. The gentry, manymiles round, were proud of the magnificence of their great neighbour, and were at the same time charmed by his affability and good nature. Hewas a zealous Cavalier of the old school. At this crisis, therefore, he used his whole influence and authority in support of the crown, andoccupied Bristol with the trainbands of Gloucestershire, who seem tohave been better disciplined than most other troops of that description. [387]

In the counties more remote from Somersetshire the supporters of thethrone were on the alert. The militia of Sussex began to march westward, under the command of Richard, Lord Lumley, who, though he had latelybeen converted from the Roman Catholic religion, was still firm in hisallegiance to a Roman Catholic King. James Bertie, Earl of Abingdon, called out the array of Oxfordshire. John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, who was also Dean of Christchurch, summoned the undergraduates of hisUniversity to take arms for the crown. The gownsmen crowded to give intheir names. Christchurch alone furnished near a hundred pikemen andmusketeers. Young noblemen and gentlemen commoners acted as officers;and the eldest son of the Lord Lieutenant was Colonel. [388]

But it was chiefly on the regular troops that the King relied. Churchillhad been sent westward with the Blues; and Feversham was following withall the forces that could be spared from the neighbourhood of London. A courier had started for Holland with a letter directing Skeltoninstantly to request that the three English regiments in the Dutchservice might be sent to the Thames. When the request was made, the party hostile to the House of Orange, headed by the deputies ofAmsterdam, again tried to cause delay. But the energy of William, whohad almost as much at stake as James, and who saw Monmouth's progresswith serious uneasiness, bore down opposition, and in a few days thetroops sailed. [389] The three Scotch regiments were already in England. They had arrived at Gravesend in excellent condition, and James hadreviewed them on Blackheath. He repeatedly declared to the DutchAmbassador that he had never in his life seen finer or betterdisciplined soldiers, and expressed the warmest gratitude to the Princeof Orange and the States for so valuable and seasonable a reinforcementThis satisfaction, however, was not unmixed. Excellently as the men wentthrough their drill, they were not untainted with Dutch politics andDutch divinity. One of them was shot and another flogged for drinkingthe Duke of Monmouth's health. It was therefore not thought advisable toplace them in the post of danger. They were kept in the neighbourhood ofLondon till the end of the campaign. But their arrival enabled the Kingto send to the West some infantry which would otherwise have been wantedin the capital. [390]

While the government was thus preparing for a conflict with the rebelsin the field, precautions of a different kind were not neglected. InLondon alone two hundred of those persons who were thought most likelyto be at the head of a Whig movement were arrested. Among the prisonerswere some merchants of great note. Every man who was obnoxious to theCourt went in fear. A general gloom overhung the capital. Businesslanguished on the Exchange; and the theatres were so generally desertedthat a new opera, written by Dryden, and set off by decorations ofunprecedented magnificence, was withdrawn, because the receipts wouldnot cover the expenses of the performance. [391] The magistrates andclergy were everywhere active, the Dissenters were everywhere closelyobserved. In Cheshire and Shropshire a fierce persecution raged; inNorthamptonshire arrests were numerous; and the gaol of Oxford wascrowded with prisoners. No Puritan divine, however moderate hisopinions, however guarded his conduct, could feel any confidence that heshould not be torn from his family and flung into a dungeon. [392]

Meanwhile Monmouth advanced from Bridgewater harassed through the wholemarch by Churchill, who appears to have done all that, with a handfulof men, it was possible for a brave and skilful officer to effect. Therebel army, much annoyed, both by the enemy and by a heavy fall of rain, halted in the evening of the twenty-second of June at Glastonbury. Thehouses of the little town did not afford shelter for so large a force. Some of the troops were therefore quartered in the churches, and otherslighted their fires among the venerable ruins of the Abbey, once thewealthiest religious house in our island. From Glastonbury the Dukemarched to Wells, and from Wells to Shepton Mallet. [393]

Hitherto he seems to have wandered from place to place with no otherobject than that of collecting troops. It was now necessary for him toform some plan of military operations. His first scheme was to seizeBristol. Many of the chief inhabitants of that important place wereWhigs. One of the ramifications of the Whig plot had extended thither. The garrison consisted only of the Gloucestershire trainbands. IfBeaufort and his rustic followers could be overpowered before theregular troops arrived, the rebels would at once find themselvespossessed of ample pecuniary resources; the credit of Monmouth'sarms would be raised; and his friends throughout the kingdom would beencouraged to declare themselves. Bristol had fortifications which, onthe north of the Avon towards Gloucestershire, were weak, but onthe south towards Somersetshire were much stronger. It was thereforedetermined that the attack should be made on the Gloucestershire side. But for this purpose it was necessary to take a circuitous route, andto cross the Avon at Keynsham. The bridge at Keynsham had been partlydemolished by the militia, and was at present impassable. A detachmentwas therefore sent forward to make the necessary repairs. The othertroops followed more slowly, and on the evening of the twenty-fourthof June halted for repose at Pensford. At Pensford they were only fivemiles from the Somersetshire side of Bristol; but the Gloucestershireside, which could be reached only by going round through Keynsham, wasdistant a long day's march. [394]

That night was one of great tumult and expectation in Bristol. Thepartisans of Monmouth knew that he was almost within sight of theircity, and imagined that he would be among them before daybreak. Aboutan hour after sunset a merchantman lying at the quay took fire. Such anoccurrence, in a port crowded with shipping, could not but excite greatalarm. The whole river was in commotion. The streets were crowded. Seditious cries were heard amidst the darkness and confusion. It wasafterwards asserted, both by Whigs and by Tories, that the fire hadbeen kindled by the friends of Monmouth, in the hope that the trainbandswould be busied in preventing the conflagration from spreading, and thatin the meantime the rebel army would make a bold push, and would enterthe city on the Somersetshire side. If such was the design of theincendiaries, it completely failed. Beaufort, instead of sending his mento the quay, kept them all night drawn up under arms round the beautifulchurch of Saint Mary Redcliff, on the south of the Avon. He would seeBristol burnt down, he said, nay, he would burn it down himself, ratherthan that it should be occupied by traitors. He was able, with the helpof some regular cavalry which had joined him from Chippenham a few hoursbefore, to prevent an insurrection. It might perhaps have been beyondhis power at once to overawe the malecontents within the walls and torepel an attack from without: but no such attack was made. The fire, which caused so much commotion at Bristol, was distinctly seen atPensford. Monmouth, however, did not think it expedient to change hisplan. He remained quiet till sunrise, and then marched to Keynsham. There he found the bridge repaired. He determined to let his army restduring the afternoon, and, as soon as night came, to proceed to Bristol. [395]

But it was too late. The King's forces were now near at hand. ColonelOglethorpe, at the head of about a hundred men of the Life Guards, dashed into Keynsham, scattered two troops of rebel horse which venturedto oppose him, and retired after inflicting much injury and sufferinglittle. In these circumstances it was thought necessary to relinquishthe design on Bristol. [396]

But what was to be done? Several schemes were proposed and discussed. Itwas suggested that Monmouth might hasten to Gloucester, might crossthe Severn there, might break down the bridge behind him, and, with hisright flank protected by the river, might march through Worcestershireinto Shropshire and Cheshire. He had formerly made a progress throughthose counties, and had been received there with as much enthusiasm asin Somersetshire and Devonshire. His presence might revive the zeal ofhis old friends; and his army might in a few days be swollen to doubleits present numbers. 

On full consideration, however, it appeared that this plan, thoughspecious, was impracticable. The rebels were ill shod for such work asthey had lately undergone, and were exhausted by toiling, day after day, through deep mud under heavy rain. Harassed and impeded as they wouldbe at every stage by the enemy's cavalry, they could not hope to reachGloucester 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 knowthat county well assured the Duke that he would be joined there by suchstrong reinforcements as would make it safe for him to give battle. [397]

He took this advice, and turned towards Wiltshire. He first summonedBath. But Bath was strongly garrisoned for the King; and Feversham wasfast approaching. The rebels, therefore made no attempt on the walls, but hastened to Philip's Norton, where they halted on the evening of thetwenty-sixth of June. 

Feversham followed them thither. Early on the morning of thetwenty-seventh they were alarmed by tidings that he was close at hand. They got into order, and lined the hedges leading to the town. 

The advanced guard of the royal army soon appeared. It consisted ofabout five hundred men, commanded by the Duke of Grafton, a youth ofbold spirit and rough manners, who was probably eager to show that hehad no share in the disloyal schemes of his half brother. Grafton soonfound himself in a deep lane with fences on both sides of him, fromwhich a galling fire of musketry was kept up. Still he pushed boldlyon till he came to the entrance of Philip's Norton. There his way wascrossed by a barricade, from which a third fire met him full in front. His men now lost heart, and made the best of their way back. Beforethey got out of the lane more than a hundred of them had been killed orwounded. Grafton's retreat was intercepted by some of the rebel cavalry:but he cut his way gallantly through them, and came off safe. [398]

The advanced guard, thus repulsed, fell back on the main body of theroyal forces. The two armies were now face to face; and a few shots wereexchanged that did little or no execution. Neither side was impatient tocome to action. Feversham did not wish to fight till his artillery cameup, and fell back to Bradford. Monmouth, as soon as the night closedin, quitted his position, marched southward, and by daybreak arrived atFrome, 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 daysbefore; and Monmouth's declaration had been posted up in the marketplace. But the news of this movement had been carried to the Earl ofPembroke, who lay at no great distance with the Wiltshire militia. Hehad instantly marched to Frome, had routed a mob of rustics who, withscythes and pitchforks, attempted to oppose him, had entered the townand had disarmed the inhabitants. No weapons, therefore, were leftthere; nor was Monmouth able to furnish any. [399]

The rebel army was in evil case. The march of the preceding night hadbeen wearisome. The rain had fallen in torrents; and the roads hadbecome mere quagmires. Nothing was heard of the promised succours fromWiltshire. One messenger brought news that Argyle's forces had beendispersed in Scotland. Another reported that Feversham, having beenjoined by his artillery, was about to advance. Monmouth understood wartoo well not to know that his followers, with all their courage andall their zeal, were no match for regular soldiers. He had till latelyflattered himself with the hope that some of those regiments which hehad formerly commanded would pass over to his standard: but that hope hewas now compelled to relinquish. His heart failed him. He could scarcelymuster firmness enough to give orders. In his misery he complainedbitterly of the evil counsellors who had induced him to quit his happyretreat in Brabant. Against Wildman in particular he broke forth intoviolent imprecations. [400] And now an ignominious thought rose in hisweak and agitated mind. He would leave to the mercy of the governmentthe thousands who had, at his call and for his sake, abandoned theirquiet fields and dwellings. He would steal away with his chief officers, would gain some seaport before his flight was suspected, would escape tothe Continent, and would forget his ambition and his shame in the armsof Lady Wentworth. He seriously discussed this scheme with his leadingadvisers. Some of them, trembling for their necks, listened to it withapprobation; but Grey, who, by the admission of his detractors, wasintrepid everywhere except where swords were clashing and guns goingoff around him, opposed the dastardly proposition with great ardour, and implored the Duke to face every danger rather than requite withingratitude and treachery the devoted attachment of the Westernpeasantry. [401]

The scheme of flight was abandoned: but it was not now easy to form anyplan for a campaign. To advance towards London would have been madness;for the road lay right across Salisbury Plain; and on that vast openspace regular troops, and above all regular cavalry, would have actedwith every advantage against undisciplined men. At this juncture areport reached the camp that the rustics of the marshes near Axbridgehad risen in defence of the Protestant religion, had armed themselveswith flails, bludgeons, and pitchforks, and were assembling by thousandsat Bridgewater. Monmouth determined to return thither, and to strengthenhimself with these new allies. [402]

The rebels accordingly proceeded to Wells, and arrived there in noamiable temper. They were, with few exceptions, hostile to Prelacy; andthey showed their hostility in a way very little to their honour. Theynot only tore the lead from the roof of the magnificent Cathedral tomake bullets, an act for which they might fairly plead the necessitiesof war, but wantonly defaced the ornaments of the building. Grey withdifficulty preserved the altar from the insults of some ruffians whowished to carouse round it, by taking his stand before it with his sworddrawn. [403]

On Thursday, the second of July, Monmouth again entered Bridgewater, In circumstances far less cheering than those in which he had marchedthence ten days before. The reinforcement which he found there wasinconsiderable. The royal army was close upon him. At one moment hethought of fortifying the town; and hundreds of labourers were summonedto dig trenches and throw up mounds. Then his mind recurred to the planof marching into Cheshire, a plan which he had rejected as impracticablewhen he was at Keynsham, and which assuredly was not more practicablenow that he was at Bridgewater. [404]

While he was thus wavering between projects equally hopeless, the King'sforces came in sight. They consisted of about two thousand five hundredregular 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, onthe plain of Sedgemoor. 

Dr. Peter Mew, Bishop of Winchester, accompanied them. This prelate hadin his youth borne arms for Charles the First against the Parliament. Neither his years nor his profession had wholly extinguished his martialardour; and he probably thought that the appearance of a father of theProtestant Church in the King's camp might confirm the loyalty of somehonest men who were wavering between their horror of Popery and theirhorror of rebellion. 

The steeple of the parish church of Bridgewater is said to be theloftiest of Somersetshire, and commands a wide view over the surroundingcountry. Monmouth, accompanied by some of his officers, went up tothe top of the square tower from which the spire ascends, and observedthrough a telescope the position of the enemy. Beneath him lay a flatexpanse, now rich with cornfields and apple trees, but then, as its nameimports, for the most part a dreary morass. When the rains were heavy, and the Parret and its tributary streams rose above their banks, thistract was often flooded. It was indeed anciently part of that greatswamp which is renowned in our early chronicles as having arrested theprogress of two successive races of invaders, which long protectedthe Celts against the aggressions of the kings of Wessex, and whichsheltered Alfred from the pursuit of the Danes. In those remote timesthis region could be traversed only in boats. It was a vast pool, wherein were scattered many islets of shifting and treacherous soil, overhung with rank jungle, and swarming with deer and wild swine. Even in the days of the Tudors, the traveller whose journey lay fromIlchester to Bridgewater was forced to make a circuit of several milesin order to avoid the waters. When Monmouth looked upon Sedgemoor, ithad been partially reclaimed by art, and was intersected by many deepand wide trenches which, in that country, are called rhines. In themidst of the moor rose, clustering round the towers of churches, afew villages of which the names seem to indicate that they once weresurrounded by waves. In one of these villages, called Weston Zoyland, the royal cavalry lay; and Feversham had fixed his headquarters there. Many persons still living have seen the daughter of the servant girl whowaited on him that day at table; and a large dish of Persian ware, whichwas set before him, is still carefully preserved in the neighbourhood. It is to be observed that the population of Somersetshire does not, likethat of the manufacturing districts, consist of emigrants from distantplaces. It is by no means unusual to find farmers who cultivate the sameland which their ancestors cultivated when the Plantagenets reigned inEngland. The Somersetshire traditions are therefore, of no small valueto a historian. [405]

At a greater distance from Bridgewater lies the village of Middlezoy. In that village and its neighbourhood, the Wiltshire militia werequartered, under the command of Pembroke. On the open moor, not far fromChedzoy, were encamped several battalions of regular infantry. Monmouthlooked gloomily on them. He could not but remember how, a few yearsbefore, he had, at the head of a column composed of some of those verymen, driven before him in confusion the fierce enthusiasts who defendedBothwell Bridge He could distinguish among the hostile ranks thatgallant band which was then called from the name of its Colonel, Dumbarton's regiment, but which has long been known as the first ofthe line, and which, in all the four quarters of the world, has noblysupported its early reputation. "I know those men, " said Monmouth; "theywill fight. If I had but them, all would go well. " [406]

Yet the aspect of the enemy was not altogether discouraging. The threedivisions of the royal army lay far apart from one another. There wasall appearance of negligence and of relaxed discipline in all theirmovements. It was reported that they were drinking themselves drunk withthe Zoyland cider. The incapacity of Feversham, who commanded in chief, was notorious. Even at this momentous crisis he thought only of eatingand sleeping. Churchill was indeed a captain equal to tasks far morearduous than that of scattering a crowd of ill armed and ill trainedpeasants. But the genius, which, at a later period, humbled six Marshalsof France, was not now in its proper place. Feversham told Churchilllittle, and gave him no encouragement to offer any suggestion. Thelieutenant, conscious of superior abilities and science, impatient ofthe control of a chief whom he despised, and trembling for the fate ofthe army, nevertheless preserved his characteristic self-command, anddissembled his feelings so well that Feversham praised his submissivealacrity, and promised to report it to the King. [407]

Monmouth, having observed the disposition of the royal forces, andhaving been apprised of the state in which they were, conceived thata night attack might be attended with success. He resolved to run thehazard; and preparations were instantly made. 

It was Sunday; and his followers, who had, for the most part, beenbrought up after the Puritan fashion, passed a great part of the day inreligious exercises. The Castle Field, in which the army was encamped, presented a spectacle such as, since the disbanding of Cromwell'ssoldiers, England had never seen. The dissenting preachers who had takenarms against Popery, and some of whom had probably fought in the greatcivil war, prayed and preached in red coats and huge jackboots, withswords by their sides. Ferguson was one of those who harangued. He tookfor his text the awful imprecation by which the Israelites who dweltbeyond Jordan cleared themselves from the charge ignorantly broughtagainst them by their brethren on the other side of the river. "The LordGod 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 usnot this day. " [408]

That an attack was to be made under cover of the night was no secretin Bridgewater. The town was full of women, who had repaired thitherby 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 never to meet again. [409] The report of the intendedattack 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 shewould herself bear the intelligence to Feversham. She stole out ofBridgewater, and made her way to the royal camp. But that camp was not aplace where female innocence could be safe. Even the officers, despisingalike the irregular force to which they were opposed, and the negligentgeneral who commanded them, had indulged largely in wine, and were readyfor any excess of licentiousness and cruelty. One of them seized theunhappy maiden, refused to listen to her errand, and brutally outragedher. She fled in agonies of rage and shame, leaving the wicked army toits doom. [410]

And now the time for the great hazard drew near. The night was not illsuited for such an enterprise. The moon was indeed at the full, and thenorthern streamers were shining brilliantly. But the marsh fog layso thick on Sedgemoor that no object could be discerned there at thedistance of fifty paces. [411]

The clock struck eleven; and the Duke with his body guard rode out ofthe Castle. He was not in the frame of mind which befits one who isabout to strike a decisive blow. The very children who pressed to seehim pass observed, and long remembered, that his look was sad and fullof evil augury. His army marched by a circuitous path, near six miles inlength, towards the royal encampment on Sedgemoor. Part of the route isto this day called War Lane. The foot were led by Monmouth himself. Thehorse were confided to Grey, in spite of the remonstrances of some whoremembered the mishap at Bridport. Orders were given that strict silenceshould be preserved, that no drum should be beaten, and no shot fired. The word by which the insurgents were to recognise one another in thedarkness was Soho. It had doubtless been selected in allusion to SohoFields in London, where their leader's palace stood. [412]

At about one in the morning of Monday the sixth of July, the rebels wereon the open moor. But between them and the enemy lay three broad rhinesfilled with water and soft mud. Two of these, called the Black Ditchand the Langmoor Rhine, Monmouth knew that he must pass. But, strangeto say, the existence of a trench, called the Bussex Rhine, whichimmediately covered the royal encampment, had not been mentioned to himby any of his scouts. 

The wains which carried the ammunition remained at the entrance of themoor. The horse and foot, in a long narrow column, passed the BlackDitch by a causeway. There was a similar causeway across the LangmoorRhine: but the guide, in the fog, missed his way. There was some delayand some tumult before the error could be rectified. At length thepassage was effected: but, in the confusion, a pistol went off. Some menof the Horse Guards, who were on watch, heard the report, and perceivedthat a great multitude was advancing through the mist. They fired theircarbines, and galloped off in different directions to give the alarm. Some hastened to Weston Zoyland, where the cavalry lay. One trooperspurred to the encampment of the infantry, and cried out vehemently thatthe enemy was at hand. The drums of Dumbarton's regiment beat to arms;and the men got fast into their ranks. It was time; for Monmouth wasalready drawing up his army for action. He ordered Grey to lead the waywith the cavalry, and followed himself at the head of the infantry. Grey pushed on till his progress was unexpectedly arrested by the BussexRhine. On the opposite side of the ditch the King's foot were hastilyforming in order of battle. 

"For whom are you?" called out an officer of the Foot Guards. "For theKing, " replied a voice from the ranks of the rebel cavalry. "For whichKing?" was then demanded. The answer was a shout of "King Monmouth, "mingled with the war cry, which forty years before had been inscribedon the colours of the parliamentary regiments, "God with us. " The royaltroops instantly fired such a volley of musketry as sent the rebel horseflying in all directions. The world agreed to ascribe this ignominiousrout to Grey's pusillanimity. Yet it is by no means clear that Churchillwould have succeeded better at the head of men who had never beforehandled arms on horseback, and whose horses were unused, not only tostand fire, but to obey the rein. 

A few minutes after the Duke's horse had dispersed themselves over themoor, his infantry came up running fast, and guided through the gloom bythe lighted matches of Dumbarton's regiment. 

Monmouth was startled by finding that a broad and profound trench laybetween him and the camp which he had hoped to surprise. The insurgentshalted on the edge of the rhine, and fired. Part of the royal infantryon the opposite bank returned the fire. During three quarters of anhour the roar of the musketry was incessant. The Somersetshire peasantsbehaved themselves as if they had been veteran soldiers, save only thatthey levelled their pieces too high. 

But now the other divisions of the royal army were in motion. The LifeGuards and Blues came pricking fast from Weston Zoyland, and scatteredin an instant some of Grey's horse, who had attempted to rally. Thefugitives spread a panic among their comrades in the rear, who hadcharge of the ammunition. The waggoners drove off at full speed, andnever stopped till they were many miles from the field of battle. Monmouth had hitherto done his part like a stout and able warrior. Hehad been seen on foot, pike in hand, encouraging his infantry by voiceand by example. But he was too well acquainted with military affairs notto know that all was over. His men had lost the advantage which surpriseand darkness had given them. They were deserted by the horse and by theammunition waggons. The King's forces were now united and in good order. Feversham had been awakened by the firing, had got out of bed, hadadjusted his cravat, had looked at himself well in the glass, and hadcome to see what his men were doing. Meanwhile, what was of much moreimportance, Churchill had rapidly made an entirely new disposition ofthe royal infantry. The day was about to break. The event of a conflicton an open plain, by broad sunlight, could not be doubtful. Yet Monmouthshould have felt that it was not for him to fly, while thousandswhom affection for him had hurried to destruction were still fightingmanfully in his cause. But vain hopes and the intense love of lifeprevailed. He saw that if he tarried the royal cavalry would soonintercept his retreat. He mounted and rode from the field. 

Yet his foot, though deserted, made a gallant stand. The Life Guardsattacked them on the right, the Blues on the left; but the Somersetshireclowns, with their scythes and the butt ends of their muskets, facedthe royal horse like old soldiers. Oglethorpe made a vigorous attempt tobreak them and was manfully repulsed. Sarsfield, a brave Irish officer, whose name afterwards obtained a melancholy celebrity, charged on theother flank. His men were beaten back. He was himself struck to theground, and lay for a time as one dead. But the struggle of the hardyrustics could not last. Their powder and ball were spent. Cries wereheard of "Ammunition! For God's sake ammunition!" But no ammunition wasat hand. And now the King's artillery came up. It had been posted halfa mile off, on the high road from Weston Zoyland to Bridgewater. Sodefective were then the appointments of an English army that there wouldhave been much difficulty in dragging the great guns to the place wherethe battle was raging, had not the Bishop of Winchester offeredhis coach horses and traces for the purpose. This interference of aChristian prelate in a matter of blood has, with strange inconsistency, been condemned by some Whig writers who can see nothing criminal inthe conduct of the numerous Puritan ministers then in arms against thegovernment. Even when the guns had arrived, there was such a want ofgunners that a serjeant of Dumbarton's regiment was forced to take onhimself the management of several pieces. [413] The cannon, however, though ill served, brought the engagement to a speedy close. The pikesof the rebel battalions began to shake: the ranks broke; the King'scavalry charged again, and bore down everything before them; the King'sinfantry came pouring across the ditch. Even in that extremity theMendip miners stood bravely to their arms, and sold their lives dearly. But the rout was in a few minutes complete. Three hundred of thesoldiers had been killed or wounded. Of the rebels more than a thousandlay dead on the moor. [414]

So ended the last fight deserving the name of battle, that has beenfought on English ground. The impression left on the simple inhabitantsof the neighbourhood was deep and lasting. That impression, indeed, hasbeen frequently renewed. For even in our own time the plough and thespade have not seldom turned up ghastly memorials of the slaughter, skulls, and thigh bones, and strange weapons made out of implements ofhusbandry. Old peasants related very recently that, in their childhood, they were accustomed to play on the moor at the fight between KingJames's men and King Monmouth's men, and that King Monmouth's men alwaysraised the cry of Soho. [415]

What seems most extraordinary in the battle of Sedgemoor is that theevent should have been for a moment doubtful, and that the rebels shouldhave resisted so long. That five or six thousand colliers and ploughmenshould contend during an hour with half that number of regular cavalryand infantry would now be thought a miracle. Our wonder will, perhaps, be diminished when we remember that, in the time of James the Second, the discipline of the regular army was extremely lax, and that, on theother hand, the peasantry were accustomed to serve in the militia. The difference, therefore, between a regiment of the Foot Guards and aregiment of clowns just enrolled, though doubtless considerable, was byno means what it now is. Monmouth did not lead a mere mob to attack goodsoldiers. For his followers were not altogether without a tincture ofsoldiership; and Feversham's troops, when compared with English troopsof our time, might almost be called a mob. 

