No More Learning

William Howard, Viscount Stafford, one of the
unhappy men who had been accused of a share in the plot, was impeached;
and on the testimony of Oates and of two other false witnesses, Dugdale
and Turberville, was found guilty of high treason, and suffered death.
But the circumstances of his trial and execution ought to have given an
useful warning to the Whig leaders. A large and respectable minority of
the House of Lords pronounced the prisoner not guilty. The multitude,
which a few months before had received the dying declarations of Oates's
victims with mockery and execrations, now loudly expressed a belief that
Stafford was a murdered man. When he with his last breath protested
his innocence, the cry was, "God bless you, my Lord! We believe you, my
Lord. " A judicious observer might easily have predicted that the blood
then shed would shortly have blood.

The King determined to try once more the experiment of a dissolution. A
new Parliament was summoned to meet at Oxford, in March, 1681. Since the
days of the Plantagenets the Houses had constantly sat at Westminster,
except when the plague was raging in the capital: but so extraordinary
a conjuncture seemed to require extraordinary precautions. If the
Parliament were held in its usual place of assembling, the House of
Commons might declare itself permanent, and might call for aid on the
magistrates and citizens of London. The trainbands might rise to defend
Shaftesbury as they had risen forty years before to defend Pym and
Hampden. The Guards might be overpowered, the palace forced, the King a
prisoner in the hands of his mutinous subjects. At Oxford there was no
such danger. The University was devoted to the crown; and the gentry of
the neighbourhood were generally Tories. Here, therefore, the opposition
had more reason than the King to apprehend violence.

The elections were sharply contested. The Whigs still composed a
majority of the House of Commons: but it was plain that the Tory
spirit was fast rising throughout the country. It should seem that the
sagacious and versatile Shaftesbury ought to have foreseen the coming
change, and to have consented to the compromise which the court offered:
but he appears to have forgotten his old tactics. Instead of making
dispositions which, in the worst event, would have secured his retreat,
he took up a position in which it was necessary that he should either
conquer or perish. Perhaps his head, strong as it was, had been turned
by popularity, by success, and by the excitement of conflict. Perhaps
he had spurred his party till he could no longer curb it, and was really
hurried on headlong by those whom he seemed to guide.

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

The King had triumphed. The reaction, which had begun some months before
the meeting of the House at Oxford, now went rapidly on. The nation,
indeed, was still hostile to Popery: but, when men reviewed the whole
history of the plot, they felt that their Protestant zeal had hurried
them into folly and crime, and could scarcely believe that they had been
induced by nursery tales to clamour for the blood of fellow subjects
and fellow Christians. The most loyal, indeed, could not deny that the
administration of Charles had often been highly blamable. But men who
had not the full information which we possess touching his dealings with
France, and who were disgusted by the violence of the Whigs, enumerated
the large concessions which, during the last few years he had made to
his Parliaments, and the still larger concessions which he had declared
himself willing to make. He had consented to the laws which excluded
Roman Catholics from the House of Lords, from the Privy Council, and
from all civil and military offices. He had passed the Habeas Corpus
Act. If securities yet stronger had not been provided against the
dangers to which the constitution and the Church might be exposed under
a Roman Catholic sovereign, the fault lay, not with Charles who had
invited the Parliament to propose such securities, but with those Whigs
who had refused to hear of any substitute for the Exclusion Bill. One
thing only had the King denied to his people. He had refused to take
away his brother's birthright. And was there not good reason to believe
that this refusal was prompted by laudable feelings? What selfish motive
could faction itself impute to the royal mind? The Exclusion Bill did
not curtail the reigning King's prerogatives, or diminish his income.
Indeed, by passing it, he might easily have obtained an ample addition
to his own revenue. And what was it to him who ruled after him? Nay, if
he had personal predilections, they were known to be rather in favour
of the Duke of Monmouth than of the Duke of York. The most natural
explanation of the King's conduct seemed to be that, careless as was
his temper and loose as were his morals, he had, on this occasion, acted
from a sense of duty and honour. And, if so, would the nation compel
him to do what he thought criminal and disgraceful? To apply, even by
strictly constitutional means, a violent pressure to his conscience,
seemed to zealous royalists ungenerous and undutiful. But strictly
constitutional means were not the only means which the Whigs were
disposed to employ. Signs were already discernible which portended the
approach of great troubles. Men, who, in the time of the civil war and
of the Commonwealth, had acquired an odious notoriety, had emerged
from the obscurity in which, after the Restoration, they had hidden
themselves from the general hatred, showed their confident and busy
faces everywhere, and appeared to anticipate a second reign of the
Saints. Another Naseby, another High Court of Justice, another usurper
on the throne, the Lords again ejected from their hall by violence, the
Universities again purged, the Church again robbed and persecuted, the
Puritans again dominant, to such results did the desperate policy of the
opposition seem to tend.

