A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689

10. Growing Excitement. 1678.– Oates's depositions were taken before a Middlesex magistrate, Sir Edmond Berry Godfrey. Not long afterwards Godfrey was found murdered in the fields near Primrose Hill. All London was wild with excitement. It was widely believed that 'the Papists' had murdered him to punish him for listening to Oates. It was also held to be an undoubted truth that 'the Papists' were about to set fire to London, and to murder all good Protestants. A joiner named College made his fortune by inventing a pocket flail, tipped with lead, which was called the Protestant flail, and was to be used by sober citizens to brain 'Popish' assassins. When Parliament met on October 21 Shaftesbury, who had been liberated early in the year, unscrupulously encouraged belief in the supposed plot. Up to that time Catholic peers had kept their seats in the House of Lords, and a few Catholics had surreptitiously sat in the Commons. A new Test Act was now passed by which they were excluded32 from both Houses, though the Duke of York was exempted by name from its operation. Five Catholic peers were thrown into the Tower, and Coleman, the secretary of the Duchess of York, who had in his custody papers implying that James had a design for forwarding the interests of his religion, was tried and executed.

11. Danby's Impeachment and the Dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament. 1678-1679.– The mark at which Shaftesbury aimed was the overthrow of Danby. Danby had always, as far as his own opinion went, been a warm antagonist of France, but a minister was still, in those days, in reality the servant of the king, and was bound to carry out his master's orders, even when they were against his own conviction. Danby had, therefore, at the time when the Peace of Nymwegen was under discussion, written letters to Ralph Montague, the English ambassador in France, bidding him to ask Louis for a considerable payment to Charles, and, at the same time, explaining that the money was needed to make Charles independent of Parliament. Montague, having subsequently returned to England, brought this letter before the House of Commons. The House at once impeached Danby, under the false impression that he had been really subservient to France all the while. Charles had become attached to Danby, and knew that, if the proceedings against him were carried on, matters would come to light which he had every reason to conceal. To save himself and his minister, on January 24, 1679, he dissolved the Cavalier Parliament, which had now sat for more than seventeen years.

12. The Meeting of the First Short Parliament. 1679.– When the elections to a new Parliament – the first of three short Parliaments – were completed, Charles found that, with the exception of at most thirty members, the opposition had gained every seat. Bowing to the storm, he sent his brother to Brussels, and expressed his readiness to place himself at the head of the Protestants of the Continent. When, however, Parliament met, on March 6, 1679, it was found that both Houses were more anxious about the fate of Protestantism at home than about that of Protestants abroad. The Commons renewed the impeachment of Danby, upon which Danby produced a free pardon from the king. The Lords decided that a pardon could not be pleaded in bar of an impeachment, but, in the end, proceedings against Danby were dropped on his being deprived of office and committed to the Tower. By the advice of Sir William Temple, Charles tried a new experiment in government. A new Privy Council was appointed of thirty members, fifteen being ministers of the Crown and fifteen influential lords and commoners, by the advice of which the king was always to be guided. Shaftesbury was appointed President of this Council, but it was soon found to be too large a body to manage affairs which required secrecy, and a small committee was therefore formed out of it for the consideration of all important business.

13. The Exclusion Bill and the Habeas Corpus Act. 1679.– Charles, now that he experienced the strength of the opposition, was prepared to give way on every point except one – the maintenance of his brother's right of succession, which the new House of Commons was prepared to attack. He accordingly offered to place the strongest restrictions upon the power of a Catholic king. To the House of Commons, on the other hand, all restrictions appeared insufficient. The members believed seriously that no law would be able to bind a 'Popish' king. They thought that if he was determined – and it was taken for granted that he would be determined – to overthrow the Protestant religion, he would be able to do so. Lord Russell, the eldest son of the Duke of Bedford – the chief leader of Shaftesbury's party in the House of Commons – was not in the habit of using exaggerated language. Yet even he declared that, if James became king, his subjects must make up their mind to become 'Papists' or to be burnt. An Exclusion Bill was brought in, excluding the Duke of York from the throne. It was read twice, but not passed, as Charles first prorogued, and then, on May 27, dissolved Parliament. The only Act of importance produced in this Parliament was the Habeas Corpus Act, which finally put an end to sundry methods by which the Crown had evaded the rule requiring the issue of writs of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners secured their right to be tried or liberated.