It was four o'clock: the sun was rising; and the routed army camepouring into the streets of Bridgewater. The uproar, the blood, thegashes, the ghastly figures which sank down and never rose again, spread horror and dismay through the town. The pursuers, too, were closebehind. Those inhabitants who had favoured the insurrection expectedsack and massacre, and implored the protection of their neighbourswho professed the Roman Catholic religion, or had made themselvesconspicuous by Tory politics; and it is acknowledged by the bitterestof Whig historians that this protection was kindly and generously given. [416]

During that day the conquerors continued to chase the fugitives. Theneighbouring villagers long remembered with what a clatter of horsehoofsand what a storm of curses the whirlwind of cavalry swept by. Beforeevening five hundred prisoners had been crowded into the parish churchof Weston Zoyland. Eighty of them were wounded; and five expired withinthe consecrated walls. Great numbers of labourers were impressed for thepurpose of burying the slain. A few, who were notoriously partial to thevanquished side, were set apart for the hideous office of quartering thecaptives. The tithing men of the neighbouring parishes were busied insetting up gibbets and providing chains. All this while the bells ofWeston Zoyland and Chedzoy rang joyously; and the soldiers sangand rioted on the moor amidst the corpses. For the farmers of theneighbourhood had made haste, as soon as the event of the fight wasknown to send hogsheads of their best cider as peace offerings to thevictors. [417]

Feversham passed for a goodnatured man: but he was a foreigner, ignorant of the laws and careless of the feelings of the English. He wasaccustomed to the military license of France, and had learned fromhis great kinsman, the conqueror and devastator of the Palatinate, notindeed how to conquer, but how to devastate. A considerable number ofprisoners were immediately selected for execution. Among them was ayouth famous for his speed. Hopes were held out to him that his lifewould be spared If he could run a race with one of the colts of themarsh. The space through which the man kept up with the horse is stillmarked by well known bounds on the moor, and is about three quarters ofa mile. Feversham was not ashamed, after seeing the performance, tosend the wretched performer to the gallows. The next day a long line ofgibbets appeared on the road leading from Bridgewater to Weston Zoyland. On each gibbet a prisoner was suspended. Four of the sufferers were leftto rot in irons. [418]

Meanwhile Monmouth, accompanied by Grey, by Buyse, and by a few otherfriends, was flying from the field of battle. At Chedzoy he stoppeda moment to mount a fresh horse and to hide his blue riband and hisGeorge. He then hastened towards the Bristol Channel. From the risingground on the north of the field of battle he saw the flash and thesmoke of the last volley fired by his deserted followers. Before sixo'clock he was twenty miles from Sedgemoor. Some of his companionsadvised him to cross the water, and seek refuge in Wales; and this wouldundoubtedly have been his wisest course. He would have been in Walesmany hours before the news of his defeat was known there; and in acountry so wild and so remote from the seat of government, he mighthave remained long undiscovered. He determined, however, to push forHampshire, in the hope that he might lurk in the cabins of deerstealersamong the oaks of the New Forest, till means of conveyance to theContinent could be procured. He therefore, with Grey and the German, turned to the southeast. But the way was beset with dangers. The threefugitives had to traverse a country in which every one already knew theevent of the battle, and in which no traveller of suspicious appearancecould escape a close scrutiny. They rode on all day, shunning towns andvillages. Nor was this so difficult as it may now appear. For men thenliving could remember the time when the wild deer ranged freely througha succession of forests from the banks of the Avon in Wiltshire to thesouthern coast of Hampshire. [419] At length, on Cranbourne Chase, thestrength of the horses failed. They were therefore turned loose. Thebridles and saddles were concealed. Monmouth and his friends procuredrustic attire, disguised themselves, and proceeded on foot towards theNew Forest. They passed the night in the open air: but before morningthey were Surrounded on every side by toils. Lord Lumley, who layat Ringwood with a strong body of the Sussex militia, had sent forthparties in every direction. Sir William Portman, with the Somersetmilitia, had formed a chain of posts from the sea to the northernextremity of Dorset. At five in the morning of the seventh, Grey, whohad wandered from his friends, was seized by two of the Sussex scouts. He submitted to his fate with the calmness of one to whom suspense wasmore intolerable than despair. "Since we landed, " he said, "I have nothad one comfortable meal or one quiet night. " It could hardly be doubtedthat the chief rebel was not far off. The pursuers redoubled theirvigilance and activity. The cottages scattered over the heathy countryon the boundaries of Dorsetshire and Hampshire were strictly examinedby Lumley; and the clown with whom Monmouth had changed clothes wasdiscovered. Portman came with a strong body of horse and foot to assistin the search. Attention was soon drawn to a place well fitted toshelter fugitives. It was an extensive tract of land separated by anenclosure from the open country, and divided by numerous hedges intosmall fields. In some of these fields the rye, the pease, and the oatswere high enough to conceal a man. Others were overgrown with fern andbrambles. A poor woman reported that she had seen two strangers lurkingin this covert. The near prospect of reward animated the zeal of thetroops. It was agreed that every man who did his duty in the searchshould have a share of the promised five thousand pounds. The outerfence was strictly guarded: the space within was examined withindefatigable diligence; and several dogs of quick scent were turned outamong the bushes. The day closed before the work could be completed: butcareful watch was kept all night. Thirty times the fugitives venturedto look through the outer hedge: but everywhere they found a sentinelon the alert: once they were seen and fired at; they then separated andconcealed themselves in different hiding places. 

At sunrise the next morning the search recommenced, and Buyse was found. He owned that he had parted from the Duke only a few hours before. Thecorn and copsewood were now beaten with more care than ever. At lengtha gaunt figure was discovered hidden in a ditch. The pursuers sprangon their prey. Some of them were about to fire: but Portman forbadeall violence. The prisoner's dress was that of a shepherd; his beard, prematurely grey, was of several days' growth. He trembled greatly, andwas unable to speak. Even those who had often seen him were at first indoubt whether this were truly the brilliant and graceful Monmouth. Hispockets were searched by Portman, and in them were found, among some rawpease gathered in the rage of hunger, a watch, a purse of gold, asmall treatise on fortification, an album filled with songs, receipts, prayers, and charms, and the George with which, many years before, KingCharles the Second had decorated his favourite son. Messengers wereinstantly despatched to Whitehall with the good news, and with theGeorge as a token that the news was true. The prisoner was conveyedunder a strong guard to Ringwood. [420]

And all was lost; and nothing remained but that he should prepare tomeet death as became one who had thought himself not unworthy to wearthe crown of William the Conqueror and of Richard the Lionhearted, of the hero of Cressy and of the hero of Agincourt. The captive mighteasily have called to mind other domestic examples, still better suitedto his condition. Within a hundred years, two sovereigns whose blood ranin his veins, one of them a delicate woman, had been placed in the samesituation in which he now stood. They had shown, in the prison and onthe scaffold, virtue of which, in the season of prosperity, they hadseemed incapable, and had half redeemed great crimes and errorsby enduring with Christian meekness and princely dignity all thatvictorious enemies could inflict. Of cowardice Monmouth had never beenaccused; and, even had he been wanting in constitutional courage, itmight have been expected that the defect would be supplied by prideand by despair. The eyes of the whole world were upon him. The latestgenerations would know how, in that extremity, he had borne himself. To the brave peasants of the West he owed it to show that they had notpoured forth their blood for a leader unworthy of their attachment. Toher who had sacrificed everything for his sake he owed it so to bearhimself that, though she might weep for him, she should not blush forhim. It was not for him to lament and supplicate. His reason, too, should have told him that lamentation and supplication would beunavailing. He had done that which could never be forgiven. He was inthe grasp of one who never forgave. 

But the fortitude of Monmouth was not that highest sort of fortitudewhich is derived from reflection and from selfrespect; nor had naturegiven him one of those stout hearts from which neither adversity norperil can extort any sign of weakness. His courage rose and fell withhis animal spirits. It was sustained on the field of battle by theexcitement of action. By the hope of victory, by the strange influenceof sympathy. All such aids were now taken away. The spoiled darling ofthe court and of the populace, accustomed to be loved and worshippedwherever he appeared, was now surrounded by stern gaolers in whose eyeshe read his doom. Yet a few hours of gloomy seclusion, and he must die aviolent and shameful death. His heart sank within him. Life seemed worthpurchasing by any humiliation; nor could his mind, always feeble, andnow distracted by terror, perceive that humiliation must degrade, butcould not save him. 

As soon as he reached Ringwood he wrote to the King. The letter was thatof a man whom a craven fear had made insensible to shame. He professedin vehement terms his remorse for his treason. He affirmed that, when hepromised his cousins at the Hague not to raise troubles in England, he had fully meant to keep his word. Unhappily he had afterwards beenseduced from his allegiance by some horrid people who had heated hismind by calumnies and misled him by sophistry; but now he abhorredthem: he abhorred himself. He begged in piteous terms that he might beadmitted to the royal presence. There was a secret which he could nottrust to paper, a secret which lay in a single word, and which, if hespoke that word, would secure the throne against all danger. On thefollowing day he despatched letters, imploring the Queen Dowager and theLord Treasurer to intercede in his behalf. [421]

When it was known in London how he had abased himself the generalsurprise was great; and no man was more amazed than Barillon, whohad resided in England during two bloody proscriptions, and had seennumerous victims, both of the Opposition and of the Court, submit totheir fate without womanish entreaties and lamentations. [422]

Monmouth and Grey remained at Ringwood two days. They were then carriedup to London, under the guard of a large body of regular troops andmilitia. In the coach with the Duke was an officer whose orders were tostab the prisoner if a rescue were attempted. At every town along theroad the trainbands of the neighbourhood had been mustered under thecommand of the principal gentry. The march lasted three days, andterminated at Vauxhall, where a regiment, commanded by George Legge, Lord Dartmouth, was in readiness to receive the prisoners. They wereput on board of a state barge, and carried down the river to WhitehallStairs. Lumley and Portman had alternately watched the Duke day andnight till they had brought him within the walls of the palace. [423]

Both the demeanour of Monmouth and that of Grey, during the journey, filled all observers with surprise. Monmouth was altogether unnerved. Grey was not only calm but cheerful, talked pleasantly of horses, dogs, and field sports, and even made jocose allusions to the periloussituation in which he stood. 

The King cannot be blamed for determining that Monmouth should sufferdeath. Every man who heads a rebellion against an established governmentstakes his life on the event; and rebellion was the smallest partof Monmouth's crime. He had declared against his uncle a war withoutquarter. In the manifesto put forth at Lyme, James had been held upto execration as an incendiary, as an assassin who had strangled oneinnocent man and cut the throat of another, and, lastly, as the poisonerof his own brother. To spare an enemy who had not scrupled to resortto such extremities would have been an act of rare, perhaps of blamablegenerosity. But to see him and not to spare him was an outrage onhumanity and decency. [424] 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 kinsmanwhom he had wronged. 

Then Monmouth threw himself on the ground, and crawled to the King'sfeet. He wept. He tried to embrace his uncle's knees with his pinionedarms. He begged for life, only life, life at any price. He owned thathe had been guilty of a greet crime, but tried to throw the blame onothers, particularly on Argyle, who would rather have put his legs intothe boots than have saved his own life by such baseness. By the tiesof kindred, by the memory of the late King, who had been the best andtruest of brothers, the unhappy man adjured James to show some mercy. James gravely replied that this repentance was of the latest, that hewas sorry for the misery which the prisoner had brought on himself, but that the case was not one for lenity. A Declaration, filled withatrocious calumnies, had been put forth. The regal title had beenassumed. For treasons so aggravated there could be no pardon on thisside of the grave. The poor terrified Duke vowed that he had neverwished to take the crown, but had been led into that fatal error byothers. As to the Declaration, he had not written it: he had not readit: he had signed it without looking at it: it was all the work ofFerguson, that bloody villain Ferguson. "Do you expect me to believe, "said James, with contempt but too well merited, "that you set your handto a paper of such moment without knowing what it contained?" One depthof infamy only remained; and even to that the prisoner descended. He waspreeminently the champion of the Protestant religion. The interest ofthat religion had been his plea for conspiring against the government ofhis 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 tothe Church of Rome. The King eagerly offered him spiritual assistance, but said nothing of pardon or respite. "Is there then no hope?" askedMonmouth. James turned away in silence. Then Monmouth strove to rallyhis courage, rose from his knees, and retired with a firmness which hehad not shown since his overthrow. [425]

Grey was introduced next. He behaved with a propriety and fortitudewhich moved even the stern and resentful King, frankly owned himselfguilty, made no excuses, and did not once stoop to ask his life. Boththe prisoners were sent to the Tower by water. There was no tumult; butmany thousands of people, with anxiety and sorrow in their faces, triedto catch a glimpse of the captives. The Duke's resolution failed as soonas he had left the royal presence. On his way to his prison he bemoanedhimself, accused his followers, and abjectly implored the intercessionof 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 repliedthat the King had spoken the truth, and that a subject who assumed theregal title excluded himself from all hope of pardon. [426]

Soon after Monmouth had been lodged in the Tower, he was informedthat his wife had, by the royal command, been sent to see him. She wasaccompanied by the Earl of Clarendon, Keeper of the Privy Seal. Herhusband received her very coldly, and addressed almost all his discourseto Clarendon whose intercession he earnestly implored. Clarendon heldout 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 solemnmessage from the King. It was Monday night. On Wednesday morningMonmouth was to die. 

He was greatly agitated. The blood left his cheeks; and it was some timebefore he could speak. Most of the short time which remained to him hewasted in vain attempts to obtain, if not a pardon, at least a respite. He wrote piteous letters to the King and to several courtiers, but invain. Some Roman Catholic divines were sent to him from Whitehall. Butthey soon discovered that, though he would gladly have purchased hislife by renouncing the religion of which he had professed himself in anespecial manner the defender, yet, if he was to die, he would as soondie without their absolution as with it. [427]

Nor were Ken and Turner much better pleased with his frame of mind. Thedoctrine of nonresistance was, in their view, as in the view of most oftheir brethren, the distinguishing badge of the Anglican Church. The twoBishops insisted on Monmouth's owning that, in drawing the sword againstthe government, he had committed a great sin; and, on this point, they found him obstinately heterodox. Nor was this his only heresy. Hemaintained that his connection with Lady Wentworth was blameless in thesight of God. He had been married, he said, when a child. He had nevercared for his Duchess. The happiness which he had not found at homehe had sought in a round of loose amours, condemned by religion andmorality. Henrietta had reclaimed him from a life of vice. To her he hadbeen strictly constant. They had, by common consent, offered up ferventprayers for the divine guidance. After those prayers they had foundtheir affection for each other strengthened; and they could then nolonger doubt that, in the sight of God, they were a wedded pair. TheBishops were so much scandalised by this view of the conjugal relationthat they refused to administer the sacrament to the prisoner. All thatthey could obtain from him was a promise that, during the single nightwhich still remained to him, he would pray to be enlightened if he werein error. 

On the Wednesday morning, at his particular request, Doctor ThomasTenison, who then held the vicarage of Saint Martin's, and, in thatimportant cure, had obtained the high esteem of the public, came to theTower. From Tenison, whose opinions were known to be moderate, the Dukeexpected more indulgence than Ken and Turner were disposed to show. ButTenison, whatever might be his sentiments concerning nonresistance inthe abstract, thought the late rebellion rash and wicked, and consideredMonmouth's notion respecting marriage as a most dangerous delusion. Monmouth was obstinate. He had prayed, he said, for the divinedirection. His sentiments remained unchanged; and he could not doubtthat they were correct. Tenison's exhortations were in milder tone thanthose of the Bishops. But he, like them, thought that he should not bejustified in administering the Eucharist to one whose penitence was ofso unsatisfactory a nature. [428]

The hour drew near: all hope was over; and Monmouth had passed frompusillanimous fear to the apathy of despair. His children were broughtto his room that he might take leave of them, and were followed by hiswife. He spoke to her kindly, but without emotion. Though she was awoman of great strength of mind, and had little cause to love him, hermisery was such that none of the bystanders could refrain from weeping. He alone was unmoved. [429]

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 placeof execution; and they consented: but they told him that, in theirjudgment, he was about to die in a perilous state of mind, and that, ifthey attended him it would be their duty to exhort him to the last. Ashe 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 coveredup to the chimney tops with an innumerable multitude of gazers, who, inawful silence, broken only by sighs and the noise of weeping, listenedfor 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 ofthe Church of England. " The Bishops interrupted him, and told him that, unless he acknowledged resistance to be sinful, he was no member oftheir church He went on to speak of his Henrietta. She was, he said, ayoung lady of virtue and honour. He loved her to the last, and he couldnot die without giving utterance to his feelings The Bishops againinterfered, and begged him not to use such language. Some altercationfollowed. The divines have been accused of dealing harshly with thedying man. But they appear to have only discharged what, in their view, was a sacred duty. Monmouth knew their principles, and, if he wished toavoid their importunity, should have dispensed with their attendance. Their general arguments against resistance had no effect on him. Butwhen they reminded him of the ruin which he had brought on his brave andloving followers, of the blood which had been shed, of the souls whichhad been sent unprepared to the great account, he was touched, 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 theirpetitions 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 tothe soldiers and to the people a few words on the duty of obedienceto the government. "I will make no speeches, " he exclaimed. "Only tenwords, my Lord. " He turned away, called his servant, and put into theman's hand a toothpick case, the last token of ill starred love. "Give it, " he said, "to that person. " He then accosted John Ketch theexecutioner, a wretch who had butchered many brave and noble victims, and whose name has, during a century and a half, been vulgarly given toall who have succeeded him in his odious office. [430] "Here, " saidthe Duke, "are six guineas for you. Do not hack me as you did my LordRussell. I have heard that you struck him three or four times. Myservant will give you some more gold if you do the work well. " He thenundressed, felt the edge of the axe, expressed some fear that it wasnot sharp enough, and laid his head on the block. The divines in themeantime continued to ejaculate with great energy: "God accept yourrepentance! God accept your imperfect repentance!"

The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had beendisconcerted by what the Duke had said. The first blow inflicted onlya slight wound. The Duke struggled, rose from the block, and lookedreproachfully at the executioner. The head sunk down once more. Thestroke 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 thecrowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a curse. "I cannot do it, " he said;"my heart fails me. " "Take up the axe, man, " cried the sheriff. "Flinghim over the rails, " roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Twomore blows extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was usedto separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up tosuch an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being tornin pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong guard. [431]

In the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke's blood; forby a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a martyr who haddied for the Protestant religion. The head and body were placed in acoffin covered with black velvet, and were laid privately under thecommunion table of Saint Peter's Chapel in the Tower. Within four yearsthe pavement of the chancel was again disturbed, and hard by the remainsof Monmouth were laid the remains of Jeffreys. In truth there is nosadder spot on the earth than that little cemetery. Death is thereassociated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with genius andvirtue, with public veneration and imperishable renown; not, as inour humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is mostendearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever isdarkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph ofimplacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardiceof friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blightedfame. Thither have been carried, through successive ages, by the rudehands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relicsof men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne, before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse ofGuilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector ofthe realm, reposes there by the brother whom he murdered. There hasmouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochesterand Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a betterage and to have died in a better cause. There are laid John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and Thomas Cromwell, Earl ofEssex, Lord High Treasurer. There, too, is another Essex, on whom natureand fortune had lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour, grace, genius, royal favour, popular applause, conducted to an earlyand ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the great houseof Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh Earl ofArundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and aspiringstatesmen, lie more delicate sufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, the lastof the proud name of Plantagenet; and those two fair Queens who perishedby the jealous rage of Henry. Such was the dust with which the dust ofMonmouth mingled. [432]

Yet a few months, and the quiet village of Toddington, in Bedfordshire, witnessed a still sadder funeral. Near that village stood an ancientand stately hall, the seat of the Wentworths. The transept of the parishchurch had long been their burial place. To that burial place, in thespring which followed the death of Monmouth, was borne the coffin of theyoung Baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede. Her family reared a sumptuousmausoleum over her remains: but a less costly memorial of her was longcontemplated with far deeper interest. Her name, carved by the hand ofhim whom she loved too well, was, a few years ago, still discernible ona tree in the adjoining park. 

It was not by Lady Wentworth alone that the memory of Monmouth wascherished with idolatrous fondness. His hold on the hearts of the peoplelasted till the generation which had seen him had passed away. Ribands, buckles, and other trifling articles of apparel which he had worn, weretreasured up as precious relics by those who had fought under him atSedgemoor. Old men who long survived him desired, when they were dying, that these trinkets might be buried with them. One button of gold threadwhich narrowly escaped this fate may still be seen at a house whichoverlooks the field of battle. Nay, such was the devotion of the peopleto their unhappy favourite that, in the face of the strongest evidenceby which the fact of a death was ever verified, many continued tocherish a hope that he was still living, and that he would again appearin arms. A person, it was said, who was remarkably like Monmouth, had sacrificed himself to save the Protestant hero. The vulgar longcontinued, at every important crisis, to whisper that the time was athand, and that King Monmouth would soon show himself. In 1686, a knavewho had pretended to be the Duke, and had levied contributions inseveral villages of Wiltshire, was apprehended, and whipped from Newgateto Tyburn. In 1698, when England had long enjoyed constitutional freedomunder a new dynasty, the son of an innkeeper passed himself on theyeomanry of Sussex as their beloved Monmouth, and defrauded many whowere by no means of the lowest class. Five hundred pounds were collectedfor him. The farmers provided him with a horse. Their wives sent himbaskets of chickens and ducks, and were lavish, it was said, of favoursof a more tender kind; for in gallantry at least, the counterfeit wasa not unworthy representative of the original. When this impostorwas thrown into prison for his fraud, his followers maintained him inluxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to countenance him when hewas tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion lastthat, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne, Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that theman in the iron mask was the Duke of Monmouth. [433]

It is, perhaps, a fact scarcely less remarkable that, to this day, the inhabitants of some parts of the West of England, when any billaffecting their interest is before the House of Lords, think themselvesentitled to claim the help of the Duke of Buccleuch, the descendant ofthe unfortunate leader for whom their ancestors bled. 

The history of Monmouth would alone suffice to refute the Imputationof inconstancy which is so frequently thrown on the common people. Thecommon people are sometimes inconstant; for they are human beings. Butthat they are inconstant as compared with the educated classes, witharistocracies, or with princes, may be confidently denied. It would beeasy to name demagogues whose popularity has remained undiminished whilesovereigns and parliaments have withdrawn their confidence from a longsuccession of statesmen. When Swift had survived his faculties manyyears, the Irish populace still continued to light bonfires on hisbirthday, in commemoration of the services which they fancied that hehad rendered to his country when his mind was in full vigour. Whileseven administrations were raised to power and hurled from it inconsequence of court intrigues or of changes in the sentiments of thehigher classes of society, the profligate Wilkes retained his hold onthe selections of a rabble whom he pillaged and ridiculed. Politicians, who, in 1807, had sought to curry favour with George the Third bydefending Caroline of Brunswick, were not ashamed, in 1820, to curryfavour with George the Fourth by persecuting her. But in 1820, as in1807, the whole body of working men was fanatically devoted to hercause. So it was with Monmouth. In 1680, he had been adored alike by thegentry and by the peasantry of the West. In 1685 he came again. To thegentry he had become an object of aversion: but by the peasantry hewas still loved with a love strong as death, with a love not to beextinguished by misfortunes or faults, by the flight from Sedgemoor, bythe letter from Ringwood, or by the tears and abject supplications atWhitehall. The charge which may with justice be brought against thecommon people is, not that they are inconstant, but that they almostinvariably choose their favourite so ill that their constancy is a viceand not a virtue. 