Strongly moved by these apprehensions, the majority of the upper and
middle classes hastened to rally round the throne. The situation of the
King bore, at this time, a great resemblance to that in which his father
stood just after the Remonstrance had been voted. But the reaction of
1641 had not been suffered to run its course. Charles the First, at the
very moment when his people, long estranged, were returning to him with
hearts disposed to reconciliation, had, by a perfidious violation of the
fundamental laws of the realm, forfeited their confidence for ever.
Had Charles the Second taken a similar course, had he arrested the Whig
leaders in an irregular manner, had he impeached them of high treason
before a tribunal which had no legal jurisdiction over them, it is
highly probable that they would speedily have regained the ascendancy
which they had lost. Fortunately for himself, he was induced, at this
crisis, to adopt a policy singularly judicious. He determined to conform
to the law, but at the same time to make vigorous and unsparing use
of the law against his adversaries. He was not bound to convoke a
Parliament till three years should have elapsed. He was not much
distressed for money. The produce of the taxes which had been settled on
him for life exceeded the estimate. He was at peace with all the world.
He could retrench his expenses by giving up the costly and useless
settlement of Tangier; and he might hope for pecuniary aid from France.
He had, therefore, ample time and means for a systematic attack on
the opposition under the forms of the constitution. The Judges were
removable at his pleasure: the juries were nominated by the Sheriffs;
and, in almost all the counties of England, the Sheriffs were nominated
by himself. Witnesses, of the same class with those who had recently
sworn away the lives of Papists, were ready to swear away the lives of
Whigs.

The first victim was College, a noisy and violent demagogue of mean
birth and education. He was by trade a joiner, and was celebrated as the
inventor of the Protestant flail. [23] He had been at Oxford when the
Parliament sate there, and was accused of having planned a rising and an
attack on the King's guards. Evidence was given against him by Dugdale
and Turberville, the same infamous men who had, a few months earlier,
borne false witness against Stafford. In the sight of a jury of
country squires no Exclusionist was likely to find favour. College was
convicted. The crowd which filled the court house of Oxford received the
verdict with a roar of exultation, as barbarous as that which he and
his friends had been in the habit of raising when innocent Papists were
doomed to the gallows. His execution was the beginning of a new judicial
massacre not less atrocious than that in which he had himself borne a
share.

The government, emboldened by this first victory, now aimed a blow at an
enemy of a very different class. It was resolved that Shaftesbury should
be brought to trial for his life. Evidence was collected which, it was
thought, would support a charge of treason. But the facts which it was
necessary to prove were alleged to have been committed in London. The
Sheriffs of London, chosen by the citizens, were zealous Whigs. They
named a Whig grand jury, which threw out the bill. This defeat, far from
discouraging those who advised the King, suggested to them a new and
daring scheme. Since the charter of the capital was in their way, that
charter must be annulled. It was pretended, therefore, that the City
had by some irregularities forfeited its municipal privileges; and
proceedings were instituted against the corporation in the Court of
King's Bench. At the same time those laws which had, soon after the
Restoration, been enacted against Nonconformists, and which had remained
dormant during the ascendency of the Whigs, were enforced all over the
kingdom with extreme rigour.