14. Shaftesbury and the King. 1679.– New elections were held, with the result that a House of Commons was chosen even more bitterly hostile to the Court than its predecessor. Shaftesbury was now at the height of his glory. Oates and other informers were adding new lies to those which they had told before, and the continual trials and executions of the Catholics for participation in the supposed Popish Plot kept the excitement in favour of the Exclusion Bill at a fever heat. Shaftesbury's position was very similar to Pym's in 1641. He had on his side the fundamental principle that a nation cannot safely be governed by a ruler whose ideas on the most important question of the day are directly opposed to those of his subjects, and he was right, as the result showed, in holding that, in the seventeenth century, a Catholic king could not satisfactorily govern a Protestant people. After Danby's fall, the king became the real head of the party opposed to Shaftesbury. His ability had always been great, but hitherto he had alienated those who were disposed to be his friends by attempting to establish an absolute government with the help of the king of France and of an army dependent on himself. He now set himself to overthrow Shaftesbury by appealing to a popular sentiment which was quite as strong, and might be stronger, than the dislike of a Catholic successor; that is to say, to the horror with which anything which threatened a new civil war filled the hearts of his subjects.

15. Shaftesbury and Halifax. 1679.– Shaftesbury had already allowed it to be known that he intended, if he carried the Exclusion Bill, to propose that the future king should be the Duke of Monmouth. Monmouth was the eldest of Charles's illegitimate sons, and it was currently, though falsely, believed that Charles had been privately married to his mother, so that he might rightly be regarded as the heir to the Crown. Charles, who knew better than any one else that this story was untrue, stood faithfully by his brother, and, though his constancy made little impression as yet, he had on his side a man whose judgment might usually be taken as an indication of the ultimate decision of public opinion. That man was George Savile, Earl, and afterwards Marquis of Halifax. He had been one of the bitterest enemies of Danby, but he devoted himself to no party. He called himself a Trimmer, as if his business was to trim the boat, and to throw himself against each party in turn as it grew violent in consequence of success. He now supported the king against Shaftesbury, on the ground that it was uncertain whether James would survive his brother, and that, if he did, he was not likely to survive him long; whereas, the succession of the Duke of Monmouth would not only exclude from the throne the Catholic James, but also his daughters, who were both Protestants. As Monmouth had no real hereditary right, there was every likelihood that, even if he ascended the throne, his claim would be opposed by partisans of James's eldest daughter, the Princess of Orange, and that a civil war would ensue.

16. The Divine Right of Kings. 1679.– The fear of civil war already frightened some, and would in time frighten more, into the acceptance of a doctrine which seems very absurd now – the doctrine of Divine indefeasible hereditary right – that is to say, that the succession as it was established by English law was established by Divine appointment, so that, though indeed subjects might refuse to obey the king, if he ordered them to commit sin, it was their duty to bear uncomplainingly any punishment that he might impose on them, however tyrannical he might be. Such a doctrine was credited, not because those who held it were absolutely silly, but because they were more afraid of rebellion and civil war than they were of the tyranny of kings. For the present, however, such ideas had little hold on the new Parliament, and Charles prorogued it to give time for them to grow.

17. The Highland Host. 1677-1678.– Events were in the meanwhile passing in Scotland which helped to impress upon those who were easily frightened the idea that the only security against rebellion lay in a general submission to established institutions in Church and State. For many years Lauderdale had been, with Charles's full support, the absolute ruler of Scotland. He put down with a high hand the opposition of noblemen in Parliament, but he could not put down the religious zeal of the peasants, who, especially in the western Lowlands, combined zeal for Presbyterianism and the Covenant with exasperation against a Government which persecuted them. They held meetings for prayer and preaching on the open hill-sides, and the Government, failing to suppress these Conventicles, as they were called, by process of law, sent into the disaffected districts, in 1677, a body of half-savage Highlanders known as the Highland Host, to reduce them to obedience by plunder and outrage.

18. Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge. 1679.– When the Highland Host had done its work it left behind a people whose temper was thoroughly soured. Political hatred of the oppressors mingled with religious zeal. The Covenanters, as those were called who denounced episcopacy as a breach of the Covenant (see p. 525), regarded themselves as God's chosen people and all who supported their persecutors as the children of the devil, against whom it was lawful to draw the sword. To many of the Scottish gentry such talk as this appeared to be contemptible and dangerous fanaticism. Amongst those who strove most heartily against it was an active officer, John Graham of Claverhouse, who, being employed to quiet the country, shot or haled to prison men whom he thought likely to be forward in rebellion. On May 3, 1679, a band of fanatics murdered, on Magus Moor, near St. Andrews, James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews, who was known to be eager to call for the persecution of the Covenanters, and who was peculiarly hated as having been once a Presbyterian himself. On June 3 Claverhouse was driven back at Drumclog by an armed conventicle which he attempted to suppress. The peasants of the West rose in arms and declared against the king's supremacy over the Church, and against Popery, Prelacy, and the succession of the Duke of York, but on June 22, Monmouth, who had been sent at the head of an army against them, defeated them at Bothwell Bridge, near Hamilton, and entirely suppressed the rebellion. Many of the prisoners were executed after being tortured to extract from them information against their accomplices, and this cruelty was exercised under the orders of the Duke of York, who had been sent to Scotland as Lord High Commissioner.33

19. Petitioners and Abhorrers. 1680.– Encouraged by his success in Scotland, Charles dismissed Shaftesbury from the presidency of the Council and got rid of his principal supporters. Temple's reformed Council came thereby to an end. When Monmouth returned from Scotland his father refused to see him and sent him away from London. In the beginning of 1680 Shaftesbury's party sent up numerous petitions to ask Charles to allow Parliament to meet, and his opponents sent up petitions expressing abhorrence at such an attempt to force the king's will. For a time the two parties were known as Petitioners and Abhorrers, names which were soon replaced by those of Whigs and Tories. These celebrated names were at first merely nicknames. The courtiers called the Petitioners Whigs – an abbreviation of Whigamore, the name by which the peasants of the west of Scotland were familiarly known, from the cry of 'Whiggam' with which they were accustomed to encourage their horses. The name Whig therefore implied that the petitioners were no better than Covenanting rebels. The Petitioners, on the other hand, called their opponents Tories – the name given to brigands in Ireland, implying that they were no better than Popish thieves.

20. The Second Short Parliament. 1680-1681.– Each party did all that could be done to court popularity. Monmouth made a triumphant progress in the west of England. On the other hand, James, on his return from Scotland, had a good reception even in London, the headquarters of his opponents. On June 26, 1680, Shaftesbury appeared at Westminster and indicted James as a recusant. At last, on October 21, the second Short Parliament met. The Exclusion Bill was rapidly passed through the Commons. In the Lords, Halifax carried the House with him by an eloquent and closely-reasoned speech, in which the claims of the Princess of Orange were dwelt on as superior to those of Monmouth, and the Bill was, in consequence, rejected. On December 29 Lord Stafford, a Catholic peer, was executed on a false charge of a design to murder the king. When he protested his innocence on the scaffold, shouts were raised of "God bless you, my lord! We believe you, my lord!" Charles saw in these shouts an indication that the tide of opinion was turning in his favour, and, on January 18, 1681, dissolved Parliament.

