No More Learning

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.
The minister's virtues and vices alike contributed to his ruin. He
was the ostensible head of the administration, and was therefore held
responsible even for those acts which he had strongly, but vainly,
opposed in Council. He was regarded by the Puritans, and by all who
pitied them, as an implacable bigot, a second Laud, with much more than
Laud's understanding. He had on all occasions maintained that the Act of
indemnity ought to be strictly observed; and this part of his conduct,
though highly honourable to him, made him hateful to all those Royalists
who wished to repair their ruined fortunes by suing the Roundheads for
damages and mesne profits. The Presbyterians of Scotland attributed to
him the downfall of their Church. The Papists of Ireland attributed to
him the loss of their lands. As father of the Duchess of York, he had
an obvious motive for wishing that there might be a barren Queen; and he
was therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The sale
of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with Holland, he
was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogant
deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches,
the ostentation with which he squandered them, his picture gallery,
filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property of
ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front
right opposite to the humbler residence of our Kings, drew on him much
deserved, and some undeserved, censure. When the Dutch fleet was in the
Thames, it was against the Chancellor that the rage of the populace was
chiefly directed. His windows were broken; the trees of his garden were
cut down; and a gibbet was set up before his door. But nowhere was he
more detested than in the House of Commons. He was unable to perceive
that the time was fast approaching when that House, if it continued to
exist at all, must be supreme in the state, when the management of that
House would be the most important department of politics, and when,
without the help of men possessing the ear of that House, it would
be impossible to carry on the government. He obstinately persisted in
considering the Parliament as a body in no respect differing from the
Parliament which had been sitting when, forty years before, he first
began to study law at the Temple. He did not wish to deprive the
legislature of those powers which were inherent in it by the old
constitution of the realm: but the new development of those powers,
though a development natural, inevitable, and to be prevented only by
utterly destroying the powers themselves, disgusted and alarmed him.
Nothing would have induced him to put the great seal to a writ for
raising shipmoney, or to give his voice in Council for committing a
member of Parliament to the Tower, on account of words spoken in debate:
but, when the Commons began to inquire in what manner the money voted
for the war had been wasted, and to examine into the maladministration
of the navy, he flamed with indignation. Such inquiry, according to him,
was out of their province. He admitted that the House was a most loyal
assembly, that it had done good service to the crown, and that its
intentions were excellent. But, both in public and in the closet, he,
on every occasion, expressed his concern that gentlemen so sincerely
attached to monarchy should unadvisedly encroach on the prerogative of
the monarch. Widely as they differed in spirit from the members of the
Long Parliament, they yet, he said, imitated that Parliament in meddling
with matters which lay beyond the sphere of the Estates of the realm,
and which were subject to the authority of the crown alone. The country,
he maintained, would never be well governed till the knights of shires
and the burgesses were content to be what their predecessors had been
in the days of Elizabeth. All the plans which men more observant
than himself of the signs of that time proposed, for the purpose of
maintaining a good understanding between the Court and the Commons,
he disdainfully rejected as crude projects, inconsistent with the
old polity of England. Towards the young orators, who were rising
to distinction and authority in the Lower House, his deportment was
ungracious: and he succeeded in making them, with scarcely an exception,
his deadly enemies. Indeed one of his most serious faults was
an inordinate contempt for youth: and this contempt was the more
unjustifiable, because his own experience in English politics was by no
means proportioned to his age. For so great a part of his life had been
passed abroad that he knew less of that world in which he found himself
on his return than many who might have been his sons.

For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons. For very different
reasons he was equally disliked by the Court. His morals as well as his
polities were those of an earlier generation. Even when he was a young
law student, living much with men of wit and pleasure, his natural
gravity and his religious principles had to a great extent preserved
him from the contagion of fashionable debauchery; and he was by no means
likely, in advanced years and in declining health, to turn libertine.
On the vices of the young and gay he looked with an aversion almost as
bitter and contemptuous as that which he felt for the theological errors
of the sectaries. He missed no opportunity of showing his scorn of
the mimics, revellers, and courtesans who crowded the palace; and the
admonitions which he addressed to the King himself were very sharp,
and, what Charles disliked still more, very long. Scarcely any voice was
raised in favour of a minister loaded with the double odium of faults
which roused the fury of the people, and of virtues which annoyed and
importuned the sovereign. Southampton was no more. Ormond performed
the duties of friendship manfully and faithfully, but in vain. The
Chancellor fell with a great ruin. The seal was taken from him: the
Commons impeached him: his head was not safe: he fled from the country:
an act was passed which doomed him to perpetual exile; and those who had
assailed and undermined him began to struggle for the fragments of his
power.