Yet the spirit of the Whigs was not subdued. Though in evil plight, they
were still a numerous and powerful party; and as they mustered strong in
the large towns, and especially in the capital, they made a noise and
a show more than proportioned to their real force. Animated by the
recollection of past triumphs, and by the sense of present oppression,
they overrated both their strength and their wrongs. It was not in
their power to make out that clear and overwhelming case which can alone
justify so violent a remedy as resistance to an established government.
Whatever they might suspect, they could not prove that their sovereign
had entered into a treaty with France against the religion and liberties
of England. What was apparent was not sufficient to warrant an appeal
to the sword. If the Lords had thrown out the Exclusion Bill, they had
thrown it out in the exercise of a right coeval with the constitution.
If the King had dissolved the Oxford Parliament, he had done so by
virtue of a prerogative which had never been questioned. If he had,
since the dissolution, done some harsh things, still those things were
in strict conformity with the letter of the law, and with the recent
practice of the malecontents themselves. If he had prosecuted his
opponents, he had prosecuted them according to the proper forms, and
before the proper tribunals. The evidence now produced for the crown was
at least as worthy of credit as the evidence on which the noblest blood
of England had lately been shed by the opposition. The treatment which
an accused Whig had now to expect from judges, advocates, sheriffs,
juries and spectators, was no worse than the treatment which had lately
been thought by the Whigs good enough for an accused Papist. If the
privileges of the City of London were attacked, they were attacked, not
by military violence or by any disputable exercise of prerogative,
but according to the regular practice of Westminster Hall. No tax was
imposed by royal authority. No law was suspended. The Habeas Corpus
Act was respected. Even the Test Act was enforced. The opposition,
therefore, could not bring home to the King that species of
misgovernment which alone could justify insurrection. And, even had his
misgovernment been more flagrant than it was, insurrection would still
have been criminal, because it was almost certain to be unsuccessful.
The situation of the Whigs in 1682 differed widely from that of the
Roundheads forty years before. Those who took up arms against Charles
the First acted under the authority of a Parliament which had been
legally assembled, and which could not, without its own consent, be
legally dissolved. The opponents of Charles the Second were private men.
Almost all the military and naval resources of the kingdom had been at
the disposal of those who resisted Charles the First. All the military
and naval resources of the kingdom were at the disposal of Charles the
Second. The House of Commons had been supported by at least half the
nation against Charles the First. But those who were disposed to levy
war against Charles the Second were certainly a minority. It could
hardly be doubted, therefore, that, if they attempted a rising, they
would fail. Still less could it be doubted that their failure would
aggravate every evil of which they complained. The true policy of the
Whigs was to submit with patience to adversity which was the natural
consequence and the just punishment of their errors, to wait patiently
for that turn of public feeling which must inevitably come, to observe
the law, and to avail themselves of the protection, imperfect indeed,
but by no means nugatory, which the law afforded to innocence. Unhappily
they took a very different course. Unscrupulous and hot-headed chiefs of
the party formed and discussed schemes of resistance, and were heard, if
not with approbation, yet with the show of acquiescence, by much better
men than themselves. It was proposed that there should be simultaneous
insurrections in London, in Cheshire, at Bristol, and at Newcastle.
Communications were opened with the discontented Presbyterians of
Scotland, who were suffering under a tyranny such as England, in the
worst times, had never known. While the leaders of the opposition thus
revolved plans of open rebellion, but were still restrained by fears
or scruples from taking any decisive step, a design of a very different
kind was meditated by some of their accomplices. To fierce spirits,
unrestrained by principle, or maddened by fanaticism, it seemed that to
waylay and murder the King and his brother was the shortest and surest
way of vindicating the Protestant religion and the liberties of England.
A place and a time were named; and the details of the butchery were
frequently discussed, if not definitely arranged. This scheme was known
but to few, and was concealed with especial care from the upright and
humane Russell, and from Monmouth, who, though not a man of delicate
conscience, would have recoiled with horror from the guilt of parricide.
Thus there were two plots, one within the other. The object of the great
Whig plot was to raise the nation in arms against the government. The
lesser plot, commonly called the Rye House Plot, in which only a few
desperate men were concerned, had for its object the assassination of
the King and of the heir presumptive.

Both plots were soon discovered. Cowardly traitors hastened to save
themselves, by divulging all, and more than all, that had passed in
the deliberations of the party. That only a small minority of those
who meditated resistance had admitted into their minds the thought of
assassination is fully established: but, as the two conspiracies ran
into each other, it was not difficult for the government to confound
them together. The just indignation excited by the Rye House Plot was
extended for a time to the whole Whig body. The King was now at
liberty to exact full vengeance for years of restraint and humiliation.
Shaftesbury, indeed, had escaped the fate which his manifold perfidy had
well deserved. He had seen that the ruin of his party was at hand, had
in vain endeavoured to make his peace with the royal brothers, had
fled to Holland, and had died there, under the generous protection of a
government which he had cruelly wronged. Monmouth threw himself at his
father's feet and found mercy, but soon gave new offence, and thought
it prudent to go into voluntary exile. Essex perished by his own hand
in the Tower. Russell, who appears to have been guilty of no offence
falling within the definition of high treason, and Sidney, of whose
guilt no legal evidence could be produced, were beheaded in defiance of
law and justice. Russell died with the fortitude of a Christian, Sidney
with the fortitude of a Stoic. Some active politicians of meaner
rank were sent to the gallows. Many quitted the country. Numerous
prosecutions for misprision of treason, for libel, and for conspiracy
were instituted. Convictions were obtained without difficulty from Tory
juries, and rigorous punishments were inflicted by courtly judges. With
these criminal proceedings were joined civil proceedings scarcely less
formidable. Actions were brought against persons who had defamed
the Duke of York and damages tantamount to a sentence of perpetual
imprisonment were demanded by the plaintiff, and without difficulty
obtained. The Court of King's Bench pronounced that the franchises of
the City of London were forfeited to the Crown. Flushed with this great
victory, the government proceeded to attack the constitutions of other
corporations which were governed by Whig officers, and which had been in
the habit of returning Whig members to Parliament. Borough after borough
was compelled to surrender its privileges; and new charters were granted
which gave the ascendency everywhere to the Tories.

