No More Learning

Both were
schismatics. Both hated episcopacy and the Liturgy. Both had what seemed
extravagant whimsies about dress, diversions and postures. Widely as the
two differed in opinion, they were popularly classed together as canting
schismatics; and whatever was ridiculous or odious in either increased
the scorn and aversion which the multitude felt for both.

Before the civil wars, even those who most disliked the opinions and
manners of the Puritan were forced to admit that his moral conduct was
generally, in essentials, blameless; but this praise was now no longer
bestowed, and, unfortunately, was no longer deserved. The general fate
of sects is to obtain a high reputation for sanctity while they are
oppressed, and to lose it as soon as they become powerful: and the
reason is obvious. It is seldom that a man enrolls himself in a
proscribed 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 religious
society is a very feeble instrument of purification, when compared with
a little sharp persecution from without. We may be certain that very few
persons, not seriously impressed by religious convictions, applied for
baptism while Diocletian was vexing the Church, or joined themselves
to Protestant congregations at the risk of being burned by Bonner. But,
when a sect becomes powerful, when its favour is the road to riches and
dignities, worldly and ambitious men crowd into it, talk its language,
conform strictly to its ritual, mimic its peculiarities, and frequently
go beyond its honest members in all the outward indications of zeal. No
discernment, no watchfulness, on the part of ecclesiastical rulers, can
prevent the intrusion of such false brethren. The tares and wheat must
grow together. Soon the world begins to find out that the godly are
not better than other men, and argues, with some justice, that, if not
better, they must be much worse. In no long time all those signs which
were formerly regarded as characteristic of a saint are regarded as
characteristic of a knave.

Thus it was with the English Nonconformists. They had been oppressed;
and oppression had kept them a pure body. They then became supreme in
the state. No man could hope to rise to eminence and command but by
their favour. Their favour was to be gained only by exchanging with
them the signs and passwords of spiritual fraternity. One of the
first resolutions adopted by Barebone's Parliament, the most intensely
Puritanical of all our political assemblies, was that no person should
be admitted into the public service till the House should be satisfied
of his real godliness. What were then considered as the signs of real
godliness, the sadcoloured dress, the sour look, the straight hair,
the nasal whine, the speech interspersed with quaint texts, the Sunday,
gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath, were easily imitated by men to whom all
religions were the same. The sincere Puritans soon found themselves lost
in a multitude, not merely of men of the world, but of the very worst
sort of men of the world. For the most notorious libertine who had
fought under the royal standard might justly be thought virtuous
when compared with some of those who, while they talked about sweet
experiences and comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practice
of fraud, rapacity, and secret debauchery. The people, with a rashness
which we may justly lament, but at which we cannot wonder, formed their
estimate of the whole body from these hypocrites. The theology, the
manners, the dialect of the Puritan were thus associated in the public
mind with the darkest and meanest vices. As soon as the Restoration
had made it safe to avow enmity to the party which had so long been
predominant, a general outcry against Puritanism rose from every corner
of the kingdom, and was often swollen by the voices of those very
dissemblers whose villany had brought disgrace on the Puritan name.

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

The House of Commons, having been elected while the Presbyterians were
dominant, by no means represented the general sense of the people. Most
of the members, while execrating Cromwell and Bradshaw, reverenced the
memory of Essex and of Pym. One sturdy Cavalier, who ventured to declare
that all who had drawn the sword against Charles the First were as much
traitors as those who kind cut off his head, was called to order, placed
at the bar, and reprimanded by the Speaker. The general wish of the
House undoubtedly was to settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a manner
satisfactory to the moderate Puritans. But to such a settlement both the
court and the nation were averse.

The restored King was at this time more loved by the people than any of
his predecessors had ever been. The calamities of his house, the heroic
death of his father, his own long sufferings and romantic adventures,
made him an object of tender interest. His return had delivered the
country from an intolerable bondage. Recalled by the voice of both the
contending factions, he was in a position which enabled him to arbitrate
between them; and in some respects he was well qualified for the task.
He had received from nature excellent parts and a happy temper. His
education had been such as might have been expected to develope his
understanding, and to form him to the practice of every public and
private virtue. He had passed through all varieties of fortune, and had
seen both sides of human nature. He had, while very young, been driven
forth from a palace to a life of exile. penury, and danger. He had, at
the age when the mind and body are in their highest perfection, and when
the first effervescence of boyish passions should have subsided, been
recalled from his wanderings to wear a crown. He had been taught by
bitter experience how much baseness, perfidy, and ingratitude may lie
hid under the obsequious demeanor of courtiers. He had found, on the
other hand, in the huts of the poorest, true nobility of soul. When
wealth was offered to any who would betray him, when death was denounced
against all who should shelter him, cottagers and serving men had kept
his secret truly, and had kissed his hand under his mean disguises with
as much reverence as if he had been seated on his ancestral throne. From
such a school it might have been expected that a young man who wanted
neither abilities nor amiable qualities would have come forth a great
and good King. Charles came forth from that school with social habits,
with polite and engaging manners, and with some talent for lively
conversation, addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond of
sauntering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of selfdenial and of
exertion, without faith in human virtue or in human attachment without
desire of renown, and without sensibility to reproach. According to him,
every person was to be bought: but some people haggled more about their
price than others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and very
skilful it was called by some fine name. The chief trick by which clever
men kept up the price of their abilities was called integrity. The chief
trick by which handsome women kept up the price of their beauty was
called modesty. The love of God, the love of country, the love of
family, the love of friends, were phrases of the same sort, delicate
and convenient synonymes for the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind,
Charles naturally cared very little what they thought of him. Honour and
shame were scarcely more to him than light and darkness to the blind.
His contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems, when
viewed in connection with the rest of his character, to deserve no
commendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it.
One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value
real glory will not value its counterfeit.