While the execution of Monmouth occupied the thoughts of the Londoners, the counties which had risen against the government were enduring allthat a ferocious soldiery could inflict. Feversham had been summoned tothe court, where honours and rewards which he little deserved awaitedhim. He was made a Knight of the Garter and Captain of the first andmost lucrative troop of Life Guards: but Court and City laughed at hismilitary exploits; and the wit of Buckingham gave forth its last feebleflash at the expense of the general who had won a battle in bed. [434]Feversham left in command at Bridgewater Colonel Percy Kirke, a militaryadventurer whose vices had been developed by the worst of all schools, Tangier. Kirke had during some years commanded the garrison of thattown, and had been constantly employed in hostilities against tribes offoreign barbarians, ignorant of the laws which regulate the warfare ofcivilized and Christian nations. Within the ramparts of his fortresshe was a despotic prince. The only check on his tyranny was the fear ofbeing called to account by a distant and a careless government. He mighttherefore safely proceed to the most audacious excesses of rapacity, licentiousness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless dissoluteness, andprocured by extortion the means of indulgence. No goods could be soldtill Kirke had had the refusal of them. No question of right could bedecided till Kirke had been bribed. Once, merely from a malignant whim, he staved all the wine in a vintner's cellar. On another occasion hedrove all the Jews from Tangier. Two of them he sent to the SpanishInquisition, which forthwith burned them. Under this iron dominationscarce a complaint was heard; for hatred was effectually kept down byterror. Two persons who had been refractory were found murdered; and itwas universally believed that they had been slain by Kirke's order. Whenhis soldiers displeased him he flogged them with merciless severity: buthe indemnified them by permitting them to sleep on watch, to reeldrunk about the streets, to rob, beat, and insult the merchants and thelabourers. 

When Tangier was abandoned, Kirke returned to England. He stillcontinued to command his old soldiers, who were designated sometimes asthe First Tangier Regiment, and sometimes as Queen Catharine's Regiment. As they had been levied for the purpose of waging war on an infidelnation, they bore on their flag a Christian emblem, the Paschal Lamb. In allusion to this device, and with a bitterly ironical meaning, thesemen, the rudest and most ferocious in the English army, were calledKirke's Lambs. The regiment, now the second of the line, stillretains this ancient badge, which is however thrown into the shade bydecorations honourably earned in Egypt, in Spain, and in the heart ofAsia. [435]

Such was the captain and such the soldiers who were now let loose on thepeople of Somersetshire. From Bridgewater Kirke marched to Taunton. Hewas accompanied by two carts filled with wounded rebels whose gasheshad not been dressed, and by a long drove of prisoners on foot, who werechained two and two Several of these he hanged as soon as he reachedTaunton, without the form of a trial. They were not suffered even totake leave of their nearest relations. The signpost of the White HartInn served for a gallows. It is said that the work of death went on insight of the windows where the officers of the Tangier regiment werecarousing, and that at every health a wretch was turned off. When thelegs of the dying man quivered in the last agony, the colonel orderedthe drums to strike up. He would give the rebels, he said music totheir dancing. The tradition runs that one of the captives was not evenallowed the indulgence of a speedy death. Twice he was suspended fromthe signpost, and twice cut down. Twice he was asked if he repented ofhis 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 deadbodies were quartered that the executioner stood ankle deep in blood. He was assisted by a poor man whose loyalty was suspected, and who wascompelled to ransom his own life by seething the remains of his friendsin pitch. The peasant who had consented to perform this hideous officeafterwards returned to his plough. But a mark like that of Cain wasupon him. He was known through his village by the horrible name of TomBoilman. The rustics long continued to relate that, though he had, byhis sinful and shameful deed, saved himself from the vengeance of theLambs, he had not escaped the vengeance of a higher power. In a greatstorm he fled for shelter under an oak, and was there struck dead bylightning. [436]

The number of those who were thus butchered cannot now be ascertained. Nine were entered in the parish registers of Taunton: but thoseregisters contained the names of such only as had Christian burial. Those who were hanged in chains, and those whose heads and limbs weresent to the neighbouring villages, must have been much more numerous. Itwas believed in London, at the time, that Kirke put a hundred captivesto death during the week which followed the battle. [437]

Cruelty, however, was not this man's only passion. He loved money; andwas no novice in the arts of extortion. A safe conduct might be boughtof him for thirty or forty pounds; and such a safe conduct, though ofno value in law, enabled the purchaser to pass the post of the Lambswithout molestation, to reach a seaport, and to fly to a foreigncountry. The ships which were bound for New England were crowded atthis juncture with so many fugitives from Sedgemoor that there was greatdanger lest the water and provisions should fail. [438]

Kirke was also, in his own coarse and ferocious way, a man of pleasure;and nothing is more probable than that he employed his power for thepurpose of gratifying his licentious appetites. It was reported that heconquered the virtue of a beautiful woman by promising to spare thelife of one to whom she was strongly attached, and that, after she hadyielded, he showed her suspended on the gallows the lifeless remains ofhim for whose sake she had sacrificed her honour. This tale an impartialjudge must reject. It is unsupported by proof. The earliest authorityfor it is a poem written by Pomfret. The respectable historians of thatage, while they speak with just severity of the crimes of Kirke, eitheromit all mention of this most atrocious crime, or mention it as a thingrumoured but not proved. Those who tell the story tell it with suchvariations as deprive it of all title to credit. Some lay the scene atTaunton, some at Exeter. Some make the heroine of the tale a maiden, some a married woman. The relation for whom the shameful ransom was paidis described by some as her father, by some as her brother, and by someas her husband. Lastly the story is one which, long before Kirke wasborn, had been told of many other oppressors, and had become a favouritetheme of novelists and dramatists. Two politicians of the fifteenthcentury, Rhynsault, the favourite of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, andOliver le Dain, the favourite of Lewis the Eleventh of France, had beenaccused of the same crime. Cintio had taken it for the subject of aromance. Whetstone had made out of Cintio's narrative the rude play ofPromos and Cassandra; and Shakspeare had borrowed from Whetstone theplot of the noble tragicomedy of Measure for Measure. As Kirke was notthe first so he was not the last, to whom this excess of wickednesswas popularly imputed. During the reaction which followed the Jacobintyranny in France, a very similar charge was brought against JosephLebon, one of the most odious agents of the Committee of PublicSafety, and, after enquiry, was admitted even by his prosecutors to beunfounded. [439]

The government was dissatisfied with Kirke, not on account of thebarbarity with which he had treated his needy prisoners, but on accountof the interested lenity which he had shown to rich delinquents. [440]He was soon recalled from the West. A less irregular and more cruelmassacre was about to be perpetrated. The vengeance was deferred duringsome weeks. It was thought desirable that the Western Circuit should notbegin till the other circuits had terminated. In the meantime the gaolsof Somersetshire and Dorsetshire were filled with thousands of captives. The chief friend and protector of these unhappy men in their extremitywas one who abhorred their religious and political opinions, one whoseorder they hated, and to whom they had done unprovoked wrong, BishopKen. That good prelate used all his influence to soften the gaolers, andretrenched from his own episcopal state that he might be able to makesome addition to the coarse and scanty fare of those who had defaced hisbeloved Cathedral. His conduct on this occasion was of a piece with hiswhole life. His intellect was indeed darkened by many superstitions andprejudices: but his moral character, when impartially reviewed, sustainsa comparison with any in ecclesiastical history, and seems to approach, as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Christianvirtue. [441]

His labour of love was of no long duration. A rapid and effectual gaoldelivery was at hand. Early in September, Jeffreys, accompanied by fourother judges, set out on that circuit of which the memory will last aslong as our race and language. The officers who commanded the troopsin the districts through which his course lay had orders to furnish himwith whatever military aid he might require. His ferocious temper neededno spur; yet a spur was applied. The health and spirits of the LordKeeper had given way. He had been deeply mortified by the coldnessof the King and by the insolence of the Chief Justice, and could findlittle consolation in looking back on a life, not indeed blackenedby any atrocious crime, but sullied by cowardice, selfishness, andservility. So deeply was the unhappy man humbled that, when he appearedfor the last time in Westminster Hall he took with him a nosegay to hidehis face, because, as he afterwards owned, he could not bear the eyes ofthe bar and of the audience. The prospect of his approaching end seemsto have inspired him with unwonted courage. He determined to dischargehis conscience, requested an audience of the King, spoke earnestlyof the dangers inseparable from violent and arbitrary counsels, andcondemned the lawless cruelties which the soldiers had committed inSomersetshire. He soon after retired from London to die. He breathedhis last a few days after the Judges set out for the West. It wasimmediately notified to Jeffreys that he might expect the Great Seal asthe reward of faithful and vigorous service. [442]

At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission. Hampshirehad not been the theatre of war; but many of the vanquished rebelshad, like their leader, fled thither. Two of them, John Hickes, aNonconformist divine, and Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer who had beenoutlawed for taking part in the Rye House plot, had sought refuge atthe house of Alice, widow of John Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the LongParliament and in the High Court of Justice, had been a commissioner ofthe Great Seal in the days of the Commonwealth and had been createda Lord by Cromwell. The titles given by the Protector had not beenrecognised by any government which had ruled England since the downfallof his house; but they appear to have been often used in conversationeven by Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore commonly known asthe Lady Alice. She was related to many respectable, and to some noble, families; and she was generally esteemed even by the Tory gentlemen ofher country. For it was well known to them that she had deeply regrettedsome violent acts in which her husband had borne a part, that she hadshed bitter tears for Charles the First, and that she had protected andrelieved 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 hiding place to the wretchedmen who now entreated her to protect them. She took them into her house, set meat and drink before them, and showed them where they might takerest. The next morning her dwelling was surrounded by soldiers. Strictsearch was made. Hickes was found concealed in the malthouse, andNelthorpe in the chimney. If Lady Alice knew her guests to have beenconcerned in the insurrection, she was undoubtedly guilty of what instrictness was a capital crime. For the law of principal and accessory, as respects high treason, then was, and is to this day, in a statedisgraceful to English jurisprudence. In cases of felony, a distinctionfounded on justice and reason, is made between the principal and theaccessory after the fact. He who conceals from justice one whom he knowsto be a murderer is liable to punishment, but not to the punishment ofmurder. He, on the other hand, who shelters one whom he knows to be atraitor is, according to all our jurists, guilty of high treason. Itis unnecessary to point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law whichincludes under the same definition, and visits with the same penalty, offences lying at the opposite extremes of the scale of guilt. Thefeeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from the thought ofgiving 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, maybe a weakness; but it is surely a weakness very nearly allied tovirtue, a weakness which, constituted as human beings are, we can hardlyeradicate from the mind without eradicating many noble and benevolentsentiments. A wise and good ruler may not think it right to sanctionthis weakness; but he will generally connive at it, or punish it verytenderly. In no case will he treat it as a crime of the blackest dye. Whether Flora Macdonald was justified in concealing the attainted heirof the Stuarts, whether a brave soldier of our own time was justified inassisting the escape of Lavalette, are questions on which casuistsmay differ: but to class such actions with the crimes of Guy Faux andFieschi is an outrage to humanity and common sense. Such, however, isthe classification of our law. It is evident that nothing but a lenientadministration could make such a state of the law endurable. And it isjust to say that, during many generations, no English government, save one, has treated with rigour persons guilty merely of harbouringdefeated and flying insurgents. To women especially has been granted, by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging in the midst ofhavoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the most endearing ofall their charms. Since the beginning of the great civil war, numerousrebels, some of them far more important than Hickes or Nelthorpe, havebeen protected from the severity of victorious governments by femaleadroitness and generosity. But no English ruler who has been thusbaffled, the savage and implacable James alone excepted, has had thebarbarity even to think of putting a lady to a cruel and shameful deathfor so venial and amiable a transgression. 

Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of destroyingAlice Lisle. She could not, according to the doctrine laid down by thehighest authority, be convicted till after the conviction of the rebelswhom she had harboured. [443] She was, however, set to the bar beforeeither Hickes or Nelthorpe had been tried. It was no easy matter in sucha case to obtain a verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated. The jury, consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire, shrankfrom the thought of sending a fellow creature to the stake for conductwhich seemed deserving rather of praise than of blame. Jeffreys wasbeside himself with fury. This was the first case of treason on thecircuit; and there seemed to be a strong probability that his prey wouldescape him. He stormed, cursed, and swore in language which no wellbredman would have used at a race or a cockfight. One witness named Dunne, partly from concern for Lady Alice, and partly from fright at thethreats and maledictions of the Chief Justice, entirely lost his head, and at last stood silent. "Oh how hard the truth is, " said Jeffreys, "tocome out of a lying Presbyterian knave. " The witness, after a pauseof some minutes, stammered a few unmeaning words. "Was there ever, "exclaimed the judge, with an oath, "was there ever such a villain onthe face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a God? Dost thoubelieve in hell fire. Of all the witnesses that I ever met with I neversaw thy fellow. " Still the poor man, scared out of his senses, remainedmute; and again Jeffreys burst forth. "I hope, gentlemen of the jury, that you take notice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How canone help abhorring both these men and their religion? A Turk is a saintto such a fellow as this. A Pagan would be ashamed of such villany. Ohblessed Jesus! What a generation of vipers do we live among!" "I cannottell what to say, my Lord, " faltered Dunne. The judge again broke forthinto a volley of oaths. "Was there ever, " he cried, "such an impudentrascal? Hold the candle to him that we may see his brazen face. You, gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown, see that an informationfor perjury be preferred against this fellow. " After the witnesses hadbeen thus handled, the Lady Alice was called on for her defence. Shebegan by saying, what may possibly have been true, that though sheknew Hickes to be in trouble when she took him in, she did not know orsuspect that he had been concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine, a man of peace. It had, therefore, never occurred to her that he couldhave borne arms against the government; and she had supposed that hewished to conceal himself because warrants were out against him forfield 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 allmanner of villany in it. Nothing but Presbytery could have made Dunnesuch a rogue. Show me a Presbyterian; and I'll show thee a lying knave. "He summed up in the same style, declaimed during an hour against Whigsand Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the prisoner's husband hadborne a part in the death of Charles the First, a fact which had notbeen proved by any testimony, and which, if it had been proved, wouldhave been utterly irrelevant to the issue. The jury retired, andremained long in consultation. The judge grew impatient. He could notconceive, he said, how, in so plain a case, they should even haveleft the box. He sent a messenger to tell them that, if they did notinstantly 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 doubtedwhether the charge had been made out. Jeffreys expostulated with themvehemently, and, after another consultation, they gave a reluctantverdict of Guilty. 

On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jeffreys gavedirections that Alice Lisle should be burned alive that very afternoon. This excess of barbarity moved the pity and indignation even of theclass which was most devoted to the crown. The clergy of WinchesterCathedral 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 somuch respected by the Tory party. He consented to put off the executionfive days. During that time the friends of the prisoner besought Jamesto be merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham, whoserecent victory had increased his influence at court, and who, it issaid, had been bribed to take the compassionate side, spoke in herfavour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law, pleaded her cause. But allwas vain. The utmost that could be obtained was that her sentenceshould be commuted from burning to beheading. She was put to death on ascaffold in the marketplace of Winchester, and underwent her fate withserene courage. [444]

In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day followingher execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the principal town of thecounty in which Monmouth had landed; and the judicial massacre began. The court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; andthis innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose. It was also rumoured that, when the clergyman who preached the assizesermon enforced the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge wasdistorted by an ominous grin. These things made men augur ill of whatwas to follow. [445]

More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work seemedheavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light. He let it beunderstood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was toplead guilty. Twenty-nine persons, who put themselves on their countryand were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. Theremaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninety-tworeceived sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshireamounted to seventy-four. 

From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barelygrazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore, comparatively fewpersons were capitally punished. Somersetshire, the chief seat of therebellion, had been reserved for the last and most fearful vengeance. In this county two hundred and thirty-three prisoners were in a fewdays hanged, drawn, and quartered. At every spot where two roads met, on every marketplace, on the green of every large village which hadfurnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind, or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made thetraveller sick with horror. In many parishes the peasantry could notassemble in the house of God without seeing the ghastly face of aneighbour grinning at them over the porch. The Chief Justice was allhimself. His spirits rose higher and higher as the work went on. Helaughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that many thought himdrunk from morning to night. But in him it was not easy to distinguishthe madness produced by evil passions from the madness produced bybrandy. A prisoner affirmed that the witnesses who appeared against himwere not entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, andanother a prostitute. "Thou impudent rebel, " exclaimed the Judge, "toreflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see thee alreadywith the halter round thy neck. " Another produced testimony that he wasa 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 creature is on the parish. " "Do not troubleyourselves, " said the Judge, "I will ease the parish of the burden. " Itwas not only against the prisoners that his fury broke forth. Gentlemenand noblemen of high consideration and stainless loyalty, who venturedto bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance, were almost sureto receive what he called, in the coarse dialect which he had learned inthe pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick with the rough side of his tongue. Lord Stawell, a Tory peer, who could not conceal his horror at theremorseless manner in which his poor neighbours were butchered, waspunished by having a corpse suspended in chains at his park gate. [446]In such spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long toldover the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of Somersetshire. Within the last forty years, peasants, in some districts, well knew theaccursed spots, and passed them unwillingly after sunset. [447]

Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all hispredecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the numberof persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, verymuch exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have beenput to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of moreformidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It hasnot been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, orafter the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side ofclemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together willappear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgracedthe Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged onthis circuit was three hundred and twenty. [448]

Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had beengenerally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of blamelesslife, and of high religious profession. They were regarded bythemselves, and by a large proportion of their neighbours, not aswrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with blood the truth of theProtestant religion. Very few of the convicts professed any repentancefor what they had done. Many, animated by the old Puritan spirit, metdeath, not merely with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vainthat the ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guiltof rebellion and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim ofthe King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of theclergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved the bitterscorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed hymns in thedungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang whilethey were undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Zionand to make war on Babylon, would set up his standard, would blow histrumpet, and would requite his foes tenfold for all the evil which hadbeen inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noteddown: their farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way, with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copioussupplement to the Marian martyrology. [449]

A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired officerof the parliamentary army, and one of those zealots who would own noking but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor. His arm had beenfrightfully mangled and shattered in the battle; and, as no surgeon wasat hand, the stout old soldier amputated it himself. He was carriedup to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make nosubmission. "I am an aged man, " he said, "and what remains to me of lifeis 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. The peopleremarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him tothe gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted notthat the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way swordin hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals. "Stop, gentlemen, " he cried: "let me go on foot. There is more in thisthan you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could notsee. " He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with asmile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichristand the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apologyfor mounting so awkwardly. "You see, " he said, "I have but one arm. "[450]

Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young Templarof good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an agreeable provincialtown proud of its taste and refinement, was regarded by all as themodel of a fine gentleman. Great interest was made to save him. It wasbelieved through the West of England that he was engaged to a young ladyof gentle blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself atthe feet of Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her fromhim with a jest so hideous that to repeat it would be an offenceagainst decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously andcourageously. [451]

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 wasone of the first merchants in London, and was generally considered asthe head of the Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewlingon the trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather, "he said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you. " The poor lad, whowas only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and fortitude, that an officer of the army who attended the execution, and who had madehimself remarkable by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, andsaid, "I do not believe that my Lord Chief Justice himself could beproof against this. " Hopes were entertained that Benjamin would bepardoned. One victim of tender years was surely enough for one house tofurnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. Thetruth was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations, and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treatedintercessors pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was allowedfor a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to Whitehallwith a petition. Many courtiers wished her success; and Churchill, amongwhose numerous faults cruelty had no place, obtained admittance for her. "I wish well to your suit with all my heart, " he said, as they stoodtogether in the antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes. This marble, "--and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece, --"is notharder than the King. " The prediction proved true. James was inexorable. Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst lamentations inwhich the soldiers who kept guard round the gallows could not refrainfrom joining. [452]

Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied thansome of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable tobring home the charge of high treason were convicted of misdemeanours, and were sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that which Oateshad undergone. A woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered byhalf the women in the districts where the war had raged, was condemnedto be whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. Shesuffered part of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to London;but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers, with the humaneconnivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the responsibilityof sparing her any further torture. A still more frightful sentence waspassed on a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious words. Hewas, as usual, interrupted in his defence by ribaldry and scurrilityfrom the judgment seat. "You are a rebel; and all your family have beenrebels Since Adam. They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verseswith you. " The sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned sevenyears, and should, during that period, be flogged through every markettown in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst intotears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My Lord, "said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many market towns inour county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortnight for sevenyears. " "If he is a young man, " said Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue. Ladies, you do not know the villain as well as I do. The punishment isnot half bad enough for him. All the interest in England shall not alterit. " Tutchin in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity, that he might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at thisconjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it seemedhighly improbable that the sentence would ever be executed, the ChiefJustice consented to remit it, in return for a bribe which reduced theprisoner to poverty. The temper of Tutchin, not originally very mild, was exasperated to madness by what he had undergone. He lived to beknown as one of the most acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of theHouse of Stuart and of the Tory party. [453]

The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred andforty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffereddeath, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyedfavour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convictsshould be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not beemancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment shouldbe some West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed forthe purpose of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England orNew Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to themand a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It wastherefore determined that they should be sent to colonies where aPuritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a labourer bornin the temperate zone could hope to enjoy little health. Such was thestate of the slave market that these bondmen, long as was the passage, and sickly as they were likely to prove, were still very valuable. Itwas estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average, each of them, after allcharges were paid, would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There wastherefore much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the Westconceived that they had, by their exertions and sufferings during theinsurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which had beeneagerly snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The courtiers, however, were victorious. [454]

The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who are nowcarried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best information whichis at present accessible that more than one fifth of those who wereshipped were flung to the sharks before the end of the voyage. The humancargoes were stowed close in the holds of small vessels. So little spacewas allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented byunhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on oneanother. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway wasconstantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses. In the dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, diseaseand death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one vessel, twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage wasperformed with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived at theirhouse of bondage were mere skeletons. During some weeks coarse biscuitand fetid water had been doled out to them in such scanty measure thatany one of them could easily have consumed the ration which was assignedto five. They were, therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whomthey had been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before sellingthem. [455]

Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death, andof those more unfortunate men who were withering under the tropical sun, was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By lawa subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this lawwas enforced after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once crueland ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of thelabouring men whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon bythe agents of the Treasury to explain what had become of a basket, of agoose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of beans, ofa truss of hay. [456] While the humbler retainers of the government werepillaging the families of the slaughtered peasants, the Chief Justicewas fast accumulating a fortune out of the plunder of a higher class ofWhigs. He traded largely in pardons. His most lucrative transaction ofthis kind was with a gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain thatPrideaux had not been in arms against the government; and it is probablethat his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from hisfather, an eminent lawyer who had been high in office under theProtector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the crown. Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they would bearevidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay long in gaol andat length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to pay fifteenthousand pounds for his liberation. This great sum was received byJeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which the people gave the nameof Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased with the priceof innocent blood. [457]

He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of parasiteswho were in the habit of drinking and laughing with him. The officeof these men was to drive hard bargains with convicts under the strongterrors of death, and with parents trembling for the lives of children. A portion of the spoil was abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To oneof his boon companions, it is said he tossed a pardon for a rich traitoracross the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse to anyintercession except that of his creatures, for he guarded his profitablemonopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even suspected that he sentsome persons to the gibbet solely because they had applied for the royalclemency through channels independent of him. [458]

Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of thistraffic. The ladies of the Queen's household distinguished themselvespreeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of the disgrace whichthey incurred falls on their mistress: for it was solely on account ofthe relation in which they stood to her that they were able to enrichthemselves by so odious a trade; and there can be no question thatshe might with a word or a look have restrained them. But in truth sheencouraged them by her evil example, if not by her express approbation. She seems to have been one of that large class of persons who bearadversity better than prosperity. While her husband was a subject and anexile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent danger of beingdeprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her mannersconciliated the kindness even of those who most abhorred her religion. But when her good fortune came her good nature disappeared. The meek andaffable Duchess turned out an ungracious and haughty Queen. [459] Themisfortunes which she subsequently endured have made her an object ofsome interest; but that interest would be not a little heightened if itcould be shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or eventried to save, one single victim from the most frightful proscriptionthat England has ever seen. Unhappily the only request that she is knownto have preferred touching the rebels was that a hundred of those whowere sentenced to transportation might be given to her. [460] The profitwhich she cleared on the cargo, after making large allowance for thosewho died of hunger and fever during the passage, cannot be estimatedat less than a thousand guineas. We cannot wonder that her attendantsshould have imitated her unprincely greediness and her unwomanlycruelty. They exacted a thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, a merchantof Bridgewater; who had contributed to the military chest of the rebelarmy. But the prey on which they pounced most eagerly was one which itmight have been thought that even the most ungentle natures would havespared. Already some of the girls who had presented the standard toMonmouth at Taunton had cruelly expiated their offence. One of them hadbeen thrown into prison where an infectious malady was raging. She hadsickened and died there. Another had presented herself at the bar beforeJeffreys to beg for mercy. "Take her, gaoler, " vociferated the Judge, with one of those frowns which had often struck terror into stouterhearts 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 fewhours was a corpse. Most of the young ladies, however, who had walkedin the procession were still alive. Some of them were under ten yearsof age. All had acted under the orders of their schoolmistress, withoutknowing that they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honourasked the royal permission to wring money out of the parents of thepoor children; and the permission was granted. An order was sent down toTaunton that all these little girls should be seized and imprisoned. Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, the Tory member for Bridgewater, wasrequested to undertake the office of exacting the ransom. He was chargedto declare in strong language that the maids of honour would not enduredelay, that they were determined to prosecute to outlawry, unless areasonable sum were forthcoming, and that by a reasonable sum was meantseven thousand pounds. Warre excused himself from taking any part in atransaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested WilliamPenn to act for them; and Penn accepted the commission. Yet it shouldseem that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity which he had oftenshown about taking off his hat would not have been altogether out ofplace on this occasion. He probably silenced the remonstrances of hisconscience by repeating to himself that none of the money which heextorted would go into his own pocket; that if he refused to bethe agent of the ladies they would find agents less humane; that bycomplying he should increase his influence at the court, and that hisinfluence at the court had already enabled him, and still might enablehim, to render great services to his oppressed brethren. The maids ofhonour were at last forced to content themselves with less than a thirdpart of what they had demanded. [461]

No English sovereign has ever given stronger proof of a cruel naturethan James the Second. Yet his cruelty was not more odious than hismercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his mercy and hiscruelty were such that each reflects infamy on the other. Our horror atthe fate of the simple clowns, the young lads, the delicate women, towhom he was inexorably severe, is increased when we find to whom and forwhat considerations he granted his pardon. 