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

The liberty of unlicensed printing was of little or no use to the
vanquished party; for the temper of judges and juries was such that
no writer whom the government prosecuted for a libel had any chance of
escaping. The dread of punishment therefore did all that a censorship
could have done. Meanwhile, the pulpits resounded with harangues against
the sin of rebellion. The treatises in which Filmer maintained that
hereditary despotism was the form of government ordained by God, and
that limited monarchy was a pernicious absurdity, had recently appeared,
and had been favourably received by a large section of the Tory party.
The university of Oxford, on the very day on which Russell was put
to death, adopted by a solemn public act these strange doctrines,
and ordered the political works of Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to be
publicly burned in the court of the Schools.

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

In a short time the law was again violated in order to gratify the Duke
of York. That prince was, partly on account of his religion, and partly
on account of the sternness and harshness of his nature, so unpopular
that it had been thought necessary to keep him out of sight while the
Exclusion Bill was before Parliament, lest his appearance should give
an advantage to the party which was struggling to deprive him of his
birthright. He had therefore been sent to govern Scotland, where the
savage old tyrant Lauderdale was sinking into the grave. Even Lauderdale
was now outdone. The administration of James was marked by odious laws,
by barbarous punishments, and by judgments to the iniquity of which even
that age furnished no parallel. The Scottish Privy Council had power to
put state prisoners to the question. But the sight was so dreadful that,
as soon as the boots appeared, even the most servile and hardhearted
courtiers hastened out of the chamber. The board was sometimes quite
deserted: and it was at length found necessary to make an order that the
members should keep their seats on such occasions. The Duke of York, it
was remarked, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle which some of
the worst men then living were unable to contemplate without pity
and horror. He not only came to Council when the torture was to be
inflicted, but watched the agonies of the sufferers with that sort of
interest and complacency with which men observe a curious experiment in
science. Thus he employed himself at Edinburgh, till the event of the
conflict between the court and the Whigs was no longer doubtful. He then
returned to England: but he was still excluded by the Test Act from all
public employment; nor did the King at first think it safe to violate a
statute which the great majority of his most loyal subjects regarded as
one of the chief securities of their religion and of their civil rights.
When, however, it appeared, from a succession of trials, that the nation
had patience to endure almost anything that the government had courage
to do, Charles ventured to dispense with the law in his brother's
favour. The Duke again took his seat in the Council, and resumed the
direction of naval affairs.

These breaches of the constitution excited, it is true, some murmurs
among the moderate Tories, and were not unanimously approved even by the
King's ministers. Halifax in particular, now a Marquess and Lord Privy
Seal, had, from the very day on which the Tories had by his help gained
the ascendant, begun to turn Whig. As soon as the Exclusion Bill had
been thrown out, he had pressed the House of Lords to make provision
against the danger to which, in the next reign, the liberties and
religion of the nation might be exposed. He now saw with alarm the
violence of that reaction which was, in no small measure, his own
work. He did not try to conceal the scorn which he felt for the servile
doctrines of the University of Oxford. He detested the French alliance.
He disapproved of the long intermission of Parliaments. He regretted the
severity with which the vanquished party was treated. He who, when the
Whigs were predominant, had ventured to pronounce Stafford not guilty,
ventured, when they were vanquished and helpless, to intercede for
Russell. At one of the last Councils which Charles held a remarkable
scene took place. The charter of Massachusetts had been forfeited. A
question arose how, for the future, the colony should be governed. The
general opinion of the board was that the whole power, legislative as
well as executive, should abide in the crown. Halifax took the opposite
side, and argued with great energy against absolute monarchy, and in
favour of representative government. It was vain, he said, to think that
a population, sprung from the English stock, and animated by English
feelings, would long bear to be deprived of English institutions. Life,
he exclaimed, would not be worth having in a country where liberty and
property were at the mercy of one despotic master. The Duke of York was
greatly incensed by this language, and represented to his brother the
danger of retaining in office a man who appeared to be infected with all
the worst notions of Marvell and Sidney.