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

The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles the Second
differed widely from those by which his predecessor and his successor
were actuated. He was not a man to be imposed upon by the patriarchal
theory of government and the doctrine of divine right. He was utterly
without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated
his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the
administration. Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance of
affairs, that the very clerks who attended him when he sate in council
could not refrain from sneering at his frivolous remarks, and at his
childish impatience. Neither gratitude nor revenge had any share
in determining his course; for never was there a mind on which both
services and injuries left such faint and transitory impressions.
He wished merely to be a King such as Lewis the Fifteenth of France
afterwards was; a King who could draw without limit on the treasury for
the gratification of his private tastes, who could hire with wealth and
honours persons capable of assisting him to kill the time, and who,
even when the state was brought by maladministration to the depths of
humiliation and to the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcome
truth from the purlieus of his own seraglio, and refuse to see and hear
whatever might disturb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for
these ends alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could
be obtained without risk or trouble. In the religious disputes
which divided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at all
interested. For his opinions oscillated in contented suspense between
infidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience was neutral in the
quarrel between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians, his taste was
by no means so. His favourite vices were precisely those to which the
Puritans were least indulgent. He could not get through one day without
the help of diversions which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a man
eminently well bred, and keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he was moved
to contemptuous mirth by the Puritan oddities. He had indeed some reason
to dislike the rigid sect. He had, at the age when the passions are
most impetuous and when levity is most pardonable, spent some months in
Scotland, a King in name, but in fact a state prisoner in the hands
of austere Presbyterians. Not content with requiring him to conform to
their worship and to subscribe their Covenant, they had watched all
his motions, and lectured him on all his youthful follies. He had been
compelled to give reluctant attendance at endless prayers and sermons,
and might think himself fortunate when he was not insolently reminded
from the pulpit of his own frailties, of his father's tyranny, and of
his mother's idolatry. Indeed he had been so miserable during this part
of his life that the defeat which made him again a wanderer might be
regarded as a deliverance rather than as a calamity. Under the influence
of such feelings as these Charles was desirous to depress the party
which had resisted his father.

The King's brother, James Duke of York, took the same side. Though a
libertine, James was diligent, methodical, and fond of authority and
business. His understanding was singularly slow and narrow, and his
temper obstinate, harsh, and unforgiving. That such a prince should have
looked with no good will on the free institutions of England, and on the
party which was peculiarly zealous for those institutions, can excite
no surprise. As yet the Duke professed himself a member of the Anglican
Church but he had already shown inclinations which had seriously alarmed
good Protestants.