21. The Third Short Parliament. 1681.– Charles summoned a new Parliament to meet at Oxford, where it would not be exposed to any violent interruption by Shaftesbury's 'brisk boys' – as his noisy London supporters were called – who might, it was feared, repeat the exploits of the City mob in 1641 (see p. 535). The new House of Commons was again predominantly Whig, and it was thought by the Whigs that Oxford had been selected as the place of meeting because the University was eminently Tory, with the deliberate intention of overpowering them by force. Their alarm increased when they learned that the king was bringing his guards with him. Accordingly the Whigs armed themselves and their servants in self-defence, and, in this guise, rode into Oxford. Parliament was opened on March 21, 1681, and Charles then offered to assent to any scheme for stripping his brother of royal authority, if only he were recognised as king. Shaftesbury replied that the only way of ending the dispute was to declare Monmouth heir to the Crown. As the Commons supported Shaftesbury, Charles, on March 28, dissolved his third Short Parliament. So much was he afraid that the Whig members and their servants might lay violent hands on him, that he drove in one coach to Christchurch Hall, where the House of Lords was sitting, and sent his robes by another, in order that it might not be guessed that a dissolution was intended. He soon found that he could now count on popular support in almost every part of England. The mass of people judge more by what they see than by what they hear. The pistols in the hands of the Whig members when they rode into Oxford had driven into men's heads the belief that they intended to gain their ends by civil war, and, much as the nation disliked the idea of having a 'Popish' king, it disliked the idea of civil war still more, and rallied round the king.

CHAPTER XL

THE LAST YEARS OF CHARLES II. 1681-1685

LEADING DATESReign of Charles II., 1660-1685

• Tory Reaction 1681

• Flight of Shaftesbury 1682

• Forfeiture of the Charter of the City of London 1683

• The Rye House Plot 1683

• Executions of Russell and Sidney 1683

• Death of Charles II. Feb. 6, 1685

1. Tory Reaction. 1681.– The Tory reaction which followed made itself especially felt in the law-courts. Judges and juries who had combined to send to death innocent Catholics, upon the testimony of forsworn informers, now combined to send to death ardent Whigs, upon the testimony of informers equally base. College, the inventor of the Protestant flail (see p. 615), was condemned to death, as having borne arms in Oxford during the last Parliament, and others shared his fate on equally slight grounds. In the City of London, however, it was still impossible to secure a verdict against a Whig. Juries were everywhere nominated by the sheriff of the county, and sheriffs were, in political cases, ready to compose a jury of political partisans. In every part of England except Middlesex, the sheriffs were named by the king, and were, therefore, Tories. The City of London, which was strongly Whig, had the privilege of electing sheriffs for London and Middlesex, and these sheriffs took care that Middlesex juries should be composed of Whigs. Shaftesbury was accused of high treason, but before he could be tried the Grand Jury of Middlesex had to find a true bill against him – that is to say, to declare that there was sufficient evidence against him to call for a trial. On November 24, 1681, the Grand Jury, composed of his own political partisans, threw out the bill, and he was at once set at liberty.

2. 'Absolom and Achitophel.' 1681.– A few days before Shaftesbury's release, Dryden, the greatest living master of the heroic couplet, strove to stir up men's minds against the prisoner by his satire of 'Absolom and Achitophel,' in which the part of the tempter Achitophel was assigned to Shaftesbury and the part of the tempted Absolom to Monmouth. Shaftesbury was described as

For close designs and crooked councils fit;Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;Restless, unfixed in principles and place;In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace;A fiery soul, which worketh out its way,Fretted the pigmy body to decay,And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.A daring pilot in extremity;Pleased with the danger when the waves ran high,He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,Would steer too nigh the sands to show his wit.

3. The Scottish Test Act and the Duke of York's Return. 1681-1682.– The 'daring pilot's' course was nearly run. Before long, on May 27, 1682, Shaftesbury's most conspicuous enemy, the Duke of York, returned from Scotland. Whilst he was in Scotland he had obtained an Act from the Scottish Parliament, binding on all officials a new test, requiring them to swear to the doctrine of hereditary right and to the maintenance of the episcopal Church. The Earl of Argyle, the son of the Marquis of Argyle, the political leader of the Covenanters against Charles I., having inherited his father's Presbyterianism, not only refused the oath, but gave reasons for refusing. The Crown lawyers declared that his reasons poisoned the minds of the subjects against the king, and he was tried and condemned to death under an old statute against leasing-making – literally, the making of lies – which had been passed about a century before to punish court favourites who sowed dissension between the king and his people by poisoning the mind of the king against his subjects. Argyle, however, escaped to Holland, and on April 20, 1682, James reached London.