Some modern writers have blamed Halifax for continuing in the ministry
while he disapproved of the manner in which both domestic and foreign
affairs were conducted. But this censure is unjust. Indeed it is to be
remarked that the word ministry, in the sense in which we use it, was
then unknown. [24] The thing itself did not exist; for it belongs to an
age in which parliamentary government is fully established. At present
the chief servants of the crown form one body.
They are understood to be
on terms of friendly confidence with each other, and to agree as to
the main principles on which the executive administration ought to be
conducted. If a slight difference of opinion arises among them, it is
easily compromised: but, if one of them differs from the rest on a vital
point, it is his duty to resign. While he retains his office, he is held
responsible even for steps which he has tried to dissuade his colleagues
from taking. In the seventeenth century, the heads of the various
branches of the administration were bound together in no such
partnership. Each of them was accountable for his own acts, for the
use which he made of his own official seal, for the documents which he
signed, for the counsel which he gave to the King. No statesman was held
answerable for what he had not himself done, or induced others to do.
If he took care not to be the agent in what was wrong, and if, when
consulted, he recommended what was right, he was blameless. It would
have been thought strange scrupulosity in him to quit his post, because
his advice as to matters not strictly within his own department was
not taken by his master; to leave the Board of Admiralty, for example,
because the finances were in disorder, or the Board of Treasury because
the foreign relations of the kingdom were in an unsatisfactory state. It
was, therefore, by no means unusual to see in high office, at the same
time, men who avowedly differed from one another as widely as ever
Pulteney differed from Walpole, or Fox from Pitt.

The moderate and constitutional counsels of Halifax were timidly and
feebly seconded by Francis North, Lord Guildford who had lately been
made Keeper of the Great Seal. The character of Guildford has been drawn
at full length by his brother Roger North, a most intolerant Tory, a
most affected and pedantic writer, but a vigilant observer of all those
minute circumstances which throw light on the dispositions of men. It is
remarkable that the biographer, though he was under the influence of the
strongest fraternal partiality, and though he was evidently anxious to
produce a flattering likeness, was unable to portray the Lord Keeper
otherwise than as the most ignoble of mankind. Yet the intellect of
Guildford was clear, his industry great, his proficiency in letters and
science respectable, and his legal learning more than respectable. His
faults were selfishness, cowardice, and meanness. He was not insensible
to the power of female beauty, nor averse from excess in wine. Yet
neither wine nor beauty could ever seduce the cautious and frugal
libertine, even in his earliest youth, into one fit of indiscreet
generosity. Though of noble descent, he rose in his profession by paying
ignominious homage to all who possessed influence in the courts. He
became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and as such was party to some
of the foulest judicial murders recorded in our history. He had sense
enough to perceive from the first that Oates and Bedloe were impostors:
but the Parliament and the country were greatly excited: the government
had yielded to the pressure; and North was not a man to risk a good
place for the sake of justice and humanity. Accordingly, while he was in
secret drawing up a refutation of the whole romance of the Popish plot,
he declared in public that the truth of the story was as plain as
the sun in heaven, and was not ashamed to browbeat, from the seat of
judgment, the unfortunate Roman Catholics who were arraigned before him
for their lives. He had at length reached the highest post in the law.
But a lawyer, who, after many years devoted to professional labour,
engages in politics for the first time at an advanced period of life,
seldom distinguishes himself as a statesman; and Guildford was no
exception to the general rule. He was indeed so sensible of his
deficiencies that he never attended the meetings of his colleagues on
foreign affairs. Even on questions relating to his own profession his
opinion had less weight at the Council board than that of any man who
has ever held the Great Seal. Such as his influence was, however, he
used it, as far as he dared, on the side of the laws.

The chief opponent of Halifax was Lawrence Hyde, who had recently
been created Earl of Rochester. Of all Tories, Rochester was the
most intolerant and uncompromising. The moderate members of his party
complained that the whole patronage of the Treasury, while he was First
Commissioner there, went to noisy zealots, whose only claim to promotion
was that they were always drinking confusion to Whiggery, and lighting
bonfires to burn the Exclusion Bill. The Duke of York, pleased with
a spirit which so much resembled his own supported his brother in law
passionately and obstinately.

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

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

Nor was Lewis negligent or inactive. Everything at that moment favoured
his designs. He had nothing to apprehend from the German empire, which
was then contending against the Turks on the Danube. Holland could
not, unsupported venture to oppose him. He was therefore at liberty
to indulge his ambition and insolence without restraint. He seized
Strasburg, Courtray, Luxemburg. He exacted from the republic of Genoa
the most humiliating submissions. The power of France at that time
reached a higher point than it ever before or ever after attained,
during the ten centuries which separated the reign of Charlemagne from
the reign of Napoleon. It was not easy to say where her acquisitions
would stop, if only England could be kept in a state of vassalage. The
first object of the court of Versailles was therefore to prevent the
calling of a Parliament and the reconciliation of English parties.
For this end bribes, promises, and menaces were unsparingly employed.
Charles was sometimes allured by the hope of a subsidy, and sometimes
frightened by being told that, if he convoked the Houses, the secret
articles of the treaty of Dover should be published. Several Privy
Councillors were bought; and attempts were made to buy Halifax, but in
vain. When he had been found incorruptible, all the art and influence
of the French embassy were employed to drive him from office: but his
polished wit and his various accomplishments had made him so agreeable
to his master, that the design failed. [25]