The person on whom devolved at this time the greatest part of the labour
of governing was Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the realm, who was soon
created Earl of Clarendon. The respect which we justly feel for
Clarendon as a writer must not blind us to the faults which he committed
as a statesman. Some of those faults, however, are explained and excused
by the unfortunate position in which he stood. He had, during the first
year of the Long Parliament, been honourably distinguished among the
senators who laboured to redress the grievances of the nation. One
of the most odious of those grievances, the Council of York, had been
removed in consequence chiefly of his exertions. When the great schism
took place, when the reforming party and the conservative party first
appeared marshalled against each other, he, with many wise and good men,
took the conservative side. He thenceforward followed the fortunes of
the court, enjoyed as large a share of the confidence of Charles the
First as the reserved nature and tortuous policy of that prince allowed
to any minister, and subsequently shared the exile and directed the
political conduct of Charles the Second. At the Restoration Hyde became
chief minister. In a few months it was announced that he was closely
related by affinity to the royal house. His daughter had become, by a
secret marriage, Duchess of York. His grandchildren might perhaps wear
the crown. He was raised by this illustrious connection over the heads
of the old nobility of the land, and was for a time supposed to be
allpowerful. In some respects he was well fitted for his great place. No
man wrote abler state papers. No man spoke with more weight and dignity
in Council and in Parliament. No man was better acquainted with general
maxims of statecraft. No man observed the varieties of character with a
more discriminating eye. It must be added that he had a strong sense of
moral and religious obligation, a sincere reverence for the laws of his
country, and a conscientious regard for the honour and interest of the
Crown. But his temper was sour, arrogant, and impatient of opposition.
Above all, he had been long an exile; and this circumstance alone would
have completely disqualified him for the supreme direction of affairs.
It is scarcely possible that a politician, who has been compelled by
civil troubles to go into banishment, and to pass many of the best years
of his life abroad, can be fit, on the day on which he returns to his
native land, to be at the head of the government. Clarendon was no
exception to this rule. He had left England with a mind heated by a
fierce conflict which had ended in the downfall of his party and of his
own fortunes. From 1646 to 1660 he had lived beyond sea, looking on all
that passed at home from a great distance, and through a false medium.
His notions of public affairs were necessarily derived from the
reports of plotters, many of whom were ruined and desperate men. Events
naturally seemed to him auspicious, not in proportion as they increased
the prosperity and glory of the nation, but in proportion as they tended
to hasten the hour of his own return. His wish, a wish which he has not
disguised, was that, till his countrymen brought back the old line, they
might never enjoy quiet or freedom. At length he returned; and, without
having a single week to look about him, to mix with society, to note
the changes which fourteen eventful years had produced in the national
character and feelings, he was at once set to rule the state. In such
circumstances, a minister of the greatest tact and docility would
probably have fallen into serious errors. But tact and docility made no
part of the character of Clarendon. To him England was still the
England of his youth; and he sternly frowned down every theory and every
practice which had sprung up during his own exile. Though he was far
from meditating any attack on the ancient and undoubted power of the
House of Commons, he saw with extreme uneasiness the growth of that
power. The royal prerogative, for which he had long suffered, and by
which he had at length been raised to wealth and dignity, was sacred
in his eyes. The Roundheads he regarded both with political and with
personal aversion. To the Anglican Church he had always been strongly
attached, and had repeatedly, where her interests were concerned,
separated himself with regret from his dearest friends. His zeal for
Episcopacy and for the Book of Common Prayer was now more ardent than
ever, and was mingled with a vindictive hatred of the Puritans, which
did him little honour either as a statesman or as a Christian.

While the House of Commons which had recalled the royal family was
sitting, it was impossible to effect the re-establishment of the
old ecclesiastical system. Not only were the intentions of the court
strictly concealed, but assurances which quieted the minds of the
moderate Presbyterians were given by the King in the most solemn manner.
He had promised, before his restoration, that he would grant liberty of
conscience to his subjects. He now repeated that promise, and added
a promise to use his best endeavours for the purpose of effecting a
compromise between the contending sects. He wished, he said, to see the
spiritual jurisdiction divided between bishops and synods. The Liturgy
should be revised by a body of learned divines, one-half of whom should
be Presbyterians. The questions respecting the surplice, the posture at
the Eucharist, and the sign of the cross in baptism, should be settled
in a way which would set tender consciences at ease. When the King
had thus laid asleep the vigilance of those whom he most feared, he
dissolved the Parliament. He had already given his assent to an act by
which an amnesty was granted, with few exceptions, to all who, during
the late troubles, had been guilty of political offences. He had also
obtained from the Commons a grant for life of taxes, the annual product
of which was estimated at twelve hundred thousand pounds. The actual
income, indeed, during some years, amounted to little more than a
million: but this sum, together with the hereditary revenue of the
crown, was then sufficient to defray the expenses of the government in
time of peace. Nothing was allowed for a standing army. The nation was
sick of the very name; and the least mention of such a force would have
incensed and alarmed all parties.

Early in 1661 took place a general election. The people were mad with
loyal enthusiasm. The capital was excited by preparations for the most
splendid coronation that had ever been known. The result was that a body
of representatives was returned, such as England had never yet seen. A
large proportion of the successful candidates were men who had fought
for the Crown and the Church, and whose minds had been exasperated by
many injuries and insults suffered at the hands of the Roundheads. When
the members met, the passions which animated each individually acquired
new strength from sympathy. The House of Commons was, during some years,
more zealous for royalty than the King, more zealous for episcopacy
than the Bishops. Charles and Clarendon were almost terrified at the
completeness of their own success. They found themselves in a situation
not unlike that in which Lewis the Eighteenth and the Duke of Richelieu
were placed while the Chamber of 1815 was sitting. Even if the King
had been desirous to fulfill the promises which he had made to the
Presbyterians, it would have been out of his power to do so. It was
indeed only by the strong exertion of his influence that he could
prevent the victorious Cavaliers from rescinding the act of indemnity,
and retaliating without mercy all that they had suffered.