The sacrifice of Clarendon in some degree took off the edge of the
public appetite for revenge. Yet was the anger excited by the profusion
and negligence of the government, and by the miscarriages of the late
war, by no means extinguished. The counsellors of Charles, with the fate
of the Chancellor before their eyes, were anxious for their own safety.
They accordingly advised their master to soothe the irritation which
prevailed both in the Parliament and throughout the country, and for
that end, to take a step which has no parallel in the history of the
House of Stuart, and which was worthy of the prudence and magnanimity of
Oliver.

We have now reached a point at which the history of the great English
revolution begins to be complicated with the history of foreign
politics. 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, on
both sides of the equator, far beyond the limits of the torrid zone. But
this great body had been smitten with palsy, and was not only
incapable of giving molestation to other states, but could not, without
assistance, 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 resources
of England. It must also be remembered that, a hundred and eighty years
ago, the empire of Russia, now a monarchy of the first class, was as
entirely out of the system of European politics as Abyssinia or Siam,
that the House of Brandenburg was then hardly more powerful than the
House of Saxony, and that the republic of the United States had not
then begun to exist. The weight of France, therefore, though still very
considerable, has relatively diminished. Her territory was not in the
days of Lewis the Fourteenth quite so extensive as at present: but
it was large, compact, fertile, well placed both for attack and for
defence, situated in a happy climate, and inhabited by a brave, active,
and ingenious people. The state implicitly obeyed the direction of a
single mind. The great fiefs which, three hundred years before, had
been, in all but name, independent principalities, had been annexed to
the crown. Only a few old men could remember the last meeting of the
States General. The resistance which the Huguenots, the nobles, and the
parliaments had offered to the kingly power, had been put down by the
two great Cardinals who had ruled the nation during forty years. The
government was now a despotism, but, at least in its dealings with the
upper classes, a mild and generous despotism, tempered by courteous
manners and chivalrous sentiments. The means at the disposal of the
sovereign were, for that age, truly formidable. His revenue, raised, it
is true, by a severe and unequal taxation which pressed heavily on the
cultivators of the soil, far exceeded that of any other potentate. His
army, excellently disciplined, and commanded by the greatest generals
then living, already consisted of more than a hundred and twenty
thousand men. Such an array of regular troops had not been seen in
Europe since the downfall of the Roman empire. Of maritime powers France
was not the first. But, though she had rivals on the sea, she had not
yet a superior. Such was her strength during the last forty years of the
seventeenth century, that no enemy could singly withstand her, and that
two great coalitions, in which half Christendom was united against her,
failed of success.

The personal qualities of the French King added to the respect inspired
by the power and importance of his kingdom. No sovereign has ever
represented the majesty of a great state with more dignity and grace. He
was his own prime minister, and performed the duties of a prime minister
with an ability and industry which could not be reasonably expected from
one who had in infancy succeeded to a crown, and who had been surrounded
by flatterers before he could speak. He had shown, in an eminent degree,
two talents invaluable to a prince, the talent of choosing his servants
well, and the talent of appropriating to himself the chief part of the
credit of their acts. In his dealings with foreign powers he had some
generosity, but no justice. To unhappy allies who threw themselves
at his feet, and had no hope but in his compassion, he extended his
protection with a romantic disinterestedness, which seemed better suited
to a knight errant than to a statesman. But he broke through the most
sacred ties of public faith without scruple or shame, whenever they
interfered with his interest, or with what he called his glory. His
perfidy and violence, however, excited less enmity than the insolence
with which he constantly reminded his neighbours of his own greatness
and of their littleness. He did not at this time profess the austere
devotion which, at a later period, gave to his court the aspect of a
monastery. On the contrary, he was as licentious, though by no means as
frivolous and indolent, as his brother of England. But he was a sincere
Roman Catholic; and both his conscience and his vanity impelled him to
use his power for the defence and propagation of the true faith, after
the example of his renowned predecessors, Clovis, Charlemagne, and Saint
Lewis.