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

Still, however, the contest continued. The event depended wholly on
the will of Charles; and Charles could not come to a decision. In
his perplexity he promised everything to everybody. He would stand
by France: he would break with France: he would never meet another
Parliament: he would order writs for a Parliament to be issued without
delay. He assured the Duke of York that Halifax should be dismissed from
office, and Halifax that the Duke should be sent to Scotland. In public
he affected implacable resentment against Monmouth, and in private
conveyed to Monmouth assurances of unalterable affection. How long, if
the King's life had been protracted, his hesitation would have lasted,
and what would have been his resolve, can only be conjectured. Early
in the year 1685, while hostile parties were anxiously awaiting his
determination, he died, and a new scene opened. In a few mouths the
excesses of the government obliterated the impression which had been
made on the public mind by the excesses of the opposition. The violent
reaction which had laid the Whig party prostrate was followed by a still
more violent reaction in the opposite direction; and signs not to be
mistaken indicated that the great conflict between the prerogatives of
the Crown and the privileges of the Parliament, was about to be brought
to a final issue.




CHAPTER III.

I INTEND, in this chapter, to give a description of the state in which
England was at the time when the crown passed from Charles the Second
to his brother. Such a description, composed from scanty and dispersed
materials, must necessarily be very imperfect. Yet it may perhaps
correct some false notions which would make the subsequent narrative
unintelligible or uninstructive.

If we would study with profit the history of our ancestors, we must be
constantly on our guard against that delusion which the well known
names of families, places, and offices naturally produce, and must never
forget that the country of which we read was a very different country
from that in which we live. In every experimental science there is a
tendency towards perfection. In every human being there is a wish to
ameliorate his own condition. These two principles have often
sufficed, even when counteracted by great public calamities and by
bad institutions, to carry civilisation rapidly forward. No ordinary
misfortune, no ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a
nation wretched, as the constant progress of physical knowledge and the
constant effort of every man to better himself will do to make a nation
prosperous. It has often been found that profuse expenditure, heavy
taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous
wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have
not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private
citizens have been able to create it. It can easily be proved that, in
our own land, the national wealth has, during at least six centuries,
been almost uninterruptedly increasing; that it was greater under
the Tudors than under the Plantagenets; that it was greater under the
Stuarts than under the Tudors; that, in spite of battles, sieges, and
confiscations, it was greater on the day of the Restoration than on the
day when the Long Parliament met; that, in spite of maladministration,
of extravagance, of public bankruptcy, of two costly and unsuccessful
wars, of the pestilence and of the fire, it was greater on the day of
the death of Charles the Second than on the day of his Restoration. This
progress, having continued during many ages, became at length, about the
middle of the eighteenth century, portentously rapid, and has proceeded,
during the nineteenth, with accelerated velocity. In consequence partly
of our geographical and partly of our moral position, we have, during
several generations, been exempt from evils which have elsewhere impeded
the efforts and destroyed the fruits of industry. While every part of
the Continent, from Moscow to Lisbon, has been the theatre of bloody
and devastating wars, no hostile standard has been seen here but as a
trophy. While revolutions have taken place all around us, our government
has never once been subverted by violence. During more than a hundred
years there has been in our island no tumult of sufficient importance to
be called an insurrection; nor has the law been once borne down either
by popular fury or by regal tyranny: public credit has been held sacred:
the administration of justice has been pure: even in times which might
by Englishmen be justly called evil times, we have enjoyed what almost
every other nation in the world would have considered as an ample
measure of civil and religious freedom. Every man has felt entire
confidence that the state would protect him in the possession of what
had been earned by his diligence and hoarded by his selfdenial. Under
the benignant influence of peace and liberty, science has flourished,
and has been applied to practical purposes on a scale never before
known. The consequence is that a change to which the history of the old
world furnishes no parallel has taken place in our country. Could the
England of 1685 be, by some magical process, set before our eyes,
we should not know one landscape in a hundred or one building in ten
thousand. The country gentleman would not recognise his own fields. The
inhabitant of the town would not recognise his own street. Everything
has been changed, but the great features of nature, and a few
massive and durable works of human art. We might find out Snowdon and
Windermere, the Cheddar Cliffs and Beachy Head. We might find out here
and there a Norman minster, or a castle which witnessed the wars of the
Roses. But, with such rare exceptions, everything would be strange to
us. Many thousands of square miles which are now rich corn land and
meadow, intersected by green hedgerows and dotted with villages and
pleasant country seats, would appear as moors overgrown with furze, or
fens abandoned to wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built of
wood and covered with thatch, where we now see manufacturing towns and
seaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world. The capital itself
would shrink to dimensions not much exceeding those of its present
suburb on the south of the Thames. Not less strange to us would be the
garb and manners of the people, the furniture and the equipages, the
interior of the shops and dwellings. Such a change in the state of
a nation seems to be at least as well entitled to the notice of a
historian as any change of the dynasty or of the ministry. [26]