The Commons began by resolving that every member should, on pain of
expulsion, take the sacrament according to the form prescribed by the
old Liturgy, and that the Covenant should be burned by the hangman in
Palace Yard. An act was passed, which not only acknowledged the power
of the sword to be solely in the King, but declared that in no extremity
whatever could the two Houses be justified in withstanding him by force.
Another act was passed which required every officer of a corporation to
receive 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 in
all cases unlawful. A few hotheaded men wished to bring in a bill, which
should at once annul all the statutes passed by the Long Parliament,
and should restore the Star Chamber and the High Commission; but the
reaction, violent as it was, did not proceed quite to this length. It
still continued to be the law that a Parliament should be held every
three years: but the stringent clauses which directed the returning
officers to proceed to election at the proper time, even without the
royal writ, were repealed. The Bishops were restored to their seats in
the Upper House. The old ecclesiastical polity and the old Liturgy were
revived without any modification which had any tendency to conciliate
even the most reasonable Presbyterians. Episcopal ordination was now,
for the first time, made an indispensable qualification for church
preferment. About two thousand ministers of religion, whose conscience
did not suffer them to conform, were driven from their benefices in one
day. The dominant party exultingly reminded the sufferers that the Long
Parliament, when at the height of power, had turned out a still greater
number of Royalist divines. The reproach was but too well founded: but
the Long Parliament had at least allowed to the divines whom it ejected
a provision sufficient to keep them from starving; and this example the
Cavaliers, intoxicated with animosity, had not the justice and humanity
to follow.

Then came penal statutes against Nonconformists, statutes for which
precedents might too easily be found in the Puritan legislation, but to
which the King could not give his assent without a breach of promises
publicly made, in the most important crisis of his life, to those on
whom his fate depended. The Presbyterians, in extreme distress and
terror, fled to the foot of the throne, and pleaded their recent
services and the royal faith solemnly and repeatedly plighted. The King
wavered. He could not deny his own hand and seal. He could not but be
conscious that he owed much to the petitioners. He was little in the
habit of resisting importunate solicitation. His temper was not that of
a persecutor. He disliked the Puritans indeed; but in him dislike was a
languid feeling, very little resembling the energetic hatred which had
burned in the heart of Laud. He was, moreover, partial to the Roman
Catholic religion; and he knew that it would be impossible to grant
liberty of worship to the professors of that religion without extending
the same indulgence to Protestant dissenters. He therefore made a feeble
attempt to restrain the intolerant zeal of the House of Commons; but
that House was under the influence of far deeper convictions and far
stronger passions than his own. After a faint struggle he yielded, and
passed, with the show of alacrity, a series of odious acts against
the separatists. It was made a crime to attend a dissenting place of
worship. A single justice of the peace might convict without a jury, and
might, for the third offence, pass sentence of transportation beyond sea
for seven years. With refined cruelty it was provided that the offender
should not be transported to New England, where he was likely to find
sympathising friends. If he returned to his own country before the
expiration of his term of exile, he was liable to capital punishment.
A new and most unreasonable test was imposed on divines who had been
deprived of their benefices for nonconformity; and all who refused to
take that test were prohibited from coming within five miles of any town
which was governed by a corporation, of any town which was represented
in Parliament, or of any town where they had themselves resided as
ministers. The magistrates, by whom these rigorous statutes were to
be enforced, were in general men inflamed by party spirit and by the
remembrance of wrongs suffered in the time of the commonwealth. The
gaols were therefore soon crowded with dissenters, and, among the
sufferers, were some of whose genius and virtue any Christian society
might well be proud.

The Church of England was not ungrateful for the protection which she
received from the government. From the first day of her existence, she
had been attached to monarchy. But, during the quarter of a century
which followed the Restoration, her zeal for royal authority and
hereditary right passed all bounds. She had suffered with the House of
Stuart. She had been restored with that House. She was connected with
it by common interests, friendships, and enmities. It seemed impossible
that a day could ever come when the ties which bound her to the children
of her august martyr would be sundered, and when the loyalty in which
she gloried would cease to be a pleasing and profitable duty. She
accordingly magnified in fulsome phrase that prerogative which was
constantly employed to defend and to aggrandise her, and reprobated,
much at her ease, the depravity of those whom oppression, from which
she was exempt, had goaded to rebellion. Her favourite theme was
the doctrine of non-resistance. That doctrine she taught without any
qualification, and followed out to all its extreme consequences. Her
disciples were never weary of repeating that in no conceivable case, not
even if England were cursed with a King resembling Busiris or Phalaris,
with a King who, in defiance of law, and without the presence of
justice, should daily doom hundreds of innocent victims to torture
and death, would all the Estates of the realm united be justified in
withstanding his tyranny by physical force. Happily the principles of
human nature afford abundant security that such theories will never be
more than theories.
The day of trial came; and the very men who had most
loudly and most sincerely professed this extravagant loyalty were, in
every county of England arrayed in arms against the throne.