The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be guided inselecting rebels for punishment is perfectly obvious. The ringleaders, the men of rank, fortune, and education, whose power and whose artificeshave led the multitude into error, are the proper objects of severity. The deluded populace, when once the slaughter on the field of battleis over, can scarcely be treated too leniently. This rule, so evidentlyagreeable to justice and humanity, was not only not observed: it wasinverted. While those who ought to have been spared were slaughtered byhundreds, the few who might with propriety have been left to the utmostrigour of the law were spared. This eccentric clemency has perplexedsome writers, and has drawn forth ludicrous eulogies from others. It wasneither at all mysterious nor at all praiseworthy. It may be distinctlytraced in every case either to a sordid or to a malignant motive, eitherto thirst for money or to thirst for blood. 

In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. His parts andknowledge, the rank which he had inherited in the state, and the highcommand which he had borne in the rebel army, would have pointed him outto a just government as a much fitter object of punishment than AliceLisle, than William Hewling, than any of the hundreds of ignorantpeasants whose skulls and quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. ButGrey's estate was large and was strictly entailed. He had only a lifeinterest in his property; and he could forfeit no more interest than hehad. If he died, his lands at once devolved on the next heir. If hewere pardoned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was thereforesuffered to redeem himself by giving a bond for forty thousand pounds tothe Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other courtiers. [462]

Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the same rank whichhad been held by Grey in the West of England. That Cochrane should beforgiven by a prince vindictive beyond all example, seemed incredible. But Cochrane was the younger son of a rich family; it was therefore onlyby sparing him that money could be made out of him. His father, LordDundonald, offered a bribe of five thousand pounds to the priests of theroyal household; and a pardon was granted. [463]

Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Commissary to therebel army, and who had inflamed the ignorant populace of Somersetshireby vehement harangues in which James had been described as an incendiaryand a poisoner, was admitted to mercy. For Storey was able to giveimportant assistance to Jeffreys in wringing fifteen thousand pounds outof Prideaux. [464]

None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson. These three chiefs of the rebellion had fledtogether from the field of Sedgemoor, and had reached the coast insafety. But they had found a frigate cruising near the spot where theyhad hoped to embark. They had then separated. Wade and Goodenoughwere soon discovered and brought up to London. Deeply as they had beenimplicated in the Rye House plot, conspicuous as they had been among thechiefs of the Western insurrection, they were suffered to live, becausethey had it in their power to give information which enabled the Kingto slaughter and plunder some persons whom he hated, but to whom he hadnever yet been able to bring home any crime. [465]

How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all the enemies ofthe government he was, without doubt, the most deeply criminal. He wasthe original author of the plot for assassinating the royal brothers. He had written that Declaration which, for insolence, malignity, andmendacity, stands unrivalled even among the libels of those stormytimes. He had instigated Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and thento usurp the crown. It was reasonable to expect that a strict searchwould be made for the archtraitor, as he was often called; and such asearch a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely haveeluded. It was confidently reported in the coffee houses of Londonthat Ferguson was taken, and this report found credit with men who hadexcellent opportunities of knowing the truth. The next thing that washeard of him was that he was safe on the Continent. It was stronglysuspected that he had been in constant communication with the governmentagainst which he was constantly plotting, that he had, while urging hisassociates to every excess of rashness sent to Whitehall just so muchinformation about their proceedings as might suffice to save his ownneck, and that therefore orders had been given to let him escape. [466]

And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his reward. Hearrived at Windsor from the West, leaving carnage, mourning, and terrorbehind him. The hatred with which he was regarded by the people ofSomersetshire has no parallel in our history. It was not to be quenchedby time or by political changes, was long transmitted from generation togeneration, and raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. When hehad been many years dead, when his name and title were extinct, hisgranddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret, travelling along the westernroad, was insulted by the populace, and found that she could not safelyventure herself among the descendants of those who had witnessed theBloody Assizes. [467]

But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge afterhis master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with interest anddelight. In his drawingroom and at his table he had frequently talked ofthe havoc which was making among his disaffected subjects with a gleeat which the foreign ministers stood aghast. With his own hand he hadpenned accounts of what he facetiously called his Lord Chief Justice'scampaign in the West. Some hundreds of rebels, His Majesty wrote to theHague, had been condemned. Some of them had been hanged: more shouldbe hanged: and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It was to nopurpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people, anddescribed with pathetic eloquence the frightful state of his diocese. He complained that it was impossible to walk along the highways withoutseeing some terrible spectacle, and that the whole air of Somersetshirewas tainted with death. The King read, and remained, according to thesaying of Churchill, hard as the marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. AtWindsor the great seal of England was put into the hands of Jeffreys andin the next London Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honourwas the reward of the many eminent and faithful services which he hadrendered to the crown. [468]

At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror ofthe Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King attempted tovindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other. Jeffreys, inthe Tower, protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyondhis master's express orders, nay, that he had fallen short of them. James, at Saint Germain's would willingly have had it believed that hisown inclinations had been on the side of clemency, and that unmeritedobloquy had been brought on him by the violence of his minister. Butneither of these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of theother. The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand tobe false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it be true in fact, isutterly worthless. 

The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was about tobegin. The government was peculiarly desirous to find victims among thegreat Whig merchants of the City. They had, in the last reign, been aformidable part of the strength of the opposition. They were wealthy;and their wealth was not, like that of many noblemen and countrygentlemen, protected by entail against forfeiture. In the case of Greyand of men situated like him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty andrapacity at once; but a rich trader might be both hanged and plundered. The commercial grandees, however, though in general hostile to Poperyand to arbitrary power, had yet been too scrupulous or too timid toincur the guilt of high treason. One of the most considerable among themwas Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the old charter ofthe City, and had filled the office of Sheriff when the question of theExclusion Bill occupied the public mind. In politics he was a Whig: hisreligious opinions leaned towards Presbyterianism: but his temper wascautious and moderate. It is not proved by trustworthy evidence that heever approached the verge of treason. He had, indeed, when Sheriff, beenvery unwilling to employ as his deputy a man so violent and unprincipledas Goodenough. When the Rye House plot was discovered, great hopeswere entertained at Whitehall that Cornish would appear to have beenconcerned: but these hopes were disappointed. One of the conspirators, indeed, John Rumsey, was ready to swear anything: but a single witnesswas not sufficient; and no second witness could be found. More than twoyears had since elapsed. Cornish thought himself safe; but the eye ofthe tyrant was upon him. Goodenough, terrified by the near prospectof death, and still harbouring malice on account of the unfavourableopinion 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, washurried to gaol, was kept there some days in solitary confinement, andwas brought altogether unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The caseagainst him rested wholly on the evidence of Rumsey and Goodenough. Bothwere, by their own confession accomplices in the plot with which theycharged the prisoner. Both were impelled by the strongest pressure ofhope end fear to criminate him. Evidence was produced which proved thatGoodenough was also under the influence of personal enmity. Rumsey'sstory was inconsistent with the story which he had told when he appearedas 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 hadcome back from the carnage of Taunton in a fierce and excited state. Itis indeed but too true that the taste for blood is a taste which evenmen not naturally cruel may, by habit, speedily acquire. The bar andthe bench united to browbeat the unfortunate Whig. The jury, named by acourtly Sheriff, readily found a verdict of Guilty; and, in spite of theindignant murmurs of the public, Cornish suffered death within ten daysafter he had been arrested. That no circumstance of degradation mightbe wanting, the gibbet was set up where King Street meets Cheapside, insight of the house where he had long lived in general respect, of theExchange where his credit had always stood high, and of the Guildhallwhere he had distinguished himself as a popular leader. He died withcourage and with many pious expressions, but showed, by look andgesture, such strong resentment at the barbarity and injustice withwhich he had been treated, that his enemies spread a calumnious reportconcerning him. He was drunk, they said, or out of his mind, when he wasturned off. William Penn, however, who stood near the gallows, and whoseprejudice were all on the side of the government, afterwards said thathe could see in Cornish's deportment nothing but the natural indignationof an innocent man slain under the forms of law. The head of themurdered magistrate was placed over the Guildhall. [469]

Black as this case was, it was not the blackest which disgraced thesessions of that autumn at the Old Bailey. Among the persons concernedin the Rye House plot was a man named James Burton. By his ownconfession he had been present when the design of assassination wasdiscussed by his accomplices. When the conspiracy was detected, a rewardwas offered for his apprehension. He was saved from death by an ancientmatron of the Baptist persuasion, named Elizabeth Gaunt. This woman, with the peculiar manners and phraseology which then distinguished hersect, had a large charity. Her life was passed in relieving the unhappyof all religious denominations, and she was well known as a constantvisitor of the gaols. Her political and theological opinions, as well asher compassionate disposition, led her to do everything in her power forBurton. She procured a boat which took him to Gravesend, where he goton board of a ship bound for Amsterdam. At the moment of parting sheput into his hand a sum of money which, for her means, was very large. Burton, after living some time in exile, returned to England withMonmouth, fought at Sedgemoor, fled to London, and took refuge in thehouse of John Fernley, a barber in Whitechapel. Fernley was very poor. He was besieged by creditors. He knew that a reward of a hundred poundshad been offered by the government for the apprehension of Burton. Butthe honest man was incapable of betraying one who, in extreme peril, hadcome under the shadow of his roof. Unhappily it was soon noised abroadthat the anger of James was more strongly excited against those whoharboured rebels than against the rebels themselves. He had publiclydeclared that of all forms of treason the hiding of traitors from hisvengeance was the most unpardonable. Burton knew this. He deliveredhimself up to the government; and he gave information against Fernleyand Elizabeth Gaunt. They were brought to trial. The villain whoselife they had preserved had the heart and the forehead to appear asthe principal witness against them. They were convicted. Fernley wassentenced to the gallows, Elizabeth Gaunt to the stake. Even afterall the horrors of that year, many thought it impossible that thesejudgments should be carried into execution. But the King was withoutpity. Fernley was hanged. Elizabeth Gaunt was burned alive at Tyburn onthe same day on which Cornish suffered death in Cheapside. She left apaper written, indeed, in no graceful style, yet such as was read bymany thousands with compassion and horror. "My fault, " she said, "wasone which a prince might well have forgiven. I did but relieve a poorfamily; and lo! I must die for it. " She complained of the insolence ofthe 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 victimshad been sacrificed. In so far as they had injured herself, she forgavethem: but, in that they were implacable enemies of that good cause whichwould yet revive and flourish, she left them to the judgment of the Kingof Kings. To the last she preserved a tranquil courage, which remindedthe spectators of the most heroic deaths of which they had read in Fox. William Penn, for whom exhibitions which humane men generally avoid seemto have had a strong attraction, hastened from Cheapside, where he hadseen Cornish hanged, to Tyburn, in order to see Elizabeth Gaunt burned. He afterwards related that, when she calmly disposed the straw about herin such a manner as to shorten her sufferings, all the bystanders burstinto tears. It was much noticed that, while the foulest judicial murderwhich had disgraced even those times was perpetrating, a tempest burstforth, such as had not been known since that great hurricane which hadraged round the deathbed of Oliver. The oppressed 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 consolationfrom thinking that heaven was bearing awful testimony against theiniquity which afflicted the earth. Since that terrible day no woman hassuffered death in England for any political offence. [470]

It was not thought that Goodenough had yet earned his pardon. Thegovernment was bent on destroying a victim of no high rank, a surgeon inthe City, named Bateman. He had attended Shaftesbury professionally, andhad been a zealous Exclusionist. He may possibly have been privy to theWhig plot; but it is certain that he had not been one of the leadingconspirators; for, in the great mass of depositions published by thegovernment, his name occurs only once, and then not in connection withany crime bordering on high treason. From his indictment, and from thescanty account which remains of his trial, it seems clear that he wasnot even accused of participating in the design of murdering the royalbrothers. The malignity with which so obscure a man, guilty of so slightan offence, was hunted down, while traitors far more criminal andfar more eminent were allowed to ransom themselves by giving evidenceagainst him, seemed to require explanation; and a disgracefulexplanation was found. When Oates, after his scourging, was carried intoNewgate insensible, and, as all thought, in the last agony, he had beenbled and his wounds had been dressed by Bateman. This was an offence notto be forgiven. Bateman was arrested and indicted. The witnesses againsthim were men of infamous character, men, too, who were swearing fortheir own lives. None of them had yet got his pardon; and it was apopular saying, that they fished for prey, like tame cormorants, withropes round their necks. The prisoner, stupefied by illness, was unableto articulate, or to understand what passed. His son and daughter stoodby him at the bar. They read as well as they could some notes which hehad set down, and examined his witnesses. It was to little purpose. Hewas convicted, hanged, and quartered. [471]

Never, not even under the tyranny of Laud, had the condition of thePuritans been so deplorable as at that time. Never had spies been soactively employed in detecting congregations. Never had magistrates, grand jurors, rectors and churchwardens been so much on the alert. ManyDissenters were cited before the ecclesiastical courts. Others found itnecessary to purchase the connivance of the agents of the government bypresents of hogsheads of wine, and of gloves stuffed with guineas. Itwas impossible for the separatists to pray together without precautionssuch as are employed by coiners and receivers of stolen goods. Theplaces of meeting were frequently changed. Worship was performedsometimes just before break of day and sometimes at dead of night. Roundthe building where the little flock was gathered sentinels were postedto give the alarm if a stranger drew near. The minister in disguise wasintroduced through the garden and the back yard. In some houses therewere trap doors through which, in case of danger, he might descend. Where Nonconformists lived next door to each other, the walls were oftenbroken open, and secret passages were made from dwelling to dwelling. Nopsalm was sung; and many contrivances were used to prevent the voiceof the preacher, in his moments of fervour, from being heard beyond thewalls. Yet, with all this care, it was often found impossible to eludethe vigilance of informers. In the suburbs of London, especially, thelaw was enforced with the utmost rigour. Several opulent gentlemen wereaccused of holding conventicles. Their houses were strictly searched, and distresses were levied to the amount of many thousands of pounds. 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 Middlesexjustice who had learned that a nightly prayer meeting was held in agravel pit about two miles from London, took with him a strong body ofconstables, broke in upon the assembly, and seized the preacher. Butthe congregation, which consisted of about two hundred men, soon rescuedtheir pastor and put the magistrate and his officers to flight. [472]This, however, was no ordinary occurrence. In general the Puritan spiritseemed to be more effectually cowed at this conjuncture than at anymoment before or since. The Tory pamphleteers boasted that not onefanatic dared to move tongue or pen in defence of his religiousopinions. Dissenting ministers, however blameless in life, howevereminent for learning and abilities, could not venture to walk thestreets for fear of outrages, which were not only not repressed, butencouraged, by those whose duty it was to preserve the peace. Somedivines of great fame were in prison. Among these was Richard Baxter. Others, who had, during a quarter of a century, borne up againstoppression, now lost heart, and quitted the kingdom. Among these wasJohn Howe. Great numbers of persons who had been accustomed to frequentconventicles repaired to the parish churches. It was remarked that theschismatics who had been terrified into this show of conformity mighteasily be distinguished by the difficulty which they had in finding outthe collect, and by the awkward manner in which they bowed at the nameof Jesus. [473]

Through many years the autumn of 1685 was remembered by theNonconformists as a time of misery and terror. Yet in that autumn mightbe discerned the first faint indications of a great turn of fortune;and before eighteen months had elapsed, the intolerant King and theintolerant Church were eagerly bidding against each other for thesupport of the party which both had so deeply injured. 

END OF VOL. I. 

*****

[Footnote 1: In this, and in the next chapter, I have very seldomthought it necessary to cite authorities: for, in these chapters, I havenot detailed events minutely, or used recondite materials; and the factswhich I mention are for the most part such that a person tolerably wellread in English history, if not already apprised of them, will at leastknow where to look for evidence of them. In the subsequent chapters Ishall carefully indicate the sources of my information. ]

[Footnote 2: This is excellently put by Mr. Hallam in the first chapterof his Constitutional History. ]

[Footnote 3: See a very curious paper which Strype believed to be inGardiner's handwriting. Ecclesiastical Memorials, Book 1. , Chap. Xvii. ]

[Footnote 4: These are Cranmer's own words. See the Appendix to Burnet'sHistory of the Reformation, Part 1. Book III. No. 21. Question 9. ]

[Footnote 5: The Puritan historian, Neal, after censuring the crueltywith which she treated the sect to which he belonged, concludes thus:"However, notwithstanding all these blemishes, Queen Elizabeth standsupon record as a wise and politic princess, for delivering her kingdomfrom the difficulties in which it was involved at her accession, forpreserving the Protestant reformation against the potent attempts of thePope, the Emperor, and King of Spain abroad, and the Queen of Scots andher Popish subjects at home. .. . She was the glory of the age in whichshe lived, and will be the admiration of posterity. "--History of thePuritans, Part I. Chap. Viii. ]

[Footnote 6: On this subject, Bishop Cooper's language is remarkablyclear and strong. He maintains, in his Answer to Martin Marprelate, printed in 1589, "that no form of church government is divinelyordained; that Protestant communities, in establishing different forms, have only made a legitimate use of their Christian liberty; andthat episcopacy is peculiarly suited to England, because the Englishconstitution is monarchical. " All those Churches, " says the Bishop, "in which the Gospell, in these daies, after great darknesse, was firstrenewed, and the learned men whom God sent to instruct them, I doubt notbut have been directed by the Spirite of God to retaine this liberty, that, in external government and other outward orders; they might choosesuch as they thought in wisedome and godlinesse to be most convenientfor the state of their countrey and disposition of their people. Whythen should this liberty that other countreys have used under aniecolour be wrested from us? I think it therefore great presumption andboldnesse that some of our nation, and those, whatever they may thinkof themselves, not of the greatest wisedome and skill, should take uponthem to controlle the whole realme, and to binde both prince and peoplein respect of conscience to alter the present state, and tie themselvesto a certain platforme devised by some of our neighbours, which, in thejudgment of many wise and godly persons, is most unfit for the state ofa Kingdome. "]

[Footnote 7: Strype's Life of Grindal, Appendix to Book II. No. Xvii. ]

[Footnote 8: Canon 55, of 1603. ]

[Footnote 9: Joseph Hall, then dean of Worcester, and afterwards bishopof Norwich, was one of the commissioners. In his life of himself, hesays: "My unworthiness was named for one of the assistants of thathonourable, grave, and reverend meeting. " To high churchmen thishumility will seem not a little out of place. ]

[Footnote 10: It was by the Act of Uniformity, passed after theRestoration, that persons not episcopally ordained were, for the firsttime, made incapable of holding benefices. No man was more zealous forthis law than Clarendon. Yet he says: "This was new; for there had beenmany, and at present there were some, who possessed benefices with cureof souls and other ecclesiastical promotions, who had never receivedorders but in France or Holland; and these men must now receive newordination, which had been always held unlawful in the Church, or bythis act of parliament must be deprived of their livelihood which theyenjoyed in the most flourishing and peaceable time of the Church. "]

[Footnote 11: Peckard's Life of Ferrar; The Arminian Nunnery, or a BriefDescription of the late erected monastical Place called the ArminianNunnery, at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, 1641. ]

[Footnote 12: The correspondence of Wentworth seems to me fully to bearout what I have said in the text. To transcribe all the passageswhich have led me to the conclusion at which I have arrived, would beimpossible, nor would it be easy to make a better selection than hasalready been made by Mr. Hallam. I may, however direct the attention ofthe reader particularly to the very able paper which Wentworth drew uprespecting the affairs of the Palatinate. The date is March 31, 1637. ]

[Footnote 13: These are Wentworth's own words. See his letter to Laud, dated Dec. 16, 1634. ]

[Footnote 14: See his report to Charles for the year 1639. ]

[Footnote 15: See his letter to the Earl of Northumberland, dated July30, 1638. ]

[Footnote 16: How little compassion for the bear had to do with thematter is sufficiently proved by the following extract from a paperentitled A perfect Diurnal of some Passages of Parliament, and fromother 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 aboutNewark, and were brought into country towns constantly on the Lord'sday to be baited, such is the religion those here related would settleamongst us; and, if any went about to hinder or but speak against theirdamnable profanations, they were presently noted as Roundheadsand Puritans, and sure to be plundered for it. But some of ColonelCromwell's forces coming by accident into Uppingham town, in Rutland, on the Lord's day, found these bears playing there in the usual manner, and, in the height of their sport, caused them to be seized upon, tiedto a tree and shot. " This was by no means a solitary instance. ColonelPride, when Sheriff of Surrey, ordered the beasts in the bear gardenof Southwark to be killed. He is represented by a loyal satirist asdefending the act thus: "The first thing that is upon my spirits is thekilling of the bears, for which the people hate me, and call me all thenames in the rainbow. But did not David kill a bear? Did not the LordDeputy Ireton kill a bear? Did not another lord of ours kill fivebears?"-Last Speech and Dying Words of Thomas pride. ]

[Footnote 17: See Penn's New Witnesses proved Old Heretics, andMuggleton's works, passim. ]

[Footnote 18: I am happy to say, that, since this passage was written, the territories both of the Rajah of Nagpore and of the King of Oudehave been added to the British dominions. (1857. )]

[Footnote 19: The most sensible thing said in the House of Commons, onthis subject, came from Sir William Coventry: "Our ancestors never diddraw a line to circumscribe prerogative and liberty. "]

[Footnote 20: Halifax was undoubtedly the real author of the Characterof a Trimmer, which, for a time, went under the name of his kinsman, SirWilliam Coventry. ]

[Footnote 21: North's Examen, 231, 574. ]

[Footnote 22: A peer who was present has described the effect ofHalifax's oratory in words which I will quote, because, though theyhave been long in print, they are probably known to few even of themost curious and diligent readers of history. "Of powerful eloquence andgreat parts were the Duke's enemies who did assert the Bill; but a nobleLord appeared against it who, that day, in all the force of speech, inreason, in arguments of what could concern the public or the privateinterests of men, in honour, in conscience, in estate, did outdo himselfand every other man; and in fine his conduct and his parts wereboth victorious, and by him all the wit and malice of that party wasoverthrown. " This passage is taken from a memoir of Henry Earl ofPeterborough, in a volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by RobertHalstead, " fol. 1685. The name of Halstead is fictitious. The realauthors were the Earl of Peterborough himself and his chaplain. The bookis extremely rare. Only twenty-four copies were printed, two of whichare now in the British Museum. Of these two one belonged to George theFourth, and the other to Mr. Grenville. ]

[Footnote 23: This is mentioned in the curious work entitled "Ragguagliodella solenne Comparsa fatta in Roma gli otto di Gennaio, 1687, dall'illustrissimo et eccellentissimo signor Conte di Castlemaine. "]

[Footnote 24: North's Examen, 69. ]

[Footnote 25: Lord Preston, who was envoy at Paris, wrote thence toHalifax as follows: "I find that your Lordship lies still under the samemisfortune of being no favourite to this court; and Monsieur Barillondare not do you the honor to shine upon you, since his master frowneth. They know very well your lordship's qualifications which make themfear and consequently hate you; and be assured, my lord, if all theirstrength can send you to Rufford, it shall be employed for that end. Twothings, I hear, they particularly object against you, your secrecy, andyour being incapable of being corrupted. Against these two things I knowthey have declared. " The date of the letter is October 5, N. S. 1683]

[Footnote 26: During the interval which has elapsed since this chapterwas written, England has continued to advance rapidly in materialprosperity, I have left my text nearly as it originally stood; but Ihave added a few notes which may enable the reader to form some notionof the progress which has been made during the last nine years; and, in general, I would desire him to remember that there is scarcely adistrict which is not more populous, or a source of wealth which is notmore productive, at present than in 1848. (1857. )]

[Footnote 27: Observations on the Bills of Mortality, by Captain JohnGraunt (Sir William Petty), chap. Xi. ]

[Footnote 28:

 "She doth comprehend Full fifteen hundred thousand which do spend Their days within. "

 --Great Britain's Beauty, 1671. ]