Our ancestors naturally looked with serious alarm on the growing power
of France. This feeling, in itself perfectly reasonable, was mingled
with other feelings less praiseworthy. France was our old enemy. It was
against France that the most glorious battles recorded in our annals
had been fought. The conquest of France had been twice effected by the
Plantagenets. The loss of France had been long remembered as a great
national disaster. The title of King of France was still borne by our
sovereigns. The lilies of France still appeared, mingled with our own
lions, on the shield of the House of Stuart. In the sixteenth century
the dread inspired by Spain had suspended the animosity of which France
had anciently been the object. But the dread inspired by Spain had given
place to contemptuous compassion; and France was again regarded as our
national foe. The sale of Dunkirk to France had been the most generally
unpopular act of the restored King. Attachment to France had been
prominent among the crimes imputed by the Commons to CIarendon. Even in
trifles the public feeling showed itself. When a brawl took place in the
streets of Westminster between the retinues of the French and Spanish
embassies, the populace, though forcibly prevented from interfering,
had given unequivocal proofs that the old antipathy to France was not
extinct.

France and Spain were now engaged in a more serious contest. One of the
chief objects of the policy of Lewis throughout his life was to extend
his dominions towards the Rhine. For this end he had engaged in war
with Spain, and he was now in the full career of conquest. The United
Provinces saw with anxiety the progress of his arms. That renowned
federation had reached the height of power, prosperity, and glory. The
Batavian territory, conquered from the waves and defended against them
by human art, was in extent little superior to the principality of
Wales. But all that narrow space was a busy and populous hive, in which
new wealth was every day created, and in which vast masses of old
wealth were hoarded. The aspect of Holland, the rich cultivation, the
innumerable canals, the ever whirling mills, the endless fleets of
barges, the quick succession of great towns, the ports bristling with
thousands of masts, the large and stately mansions, the trim villas, the
richly furnished apartments, the picture galleries, the summer rouses,
the tulip beds, produced on English travellers in that age an effect
similar to the effect which the first sight of England now produces on a
Norwegian or a Canadian. The States General had been compelled to humble
themselves before Cromwell. But after the Restoration they had taken
their revenge, had waged war with success against Charles, and had
concluded peace on honourable terms. Rich, however, as the Republic
was, and highly considered in Europe, she was no match for the power of
Lewis. She apprehended, not without good cause, that his kingdom
might soon be extended to her frontiers; and she might well dread
the immediate vicinity of a monarch so great, so ambitious, and so
unscrupulous. Yet it was not easy to devise any expedient which might
avert the danger. The Dutch alone could not turn the scale against
France. On the side of the Rhine no help was to be expected. Several
German princes had been gained by Lewis; and the Emperor himself was
embarrassed by the discontents of Hungary. England was separated from
the United Provinces by the recollection of cruel injuries recently
inflicted and endured; and her policy had, since the restoration, been
so devoid of wisdom and spirit, that it was scarcely possible to expect
from her any valuable assistance

But the fate of Clarendon and the growing ill humour of the Parliament
determined the advisers of Charles to adopt on a sudden a policy which
amazed and delighted the nation.

The English resident at Brussels, Sir William Temple, one of the most
expert diplomatists and most pleasing writers of that age, had already
represented to this court that it was both desirable and practicable
to enter into engagements with the States General for the purpose of
checking the progress of France. For a time his suggestions had been
slighted; but it was now thought expedient to act on them. He was
commissioned to negotiate with the States General. He proceeded to the
Hague, and soon came to an understanding with John De Witt, then the
chief minister of Holland. Sweden, small as her resources were, had,
forty years before, been raised by the genius of Gustavus Adolphus to
a high rank among European powers, and had not yet descended to her
natural position. She was induced to join on this occasion with England
and the States. Thus was formed that coalition known as the Triple
Alliance. Lewis showed signs of vexation and resentment, but did not
think it politic to draw on himself the hostility of such a confederacy
in addition to that of Spain. He consented, therefore, to relinquish
a large part of the territory which his armies had occupied. Peace was
restored to Europe; and the English government, lately an object of
general contempt, was, during a few months, regarded by foreign powers
with respect scarcely less than that which the Protector had inspired.

At home the Triple Alliance was popular in the highest degree. It
gratified alike national animosity and national pride. It put a limit
to the encroachments of a powerful and ambitious neighbour. It bound
the leading Protestant states together in close union. Cavaliers and
Roundheads rejoiced in common: but the joy of the Roundhead was even
greater than that of the Cavalier. For England had now allied herself
strictly with a country republican in government and Presbyterian in
religion, against a country ruled by an arbitrary prince and attached
to the Roman Catholic Church.