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

While these changes were in progress, a change still more important took
place in the morals and manners of the community. Those passions
and tastes which, under the rule of the Puritans, had been sternly
repressed, and, if gratified at all, had been gratified by stealth,
broke forth with ungovernable violence as soon as the check was
withdrawn. Men flew to frivolous amusements and to criminal pleasures
with the greediness which long and enforced abstinence naturally
produces. Little restraint was imposed by public opinion. For the
nation, nauseated with cant, suspicious of all pretensions to sanctity
and still smarting from the recent tyranny of rulers austere in life and
powerful in prayer, looked for a time with complacency on the softer and
gayer vices. Still less restraint was imposed by the government.
Indeed there was no excess which was not encouraged by the ostentatious
profligacy of the King and of his favourite courtiers. A few counsellors
of Charles the First, who were now no longer young, retained the
decorous gravity which had been thirty years before in fashion at
Whitehall. Such were Clarendon himself, and his friends, Thomas
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James Butler, Duke
of Ormond, who, having through many vicissitudes struggled gallantly
for the royal cause in Ireland, now governed that kingdom as Lord
Lieutenant. But neither the memory of the services of these men, nor
their great power in the state, could protect them from the sarcasms
which modish vice loves to dart at obsolete virtue. The praise of
politeness and vivacity could now scarcely be obtained except by some
violation of decorum. Talents great and various assisted to spread the
contagion. Ethical philosophy had recently taken a form well suited
to please a generation equally devoted to monarchy and to vice. Thomas
Hobbes had, in language more precise and luminous than has ever been
employed by any other metaphysical writer, maintained that the will of
the prince was the standard of right and wrong, and that every subject
ought to be ready to profess Popery, Mahometanism, or Paganism, at the
royal command. Thousands who were incompetent to appreciate what was
really valuable in his speculations, eagerly welcomed a theory which,
while it exalted the kingly office, relaxed the obligations of morality,
and degraded religion into a mere affair of state. Hobbism soon became
an almost essential part of the character of the fine gentleman. All
the lighter kinds of literature were deeply tainted by the prevailing
licentiousness. Poetry stooped to be the pandar of every low desire.
Ridicule, instead of putting guilt and error to the blush, turned her
formidable shafts against innocence and truth. The restored Church
contended indeed against the prevailing immorality, but contended
feebly, and with half a heart. It was necessary to the decorum of
her character that she should admonish her erring children: but her
admonitions were given in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Her attention
was elsewhere engaged. Her whole soul was in the work of crushing the
Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Caesar the things
which were Caesar's. She had been pillaged and oppressed by the party
which preached an austere morality. She had been restored to opulence
and honour by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were
disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they were yet
ready to fight knee deep in blood for her cathedrals and places, for
every line of her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If the
debauched Cavalier haunted brothels and gambling houses, he at least
avoided conventicles. If he never spoke without uttering ribaldry and
blasphemy, he made some amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe
to gaol for preaching and praying. Thus the clergy, for a time, made war
on schism with so much vigour that they had little leisure to make war
on vice. The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and
under the special sanction of the head of the Church, publicly recited
by female lips in female ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's
Progress languished in a dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel
to the poor. It is an unquestionable and a most instructive fact that
the years during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was
in the zenith were precisely the years during which national virtue was
at the lowest point.

Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the prevailing
immorality; but those persons who made politics their business were
perhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt society. For they were
exposed, not only to the same noxious influences which affected the
nation generally, but also to a taint of a peculiar and of a most
malignant kind. Their character had been formed amidst frequent and
violent revolutions and counterrevolutions. In the course of a few
years they had seen the ecclesiastical and civil polity of their country
repeatedly changed. They had seen an Episcopal Church persecuting
Puritans, a Puritan Church persecuting Episcopalians, and an Episcopal
Church persecuting Puritans again. They had seen hereditary monarchy
abolished and restored. They had seen the Long Parliament thrice supreme
in the state, and thrice dissolved amidst the curses and laughter of
millions. They had seen a new dynasty rapidly rising to the height of
power and glory, and then on a sudden hurled down from the chair of
state without a struggle. They had seen a new representative system
devised, tried and abandoned. They had seen a new House of Lords
created and scattered. They had seen great masses of property violently
transferred from Cavaliers to Roundheads, and from Roundheads back to
Cavaliers. During these events no man could be a stirring and thriving
politician who was not prepared to change with every change of fortune.
It was only in retirement that any person could long keep the character
either of a steady Royalist or of a steady Republican. One who, in
such an age, is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce all
thoughts of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst
of endless mutation, he must be always on the watch for the indications
of a coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment for deserting
a falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a faction while it
was uppermost, he must suddenly extricate himself from it when its
difficulties begin, must assail it, must persecute it, must enter on a
new career of power and prosperity in company with new associates. His
situation naturally developes in him to the highest degree a peculiar
class of abilities and a peculiar class of vices. He becomes quick of
observation and fertile of resource. He catches without effort the tone
of any sect or party with which he chances to mingle. He discerns
the signs of the times with a sagacity which to the multitude appears
miraculous, with a sagacity resembling that with which a veteran police
officer pursues the faintest indications of crime, or with which a
Mohawk warrior follows a track through the woods. But we shell seldom
find, in a statesman so trained, integrity, constancy, any of the
virtues of the noble family of Truth. He has no faith in any doctrine,
no zeal for any cause. He has seen so many old institutions swept away,
that he has no reverence for prescription. He has seen so many
new institutions, from which much had been expected, produce mere
disappointment, that he has no hope of improvement. He sneers alike at
those who are anxious to preserve and at those who are eager to reform.
There is nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple or
a blush, join in defending or in destroying. Fidelity to opinions and
to friends seems to him mere dulness and wrongheadedness. Politics
he regards, not as a science of which the object is the happiness of
mankind, but as an exciting game of mixed chance and skill, at which
a dexterous and lucky player may win an estate, a coronet, perhaps a
crown, and at which one rash move may lead to the loss of fortune and
of life. Ambition, which, in good times, and in good minds, is half a
virtue, now, disjoined from every elevated and philanthropic sentiment,
becomes a selfish cupidity scarcely less ignoble than avarice. Among
those politicians who, from the Restoration to the accession of the
House of Hanover, were at the head of the great parties in the state,
very few can be named whose reputation is not stained by what, in our
age, would be called gross perfidy and corruption. It is scarcely an
exaggeration to say that the most unprincipled public men who have taken
part in affairs within our memory would, if tried by the standard
which was in fashion during the latter part of the seventeenth century,
deserve to be regarded as scrupulous and disinterested.