[Footnote 29: Isaac Vossius, De Magnitudine Urbium Sinarum, 1685. Vossius, as we learn from Saint Evremond, talked on this subject oftenerand longer than fashionable circles cared to listen. ]

[Footnote 30: King's Natural and Political Observations, 1696 Thisvaluable treatise, which ought to be read as the author wrote it, andnot as garbled by Davenant, will be found in some editions of Chalmers'sEstimate. ]

[Footnote 31: Dalrymple's Appendix to Part II. Book I, The practice ofreckoning the population by sects was long fashionable. Gulliver saysof the King of Brobdignag; "He laughed at my odd arithmetic, as hewas pleased to call it, in reckoning the numbers of our people bya computation drawn from the several sects among us in religion andpolitics. "]

[Footnote 32: Preface to the Population Returns of 1831. ]

[Footnote 33: Statutes 14 Car. II. C. 22. ; 18 & 19 Car. II. C. 3. , 29 &30 Car. II. C. 2. ]

[Footnote 34: Nicholson and Bourne, Discourse on the Ancient State ofthe Border, 1777. ]

[Footnote 35: Gray's Journal of a Tour in the Lakes, Oct. 3, 1769. ]

[Footnote 36: North's Life of Guildford; Hutchinson's History ofCumberland, Parish of Brampton. ]

[Footnote 37: See Sir Walter Scott's Journal, Oct. 7, 1827, in his Lifeby Mr. Lockhart. ]

[Footnote 38: Dalrymple, Appendix to Part II. Book I. The returns ofthe hearth money lead to nearly the same conclusion. The hearths in theprovince of York were not a sixth of the hearths of England. ]

[Footnote 39: I do not, of course, pretend to strict accuracy here; butI believe that whoever will take the trouble to compare the last returnsof hearth money in the reign of William the Third with the census of1841, will come to a conclusion not very different from mine. ]

[Footnote 40: There are in the Pepysian Library some ballads of that ageon the chimney money. I will give a specimen or two:

 "The good old dames whenever they the chimney man espied, Unto their nooks they haste away, their pots and pipkins hide. There is not one old dame in ten, and search the nation through, But, if you talk of chimney men, will spare a curse or two. "

 Again:

 "Like plundering soldiers they'd enter the door, And make a distress on the goods of the poor. While frighted poor children distractedly cried; This nothing abated their insolent pride. "

 In the British Museum there are doggrel verses composed on the same subject and in the same spirit:

 "Or, if through poverty it be 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. "

I take this opportunity the first which occurs, of acknowledging mostgrateful the kind and liberal manner in which the Master and Vicemasterof Magdalei College, Cambridge, gave me access to the valuablecollections of Pepys. ]

[Footnote 41: My chief authorities for this financial statement will befound in the Commons' Journal, March 1, and March 20, 1688-9. ]

[Footnote 42: See, for example, the picture of the mound at Marlborough, in Stukeley's Dinerarium Curiosum. ]

[Footnote 43: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. ]

[Footnote 44: 13 and 14 Car. II. C. 3; 15 Car. II. C. 4. Chamberlayne'sState of England, 1684. ]

[Footnote 45: Dryden, in his Cymon and Iphigenia, expressed, with hisusual keenness and energy, the sentiments which had been fashionableamong the sycophants of James the Second:--

 "The country rings around with loud alarms, And raw in fields the rude militia swarms; Mouths without hands, maintained at vast expense, Stout once a month they march, a blustering band, And ever, but in time of need at hand. This was the morn when, issuing on the guard, Drawn up in rank and file, they stood prepared Of seeming arms to make a short essay. Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day. "]

[Footnote 46: Most of the materials which I have used for thisaccount of the regular army will be found in the Historical Records ofRegiments, published by command of King William the Fourth, and underthe direction of the Adjutant General. See also Chamberlayne's State ofEngland, 1684; Abridgment of the English Military Discipline, printed byespecial command, 1688; Exercise of Foot, by their Majesties' command, 1690. ]

[Footnote 47: I refer to a despatch of Bonrepaux to Seignelay, datedFeb. 8/18. 1686. It was transcribed for Mr. Fox from the Frencharchives, during the peace of Amiens, and, with the other materialsbrought together by that great man, was entrusted to me by the kindnessof the late Lady Holland, and of the present Lord Holland. I ought toadd that, even in the midst of the troubles which have lately agitatedParis, I found no difficulty in obtaining, from the liberality ofthe functionaries there, extracts supplying some chasms in Mr. Fox'scollection. (1848. )]

[Footnote 48: My information respecting the condition of the navy, at this time, is chiefly derived from Pepys. His report, presented toCharles the Second in May, 1684, has never, I believe, been printed. Themanuscript is at Magdalene College Cambridge. At Magdalene College isalso a valuable manuscript containing a detailed account of the maritimeestablishments of the country in December 1684. Pepys's "Memoirsrelating to the State of the Royal Navy for Ten Years determinedDecember, 1688, " and his diary and correspondence during his missionto Tangier, are in print. I have made large use of them. See alsoSheffield's Memoirs, Teonge's Diary, Aubrey's Life of Monk, the Life ofSir Cloudesley Shovel, 1708, Commons' Journals, March 1 and March 20. 1688-9. ]

[Footnote 49: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Commons' Journals, March 1, and March 20, 1688-9. In 1833, it was determined, after fullenquiry, that a hundred and seventy thousand barrels of gunpowder shouldconstantly be kept in store. ]

[Footnote 50: It appears from the records of the Admiralty, that Flagofficers were allowed half pay in 1668, Captains of first and secondrates not till 1674. ]

[Footnote 51: Warrant in the War Office Records; dated March 26, 1678. ]

[Footnote 52: Evelyn's Diary. Jan. 27, 1682. I have seen a privy seal, dated May 17. 1683, which confirms Evelyn's testimony. ]

[Footnote 53: James the Second sent Envoys to Spain, Sweden, andDenmark; yet in his reign the diplomatic expenditure was little morethan 30, 000£. A year. See the Commons' Journals, March 20, 1688-9. Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. ]

[Footnote 54: Carte's Life of Ormond. ]

[Footnote 55: Pepys's Diary, Feb. 14, 1668-9. ]

[Footnote 56: See the Report of the Bath and Montague case, which wasdecided by Lord Keeper Somers, in December, 1693. ]

[Footnote 57: During three quarters of a year, beginning from Christmas, 1689, the revenues of the see of Canterbury were received by an officerappointed by the crown. That officer's accounts are now in the BritishMuseum. (Lansdowne MSS. 885. ) The gross revenue for the three quarterswas not quite four thousand pounds; and the difference between the grossand the net revenue was evidently something considerable. ]

[Footnote 58: King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant onthe Balance of Trade. Sir W. Temple says, "The revenues of a House ofCommons have seldom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds. " Memoirs, Third Part. ]

[Footnote 59: Langton's Conversations with Chief Justice Hale, 1672. ]

[Footnote 60: Commons' Journals, April 27, 1689; Chamberlayne's State ofEngland, 1684. ]

[Footnote 61: See the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. ]

[Footnote 62: King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on theBalance of Trade. ]

[Footnote 63: 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. In some of his maps the roadsthrough enclosed country are marked by lines, and the roads throughunenclosed country by dots. The proportion of unenclosed country, which, if cultivated, must have been wretchedly cultivated, seems to have beenvery great. From Abingdon to Gloucester, for example, a distance offorty or fifty miles, there was not a single enclosure, and scarcely oneenclosure between Biggleswade and Lincoln. ]

[Footnote 64: Large copies of these highly interesting drawings are inthe noble collection bequeathed by Mr. Grenville to the British Museum. See particularly the drawings of Exeter and Northampton. ]

[Footnote 65: Evelyn's Diary, June 2, 1675. ]

[Footnote 66: See White's Selborne; Bell's History of BritishQuadrupeds, Gentleman's Recreation, 1686; Aubrey's Natural Historyof Wiltshire, 1685; Morton's History of Northamptonshire, 1712;Willoughby's Ornithology, by Ray, 1678; Latham's General Synopsis ofBirds; and Sir Thomas Browne's Account of Birds found in Norfolk. ]

[Footnote 67: King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on theBalance of Trade. ]

[Footnote 68: See the Almanacks of 1684 and 1685. ]

[Footnote 69: See Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the BritishEmpire, Part III. Chap. I. Sec. 6. ]

[Footnote 70: King and Davenant as before The Duke of Newcastle onHorsemanship; Gentleman's Recreation, 1686. The "dappled Flanders mares"were marks of greatness in the time of Pope, and even later. The vulgarproverb, that the grey mare is the better horse, originated, I suspect, in the preference generally given to the grey mares of Flanders over thefinest coach horses of England. ]

[Footnote 71: See a curious note by Tonkin, in Lord De Dunstanville'sedition of Carew's Survey of Cornwall. ]

[Footnote 72: Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall, 1758. The quantityof copper now produced, I have taken from parliamentary returns. Davenant, in 1700, estimated the annual produce of all the mines ofEngland at between seven and eight hundred thousand pounds]

[Footnote 73: Philosophical Transactions, No. 53. Nov. 1669, No. 66. Dec. 1670, No. 103. May 1674, No 156. Feb. 1683-4]

[Footnote 74: Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, 1677;Porter's Progress of the Nation. See also a remarkably perspicnoushistory, in small compass of the English iron works, in Mr. M'Culloch'sStatistical Account of the British Empire. ]

[Footnote 75: See Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684, 1687, Angliae, Metropolis, 1691; M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British EmpirePart III. Chap. Ii. (edition of 1847). In 1845 the quantity of coalbrought into London appeared, by the Parliamentary returns, to be3, 460, 000 tons. (1848. ) In 1854 the quantity of coal brought into Londonamounted to 4, 378, 000 tons. (1857. )]

[Footnote 76: My notion of the country gentleman of the seventeenthcentury has been derived from sources too numerous to be recapitulated. I must leave my description to the judgment of those who have studiedthe history and the lighter literature of that age. ]

[Footnote 77: In the eighteenth century the great increase in the valueof benefices produced a change. The younger sons of the nobility wereallured back to the clerical profession. Warburton in a letter toHurd, dated the 6th of July, 1762, mentions this change, which was thenrecent. "Our grandees have at last found their way back into the Church. I only wonder they have been so long about it. But be assured thatnothing but a new religious revolution, to sweep away the fragments thatHenry the Eighth left after banqueting his courtiers, will drive themout again. "]

[Footnote 78: See Heylin's Cyprianus Anglicus. ]

[Footnote 79: Eachard, Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy; Oldham, Satire addressed to a Friend about to leave the University; Tatler, 255, 258. That the English clergy were a lowborn class, is remarked in theTravels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, Appendix A. ]

[Footnote 80: "A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque artificum farragine, ecclesiae rector aut vicarius contemnitur et fit ludibrio. Gentis etfamiliae nitor sacris ordinibus pollutus censetur: foeminisque natalitioinsignibus unicum inculcatur saepius praeceptum, ne modestiae naufragiumfaciant, aut, (quod idem auribus tam delicatulis sonat, ) ne clerico senuptas dari patiantur. "--Angliae Notitia, by T. Wood, of New CollegeOxford 1686. ]

[Footnote 81: Clarendon's Life, ii. 21. ]

[Footnote 82: See the injunctions of 1559, In Bishop Sparrow'sCollection. Jeremy Collier, in his Essay on Pride, speaks of thisinjunction with a bitterness which proves that his own pride had notbeen effectually tamed. ]

[Footnote 83: Roger and Abigail in Fletcher's Scornful Lady, Bulland the Nurse in Vanbrugh's Relapse, Smirk and Susan in Shadwell'sLancashire Witches, are instances. ]

[Footnote 84: Swift's Directions to Servants. In Swift's Remarks on theClerical Residence Bill, he describes the family of an English vicarthus: "His wife is little better than a Goody, in her birth, education, or dress. .. .. His daughters shall go to service, or be sent apprenticeto the sempstress of the next town. "]

[Footnote 85: Even in Tom Jones, published two generations later. Mrs. Seagrim, the wife of a gamekeeper, and Mrs. Honour, a waitingwoman, boast of their descent from clergymen, "It is to be hoped, " saysFielding, "such instances will in future ages, when some provision ismade for the families of the inferior clergy, appear stranger than theycan be thought at present. "]

[Footnote 86: This distinction between country clergy and town clergy isstrongly marked by Eachard, and cannot but be observed by every personwho has studied the ecclesiastical history of that age. ]

[Footnote 87: Nelson's Life of Bull. As to the extreme difficulty whichthe country clergy found in procuring books, see the Life of ThomasBray, the founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. ]

[Footnote 88: "I have frequently heard him (Dryden) own with pleasure, that if he had any talent for English prose it was owing to his havingoften read the writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson. "--Congreve'sDedication of Dryden's Plays. ]

[Footnote 89: I have taken Davenant's estimate, which is a little lowerthan King's. ]

[Footnote 90: Evelvn's Diary, June 27. 1654; Pepys's Diary, June 13. 1668; Roger North's Lives of Lord Keeper Guildford, and of Sir DudleyNorth; Petty's Political Arithmetic. I have taken Petty's facts, but, indrawing inferences from them, I have been guided by King and Davenant, who, though not abler men than he, had the advantage of coming afterhim. As to the kidnapping for which Bristol was infamous, see North'sLife of Guildford, 121, 216, and the harangue of Jeffreys on thesubject, in the Impartial History of his Life and Death, printed withthe Bloody Assizes. His style was, as usual, coarse, but I cannot reckonthe reprimand which he gave to the magistrates of Bristol among hiscrimes. ]

[Footnote 91: Fuller's Worthies; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 17, 1671; Journalof T. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, Jan. 1663-4; Blomefield'sHistory of Norfolk; History of the City and County of Norwich, 2 vols. 1768. ]

[Footnote 92: The population of York appears, from the return ofbaptisms and burials in Drake's History, to have been about 13, 000 in1730. Exeter had only 17, 000 inhabitants in 1801. The population ofWorcester was numbered just before the siege in 1646. See Nash's Historyof Worcestershire. I have made allowance for the increase which must besupposed to have taken place in forty years. In 1740, the population ofNottingham was found, by enumeration, to be just 10, 000. See Dering'sHistory. The population of Gloucester may readily be inferred from thenumber of houses which King found in the returns of hearth money, and from the number of births and burials which is given in Atkyns'sHistory. The population of Derby was 4, 000 in 1712. See Wolley's MS. History, quoted in Lyson's Magna Britannia. The population of Shrewsburywas ascertained, in 1695, by actual enumeration. As to the gaieties ofShrewsbury, see Farquhar's Recruiting Officer. Farquhar's descriptionis borne out by a ballad in the Pepysian Library, of which the burden is"Shrewsbury for me. "]

[Footnote 93: Blome's Britannia, 1673; Aikin's Country round Manchester;Manchester Directory, 1845: Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture. The best information which I have been able to find, touching thepopulation of Manchester in the seventeenth century is contained ina paper drawn up by the Reverend R. Parkinson, and published in theJournal of the Statistical Society for October 1842. ]

[Footnote 94: Thoresby's Ducatus Leodensis; Whitaker's Loidis andElmete; Wardell's Municipal History of the Borough of Leeds. (1848. ) In1851 Leeds had 172, 000 Inhabitants. (1857. )]

[Footnote 95: Hunter's History of Hallamshire. (1848. ) In 1851 thepopulation of Sheffield had increased to 135, 000. (1857. )]

[Footnote 96: Blome's Britannia, 1673; Dugdale's Warwickshire, North'sExamen, 321; Preface to Absalom and Achitophel; Hutton's History ofBirmingham; Boswell's Life of Johnson. In 1690 the burials at Birminghamwere 150, the baptisms 125. I think it probable that the annualmortality was little less than one in twenty-five. In London it wasconsiderably greater. A historian of Nottingham, half a century later, boasted of the extraordinary salubrity of his town, where the annualmortality was one in thirty. See Doring's History of Nottingham. (1848. )In 1851 the population of Birmingham had increased to 222, 000. (1857. )]

[Footnote 97: Blome's Britannia; Gregson's Antiquities of the CountyPalatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Part II. ; Petition from Liverpool inthe Privy Council Book, May 10, 1686. In 1690 the burials at Liverpoolwere 151, the baptisms 120. In 1844 the net receipt of the customs atLiverpool was 4, 366, 526£. 1s. 8d. (1848. ) In 1851 Liverpool contained375, 000 inhabitants, (1857. )]

[Footnote 98: Atkyne's Gloucestershire. ]

[Footnote 99: Magna Britannia; Grose's Antiquities; New BrighthelmstoneDirectory. ]

[Footnote 100: Tour in Derbyshire, by Thomas Browne, son of Sir Thomas. ]

[Footnote 101: Memoires de Grammont; Hasted's History of Kent; TunbridgeWells, a Comedy, 1678; Causton's Tunbridgialia, 1688; Metellus, a poemon Tunbridge Wells, 1693. ]

[Footnote 102: See Wood's History of Bath, 1719; Evelyn's Diary, June27, 1654; Pepys's Diary, June 12, 1668; Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum;Collinson's Somersetshire; Dr. Peirce's History and Memoirs of the Bath, 1713, Book I. Chap. Viii. Obs. 2, 1684. I have consulted severalold maps and pictures of Bath, particularly one curious map which issurrounded by views of the principal buildings. It Dears the date of1717. ]

[Footnote 103: According to King 530, 000. (1848. ) In 1851 the populationof London exceeded, 2, 300, 000. (1857. )]

[Footnote 104: Macpherson's History of Commerce; Chalmers's Estimate;Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. The tonnage of the steamersbelonging to the port of London was, at the end of 1847, about 60, 000tons. The customs of the port, from 1842 to 1845, very nearly averaged11, 000, 000£. (1848. ) In 1854 the tonnage of the steamers of the port ofLondon amounted to 138, 000 tons, without reckoning vessels of less thanfifty tons. (1857. )]

[Footnote 105: Lyson's Environs of London. The baptisms at Chelsea, between 1680 and 1690, were only 42 a year. ]

[Footnote 106: Cowley, Discourse of Solitude. ]

[Footnote 107: The fullest and most trustworthy information about thestate of the buildings of London at this time is to be derived from themaps and drawings in the British Museum and in the Pepysian Library. The badness of the bricks in the old buildings of London is particularlymentioned in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. There is an account ofthe works at Saint Paul's in Ward's London Spy. I am almost ashamed toquote such nauseous balderdash; but I have been forced to descend evenlower, if possible, in search of materials. ]

[Footnote 108: Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 20. 1672. ]

[Footnote 109: Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North. ]

[Footnote 110: North's Examen. This amusing writer has preserveda specimen of the sublime raptures in which the Pindar of the Cityindulged:--

 "The worshipful sir John Moor! After age that name adore!"]

[Footnote 111: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Anglie Metropolis, 1690; Seymour's London, 1734. ]

[Footnote 112: North's Examen, 116; Wood, Ath. Ox. Shaftesbury; The Dukeof B. 's Litany. ]

[Footnote 113: Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. ]

[Footnote 114: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Pennant's London;Smith's Life of Nollekens. ]

[Footnote 115: Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 10, 1683, Jan. 19, 1685-6. ]

[Footnote 116: Stat. 1 Jac. II. C. 22; Evelyn's Diary, Dec, 7, 1684. ]

[Footnote 117: Old General Oglethorpe, who died in 1785, used to boastthat he had shot birds here in Anne's reign. See Pennant's London, andthe Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1785. ]

[Footnote 118: The pest field will be seen in maps of London as late asthe end of George the First's reign. ]

[Footnote 119: See a very curious plan of Covent Garden made about 1690, and engraved for Smith's History of Westminster. See also Hogarth'sMorning, painted while some of the houses in the Piazza were stilloccupied by people of fashion. ]

[Footnote 120: London Spy, Tom Brown's comical View of London andWestminster; Turner's Propositions for the employing of the Poor, 1678;Daily Courant and Daily Journal of June 7, 1733; Case of Michael v. Allestree, in 1676, 2 Levinz, p. 172. Michael had been run over bytwo horses which Allestree was breaking in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The declaration set forth that the defendant "porta deux chivalsungovernable en un coach, et improvide, incante, et absque debitaconsideratione ineptitudinis loci la eux drive pur eux faire tractableet apt pur an coach, quels chivals, pur ceo que, per leur ferocite, nepoientestre rule, curre sur le plaintiff et le noie. "]

[Footnote 121: Stat. 12 Geo. I. C. 25; Commons' Journals, Feb. 25, March2, 1725-6; London Gardener, 1712; Evening Post, March, 23, 1731. I havenot been able to find this number of the Evening Post; I thereforequote it on the faith of Mr. Malcolm, who mentions it in his History ofLondon. ]

[Footnote 122: Lettres sur les Anglois, written early in the reign ofWilliam the Third; Swift's City Shower; Gay's Trivia. Johnson used torelate a curious conversation which he had with his mother about givingand taking the wall. ]

[Footnote 123: Oldham's Imitation of the 3d Satire of Juvenal, 1682;Shadwell's Scourers, 1690. Many other authorities will readily occurto all who are acquainted with the popular literature of that and thesucceeding generation. It may be suspected that some of the TityreTus, like good Cavaliers, broke Milton's windows shortly after theRestoration. I am confident that he was thinking of those pests ofLondon 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 Belial, flown With innocence and wine. "]

[Footnote 124: Seymour's London. ]

[Footnote 125: Angliae Metropolis, 1690, Sect. 17, entitled, "Of the newlights"; Seymour's London. ]

[Footnote 126: Stowe's Survey of London; Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia;Ward's London Spy; Stat. 8 & 9 Gul. III. Cap. 27. ]

[Footnote 127: See Sir Roger North's account of the way in which Wrightwas made a judge, and Clarendon's account of the way in which Sir GeorgeSavile was made a peer. ]

[Footnote 128: The sources from which I have drawn my information aboutthe state of the Court are too numerous to recapitulate. Among themare the Despatches of Barillon, Van Citters, Ronquillo, and Adda, theTravels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, the works of Roger North, the Diares ofPepys, Evelyn, and Teonge, and the Memoirs of Grammont and Reresby. ]

[Footnote 129: The chief peculiarity of this dialect was that, ina large class of words, the O was pronounced like A. Thus Lord waspronounced Lard. See Vanbrugh's Relapse. Lord Sunderland was a greatmaster of this court tune, as Roger North calls it; and Titus Oatesaffected it in the hope of passing for a fine gentleman. Examen, 77, 254. ]

[Footnote 130: Lettres sur les Anglois; Tom Brown's Tour; Ward's LondonSpy; The Character of a Coffee House, 1673; Rules and Orders of theCoffee House, 1674; Coffee Houses vindicated, 1675; A Satyr againstCoffee; North's Examen, 138; Life of Guildford, 152; Life of Sir DudleyNorth, 149; Life of Dr. Radcliffe, published by Curll in 1715. Theliveliest description of Will's is in the City and Country Mouse. Thereis a remarkable passage about the influence of the coffee house oratorsin Halstead's Succinct Genealogies, printed in 1685. ]

[Footnote 131: Century of inventions, 1663, No. 68. ]

[Footnote 132: North's Life of Guildford, 136. ]

[Footnote 133: Thoresby's Diary Oct. 21, 1680, Aug. 3, 1712. ]

[Footnote 134: Pepys's Diary, June 12 and 16, 1668. ]

[Footnote 135: Ibid. Feb. 28, 1660. ]

[Footnote 136: Thoresby's Diary, May 17, 1695. ]

[Footnote 137: Ibid. Dec. 27, 1708. ]

[Footnote 138: Tour in Derbyshire, by J. Browne, son of Sir ThomasBrowne, 1662; Cotton's Angler, 1676. ]

[Footnote 139: Correspondence of Henry Earl of Clarendon, Dec. 30, 1685, Jan. 1, 1686. ]

[Footnote 140: Postlethwaite's Dictionary, Roads; History of Hawkhurst, in the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica. ]

[Footnote 141: Annals of Queen Anne, 1703, Appendix, No. 3. ]

[Footnote 142: 15 Car. II. C. 1. ]

[Footnote 143: The evils of the old system are strikingly set forthin many petitions which appear in the Commons' Journal of 172 5/6. Howfierce an opposition was offered to the new system may be learned fromthe Gentleman's Magazine of 1749. ]

[Footnote 144: Postlethwaite's Dict. , Roads. ]

[Footnote 145: Loidis and Elmete; Marshall's Rural Economy of England, In 1739 Roderic Random came from Scotland to Newcastle on a packhorse. ]

[Footnote 146: Cotton's Epistle to J. Bradshaw. ]

[Footnote 147: Anthony a Wood's Life of himself. ]

[Footnote 148: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. See also the listof stage coaches and waggons at the end of the book, entitled AngliaeMetropolis, 1690. ]

[Footnote 149: John Cresset's Reasons for suppressing Stage Coaches, 1672. These reason were afterwards inserted in a tract, entitled "TheGrand Concern of England explained, 1673. " Cresset's attack on stagecoaches called forth some answers which I have consulted. ]

[Footnote 150: Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; North's Examen, 105; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 9, 10, 1671. ]