One of the first objects of an inquirer, who wishes to form a correct
notion of the state of a community at a given time, must be to ascertain
of how many persons that community then consisted. Unfortunately the
population of England in 1685, cannot be ascertained with perfect
accuracy. For no great state had then adopted the wise course of
periodically numbering the people. All men were left to conjecture for
themselves; and, as they generally conjectured without examining facts,
and under the influence of strong passions and prejudices, their guesses
were often ludicrously absurd. Even intelligent Londoners ordinarily
talked of London as containing several millions of souls. It was
confidently asserted by many that, during the thirty-five years
which had elapsed between the accession of Charles the First and the
Restoration the population of the City had increased by two millions.
[27] Even while the ravages of the plague and fire were recent, it was
the fashion to say that the capital still had a million and a half of
inhabitants. [28] Some persons, disgusted by these exaggerations,
ran violently into the opposite extreme. Thus Isaac Vossius, a man of
undoubted parts and learning, strenuously maintained that there were
only two millions of human beings in England, Scotland, and Ireland
taken together. [29]

We are not, however, left without the means of correcting the wild
blunders into which some minds were hurried by national vanity and
others by a morbid love of paradox. There are extant three computations
which seem to be entitled to peculiar attention. They are entirely
independent of each other: they proceed on different principles; and yet
there is little difference in the results.

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

About the same time King William the Third was desirous to ascertain the
comparative strength of the religious sects into which the community
was divided. An inquiry was instituted; and reports were laid before
him from all the dioceses of the realm. According to these reports the
number of his English subjects must have been about five million two
hundred thousand. [31]

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

Of these three estimates, framed without concert by different persons
from different sets of materials, the highest, which is that of King,
does not exceed the lowest, which is that of Finlaison, by one twelfth.
We may, therefore, with confidence pronounce that, when James the Second
reigned, England contained between five million and five million five
hundred thousand inhabitants. On the very highest supposition she then
had less than one third of her present population, and less than three
times the population which is now collected in her gigantic capital.

The increase of the people has been great in every part of the kingdom,
but generally much greater in the northern than in the southern shires.
In truth a large part of the country beyond Trent was, down to the
eighteenth century, in a state of barbarism. Physical and moral causes
had concurred to prevent civilisation from spreading to that region. The
air was inclement; the soil was generally such as required skilful and
industrious cultivation; and there could be little skill or industry in
a tract which was often the theatre of war, and which, even when
there was nominal peace, was constantly desolated by bands of Scottish
marauders. Before the union of the two British crowns, and long after
that union, there was as great a difference between Middlesex and
Northumberland as there now is between Massachusetts and the settlements
of those squatters who, far to the west of the Mississippi, administer a
rude justice with the rifle and the dagger. In the reign of Charles the
Second, the traces left by ages of slaughter and pillage were distinctly
perceptible, many miles south of the Tweed, in the face of the country
and in the lawless manners of the people. There was still a large class
of mosstroopers, whose calling was to plunder dwellings and to drive
away whole herds of cattle. It was found necessary, soon after the
Restoration, to enact laws of great severity for the prevention of
these outrages. The magistrates of Northumberland and Cumberland were
authorised to raise bands of armed men for the defence of property and
order; and provision was made for meeting the expense of these levies by
local taxation. [33] The parishes were required to keep bloodhounds for
the purpose of hunting the freebooters. Many old men who were living in
the middle of the eighteenth century could well remember the time when
those ferocious dogs were common. [34] Yet, even with such auxiliaries,
it was often found impossible to track the robbers to their retreats
among the hills and morasses. For the geography of that wild country was
very imperfectly known. Even after the accession of George the Third,
the path over the fells from Borrowdale to Ravenglas was still a secret
carefully kept by the dalesmen, some of whom had probably in their youth
escaped from the pursuit of justice by that road. [35] The seats of the
gentry and the larger farmhouses were fortified. Oxen were penned at
night beneath the overhanging battlements of the residence, which was
known by the name of the Peel. The inmates slept with arms at their
sides. Huge stones and boiling water were in readiness to crush and
scald the plunderer who might venture to assail the little garrison. No
traveller ventured into that country without making his will. The Judges
on circuit, with the whole body of barristers, attorneys, clerks, and
serving men, rode on horseback from Newcastle to Carlisle, armed and
escorted by a strong guard under the command of the Sheriffs. It was
necessary to carry provisions; for the country was a wilderness which
afforded no supplies. The spot where the cavalcade halted to dine, under
an immense oak, is not yet forgotten. The irregular vigour with which
criminal justice was administered shocked observers whose lives had been
passed in more tranquil districts. Juries, animated by hatred and by a
sense of common danger, convicted housebreakers and cattle stealers with
the promptitude of a court martial in a mutiny; and the convicts were
hurried by scores to the gallows. [36] Within the memory of some whom
this generation has seen, the sportsman who wandered in pursuit of game
to the sources of the Tyne found the heaths round Keeldar Castle peopled
by a race scarcely less savage than the Indians of California, and heard
with surprise the half naked women chaunting a wild measure, while the
men with brandished dirks danced a war dance. [37]