While these political, religious, and moral changes were taking place in
England, the Royal authority had been without difficulty reestablished
in every other part of the British islands. In Scotland the restoration
of the Stuarts had been hailed with delight; for it was regarded as
the restoration of national independence. And true it was that the yoke
which Cromwell had imposed was, in appearance, taken away, that the
Scottish Estates again met in their old hall at Edinburgh, and that the
Senators of the College of Justice again administered the Scottish
law according to the old forms. Yet was the independence of the little
kingdom necessarily rather nominal than real; for, as long as the King
had England on his side, he had nothing to apprehend from disaffection
in his other dominions. He was now in such a situation that he could
renew the attempt which had proved destructive to his father without any
danger of his father's fate. Charles the First had tried to force his
own religion by his regal power on the Scots at a moment when both his
religion and his regal power were unpopular in England; and he had not
only failed, but had raised troubles which had ultimately cost him
his crown and his head. Times had now changed: England was zealous for
monarchy and prelacy; and therefore the scheme which had formerly been
in the highest degree imprudent might be resumed with little risk to
the throne. The government resolved to set up a prelatical church in
Scotland. The design was disapproved by every Scotchman whose judgment
was entitled to respect. Some Scottish statesmen who were zealous
for the King's prerogative had been bred Presbyterians. Though little
troubled with scruples, they retained a preference for the religion of
their childhood; and they well knew how strong a hold that religion had
on the hearts of their countrymen. They remonstrated strongly: but, when
they found that they remonstrated in vain, they had not virtue enough to
persist in an opposition which would have given offence to their
master; and several of them stooped to the wickedness and baseness of
persecuting what in their consciences they believed to be the purest
form of Christianity. The Scottish Parliament was so constituted that
it had scarcely ever offered any serious opposition even to Kings much
weaker than Charles then was. Episcopacy, therefore, was established
by law. As to the form of worship, a large discretion was left to the
clergy. In some churches the English Liturgy was used. In others, the
ministers selected from that Liturgy such prayers and thanksgivings
as were likely to be least offensive to the people. But in general the
doxology was sung at the close of public worship; and the Apostles'
Creed was recited when baptism was administered. By the great body of
the Scottish nation the new Church was detested both as superstitious
and as foreign; as tainted with the corruptions of Rome, and as a
mark of the predominance of England. There was, however, no general
insurrection. The country was not what it had been twenty-two years
before. Disastrous war and alien domination had tamed the spirit of the
people. The aristocracy, which was held in great honour by the middle
class and by the populace, had put itself at the head of the movement
against Charles the First, but proved obsequious to Charles the Second.
From the English Puritans no aid was now to be expected. They were a
feeble party, proscribed both by law and by public opinion. The bulk
of the Scottish nation, therefore, sullenly submitted, and, with many
misgivings of conscience, attended the ministrations of the Episcopal
clergy, or of Presbyterian divines who had consented to accept from the
government a half toleration, known by the name of the Indulgence.
But there were, particularly in the western lowlands, many fierce and
resolute men who held that the obligation to observe the Covenant was
paramount to the obligation to obey the magistrate. These people, in
defiance of the law, persisted in meeting to worship God after their own
fashion. The Indulgence they regarded, not as a partial reparation of
the wrongs inflicted by the State on the Church, but as a new wrong, the
more odious because it was disguised under the appearance of a benefit.
Persecution, they said, could only kill the body; but the black
Indulgence was deadly to the soul. Driven from the towns, they assembled
on heaths and mountains. Attacked by the civil power, they without
scruple repelled force by force. At every conventicle they mustered in
arms. They repeatedly broke out into open rebellion. They were easily
defeated, and mercilessly punished: but neither defeat nor punishment
could subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured till
their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by scores,
exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandoned
at another time to the mercy of troops of marauders from the Highlands,
they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the boldest and
mightiest oppressor could not but dread the audacity of their despair.