[Footnote 151: See the London Gazette, May 14, 1677, August 4, 1687, Dec. 5, 1687. The last confession of Augustin King, who was the son ofan eminent divine, and had been educated at Cambridge but was hanged atColchester in March, 1688, is highly curious. ]

[Footnote 152: Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face at Will'scoffeehouse? Gibbet. Yes sir, and at White's too. --Beaux' Stratagem. ]

[Footnote 153: Gent's History of York. Another marauder of the samedescription, named Biss, was hanged at Salisbury in 1695. In a balladwhich is in the Pepysian Library, he is represented as defending himselfthus before the Judge:

 "What say you now, my honoured Lord What harm was there in this? Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred By brave, freehearted Biss. "]

[Footnote 154: Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published immediately after theexecution. Oates's Eikwg basilikh, Part I. ]

[Footnote 155: See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison'sHistorical Description of the Island of Great Britain, and Pepys'saccount of his tour in the summer of 1668. The excellence of the Englishinns is noticed in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. ]

[Footnote 156: Stat. 12 Car. II. C. 36; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Angliae Metropolis, 1690; London Gazette, June 22, 1685, August15, 1687. ]

[Footnote 157: Lond. Gaz. , Sept. 14, 1685. ]

[Footnote 158: Smith's Current intelligence, March 30, and April 3, 1680. ]

[Footnote 159: Anglias Metropolis, 1690. ]

[Footnote 160: Commons' Journals, Sept. 4, 1660, March 1, 1688-9;Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV. ]

[Footnote 161: I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year1856 the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than 2, 800, 000£. ; andthe net receipt was about 1, 200, 000£. The number of letters conveyed bypost was 478, 000, 000. (1857). ]

[Footnote 162: London Gazette, May 5, and 17, 1680. ]

[Footnote 163: There is a very curious, and, I should think, uniquecollection of these papers in the British Museum. ]

[Footnote 164: For example, there is not a word in the Gazette aboutthe important parliamentary proceedings of November, 1685, or about thetrial and acquittal of the Seven Bishops. ]

[Footnote 165: Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject ofnewsletters, see the Examen, 133. ]

[Footnote 166: I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitudeto the family of my dear and honoured friend sir James Mackintoshfor confiding to me the materials collected by him at a time when hemeditated a work similar to that which I have undertaken. I have neverseen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists, within the samecompass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and privatearchives The judgment with which sir James in great masses of therudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected what wasworthless, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after himin the same mine. ]

[Footnote 167: Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printinghouses in 1724 will be found in Nichols's Literary Anecdotae of theeighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a fewyears in the number of presses, and yet there were thirty-four countiesin which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire. ]

[Footnote 168: Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life ofBaxter; Nonconformist Memorial. ]

[Footnote 169: Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for hiswhole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of letters. Evenwhen Franklin first visited London in 1724, circulating libraries wereunknown there. The crowd at the booksellers' shops in Little Britain ismentioned by Roger North in his life of his brother John. ]

[Footnote 170: One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter ofJames, had excellent natural abilities, had been educated by a Bishop, was fond of history and poetry and was regarded by very eminent men as asuperior woman. There is, in the library at the Hague, a superb EnglishBible which was delivered to her when she was crowned in WestminsterAbbey. In the titlepage are these words in her own hand, "This book wasgiven the King and I, at our crownation. Marie R. "]

[Footnote 171: Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greekprofessor at Cambridge, complained bitterly of the general neglect ofthe Greek tongue among the academical clergy. ]

[Footnote 172: Butler, in a satire of great asperity, says, "For, though to smelter words of Greek And Latin be the rhetorique Of pedants counted, and vainglorious, To smatter French is meritorious. "]

[Footnote 173: The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poemon the coronation of Charles the Second by Dryden, who certainly couldnot plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words from any foreigntongue:--

 "Hither in summer evenings you repair To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air. "]

[Footnote 174: Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practice with hisusual force and keenness. ]

[Footnote 175: The contrast will be found in Sir Walter Scott's editionof Dryden. ]

[Footnote 176: See the Life of Southern. By Shiels. ]

[Footnote 177: See Rochester's Trial of the Poets. ]

[Footnote 178: Some Account of the English Stage. ]

[Footnote 179: Life of Southern, by Shiels. ]

[Footnote 180: If any reader thinks my expressions too severe, I wouldadvise him to read Dryden's Epilogue to the Duke of Guise, and toobserve that it was spoken by a woman. ]

[Footnote 181: See particularly Harrington's Oceana. ]

[Footnote 182: See Sprat's History of the Royal Society. ]

[Footnote 183: Cowley's Ode to the Royal Society. ]

[Footnote 184:

 "Then we upon the globe's last verge shall go, And view the ocean leaning on the sky; From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know, And on the lunar world secretly pry. '] --Annus Mirabilis, 164]

[Footnote 185: North's Life of Guildford. ]

[Footnote 186: Pepys's Diary, May 30, 1667. ]

[Footnote 187: Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who, between the Restoration and the Revolution showed a bitter enmity tothe new philosophy, as it was then called. See the Satire on the RoyalSociety, and the Elephant in the Moon. ]

[Footnote 188: The eagerness with which the agriculturists of thatage tried experiments and introduced improvements is well described byAubrey. See the Natural history of Wiltshire, 1685. ]

[Footnote 189: Sprat's History of the Royal Society. ]

[Footnote 190: Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, London Gazette, May 31, 1683; North's Life of Guildford. ]

[Footnote 191: The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentionedin Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting. ]

[Footnote 192: Petty's Political Arithmetic. ]

[Footnote 193: Stat 5 Eliz. C. 4; Archaeologia, vol. Xi. ]

[Footnote 194: Plain and easy Method showing how the office of Overseerof the Poor may be managed, by Richard Dunning; 1st edition, 1685; 2dedition, 1686. ]

[Footnote 195: Cullum's History of Hawsted. ]

[Footnote 196: Ruggles on the Poor. ]

[Footnote 197: See, in Thurloe's State Papers, the memorandum of theDutch Deputies dated August 2-12, 1653. ]

[Footnote 198: The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barnstaple. See Smith's Memoirs of Wool, chapter lxviii. ]

[Footnote 199: This ballad is in the British Museum. The precise yearis not given; but the Imprimatur of Roger Lestrange fixes the datesufficiently for my purpose. I will quote some of the lines. The masterclothier is introduced speaking as follows:

 "In former ages we used to give, So 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 kind 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 forgain all our wealth and estate, By many poor men that work early and late. Then hey for the clothing trade! It goes on brave; We scorn for to toyl and moyl, nor yet to slave. Our workmen do work hard, but we live at ease, We go when we will, and we come when we please. "]

[Footnote 200: Chamberlayne's State of England; Petty's PoliticalArithmetic, chapter viii. ; Dunning's Plain and Easy Method; Firmin'sProposition for the Employing of the Poor. It ought to be observed thatFirmin was an eminent philanthropist. ]

[Footnote 201: King in his Natural and Political Conclusions roughlyestimated the common people of England at 880, 000 families. Of thesefamilies 440, 000, according to him ate animal food twice a week. Theremaining 440, 000, ate it not at all, or at most not oftener than once aweek. ]

[Footnote 202: Fourteenth Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, AppendixB. No. 2, Appendix C. No 1, 1848. Of the two estimates of the poor ratementioned in the text one was formed by Arthur Moore, the other, someyears later, by Richard Dunning. Moore's estimate will be found inDavenant's Essay on Ways and Means; Dunning's in Sir Frederic Eden'svaluable work on the poor. King and Davenant estimate the paupersand beggars in 1696, at the incredible number of 1, 330, 000 out of apopulation of 5, 500, 000. In 1846 the number of persons who receivedrelief appears from the official returns to have been only 1, 332, 089 outof a population of about 17, 000, 000. It ought also to be observed that, in those returns, a pauper must very often be reckoned more than once. I would advise the reader to consult De Foe's pamphlet entitled "GivingAlms no Charity, " and the Greenwich tables which will be found in Mr. M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary under the head Prices. ]

[Footnote 203: The deaths were 23, 222. Petty's Political Arithmetic. ]

[Footnote 204: Burnet, i. 560. ]

[Footnote 205: Muggleton's Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit. ]

[Footnote 206: Tom Brown describes such a scene in lines which I do notventure to quote. ]

[Footnote 207: Ward's London Spy. ]

[Footnote 208: Pepys's Diary, Dec. 28, 1663, Sept. 2, 1667. ]

[Footnote 209: Burnet, i, 606; Spectator, No. 462; Lords' Journals, October 28, 1678; Cibber's Apology. ]

[Footnote 210: Burnet, i. 605, 606, Welwood, North's Life of Guildford, 251. ]

[Footnote 211: I may take this opportunity of mentioning that wheneverI give only one date, I follow the old style, which was, in theseventeenth century, the style of England; but I reckon the year fromthe first of January. ]

[Footnote 212: Saint Everemond, passim; Saint Real, Memoires de laDuchesse de Mazarin; Rochester's Farewell; Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 6, 1676, June 11, 1699. ]

[Footnote 213: Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 28, 1684-5, Saint Evremond's Letterto Dery. ]

[Footnote 214: Id. , February 4, 1684-5. ]

[Footnote 215: Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North, 170; The truePatriot vindicated, or a Justification of his Excellency the E-ofR-; Burnet, i. 605. The Treasury Books prove that Burnet had goodintelligence. ]

[Footnote 216: Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24, 1681-2, Oct. 4, 1683. ]

[Footnote 217: Dugdale's Correspondence. ]

[Footnote 218: Hawkins's Life of Ken, 1713. ]

[Footnote 219: See the London Gazette of Nov. 21, 1678. Barillonand Burnet say that Huddleston was excepted out of all the Acts ofParliament made against priests; but this is a mistake. ]

[Footnote 220: Clark's Life of James the Second, i, 746. Orig. Mem. ;Barillon's Despatch of Feb. 1-18, 1685; Van Citters's Despatches of Feb. 3-13 and Feb. 1-16. Huddleston's Narrative; Letters of Philip, secondEarl of Chesterfield, 277; Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters, FirstSeries. Iii. 333: Second Series, iv 74; Chaillot MS. ; Burnet, i. 606:Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4. 1684-5: Welwood's Memoires 140; North's Life ofGuildford. 252; Examen, 648; Hawkins's Life of Ken; Dryden's ThrenodiaAugustalis; Sir H. Halford's Essay on Deaths of Eminent Persons. Seealso a fragment of a letter written by the Earl of Ailesbury, which isprinted in the European Magazine for April, 1795. Ailesbury calls Burnetan impostor. Yet his own narrative and Burnet's will not, to any candidand sensible reader, appear to contradict each other. I have seen inthe British Museum, and also in the Library of the Royal Institution, acurious broadside containing an account of the death of Charles. It willbe found in the Somers Collections. The author was evidently a zealousRoman Catholic, and must have had access to good sources of information. I strongly suspect that he had been in communication, directly orindirectly, with James himself. No name is given at length; but theinitials are perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is saidthat the D. Of Y. Was reminded of the duty which he owed to his brotherby P. M. A. C. F. I must own myself quite unable to decipher the lastfive letters. It is some consolation that Sir Walter Scott wasequally unsuccessful. (1848. ) Since the first edition of this workwas published, several ingenious conjectures touching these mysteriousletters have been communicated to me, but I am convinced that the truesolution has not yet been suggested. (1850. ) I still greatlydoubt whether the riddle has been solved. But the most plausibleinterpretation is one which, with some variations, occurred, almost atthe same time, to myself and to several other persons; I am inclined toread "Pere Mansuete A Cordelier Friar. " Mansuete, a Cordelier, wasthen James's confessor. To Mansuete therefore it peculiarly belongedto remind James of a sacred duty which had been culpably neglected. Thewriter of the broadside must have been unwilling to inform the worldthat a soul which many devout Roman Catholics had left to perish hadbeen snatched from destruction by the courageous charity of a woman ofloose character. It is therefore not unlikely that he would prefer afiction, at once probable and edifying, to a truth which could notfail to give scandal. (1856. )----It should seem that no transactions inhistory ought to be more accurately known to us than those whichtook place round the deathbed of Charles the Second. We have severalrelations written by persons who were actually in his room. We haveseveral relations written by persons who, though not themselveseyewitnesses, had the best opportunity of obtaining information fromeyewitnesses. Yet whoever attempts to digest this vast mass of materialsinto a consistent narrative will find the task a difficult one. IndeedJames and his wife, when they told the story to the nuns of Chaillot, could not agree as to some circumstances. The Queen said that, afterCharles had received the last sacraments the Protestant Bishops renewedtheir exhortations. The King said that nothing of the kind took place. "Surely, " said the Queen, "you told me so yourself. " "It is impossiblethat I have told you so, " said the King, "for nothing of the sorthappened. "----It is much to be regretted that Sir Henry Halford shouldhave taken so little trouble ascertain the facts on which he pronouncedjudgment. He does not seem to have been aware of the existence of thenarrative of James, Barillon, and Huddleston. ----As this is the firstoccasion on which I cite the correspondence of the Dutch ministersat the English court, I ought here to mention that a series of theirdespatches, from the accession of James the Second to his flight, forms one of the most valuable parts of the Mackintosh collection. The subsequent despatches, down to the settlement of the government inFebruary, 1689, I procured from the Hague. The Dutch archives have beenfar too little explored. They abound with information interesting in thehighest degree to every Englishman. They are admirably arranged and theyare in the charge of gentlemen whose courtesy, liberality and zeal forthe interests of literature, cannot be too highly praised. I wish toacknowledge, in the strongest manner, my own obligations to Mr. De Jongeand to Mr. Van Zwanne. ]

[Footnote 221: Clarendon mentions this calumny with just scorn. "According to the charity of the time towards Cromwell, very many wouldhave it believed to be by poison, of which there was no appearance, norany proof ever after made. "--Book xiv. ]

[Footnote 222: Welwood, 139 Burnet, i. 609; Sheffield's Characterof Charles the Second; North's Life of Guildford, 252; Examen, 648; Revolution Politics; Higgons on Burnet. What North says of theembarrassment and vacillation of the physicians is confirmed by thedespatches of Van Citters. I have been much perplexed by the strangestory about Short's suspicions. I was, at one time, inclined to adoptNorth's solution. But, though I attach little weight to the authority ofWelwood and Burnet in such a case, I cannot reject the testimony of sowell informed and so unwilling a witness as Sheffield. ]

[Footnote 223: London Gazette, Feb. 9. 1684-5; Clarke's Life of Jamesthe Second, ii. 3; Barillon, Feb. 9-19: Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 6. ]

[Footnote 224: See the authorities cited in the last note. See also theExamen, 647; Burnet, i. 620; Higgons on Burnet. ]

[Footnote 225: London Gazette, Feb. 14, 1684-5; Evelyn's Diary of thesame day; Burnet, i. 610: The Hind let loose. ]

[Footnote 226: Burnet, i. 628; Lestrange, Observator, Feb. 11, 1684. ]

[Footnote 227: The letters which passed between Rochester and Ormond onthis subject will be found in the Clarendon Correspondence. ]

[Footnote 228: The ministerial changes are announced in the LondonGazette, Feb. 19, 1684-5. See Burnet, i. 621; Barillon, Feb. 9-19, 16-26; and Feb. 19, /Mar. 1. ]

[Footnote 229: Carte's Life of Ormond; Secret Consults of the RomishParty in Ireland, 1690; Memoirs of Ireland, 1716. ]

[Footnote 230: Christmas Sessions Paper of 1678. ]

[Footnote 231: The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit, part v chapterv. In this work Lodowick, after his fashion, revenges himself on the"bawling devil, " as he calls Jeffreys, by a string of curses whichErnulphus, or Jeffreys himself, might have envied. The trial was inJanuary, 1677. ]

[Footnote 232: This saying is to be found in many contemporarypamphlets. Titus Oates was never tired of quoting it. See his EikwgBasilikh. ]

[Footnote 233: The chief sources of information concerning Jeffreys arethe State Trials and North's Life of Lord Guildford. Some touches ofminor importance I owe to contemporary pamphlets in verse and prose. Such are the Bloody Assizes the life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys, the Panegyric on the late Lord Jeffreys, the Letter to the LordChancellor, Jeffreys's Elegy. See also Evelyn's Diary, Dec. 5, 1683, Oct. 31. 1685. I scarcely need advise every reader to consult LordCampbell's excellent Life of Jeffreys. ]

[Footnote 234: London Gazette, Feb. 12, 1684-5. North's Life ofGuildford, 254. ]

[Footnote 235: The chief authority for these transactions is Barillon'sdespatch of February 9-19, 1685. It will be found in the Appendix to Mr. Fox's History. See also Preston's Letter to James, dated April 18-28, 1685, in Dalrymple. ]

[Footnote 236: Lewis to Barillon, Feb. 16-26, 1685. ]

[Footnote 237: Barillon, Feb. 16-26, 1685. ]

[Footnote 238: Barillon, Feb. 18-28, 1685. ]

[Footnote 239: Swift who hated Marlborough, and who was little disposedto allow any merit to those whom he hated, says, in the famous letter toCrassus, "You are no ill orator in the Senate. "]

[Footnote 240: Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 264. Chesterfleld'sLetters, Nov. , 18, 1748. Chesterfield is an unexceptional witness; forthe annuity was a charge on the estate of his grandfather, Halifax. Ibelieve that there is no foundation for a disgraceful addition to thestory which may be found in Pope:

 "The gallant too, to whom she paid it down, Lived to refuse his mistress half a crown. " Curll calls this a piece of travelling scandal. ]

[Footnote 241: Pope in Spence's Anecdotes. ]

[Footnote 242: See the Historical Records of the first or RoyalDragoons. The appointment of Churchill to the command of this regimentwas ridiculed as an instance of absurd partiality. One lampoon of thattime which I do not remember to have seen in print, but of which amanuscript copy is in the British Museum, contains these lines:

 "Let's cut our meat with spoons: The sense is as good As that Churchill should Be put to command the dragoons. "]

[Footnote 243: Barillon, Feb. 16-26, 1685. ]

[Footnote 244: Barillon, April 6-16; Lewis to Barillon, April 14-24. ]

[Footnote 245: I might transcribe half Barillon's correspondence inproof of this proposition, but I will quote only one passage, inwhich the policy of the French government towards England is exhibitedconcisely and with perfect clearness. ---- "On peut tenir pour un maximeindubitable que l'accord du Roy d'Angleterre avec son parlement, enquelque maniere qu'il se fasse, n'est pas conforme aux interets de V. M. Je me contente de penser cela sane m'en ouvrir a personne, et je cacheavec soin mes sentimens a cet egard. "--Barillon to Lewis, Feb. 28, /Mar. 1687. That this was the real secret of the whole policy of Lewis towardsour country was perfectly understood at Vienna. The Emperor Leopoldwrote thus to James, March 30, /April 9, 1689: "Galli id unum agebant, ut, perpetuas inter Serenitatem vestram et ejusdem populos fovendosimultates, reliquæ Christianæ Europe tanto securius insultarent. "]

[Footnote 246: "Que sea unido con su reyno, yen todo buena intelligenciacon el parlamenyo. " Despatch from the King of Spain to Don PedroRonquillo, March 16-26, 1685. This despatch is in the archives ofSamancas, which contain a great mass of papers relating to Englishaffairs. Copies of the most interesting of those papers are in thepossession of M. Guizot, and were by him lent to me. It is with peculiarpleasure that at this time, I acknowledge this mark of the friendship ofso great a man. (1848. )]

[Footnote 247: Few English readers will be desirous to go deep into thehistory of this quarrel. Summaries will be found in Cardinal Bausset'sLife of Bossuet, and in Voltaire's Age of Lewis XIV. ]

[Footnote 248: Burnet, i. 661, and Letter from Rome, Dodd's ChurchHistory, part viii. Book i. Art. 1. ]

[Footnote 249: Consultations of the Spanish Council of State on April2-12 and April 16-26, In the Archives of Simancas. ]

[Footnote 250: Lewis to Barillon, May 22, /June 1, 1685; Burnet, i. 623. ]

[Footnote 251: Life of James the Second, i. 5. Barillon, Feb. 19, /Mar. 1, 1685; Evelyn's Diary, March 5, 1685. ]

[Footnote 252:

 "To those that ask boons He swears by God's oons And chides them as if they came there to steal spoons. " Lamentable Lory, a ballad, 1684. ]

[Footnote 253: Barillon, April 20-30. 1685. ]

[Footnote 254: From Adda's despatch of Jan. 22, /Feb. 1, 1686, andfrom the expressions of the Pere d'Orleans (Histoire des Revolutionsd'Angleterre, liv. Xi. ), it is clear that rigid Catholics thought theKing's conduct indefensible. ]

[Footnote 255: London Gazette, Gazette de France; Life of James theSecond, ii. 10; History of the Coronation of King James the Second andQueen Mary, by Francis Sandford, Lancaster Herald, fol. 1687; Evelyn'sDiary, May, 21, 1685; Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors, April 10-20, 1685; Burnet, i. 628; Eachard, iii. 734; A sermon preached before theirMajesties King James the Second and Queen Mary at their Coronation inWestminster Abbey, April 23, 1695, by Francis Lord Bishop of Ely, andLord Almoner. I have seen an Italian account of the Coronation which waspublished at Modena, and which is chiefly remarkable for the skill withwhich the writer sinks the fact that the prayers and psalms were inEnglish, and that the Bishops were heretics. ]

[Footnote 256: See the London Gazette during the months of February, March, and April, 1685. ]

[Footnote 257: It would be easy to fill a volume with what Whighistorians and pamphleteers have written on this subject. I will citeonly one witness, a churchman and a Tory. "Elections, " says Evelyn, "were thought to be very indecently carried on in most places. God givea better issue of it than some expect!" May 10, 1685. Again he says, "The truth is there were many of the new members whose elections andreturns were universally condemned. " May 22. ]

[Footnote 258: This fact I learned from a newsletter in the library ofthe Royal Institution. Van Citters mentions the strength of the Whigparty in Bedfordshire. ]

[Footnote 259: Bramston's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 260: Reflections on a Remonstrance and Protestation of all thegood Protestants of this Kingdom, 1689; Dialogue between Two Friends, 1689. ]

[Footnote 261: Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Marquess of Wharton, 1715. ]

[Footnote 262: See the Guardian, No. 67; an exquisite specimen ofAddison's peculiar manner. It would be difficult to find in the worksof any other writer such an instance of benevolence delicately flavouredwith contempt. ]

[Footnote 263: The Observator, April 4, 1685. ]

[Footnote 264: Despatch of the Dutch Ambasadors, April 10-20, 1685. ]

[Footnote 265: Burnet, i. 626. ]

[Footnote 266: A faithful account of the Sickness, Death, and Burial ofCaptain Bedlow, 1680; Narrative of Lord Chief Justice North. ]

[Footnote 267: Smith's Intrigues of the Popish Plot, 1685. ]

[Footnote 268: Burnet, i. 439. ]

[Footnote 269: See the proceedings in the Collection of State Trials. ]

[Footnote 270: Evelyn's Diary, May 7, 1685. ]

[Footnote 271: There remain many pictures of Oates. The most strikingdescriptions of his person are in North's Examen, 225, in Dryden'sAbsalom and Achitophel, and In a broadside entitled, A Hue and Cry afterT. O. ]

[Footnote 272: The proceedings will be found at length in the Collectionof State Trials. ]

[Footnote 273: Gazette de France May 29, /June 9, 1685. ]

[Footnote 274: Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors, May 19-29, 1685. ]

[Footnote 275: Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685; Eachard, iii. 741; Burnet, i. 637; Observator, May 27, 1685; Oates's Eikvn, 89; Eikwn Brotoloigon, 1697; Commons' Journals of May, June, and July, 1689; Tom Brown'sadvice to Dr. Oates. Some interesting circumstances are mentioned ina broadside, printed for A. Brooks, Charing Cross, 1685. I have seencontemporary French and Italian pamphlets containing the history of thetrial and execution. A print of Titus in the pillory was published atMilan, with the following curious inscription: "Questo e il naturaleritratto di Tito Otez, o vero Oatz, Inglese, posto in berlina, uno de'principali professor della religion protestante, acerrimo persecutorede' Cattolici, e gran spergiuro. " I have also seen a Dutch engravingof his punishment, with some Latin verses, of which the following are aspecimen:

 "At Doctor fictus non fictos pertulit ictus A tortore datos haud molli in corpore gratos, Disceret ut vere scelera ob commissa rubere. "

The anagram of his name, "Testis Ovat, " may be found on many printspublished in different countries. ]

[Footnote 276: Blackstone's Commentaries, Chapter of Homicide. ]

[Footnote 277: According to Roger North the judges decided thatDangerfield, having been previously convicted of perjury, wasincompetent to be a witness of the plot. But this is one among manyinstances of Roger's inaccuracy. It appears, from the report of thetrial of Lord Castlemaine in June 1680, that, after much altercationbetween counsel, and much consultation among the judges of the differentcourts in Westminster Hall, Dangerfield was sworn and suffered to tellhis story; but the jury very properly gave no credit to his testimony. ]