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

Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence and precision than of
the population. The revenue of England, when Charles the Second
died, was small, when compared with the resources which she even then
possessed, or with the sums which were raised by the governments of the
neighbouring countries. It had, from the time of the Restoration, been
almost constantly increasing, yet it was little more than three fourths
of the revenue of the United Provinces, and was hardly one fifth of the
revenue of France.

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

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

The King's revenue was, or rather ought to have been, charged with the
payment of about eighty thousand pounds a year, the interest of the sum
fraudulently destined in the Exchequer by the Cabal. While Danby was at
the head of the finances, the creditors had received dividends, though
not with the strict punctuality of modern times: but those who had
succeeded him at the treasury had been less expert, or less solicitous
to maintain public faith. Since the victory won by the court over the
Whigs, not a farthing had been paid; and no redress was granted to the
sufferers, till a new dynasty had been many years on the throne. There
can be no greater error than to imagine that the device of meeting the
exigencies of the state by loans was imported into our island by
William the Third. What really dates from his reign is not the system
of borrowing, but the system of funding. From a period of immemorable
antiquity it had been the practice of every English government to
contract debts. What the Revolution introduced was the practice of
honestly paying them. [41]

By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make an income of
about fourteen hundred thousand pounds, with some occasional help from
Versailles, support the necessary charges of the government and the
wasteful expenditure of the court. For that load which pressed most
heavily on the finances of the great continental states was here
scarcely felt. In France, Germany, and the Netherlands, armies, such
as Henry the Fourth and Philip the Second had never employed in time
of war, were kept up in the midst of peace. Bastions and raveling
were everywhere rising, constructed on principles unknown to Parma and
Spinola. Stores of artillery and ammunition were accumulated, such as
even Richelieu, whom the preceding generation had regarded as a worker
of prodigies, would have pronounced fabulous. No man could journey many
leagues in those countries without hearing the drums of a regiment
on march, or being challenged by the sentinels on the drawbridge of a
fortress. In our island, on the contrary, it was possible to live long
and to travel far without being once reminded, by any martial sight or
sound, that the defence of nations had become a science and a calling.
The majority of Englishmen who were under twenty-five years of age had
probably never seen a company of regular soldiers. Of the cities which,
in the civil war, had valiantly repelled hostile armies, scarcely one
was now capable of sustaining a siege The gates stood open night and
day. The ditches were dry. The ramparts had been suffered to fall into
decay, or were repaired only that the townsfolk might have a pleasant
walk on summer evenings. Of the old baronial keeps many had been
shattered by the cannon of Fairfax and Cromwell, and lay in heaps of
ruin, overgrown with ivy. Those which remained had lost their martial
character, and were now rural palaces of the aristocracy. The moats were
turned into preserves of carp and pike. The mounds were planted with
fragrant shrubs, through which spiral walks ran up to summer houses
adorned with mirrors and paintings. [42] On the capes of the sea coast,
and on many inland hills, were still seen tall posts, surmounted by
barrels. Once those barrels had been filled with pitch. Watchmen had
been set round them in seasons of danger; and, within a few hours after
a Spanish sail had been discovered in the Channel, or after a thousand
Scottish mosstroopers had crossed the Tweed, the signal fires were
blazing fifty miles off, and whole counties were rising in arms. But
many years had now elapsed since the beacons had been lighted; and they
were regarded rather as curious relics of ancient manners than as parts
of a machinery necessary to the safety of the state. [43]

The only army which the law recognised was the militia. That force had
been remodelled by two Acts of Parliament, passed shortly after the
Restoration.