Such was, during the reign of Charles the Second, the state of Scotland.
Ireland was not less distracted. In that island existed feuds, compared
with which the hottest animosities of English politicians were lukewarm.
The enmity between the Irish Cavaliers and the Irish Roundheads was
almost forgotten in the fiercer enmity which raged between the English
and the Celtic races. The interval between the Episcopalian and the
Presbyterian seemed to vanish, when compared with the interval which
separated both from the Papist. During the late civil troubles the
greater part of the Irish soil had been transferred from the vanquished
nation to the victors. To the favour of the Crown few either of the
old or of the new occupants had any pretensions. The despoilers and the
despoiled had, for the most part, been rebels alike. The government
was soon perplexed and wearied by the conflicting claims and mutual
accusations of the two incensed factions. Those colonists among
whom Cromwell had portioned out the conquered territory, and whose
descendants are still called Cromwellians, asserted that the aboriginal
inhabitants were deadly enemies of the English nation under every
dynasty, and of the Protestant religion in every form. They described
and exaggerated the atrocities which had disgraced the insurrection of
Ulster: they urged the King to follow up with resolution the policy of
the Protector; and they were not ashamed to hint that there would never
be peace in Ireland till the old Irish race should be extirpated.
The Roman Catholics extenuated their offense as they best might, and
expatiated in piteous language on the severity of their punishment,
which, in truth, had not been lenient. They implored Charles not to
confound the innocent with the guilty, and reminded him that many of the
guilty had atoned for their fault by returning to their allegiance, and
by defending his rights against the murderers of his father. The court,
sick of the importunities of two parties, neither of which it had any
reason to love, at length relieved itself from trouble by dictating
a compromise. That system, cruel, but most complete and energetic, by
which Oliver had proposed to make the island thoroughly English, was
abandoned. The Cromwellians were induced to relinquish a third part of
their acquisitions. The land thus surrendered was capriciously divided
among claimants whom the government chose to favour. But great numbers
who protested that they were innocent of all disloyalty, and some
persons who boasted that their loyalty had been signally displayed,
obtained neither restitution nor compensation, and filled France and
Spain with outcries against the injustice and ingratitude of the House
of Stuart.

Meantime the government had, even in England, ceased to be popular. The
Royalists had begun to quarrel with the court and with each other; and
the party which had been vanquished, trampled down, and, as it seemed,
annihilated, but which had still retained a strong principle of life,
again raised its head, and renewed the interminable war.

Had the administration been faultless, the enthusiasm with which the
return of the King and the termination of the military tyranny had been
hailed could not have been permanent. For it is the law of our nature
that such fits of excitement shall always be followed by remissions. The
manner in which the court abused its victory made the remission speedy
and complete. Every moderate man was shocked by the insolence, cruelty,
and perfidy with which the Nonconformists were treated. The penal laws
had effectually purged the oppressed party of those insincere members
whose vices had disgraced it, and had made it again an honest and
pious body of men. The Puritan, a conqueror, a ruler, a persecutor,
a sequestrator, had been detested. The Puritan, betrayed and evil
entreated, deserted by all the timeservers who, in his prosperity, had
claimed brotherhood with him, hunted from his home, forbidden under
severe penalties to pray or receive the sacrament according to his
conscience, yet still firm in his resolution to obey God rather than
man, was, in spite of some unpleasing recollections, an object of pity
and respect to well constituted minds. These feelings became stronger
when it was noised abroad that the court was not disposed to treat
Papists with the same rigour which had been shown to Presbyterians. A
vague suspicion that the King and the Duke were not sincere Protestants
sprang up and gathered strength. Many persons too who had been disgusted
by the austerity and hypocrisy of the Saints of the Commonwealth began
to be still more disgusted by the open profligacy of the court and of
the Cavaliers, and were disposed to doubt whether the sullen preciseness
of Praise God Barebone might not be preferable to the outrageous
profaneness and licentiousness of the Buckinghams and Sedleys. Even
immoral men, who were not utterly destitute of sense and public spirit,
complained that the government treated the most serious matters as
trifles, and made trifles its serious business. A King might be
pardoned for amusing his leisure with wine, wit, and beauty. But it was
intolerable that he should sink into a mere lounger and voluptuary, that
the gravest affairs of state should be neglected, and that the public
service should be starved and the finances deranged in order that
harlots and parasites might grow rich.