[Footnote 278: Dangerfield's trial was not reported; but I have seen aconcise account of it in a contemporary broadside. An abstract of theevidence against Francis, and his dying speech, will be found in theCollection of State Trials. See Eachard, iii. 741. Burnet's narrativecontains more mistakes than lines. See also North's Examen, 256, thesketch of Dangerfield's life in the Bloody Assizes, the Observator ofJuly 29, 1685, and the poem entitled "Dangerfield's Ghost to Jeffreys. "In the very rare volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by RobertHalstead, " Lord Peterbough says that Dangerfield, with whom he had hadsome intercourse, was "a young man who appeared under a decent figure, a serious behaviour, and with words that did not seem to proceed from acommon understanding. "]

[Footnote 279: Baxter's preface to Sir Mathew Hale's Judgment of theNature of True Religion, 1684. ]

[Footnote 280: See the Observator of February 28, 1685, the informationin the Collection of State Trials, the account of what passed in courtgiven by Calamy, Life of Baxter, chap. Xiv. , and the very curiousextracts from the Baxter MSS. In the Life, by Orme, published in 1830. ]

[Footnote 281: Baxter MS. Cited by Orme. ]

[Footnote 282: Act Parl. Car. II. March 29, 1661, Jac. VII. April 28, 1685, and May 13, 1685. ]

[Footnote 283: Act Parl. Jac. VII. May 8, 1685, Observator, June 20, 1685; Lestrange evidently wished to see the precedent followed inEngland. ]

[Footnote 284: His own words reported by himself. Life of James theSecond, i. 666. Orig. Mem. ]

[Footnote 285: Act Parl. Car. II. August 31, 1681. ]

[Footnote 286: Burnet, i. 583; Wodrow, III. V. 2. Unfortunately the Actaof the Scottish Privy Council during almost the whole administration ofthe Duke of York are wanting. (1848. ) This assertion has been met by adirect contradiction. But the fact is exactly as I have stated it. Thereis in he Acta of the Scottish Privy Council a hiatus extending fromAugust 1678 to August 1682. The Duke of York began to reside in Scotlandin December 1679. He left Scotland, never to return in May 1682. (1857. )]

[Footnote 287: Wodrow, III. Ix. 6. ]

[Footnote 288: Wodrow, III. Ix. 6. The editor of the Oxford edition ofBurnet attempts to excuse this act by alleging that Claverhouse was thenemployed to intercept all communication between Argyle and Monmouth, and by supposing that John Brown may have been detected in conveyingintelligence between the rebel camps. Unfortunately for this hypothesisJohn Brown was shot on the first of May, when both Argyle and Monmouthwere in Holland, and when there was no insurrection in any part of ourisland. ]

[Footnote 289: Wodrow, III. Ix, 6. ]

[Footnote 290: Wodrow, III. Ix. 6. It has been confidently asserted, bypersons who have not taken the trouble to look at the authority to whichI have referred, that I have grossly calumniated these unfortunatemen; that I do not understand the Calvinistic theology; and that it isimpossible that members of the Church of Scotland can have refused topray for any man on the ground that he was not one of the elect. ----I can only refer to the narrative which Wodrow has inserted in hishistory, and which he justly calls plain and natural. That narrativeis signed by two eyewitnesses, and Wodrow, before he published it, submitted it to a third eyewitness, who pronounced it strictly accurate. From that narrative I will extract the only words which bear onthe point in question: "When all the three were taken, the officersconsulted among themselves, and, withdrawing to the west side of thetown, questioned the prisoners, particularly if they would pray for KingJames VII. They answered, they would pray for all within the election ofgrace. Balfour said Do you question the King's election? They answered, sometimes they questioned their own. Upon which he swore dreadfully, andsaid they should die presently, because they would not pray for Christ'svicegerent, and so without one word more, commanded Thomas Cook to go tohis prayers, for he should die. ---- In this narrative Wodrow saw nothingimprobable; and I shall not easily be convinced that any writer nowliving understands the feelings and opinions of the Covenanters betterthan Wodrow did. (1857. )]

[Footnote 291: Wodrow, III. Ix. 6. Cloud of Witnesses. ]

[Footnote 292: Wodrow, III. Ix. 6. The epitaph of Margaret Wilson, inthe churchyard at Wigton, is printed in the Appendix to the Cloud ofWitnesses;

 "Murdered for owning Christ supreme Head of his church, and no more crime, But her not owning Prelacy. And not abjuring Presbytery, Within the sea, tied to a stake, She suffered for Christ Jesus' sake. "]

[Footnote 293: See the letter to King Charles II. Prefixed to Barclay'sApology. ]

[Footnote 294: Sewel's History of the Quakers, book x. ]

[Footnote 295: Minutes of Yearly Meetings, 1689, 1690. ]

[Footnote 296: Clarkson on Quakerism; Peculiar Customs, chapter v. ]

[Footnote 297: After this passage was written, I found in the BritishMuseum, a manuscript (Harl. MS. 7506) entitled, "An Account of theSeizures, Sequestrations, great Spoil and Havock made upon the Estatesof the several Protestant Dissenters called Quakers, upon Prosecution ofold Statutes made against Papist and Popish Recusants. " The manuscriptis marked as having belonged to James, and appears to have been givenby his confidential servant, Colonel Graham, to Lord Oxford. Thiscircumstance appears to me to confirm the view which I have taken of theKing's conduct towards the Quakers. ]

[Footnote 298: Penn's visits to Whitehall, and levees at Kensington, are described with great vivacity, though in very bad Latin, by GerardCroese. "Sumebat, " he says, "rex sæpe secretum, non horarium, verohorarum plurium, in quo de variis rebus cum Penno serio sermonemconferebat, et interim differebat audire præcipuorum nobilium ordinem, qui hoc interim spatio in proc¦tone, in proximo, regem conventum præstoerant. " Of the crowd of suitors at Penn's house. Croese says, "Visiquandoquo de hoc genere hominum non minus bis centum. "--HistoriaQuakeriana, lib. Ii. 1695. ]

[Footnote 299: "Twenty thousand into my pocket; and a hundred thousandinto my province. " Penn's "Letter to Popple. "]

[Footnote 300: These orders, signed by Sunderland, will be found inSewel's History. They bear date April 18, 1685. They are written ina style singularly obscure and intricate: but I think that I haveexhibited the meaning correctly. I have not been able to find any proofthat any person, not a Roman Catholic or a Quaker, regained his freedomunder these orders. See Neal's History of the Puritans, vol. Ii. Chap. Ii. ; Gerard Croese, lib. Ii. Croese estimates the number of Quakersliberated at fourteen hundred and sixty. ]

[Footnote 301: Barillon, May 28, /June 7, 1685. Observator, May 27, 1685;Sir J. Reresby's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 302: Lewis wrote to Barillon about this class of Exclusionistsas follows: "L'interet qu'ils auront a effacer cette tache par desservices considerables les portera, aelon toutes les apparences, a leservir plus utilement que ne pourraient faire ceux qui ont toujours eteles plus attaches a sa personne. " May 15-25, 1685. ]

[Footnote 303: Barillon, May 4-14, 1685; Sir John Reresby's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 304: Burnet, i. 626; Evelyn's Diary, May, 22, 1685. ]

[Footnote 305: Roger North's Life of Guildford, 218; Bramston'sMemoirs. ]

[Footnote 306: North's Life of Guildford, 228; News from Westminster. ]

[Footnote 307: Burnet, i. 382; Letter from Lord Conway to Sir GeorgeRawdon, Dec. 28, 1677. In the Rawdon Papers. ]

[Footnote 308: London Gazette, May 25, 1685; Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685. ]

[Footnote 309: North's Life of Guildford, 256. ]

[Footnote 310: Burnet, i. 639; Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685; Barillon, May 23, /June 2, and May 25, /June 4, 1685 The silence of the journalsperplexed Mr. Fox; but it is explained by the circumstance thatSeymour's motion was not seconded. ]

[Footnote 311: Journals, May 22. Stat. Jac. II. I. 1. ]

[Footnote 312: Journals, May 26, 27. Sir J. Reresby's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 313: Commons' Journals, May 27, 1685. ]

[Footnote 314: Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North; Life of LordGuilford, 166; Mr M'Cullough's Literature of Political Economy. ]

[Footnote 315: Life of Dudley North, 176, Lonsdale's Memoirs, VanCitters, June 12-22, 1685. ]

[Footnote 316: Commons' Journals, March 1, 1689. ]

[Footnote 317: Lords' Journals, March 18, 19, 1679, May 22, 1685. ]

[Footnote 318: Stat. 5 Geo. IV. C. 46. ]

[Footnote 319: Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, book xiv. ; Burnet'sOwn Times, i. 546, 625; Wade's and Ireton's Narratives, Lansdowne MS. 1152; West's information in the Appendix to Sprat's True Account. ]

[Footnote 320: London Gazette, January, 4, 1684-5; Ferguson MS. InEachard's History, iii. 764; Grey's Narratives; Sprat's True Account, Danvers's Treatise on Baptism; Danvers's Innocency and Truth vindicated;Crosby's History of the English Baptists. ]

[Footnote 321: Sprat's True Account; Burnet, i. 634; Wade's Confession, Earl. MS. 6845. ---- Lord Howard of Escrick accused Ayloffe of proposingto assassinate the Duke of York; but Lord Howard was an abject liar;and this story was not part of his original confession, but was addedafterwards by way of supplement, and therefore deserves no creditwhatever. ]

[Footnote 322: Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845; Lansdowne MS. 1152;Holloway's narrative in the Appendix to Sprat's True Account. Wade ownedthat Holloway had told nothing but truth. ]

[Footnote 323: Sprat's True Account and Appendix, passim. ]

[Footnote 324: Sprat's True Account and Appendix, Proceedings againstRumbold in the Collection of State Trials; Burnet's Own Times, i. 633;Appendix to Fox's History, No. IV. ]

[Footnote 325: Grey's narrative; his trial in the Collection of StateTrials; Sprat's True Account. ]

[Footnote 326: In the Pepysian Collection is a print representing oneof the balls which About this time William and Mary gave in the OranjeZaal. ]

[Footnote 327: Avaux Neg. January 25, 1685. Letter from James to thePrincess of Orange dated January 1684-5, among Birch's Extracts in theBritish Museum. ]

[Footnote 328: Grey's Narrative; Wade's Confession, Lansdowne MS. 1152. ]

[Footnote 329: Burnet, i. 542; Wood, Ath. Ox. Under the name of Owen;Absalom and Achtophel, part ii. ; Eachard, iii. 682, 697; Sprat's TrueAccount, passim; Lond. Gaz. Aug. 6, 1683; Nonconformist's Memorial;North's Examen, 399. ]

[Footnote 330: Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845. ]

[Footnote 331: Avaux Neg. Feb. 20, 22, 1685; Monmouth's letter to Jamesfrom Ringwood. ]

[Footnote 332: Boyer's History of King William the Third, 2d edition, 1703, vol. I 160. ]

[Footnote 333: Welwood's Memoirs, App. Xv. ; Burnet, i. 530. Grey told asomewhat different story, but he told it to save his life. The Spanishambassador at the English court, Don Pedro de Ronquillo, in a letterto the governor of the Low Countries written about this time, sneersat Monmouth for living on the bounty of a fond woman, and hints a veryunfounded suspicion that the Duke's passion was altogether interested. "Hallandose hoy tan falto de medios que ha menester trasformarse en Amorcon Miledi en vista de la ecesidad de poder subsistir. "--Ronquillo toGrana. Mar. 30, /Apr. 9, 1685. ]

[Footnote 334: Proceedings against Argyle in the Collection of StateTrials, Burnet, i 521; A True and Plain Account of the Discoveriesmade in Scotland, 1684, The Scotch Mist Cleared; Sir George Mackenzie'sVindication, Lord Fountainhall's Chronological Notes. ]

[Footnote 335: Information of Robert Smith in the Appendix to Sprat'sTrue Account. ]

[Footnote 336: True and Plain Account of the Discoveries made inScotland. ]

[Footnote 337: Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, lib. Ii. Cap. 33. ]

[Footnote 338: See Sir Patrick Hume's Narrative, passim. ]

[Footnote 339: Grey's Narrative; Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845. ]

[Footnote 340: Burnet, i. 631. ]

[Footnote 341: Grey's Narrative. ]

[Footnote 342: Le Clerc's Life of Locke; Lord King's Life of Locke;Lord Grenville's Oxford and Locke. Locke must not be confounded withthe Anabapist Nicholas Look, whose name was spelled Locke in Grey'sConfession, and who is mentioned in the Lansdowne MS. 1152, and in theBuccleuch narrative appended to Mr. Rose's dissertation. I should hardlythink it necessary to make this remark, but that the similarity ofthe two names appears to have misled a man so well acquainted with thehistory of those times as Speaker Onslow. See his note on Burnet, i, 629. ]

[Footnote 343: Wodrow, book iii. Chap. Ix; London Gazette, May 11, 1685;Barillon, May 11-21. ]

[Footnote 344: Register of the Proceedings of the States General, May5-15, 1685. ]

[Footnote 345: This is mentioned in his credentials, dated on the 16thof March, 1684-5. ]

[Footnote 346: Bonrepaux to Seignelay, February 4-14, 1686. ]

[Footnote 347: Avaux Neg. April 30, /May 10, May 1-11, May 5-15, 1685;Sir Patrick Hume's Narrative; Letter from The Admiralty of Amsterdam tothe States General, dated June 20, 1685; Memorial of Skelton, deliveredto the States General, May 10, 1685. ]

[Footnote 348: If any person is inclined to suspect that I haveexaggerated the absurdity and ferocity of these men, I would advise himto read two books, which will convince him that I have rather softenedthan overcharged the portrait, the Hind Let Loose, and FaithfulContendings Displayed. ]

[Footnote 349: A few words which were in the first five editions havebeen omitted in this place. Here and in another passage I had, as Mr. Aytoun has observed, mistaken the City Guards, which were commanded byan officer named Graham, for the Dragoons of Graham of Claverhouse. ]

[Footnote 350: The authors from whom I have taken the history ofArgyle's expedition are Sir Patrick Hume, who was an eyewitness of whathe related, and Wodrow, who had access to materials of the greatestvalue, among which were the Earl's own papers. Wherever there is aquestion of veracity between Argyle and Hume, I have no doubt thatArgyle's narrative ought to be followed. ---- See also Burnet, i. 631, and the life of Bresson, published by Dr. Mac Crie. The account ofthe Scotch rebellion in the Life of James the Second, is a ridiculousromance, not written by the King himself, nor derived from his papers, but composed by a Jacobite who did not even take the trouble to look ata map of the seat of war. ]

[Footnote 351: Wodrow, III. Ix 10; Western Martyrology; Burnet, i. 633;Fox's History, Appendix iv. I can find no way, except that indicated inthe text, of reconciling Rumbold's denial that he had ever admitted intohis mind the thought of assassination with his confession that he hadhimself mentioned his own house as a convenient place for an attack onthe royal brothers. The distinction which I suppose him to have takenwas certainly taken by another Rye House conspirator, who was, like him, an old soldier of the Commonwealth, Captain Walcot. On Walcot's trial, West, the witness for the crown, said, "Captain, you did agree to be oneof those that were to fight the Guards. " "What, then, was the reason. "asked Chief Justice Pemberton, "that he would not kill the King?" "Hesaid, " answered West, "that it was a base thing to kill a naked man, andhe would not do it. "]

[Footnote 352: Wodrow, III. Ix. 9. ]

[Footnote 353: Wade's narrative, Harl, MS. 6845; Burnet, i. 634; VanCitters's Despatch of Oct. 30, /Nov. 9, 1685; Luttrell's Diary of thesame date. ]

[Footnote 354: Wodrow, III, ix. 4, and III. Ix. 10. Wodrow gives fromthe Acts of Council the names of all the prisoners who were transported, mutilated or branded. ]

[Footnote 355: Skelton's letter is dated the 7-17th of May 1686. Itwill be found, together with a letter of the Schout or High Bailiffof Amsterdam, in a little volume published a few months later, andentitled, "Histoire des Evenemens Tragiques d'Angleterre. " The documentsinserted in that work are, as far as I have examined them, given exactlyfrom the Dutch archives, except that Skelton's French, which was notthe purest, is slightly corrected. See also Grey's Narrative. ----Goodenough, on his examination after the battle of Sedgemoor, said, "The Schout of Amsterdam was a particular friend to this last design. "Lansdowne MS. 1152. ---- It is not worth while to refute those writerswho represent the Prince of Orange as an accomplice in Monmouth'senterprise. The circumstance on which they chiefly rely is that theauthorities of Amsterdam took no effectual steps for preventing theexpedition from sailing. This circumstance is in truth the strongestproof that the expedition was not favoured by William. No person, notprofoundly ignorant of the institutions and politics of Holland, wouldhold the Stadtholder answerable for the proceedings of the heads of theLoevestein party. ]

[Footnote 356: Avaux Neg. June 7-17, 8-18, 14-24, 1685, Letter of thePrince of Orange to Lord Rochester, June 9, 1685. ]

[Footnote 357: Van Citters, June 9-19, June 12-22, 1685. Thecorrespondence of Skelton with the States General and with the Admiraltyof Amsterdam is in the archives at the Hague. Some pieces will be foundin the Evenemens Tragiques d'Angleterre. See also Burnet, i. 640. ]

[Footnote 358: Wade's Confession in the Hardwicke Papers; Harl. MS. 6845. ]

[Footnote 359: See Buyse's evidence against Monmouth and Fletcher in theCollection of State Trials. ]

[Footnote 360: Journals of the House of Commons, June 13, 1685; Harl. MS. 6845; Lansdowne MS. 1152. ]

[Footnote 361: Burnet, i. 641, Goodenough's confession in the LansdowneMS. 1152. Copies of the Declaration, as originally printed, are veryrare; but there is one in the British Museum. ]

[Footnote 362: Historical Account of the Life and magnanimous Actions ofthe most illustrious Protestant Prince James, Duke of Monmouth, 1683. ]

[Footnote 363: Wade's Confession, Hardwicke Papers; Axe Papers; Harl. MS. 6845. ]

[Footnote 364: Harl. MS. 6845. ]

[Footnote 365: Buyse's evidence in the Collection of State Trials;Burnet i 642; Ferguson's MS. Quoted by Eachard. ]

[Footnote 366: London Gazette, June 18, 1685; Wade's Confession, Hardwicke Papers. ]

[Footnote 367: Lords' Journals, June 13, 1685. ]

[Footnote 368: Wade's Confession; Ferguson MS. ; Axe Papers, Harl. MS. 6845, Oldmixon, 701, 702. Oldmixon, who was then a boy, lived very nearthe scene of these events. ]

[Footnote 369: London Gazette, June 18, 1685; Lords' and Commons'Journals, June 13 and 15; Dutch Despatch, 16-26. ]

[Footnote 370: Oldmixon is wrong in saying that Fenwick carried up thebill. It was carried up, as appears from the Journals, by Lord Ancram. See Delamere's Observations on the Attainder of the Late Duke ofMonmouth. ]

[Footnote 371: Commons' Journals of June 17, 18, and 19, 1685; Reresby'sMemoirs. ]

[Footnote 372: Commons' Journals, June 19, 29, 1685; Lord Lonsdale'sMemoirs, 8, 9, Burnet, i. 639. The bill, as amended by the committee, will be found in Mr. Fox's historical work. Appendix iii. If Burnet'saccount be correct, the offences which, by the amended bill, were madepunishable only with civil incapacities were, by the original bill, madecapital. ]

[Footnote 373: 1 Jac. II. C. 7; Lords' Journals, July 2, 1685. ]

[Footnote 374: Lords' and Commons' Journals, July 2, 1685. ]

[Footnote 375: Savage's edition of Toulmin's History of Taunton. ]

[Footnote 376: Sprat's true Account; Toulmin's History of Taunton. ]

[Footnote 377: Life and Death of Joseph Alleine, 1672; Nonconformists'Memorial. ]

[Footnote 378: Harl. MS. 7006; Oldmixon. 702; Eachard, iii. 763. ]

[Footnote 379: Wade's Confession; Goodenough's Confession, Harl. MS. 1152, Oldmixon, 702. Ferguson's denial is quite undeserving of credit. Acopy of the proclamation is in the Harl. MS. 7006. ]

[Footnote 380: Copies of the last three proclamations are in the BritishMuseum; Harl. MS. 7006. The first I have never seen; but it is mentionedby Wado. ]

[Footnote 381: Grey's Narrative; Ferguson's MS. , Eachard, iii. 754. ]

[Footnote 382: Persecution Exposed, by John Whiting. ]

[Footnote 383: Harl. MS. 6845. ]

[Footnote 384: One of these weapons may still be seen in the tower. ]

[Footnote 385: Grey's Narrative; Paschall's Narrative in the Appendix toHeywood's Vindication. ]

[Footnote 386: Oldmixon, 702. ]

[Footnote 387: North's Life of Guildford, 132. Accounts of Beaufort'sprogress through Wales and the neighbouring counties are in the LondonGazettes of July 1684. Letter of Beaufort to Clarendon, June 19, 1685. ]

[Footnote 388: Bishop Fell to Clarendon, June 20; Abingdon to Clarendon, June 20, 25, 26, 1685; Lansdowne MS. 846. ]

[Footnote 389: Avaux, July 5-15, 6-16, 1685. ]

[Footnote 390: Van Citters, June 30, /July 10, July 3-13, 21-31, 1685;Avaux Neg. July 5-15, London Gazette, July 6. ]

[Footnote 391: Barillon, July 6-16, 1685; Scott's preface to Albion andAlbanius. ]

[Footnote 392: Abingdon to Clarendon, June 29, 1685; Life of PhilipHenry, by Bates. ]

[Footnote 393: London Gazette, June 22, and June 25, 1685; Wade'sConfession; Oldmixon, 703; Harl. MS. 6845. ]

[Footnote 394: Wade's Confession. ]

[Footnote 395: Wade's Confession; Oldmixon, 703; Harl. MS. 6845; Chargeof Jeffreys to the grand jury of Bristol, Sept. 21, 1685. ]

[Footnote 396: London Gazette, June 29, 1685; Wade's Confession. ]

[Footnote 397: Wade's Confession. ]

[Footnote 398: London Gazette, July 2, 1685; Barillon, July 6-16; Wade'sConfession. ]

[Footnote 399: London Gazette, June 29, 1685; Van Citters, June 30, /July10, ]

[Footnote 400: Harl. MS. 6845; Wade's Confession. ]

[Footnote 401: Wade's Confession; Eachard, iii. 766. ]

[Footnote 402: Wade's Confession. ]

[Footnote 403: London Gazette, July 6, 1685; Van Citters, July 3-13, Oldmixon, 703. ]

[Footnote 404: Wade's Confession. ]

[Footnote 405: Matt. West. Flor. Hist. , A. D. 788; MS. Chronicle quotedby Mr. Sharon Turner in the History of the Anglo-Saxons, book IV. Chap. Xix; Drayton's Polyolbion, iii; Leland's Itinerary; Oldmixon, 703. Oldmixon was then at Bridgewater, and probably saw the Duke on thechurch tower. The dish mentioned in the text is the property of Mr. Stradling, who has taken laudable pain's to preserve the relics andtraditions of the Western insurrection. ]

[Footnote 406: Oldmixon, 703. ]

[Footnote 407: Churchill to Clarendon, July 4, 1685. ]

[Footnote 408: Oldmixon, 703; Observator, Aug. 1, 1685. ]

[Footnote 409: Paschall's Narrative in Heywood's Appendix. ]

[Footnote 410: Kennet, ed. 1719, iii. 432. I am forced to believethat this lamentable story is true. The Bishop declares that it wascommunicated to him in the year 1718 by a brave officer of the Blues, who had fought at Sedgemoor, and who had himself seen the poor girldepart in an agony of distress. ]

[Footnote 411: Narrative of an officer of the Horse Guards in Kennet, ed. 1718, iii. 432; MS. Journal of the Western Rebellion, kept by Mr. Edward Dummer, Dryden's Hind and Panther, part II. The lines of Drydenare remarkable:

 "Such were the pleasing triumphs of the sky For James's late nocturnal victory. The fireworks which his angels made above. The pledge of his almighty patron's love, I saw myself the lambent easy light Gild the brown horror and dispel the night. The messenger with speed the tidings bore. News which three labouring nations did restore; But heaven's own Nuntius was arrived before. ']

[Footnote 412: It has been said by several writers, and among them byPennant, that the district in London called Soho derived its name fromthe watchword of Monmouth's army at Sedgemoor. Mention of Soho Fieldswill be found in many books printed before the Western insurrection; forexample, in Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. ]

[Footnote 413: There is a warrant of James directing that forty poundsshould be paid to Sergeant Weems, of Dumbarton's regiment, "for goodservice in the action at Sedgemoor in firing the great guns against therebels. " Historical Record of the First or Royal Regiment of Foot. ]