4. The City Elections. 1682.– The first thing on which, after James's return, the king's ministers set their heart, was to strike a blow at Shaftesbury. As he lived in his house in Aldersgate Street and took care never to leave the City, it was impossible to bring him to trial as long as the sheriffs of London and Middlesex were Whigs. The Lord Mayor, Moore, was gained by the Court, and, by various unscrupulous contrivances, he secured the appointment of two Tory sheriffs, and, even before the end of 1682, of a Tory Lord Mayor named Prichard as his own successor. There would no longer be any difficulty in filling the Middlesex jury box with Tories.

5. Flight and Death of Shaftesbury. 1682-1683.– Shaftesbury had for some time been keenly alive to the danger impending over him. He had wild followers in the City ready to follow him in acts of violence, and he had proposed to Russell and Monmouth that the king's guards at Whitehall should be attacked, and the king compelled to do his bidding. Russell and Monmouth recoiled from an act of violence which would certainly end in bloodshed. Shaftesbury still hoped to effect his end by the aid of his less scrupulous supporters; but time slipped away, and on October 19, three days before Prichard's election, he fled to Holland, where he died on January 22, 1683. With all his faults, he had led the way on that path in which the English nation was, before long, to walk, as he had latterly striven for a combination of Parliamentary supremacy with toleration for dissenters and without toleration for Catholics. His personal failure was due to the disquietude caused by his turbulence in the minds of that large part of the community which regards orderly government as a matter of primary necessity.

6. The Attack on the City. 1682-1683.– The difficulty which Charles had experienced in bending the city to his will made him anxious to provide against similar resistance in the future. Taking care to effect his objects under, at least, the form of law, he enforced on the electors in the City, who were called in December to choose the Common Council, the oath of supremacy and the proof required by the Corporation Act of having received the Sacrament in the Church. The result was that a Tory majority was returned on the Common Council. Following up this blow in 1683, he called on the City to show cause, by a writ known as 'Quo Warranto,' before the King's Bench, why its charter should not be forfeited, in consequence of its having imposed irregular tolls and having attacked the king's authority in a petition exhibited in 1680. The King's Bench decided against the City, and the king then offered to restore the charter on certain conditions, of which the principal was, that he was to have a veto on the election of its principal officers. At first the City accepted his terms, but, before the end of the year, it drew back, and the king then named the Lord Mayor and other officers directly, paying no further regard to the municipal self-government under which the City had, for many centuries, conducted its own affairs.

7. The Remodelling of the Corporations. 1683-1684.– A large number of other corporate towns were treated as London had been treated. By a plentiful use of writs of Quo Warranto, the judges on circuit obtained the surrender of their charters, after which the king issued new ones in which Tories alone were named as members of the corporations. It was said of Jeffreys, one amongst the judges who was most subservient, that he 'made all charters, like the walls of Jericho, fall down before him.' The object of these proceedings was to make sure of a Tory Parliament when the time came for fresh elections. In a large number of boroughs the corporations chose the members, and in such cases wherever the corporation had been remodelled, there would be a safe Tory seat. At the same time the laws against the Dissenters were strictly executed, and the prisons filled with their ministers.

8. The Rye House Plot. 1683.– When injustice is done under legal forms, there are usually some persons who think it allowable to appeal to force. Some of Shaftesbury's more violent followers formed a plot to attack the king and his brother at the Rye House on their return from Newmarket, and either to seize or murder them. The plot failed, as Charles passed the Rye House some days earlier than was expected, and several of the conspirators were taken and executed.