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

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

The minds of men were now in such a temper that every public act excited
discontent. Charles had taken to wife Catharine Princess of Portugal.
The marriage was generally disliked; and the murmurs became loud when it
appeared that the King was not likely to have any legitimate posterity.
Dunkirk, won by Oliver from Spain, was sold to Lewis the Fourteenth,
King of France. This bargain excited general indignation. Englishmen
were already beginning to observe with uneasiness the progress of the
French power, and to regard the House of Bourbon with the same feeling
with which their grandfathers had regarded the House of Austria. Was it
wise, men asked, at such a time, to make any addition to the strength of
a monarchy already too formidable? Dunkirk was, moreover, prized by
the people, not merely as a place of arms, and as a key to the Low
Countries, but also as a trophy of English valour. It was to the
subjects of Charles what Calais had been to an earlier generation, and
what the rock of Gibraltar, so manfully defended, through disastrous and
perilous years, against the fleets and armies of a mighty coalition, is
to ourselves. The plea of economy might have had some weight, if it had
been urged by an economical government. But it was notorious that the
charges of Dunkirk fell far short of the sums which were wasted at court
in vice and folly. It seemed insupportable that a sovereign, profuse
beyond example in all that regarded his own pleasures, should be
niggardly in all that regarded the safety and honour of the state.

The public discontent was heightened, when it was found that, while
Dunkirk was abandoned on the plea of economy, the fortress of Tangier,
which was part of the dower of Queen Catharine, was repaired and kept up
at an enormous charge. That place was associated with no recollections
gratifying to the national pride: it could in no way promote the
national interests: it involved us in inglorious, unprofitable, and
interminable wars with tribes of half savage Mussulmans and it was
situated in a climate singularly unfavourable to the health and vigour
of the English race.

But the murmurs excited by these errors were faint, when compared with
the clamours which soon broke forth. The government engaged in war with
the United Provinces. The House of Commons readily voted sums unexampled
in our history, sums exceeding those which had supported the fleets and
armies of Cromwell at the time when his power was the terror of all
the world. But such was the extravagance, dishonesty, and incapacity of
those who had succeeded to his authority, that this liberality proved
worse than useless. The sycophants of the court, ill qualified to
contend 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 and
without rigging. It was at length determined to abandon all schemes of
offensive war; and it soon appeared that even a defensive war was a task
too hard for that administration. The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames,
and burned the ships of war which lay at Chatham. It was said that, on
the very day of that great humiliation, the King feasted with the ladies
of his seraglio, and amused himself with hunting a moth about the supper
room. Then, at length, tardy justice was done to the memory of Oliver.
Everywhere men magnified his valour, genius, and patriotism. Everywhere
it was remembered how, when he ruled, all foreign powers had trembled
at the name of England, how the States General, now so haughty, had
crouched at his feet, and how, when it was known that he was no more,
Amsterdam was lighted up as for a great deliverance, and children
ran along the canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead. Even
Royalists exclaimed that the state could be saved only by calling the
old soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon the capital began to feel
the miseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to be procured. Tilbury
Fort, the place where Elizabeth had, with manly spirit, hurled foul
scorn at Parma and Spain, was insulted by the invaders. The roar of
foreign guns was heard, for the first time, by the citizens of London.
In the Council it was seriously proposed that, if the enemy advanced,
the Tower should be abandoned. Great multitudes of people assembled in
the streets crying out that England was bought and sold. The houses and
carriages of the ministers were attacked by the populace; and it seemed
likely that the government would have to deal at once with an invasion
and with an insurrection. The extreme danger, it is true, soon passed
by. A treaty was concluded, very different from the treaties which
Oliver had been in the habit of signing; and the nation was once more
at peace, but was in a mood scarcely less fierce and sullen than in the
days of shipmoney.

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

Had there been a general election while the nation was smarting under so
many disgraces and misfortunes, it is probable that the Roundheads would
have regained ascendency in the state. But the Parliament was still
the Cavalier Parliament, chosen in the transport of loyalty which had
followed the Restoration. Nevertheless it soon became evident that no
English legislature, however loyal, would now consent to be merely what
the legislature had been under the Tudors. From the death of Elizabeth
to the eve of the civil war, the Puritans, who predominated in the
representative body, had been constantly, by a dexterous use of the
power of the purse, encroaching on the province of the executive
government. The gentlemen who, after the Restoration, filled the Lower
House, though they abhorred the Puritan name, were well pleased to
inherit the fruit of the Puritan policy. They were indeed most willing
to employ the power which they possessed in the state for the purpose of
making their King mighty and honoured, both at home and abroad: but
with the power itself they were resolved not to part. The great English
revolution of the seventeenth century, that is to say, the transfer of
the supreme control of the executive administration from the crown to
the House of Commons, was, through the whole long existence of this
Parliament, proceeding noiselessly, but rapidly and steadily. Charles,
kept poor by his follies and vices, wanted money. The Commons alone
could legally grant him money. They could not be prevented from putting
their own price on their grants. The price which they put on their
grants was this, that they should be allowed to interfere with every one
of the King's prerogatives, to wring from him his consent to laws which
he disliked, to break up cabinets, to dictate the course of foreign
policy, and even to direct the administration of war. To the royal
office, and the royal person, they loudly and sincerely professed the
strongest attachment. But to Clarendon they owed no allegiance; and they
fell on him as furiously as their predecessors had fallen on Strafford.