[Footnote 414: James the Second's account of the battle of Sedgemoorin Lord Hardwicke's State Papers; Wade's Confession; Ferguson's MS. Narrative in Eachard, iii. 768; Narrative of an Officer of the HorseGuards in Kennet, ed. 1719, iii. 432, London Gazette, July 9, 1685;Oldmixon, 703; Paschall's Narrative; Burnet, i. 643; Evelyn's Diary, July 8; Van Citters, . July 7-17; Barillon, July 9-19; Reresby's Memoirs;the Duke of Buckingham's battle of Sedgemoor, a Farce; MS. Journal ofthe Western Rebellion, kept by Mr. Edward Dummer, then serving in thetrain of artillery employed by His Majesty for the suppression of thesame. The last mentioned manuscript is in the Pepysian library, and isof the greatest value, not on account of the narrative, which containslittle that is remarkable, but on account of the plans, which exhibitthe battle in four or five different stages. ]

"The history of a battle, " says the greatest of living generals, "isnot unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all thelittle events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, butno individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment atwhich, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their valueor importance. .. .. Just to show you how little reliance can be placedeven on what are supposed the best accounts of a battle, I mention thatthere are some circumstances mentioned in General--'s account whichdid not occur as he relates them. It is impossible to say when eachimportant occurrence took place, or in what order. "--Wellington Papers, Aug. 8, and 17, 1815. ---- The battle concerning which the Duke ofWellington wrote thus was that of Waterloo, fought only a few weeksbefore, by broad day, under his own vigilant and experienced eye. What then must be the difficulty of compiling from twelve or thirteennarratives an account of a battle fought more than a hundred and sixtyyears ago in such darkness that not a man of those engaged could seefifty paces before him? The difficulty is aggravated by the circumstancethat those witnesses who had the best opportunity of knowing the truthwere by no means inclined to tell it. The Paper which I have placed atthe head of my list of authorities was evidently drawn up with extremepartiality to Feversham. Wade was writing under the dread of the halter. Ferguson, who was seldom scrupulous about the truth of his assertions, lied on this occasion like Bobadil or Parolles. Oldmixon, who was a boyat Bridgewater when the battle was fought, and passed a great part ofhis subsequent life there, was so much under the influence of localpassions that his local information was useless to him. His desire tomagnify the valour of the Somersetshire peasants, a valour whichtheir enemies acknowledged and which did not need to be set off byexaggeration and fiction, led him to compose an absurd romance. Theeulogy which Barillon, a Frenchman accustomed to despise raw levies, pronounced on the vanquished army, is of much more value, "Soninfanterie fit fort bien. On eut de la peine a les rompre, et lessoldats combattoient avec les crosses de mousquet et les scies qu'ilsavoient au bout de grands bastons au lieu de picques. "---- Little isnow to be learned by visiting the field of battle for the face of thecountry has been greatly changed; and the old Bussex Rhine on the banksof which the great struggle took place, has long disappeared. Therhine now called by that name is of later date, and takes a differentcourse. ---- I have derived much assistance from Mr. Roberts's account ofthe battle. Life of Monmouth, chap. Xxii. His narrative is in the mainconfirmed by Dummer's plans. ]

[Footnote 415: I learned these things from persons living close toSedgemoor. ]

[Footnote 416: Oldmixon, 704. ]

[Footnote 417: Locke's Western Rebellion Stradling's Chilton Priory. ]

[Footnote 418: Locke's Western Rebellion Stradling's Chilton Priory;Oldmixon, 704. ]

[Footnote 419: Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire, 1691. ]

[Footnote 420: Account of the manner of taking the late Duke ofMonmouth, published by his Majesty's command; Gazette de France, July18-28, 1688; Eachard, iii. 770; Burnet, i. 664, and Dartmouth's note:Van Citters, July 10-20, 1688. ]

[Footnote 421: The letter to the King was printed at the time byauthority; that to the Queen Dowager will be found in Sir H. Ellis'sOriginal Letters; that to Rochester in the Clarendon Correspondence. ]

[Footnote 422: "On trouve, " he wrote, "fort a redire icy qu'il ayt faitune chose si peu ordinaire aux Anglois. " July 13-23, 1685. ]

[Footnote 423: Account of the manner of taking the Duke of Monmouth;Gazette, July 16, 1685; Van Citters, July 14-24, ]

[Footnote 424: Barillon was evidently much shocked. "Ill se vient, " hesays, "de passer icy, une chose bien extraordinaire et fort opposee al'usage ordinaire des autres nations" 13-23, 1685. ]

[Footnote 425: 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; Bucclench MS. ]

[Footnote 426: James to the Prince of Orange, July 14, 1685, DutchDespatch of the same date, Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 646; NarcissusLuttrell'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 accessby the kindness of the Warden of All Souls' College, where the originalMS. Is deposited. The delegates of the Press of the University of Oxfordhave since published the whole in six substantial volumes, which will, Iam afraid, find little favour with readers who seek only for amusement, but which will always be useful as materials for history. (1857. )]

[Footnote 427: Buccleuch MS; Life of James the Second, ii. 37, Orig. Mem. , Van Citters, July 14-24, 1685; Gazette de France, August 1-11. ]

[Footnote 428: Buccleuch MS. ; Life of James the Second, ii. 37, 38, Orig. Mem. , Burnet, i. 645; Tenison's account in Kennet, iii. 432, ed. 1719. ]

[Footnote 429: Buccleuch MS. ]

[Footnote 430: The name of Ketch was often associated with that ofJeffreys in the lampoons of those days. 

 "While Jeffreys on the bench, Ketch on the gibbet sits, "

says one poet. In the year which followed Monmouth's execution Ketchwas turned out of his office for insulting one of the Sheriffs, and wassucceeded by a butcher named Rose. But in four months Rose himself washanged at Tyburn, and Ketch was reinstated. Luttrell's Diary, January20, and May 28, 1686. See a curious note by Dr. Grey, on Hudibras, partiii. Canto ii. Line 1534. ]

[Footnote 431: Account of the execution of Monmouth, signed by thedivines who attended him; Buccleuch MS; Burnet, i. 646; Van Citters, July 17-27, 1685, Luttrell's Diary; Evelyn's Diary, July 15; Barillon, July 19-29. ]

[Footnote 432: I cannot refrain from expressing my disgust at thebarbarous stupidity which has transformed this most interesting littlechurch into the likeness of a meetinghouse in a manufacturing town. ]

[Footnote 433: Observator, August 1, 1685; Gazette de France, Nov. 2, 1686; Letter from Humphrey Wanley, dated Aug. 25, 1698, in the AubreyCollection; Voltaire, Dict. Phil. There are, in the Pepysian Collection, several ballads written after Monmouth's death which represent him asliving, and predict his speedy return. I will give two specimens. 

 "Though this is a dismal story Of the fall of my design, Yet I'll come again in glory, If I live till eighty-nine: For I'll have a stronger army And of ammunition store. "

 Again;

 "Then shall Monmouth in his glories Unto his English friends appear, And will stifle all such stories As are vended everywhere. "They'll see I was not so degraded, To be taken gathering pease, Or in a cock of hay up braided. What strange stories now are these!"]

[Footnote 434: London Gazette, August 3, 1685; the Battle of Sedgemoor, a Farce. ]

[Footnote 435: Pepys's Diary, kept at Tangier; Historical Records of theSecond or Queen's Royal Regiment of Foot. ]

[Footnote 436: Bloody Assizes, Burnet, i. 647; Luttrell's Diary, July15, 1685; Locke's Western Rebellion; Toulmin's History of Taunton, edited by Savage. ]

[Footnote 437: Luttrell's Diary, July 15, 1685; Toulmin's Hist. OfTaunton. ]

[Footnote 438: Oldmixon, 705; Life and Errors of John Dunton, chap. Vii. ]

[Footnote 439: The silence of Whig writers so credulous and somalevolent as Oldmixon and the compilers of the Western Martyrologywould alone seem to me to settle the question. It also deserves to beremarked that the story of Rhynsault is told by Steele in the Spectator, No. 491. Surely it is hardly possible to believe that, if a crimeexactly resembling that of Rhynsault had been committed within livingmemory in England by an officer of James the Second, Steele, who wasindiscreetly and unseasonably forward to display his Whiggism, wouldhave made no allusion to that fact. For the case of Lebon, see theMoniteur, 4 Messidor, l'an 3. ]

[Footnote 440: Sunderland to Kirke, July 14 and 28, 1685. "His Majesty, "says Sunderland, "commands me to signify to you his dislike of theseproceedings, and desires you to take care that no person concerned inthe rebellion be at large. " It is but just to add that, in the sameletter, Kirke is blamed for allowing his soldiers to live at freequarter. ]

[Footnote 441: I should be very glad if I could give credit to thepopular story that Ken, immediately after the battle of Sedgemoor, represented to the chiefs of the royal army the illegality of militaryexecutions. He would, I doubt not, have exerted all his influence onthe side of law and of mercy, if he had been present. But there is notrustworthy evidence that he was then in the West at all. Indeed what weknow about his proceedings at this time amounts very nearly to proof ofan 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 equallycertain that, on the Monday after the battle, he was with Monmouth inthe Tower; and, in that age, a journey from London to Bridgewater andback again was no light thing. ]

[Footnote 442: North's Life of Guildford, 260, 263, 273; Mackintosh'sView of the Reign of James the Second, page 16, note; Letter of Jeffreysto Sunderland, Sept. 5, 1685. ]

[Footnote 443: See the preamble of the Act of Parliament reversing herattainder. ]

[Footnote 444: Trial of Alice Lisle in the Collection of State Trials;Act of the First of William and Mary for annulling and making voidthe Attainder of Alice Lisle widow; Burnet, i. 649; Caveat against theWhigs. ]

[Footnote 445: Bloody Assizes. ]

[Footnote 446: Locke's Western Rebellion. ]

[Footnote 447: This I can attest from my own childish recollections. ]

[Footnote 448: Lord Lonsdale says seven hundred; Burnet six hundred. Ihave followed the list which the Judges sent to the Treasury, and whichmay still be seen there in the letter book of 1685. See the BloodyAssizes, Locke's Western Rebellion; the Panegyric on Lord Jeffreys;Burnet, i. 648; Eachard, iii. 775; Oldmixon, 705. ]

[Footnote 449: Some of the prayers, exhortations, and hymns of thesufferers will be found in the Bloody Assizes. ]

[Footnote 450: Bloody Assizes; Locke's Western Rebellion; LordLonsdale's Memoirs; Account of the Battle of Sedgemoor in the HardwickePapers. The story in the Life of James the Second, ii. 43; is not takenfrom the King's manuscripts, and sufficiently refutes itself. ]

[Footnote 451: Bloody Assizes; Locke's Western Rebellion, HumblePetition of Widows and Fatherless Children in the West of England;Panegyric on Lord Jeffreys. ]

[Footnote 452: As to the Hewlings, I have followed Kiffin's Memoirs, andMr. Hewling Luson's narrative, which will be found in the second editionof the Hughes Correspondence, vol. Ii. Appendix. The accounts in Locke'sWestern Rebellion and in the Panegyric on Jeffreys are full of errors. Great part of the account in the Bloody Assizes was written by Kiffin, and agrees word for word with his Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 453: See Tutchin's account of his own case in the BloodyAssizes. ]

[Footnote 454: Sunderland to Jeffreys, Sept. 14, 1685; Jeffreys to theKing, Sept. 19, 1685, in the State Paper Office. ]

[Footnote 455: The best account of the sufferings of those rebelswho were sentenced to transportation is to be found in a very curiousnarrative written by John Coad, an honest, Godfearing carpenter whojoined Monmouth, was badly wounded at Philip's Norton, was tried byJeffreys, and was sent to Jamaica. The original manuscript was kindlylent to me by Mr. Phippard, to whom it belongs. ]

[Footnote 456: In the Treasury records of the autumn of 1685 are severalletters directing search to be made for trifles of this sort. ]

[Footnote 457: Commons' Journals, Oct. 9, Nov. 10, Dec 26, 1690;Oldmixon, 706. Panegyrie on Jeffreys. ]

[Footnote 458: Life and Death of Lord Jeffreys; Panegyric on Jeffreys;Kiffin's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 459: Burnet, i 368; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4, 1684-5, July 13, 1686. In one of the satires of that time are these lines:

 "When Duchess, she was gentle, mild, and civil; When Queen, she proved a raging furious devil. "]

[Footnote 460: Sunderland to Jeffreys, Sept. 14, 1685. ]

[Footnote 461: Locke's Western Rebellion; Toulmin's History of Taunton, edited by Savage, Letter of the Duke of Somerset to Sir F. Warre; Letterof Sunderland to Penn, Feb. 13, 1685-6, from the State Paper Office, inthe Mackintosh Collection. (1848. )---- The letter of Sunderland is asfollows:--

 "Whitehall, Feb. 13, 1685-6. 

 "Mr. Penne, "Her Majesty's Maids of Honour having acquainted me that they design to employ you and Mr. Walden in making a composition with the Relations of the Maids of Taunton for the 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. Walden and you to make the most advantageous composition you can in their behalf. "

 I am, Sir, "Your humble servant, "SUNDERLAND. "

That the person to whom this letter was addressed was William Penn theQuaker was not doubted by Sir James Mackintosh who first brought it tolight, or, as far as I am aware, by any other person, till afterthe publication of the first part of this History. It has since beenconfidently asserted that the letter was addressed to a certain GeorgePenne, who appears from an old accountbook lately discovered to havebeen concerned in a negotiation for the ransom of one of Monmouth'sfollowers, named Azariah Pinney. ---- If I thought that I had committedan error, I should, I hope, have the honesty to acknowledge it. But, after full consideration, I am satisfied that Sunderland's letter wasaddressed to William Penn. ---- Much has been said about the way in whichthe name is spelt. The Quaker, we are told, was not Mr. Penne, butMr. Penn. I feel assured that no person conversant with the books andmanuscripts of the seventeenth century will attach any importance tothis argument. It is notorious that a proper name was then thought tobe well spelt if the sound were preserved. To go no further than thepersons, who, in Penn's time, held the Great Seal, one of them issometimes Hyde and sometimes Hide: another is Jefferies, Jeffries, Jeffereys, and Jeffreys: a third is Somers, Sommers, and Summers: afourth is Wright and Wrighte; and a fifth is Cowper and Cooper. TheQuaker's name was spelt in three ways. He, and his father the Admiralbefore him, invariably, as far as I have observed, spelt it Penn; butmost people spelt it Pen; and there were some who adhered to the ancientform, Penne. For example. William the father is Penne in a letter fromDisbrowe to Thurloe, dated on the 7th of December, 1654; and William theson is Penne in a newsletter of the 22nd of September, 1688, printed inthe Ellis Correspondence. In Richard Ward's Life and Letters of HenryMore, printed in 1710, the name of the Quaker will be found spelt in allthe three ways, Penn in the index, Pen in page 197, and Penne in page311. The name is Penne in the Commission which the Admiral carried outwith him on his expedition to the West Indies. Burchett, who becameSecretary to the Admiralty soon after the Revolution, and remained inoffice long after the accession of the House of Hannover, always, in hisNaval History, wrote the name Penne. Surely it cannot be thought strangethat an old-fashioned spelling, in which the Secretary of the Admiraltypersisted so late as 1720, should have been used at the office of theSecretary of State in 1686. I am quite confident that, if the letterwhich we are considering had been of a different kind, if Mr. Penne hadbeen informed that, in consequence of his earnest intercession, the Kinghad 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 thatintercession on the ground that his name was not Penne, the very personswho now complain so bitterly that I am unjust to his memory wouldhave complained quite as bitterly, and, I must say, with much morereason. ---- I think myself, therefore perfectly justified in consideringthe names, Penn and Penne, as the same. To which, then, of the twopersons who bore that name George or William, is it probable that theletter of the Secretary of State was addressed?---- George was evidentlyan adventurer of a very low class. All that we learn about him from thepapers of the Pinney family is that he was employed in the purchase of apardon for the younger son of a dissenting minister. The whole sumwhich appears to have passed through George's hands on this occasion wassixty-five pounds. His commission on the transaction must therefore havebeen small. The only other information which we have about him, is thathe, some time later, applied to the government for a favour which wasvery far from being an honour. In England the Groom Porter of the Palacehad a jurisdiction over games of chance, and made some very dirty gainby issuing lottery tickets and licensing hazard tables. George appearsto have petitioned for a similar privilege in the American colonies. ----William Penn was, during the reign of James the Second, the most activeand powerful solicitor about the Court. I will quote the words of hisadmirer Crose. "Quum autem Pennus tanta gratia plurinum apud regemvaleret, et per id perplures sibi amicos acquireret, illum omnes, etiam qui modo aliqua notitia erant conjuncti, quoties aliquid a regepostulandum agendumve apud regem esset, adire, ambire, orare, ut eosapud regem adjuvaret. " He was overwhelmed by business of this kind, "obrutus negotiationibus curationibusque. " His house and the approachesto it were every day blocked up by crowds of persons who came to requesthis good offices; "domus ac vestibula quotidie referta clientium etsuppliccantium. " From the Fountainhall papers it appears that hisinfluence was felt even in the highlands of Scotland. We learn fromhimself that, at this time, he was always toiling for others, that hewas a daily suitor at Whitehall, and that, if he had chosen to sell hisinfluence, he could, in little more than three, years, have put twentythousand pounds into his pocket, and obtained a hundred thousand morefor the improvement of the colony of which he was proprietor. ---- Suchwas the position of these two men. Which of them, then, was the morelikely to be employed in the matter to which Sunderland's letterrelated? Was it George or William, an agent of the lowest or of thehighest class? The persons interested were ladies of rank and fashion, resident at the palace. Where George would hardly have been admittedinto an outer room, but where William was every day in the presencechamber and was frequently called into the closet. The greatest noblesin the kingdom were zealous and active in the cause of their fairfriends, nobles with whom William lived in habits of familiarintercourse, but who would hardly have thought George fit company fortheir grooms. The sum in question was seven thousand pounds, a sum notlarge when compared with the masses of wealth with which William hadconstantly to deal, but more than a hundred times as large as the onlyransom which is known to have passed through the hands of George. These considerations would suffice to raise a strong presumption thatSunderland's letter was addressed to William, and not to George: butthere is a still stronger argument behind. ---- It is most important toobserve that the person to whom this letter was addressed was not thefirst person whom the Maids of Honour had requested to act for them. They applied to him because another person to whom they had previouslyapplied, had, after some correspondence, declined the office. Fromtheir first application we learn with certainty what sort of personthey wished to employ. If their first application had been made tosome obscure pettifogger or needy gambler, we should be warranted inbelieving that the Penne to whom their second application was made wasGeorge. If, on the other hand, their first application was made to agentleman of the highest consideration, we can hardly be wrong in sayingthat the Penne to whom their second application was made must have beenWilliam. To whom, then, was their first application made? It was to SirFrancis Warre of Hestercombe, a Baronet and a Member of Parliament. Theletters are still extant in which the Duke of Somerset, the proud Duke, not a man very likely to have corresponded with George Penne, pressedSir Francis to undertake the commission. The latest of those lettersis dated about three weeks before Sunderland's letter to Mr. Penne. Somerset tells Sir Francis that the town clerk of Bridgewater, whosename, I may remark in passing, is spelt sometimes Bird and sometimesBirde, had offered his services, but that those services had beendeclined. It is clear, therefore, that the Maids of Honour were desirousto have an agent of high station and character. And they were right. Forthe sum which they demanded was so large that no ordinary jobber couldsafely be entrusted with the care of their interests. ---- As Sir FrancisWarre excused himself from undertaking the negotiation, it becamenecessary for the Maids of Honour and their advisers to choose somebodywho might supply his place; and they chose Penne. Which of the twoPennes, then, must have been their choice, George, a petty broker towhom a percentage on sixty-five pounds was an object, and whose highestambition was to derive an infamous livelihood from cards and dice, orWilliam, not inferior in social position to any commoner in the kingdom?Is it possible to believe that the ladies, who, in January, employed theDuke of Somerset to procure for them an agent in the first rank of theEnglish gentry, and who did not think an attorney, though occupying arespectable post in a respectable corporation, good enough for theirpurpose, would, in February, have resolved to trust everything to afellow who was as much below Bird as Bird was below Warre?---- But, itis said, Sunderland's letter is dry and distant; and he never would havewritten in such a style to William Penn with whom he was on friendlyterms. Can it be necessary for me to reply that the officialcommunications which a Minister of State makes to his dearest friendsand nearest relations are as cold and formal as those which he makes tostrangers? Will it be contended that the General Wellesley to whom theMarquis Wellesley, when Governor of India, addressed so many lettersbeginning with "Sir, " and ending with "I have the honour to be yourobedient servant, '' cannot possibly have been his Lordship's brotherArthur?---- But, it is said, Oldmixon tells a different story. Accordingto him, a Popish lawyer named Brent, and a subordinate jobber, namedCrane, were the agents in the matter of the Taunton girls. Now it isnotorious that of all our historians Oldmixon is the least trustworthy. His most positive assertion would be of no value when opposed to suchevidence as is furnished by Sunderland's letter, But Oldmixon assertsnothing positively. Not only does he not assert positively that Brentand Crane acted for the Maids of Honour; but he does not even assertpositively that the Maids of Honour were at all concerned. He goesno further than "It was said, " and "It was reported. " It is plain, therefore, that he was very imperfectly informed. I do not think itimpossible, however, that there may have been some foundation for therumour which he mentions. We have seen that one busy lawyer, named Bird, volunteered to look after the interest of the Maids of Honour, and thatthey were forced to tell him that they did not want his services. Otherpersons, and among them the two whom Oldmixon names, may have tried tothrust themselves into so lucrative a job, and may, by pretending tointerest at Court, have succeeded in obtaining a little money fromterrified families. But nothing can be more clear than that theauthorised agent of the Maids of Honour was the Mr. Penne, to whom theSecretary of State wrote; and I firmly believe that Mr. Penne to havebeen William the Quaker---- If it be said that it is incredible thatso good a man would have been concerned in so bad an affair, I can onlyanswer that this affair was very far indeed from being the worst inwhich he was concerned. ---- For those reasons I leave the text, andshall leave it exactly as it originally stood. (1857. )]

[Footnote 462: Burnet, i. 646, and Speaker Onslow's note; Clarendon toRochester, May 8, 1686. ]

[Footnote 463: Burnet, i. 634. ]

[Footnote 464: Calamy's Memoirs; Commons' Journals, December 26, 1690;Sunderland to Jeffreys, September 14, 1685; Privy Council Book, February26, 1685-6. ]

[Footnote 465: Lansdowne MS. 1152; Harl. MS. 6845; London Gazette, July20, 1685. ]

[Footnote 466: Many writers have asserted, without the slightestfoundation, that a pardon was granted to Ferguson by James. Some havebeen so absurd as to cite this imaginary pardon, which, if it werereal would prove only that Ferguson was a court spy, in proof of themagnanimity and benignity of the prince who beheaded Alice Lisle andburned Elizabeth Gaunt. Ferguson was not only not specially pardoned, but was excluded by name from the general pardon published in thefollowing spring. (London Gazette, March 15, 1685-6. ) If, as the publicsuspected and as seems probable, indulgence was shown to him; it wasindulgence of which James was, not without reason, ashamed, and whichwas, as far as possible, kept secret. The reports which were current inLondon at the time are mentioned in the Observator, Aug. 1, 1685. ---- SirJohn Reresby, who ought to have been well informed, positively affirmsthat Ferguson was taken three days after the battle of Sedgemoor. ButSir John was certainly wrong as to the date, and may therefore havebeen wrong as to the whole story. From the London Gazette, and fromGoodenough's confession (Lansdowne MS. 1152), it is clear that, afortnight after the battle, Ferguson had not been caught, and wassupposed to be still lurking in England. ]

[Footnote 467: Granger's Biographical History. ]

[Footnote 468: Burnet, i. 648; James to the Prince of Orange, Sept. 10, and 24, 1685; Lord Lonadale's Memoirs; London Gazette, Oct. 1, 1685. ]

[Footnote 469: Trial of Cornish in the Collection of State Trials, Sir J. Hawles's Remarks on Mr. Cornish's Trial; Burnet, i. 651; BloodyAssizes; Stat. 1 Gul. And Mar. ]

[Footnote 470: Trials of Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt, in the Collectionof State Trials Burnet, i. 649; Bloody Assizes; Sir J. Bramston'sMemoirs; Luttrell's Diary, Oct. 23, 1685. ]

[Footnote 471: Bateman's Trial in the Collection of State Trials;Sir John Hawles's Remarks. It is worth while to compare Thomas Lee'sevidence on this occasion with his confession previously published byauthority. ]

[Footnote 472: Van Citters, Oct. 13-23, 1685. ]

[Footnote 473: Neal's History of the Puritans, Calamy's Account of theejected Ministers and the Nonconformists' Memorial contain abundantproofs of the severity of this persecution. Howe's farewell letter tohis flock will be found in the interesting life of that great man, byMr. Rogers. Howe complains that he could not venture to show himself inthe streets of London, and that his health had suffered from want ofair and exercise. But the most vivid picture of the distress of theNonconformists is furnished by their deadly enemy, Lestrange, in theObservators of September and October, 1685. ]