Chapter XI (4)

[536] It is remarkable, that Scrope had been so particularly favoured by the convention parliament, as to be exempted, together with Hutchinson and Lascelles, from any penalty or forfeiture by a special resolution. June 9. But the Lords put in his name again, though they pointedly excepted Hutchinson; and the Commons, after first resolving that he should only pay a fine of one year's value of his estate, came at last to agree in excepting him from the indemnity as to life. It appears that some private conversation of Scrope had been betrayed, wherein he spoke of the king's death as he thought.

As to Hutchinson, he had certainly concurred in the restoration, having an extreme dislike to the party who had turned out the parliament in Oct. 1659, especially Lambert. This may be inferred from his conduct, as well as by what Ludlow says, and Kennet in his _Register_, p. 169. His wife puts a speech into his mouth as to his share in the king's death, not absolutely justifying it, but, I suspect, stronger than he ventured to use. At least, the Commons voted that he should not be excepted from the indemnity, "on account of his signal repentance," which could hardly be predicated of the language she ascribes to him. Compare Mrs. Hutchinson's _Memoirs_, p. 367, with Commons' Journals, June 9.

[537] Horace Walpole, in his _Catalogue of Noble Authors_, has thought fit to censure both these persons for their pretended inconsistency. The case is, however, different as to Monk and Cooper; and perhaps it may be thought, that men of more delicate sentiments than either of these possessed, would not have sat upon the trial of those with whom they had long professed to act in concert, though innocent of their crime.

[538] Commons' Journals, May 12, 1660.

[539] _Parl. Hist._ iv. 80.

[540] _Id._ iv. 129.

[541] _Memoirs_, p. 229. It appears by some passages in the _Clarendon Papers_, that the church had not expected to come off so brilliantly; and, while the restoration was yet unsettled, would have been content to give leases of their lands. Pp. 620, 723. Hyde, however, was convinced that the church would be either totally ruined, or restored to a great lustre; and herein he was right, as it turned out. P. 614.

[542] _Life of Clarendon_, 99. L'Estrange, in a pamphlet printed before the end of 1660, complains that the cavaliers were neglected, the king betrayed, the creatures of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and St. John laden with offices and honours. Of the indemnity he says, "That act made the enemies to the constitution masters in effect of the booty of three nations, bating the Crown and church lands, all which they might now call their own; while those who stood up for the laws were abandoned to the comfort of an irreparable but honourable ruin." He reviles the presbyterian ministers still in possession; and tells the king that misplaced lenity was his father's ruin. Kennet's _Register_, p. 233. See too, in _Somers Tracts_, vii. 517, "The Humble Representation of the Sad Condition of the King's Party." Also p. 557.

[543] Commons' Journals, 4 September 1660. Sir Philip Warwick, chancellor of the exchequer, assured Pepys that the revenue fell short by a fourth of the £1,200,000 voted by parliament. See his _Diary_, March 1, 1664. Ralph, however, says, the income in 1662 was £1,120,593, though the expenditure was £1,439,000. P. 88. It appears probable that the hereditary excise did not yet produce much beyond its estimate. _Id._ p. 20.

[544] 21 Nov. 1660, 151 to 149. _Parl. Hist._

[545] The troops disbanded were fourteen regiments of horse and eighteen of foot in England: one of horse and four of foot in Scotland, besides garrisons. Journals, Nov. 7.

[546] Ralph, 35; _Life of James_, 447; Grose's _Military Antiquities_, i. 61.

[547] Neal, 429, 444.

[548] _Id._ 471; Pepy's _Diary_, ad init. Even in Oxford, about 300 episcopalians used to meet every Sunday with the connivance of Dr. Owen, dean of Christ Church. Orme's _Life of Owen_, 188. It is somewhat bold in Anglican writers to complain, as they now and then do, of the persecution they suffered at this period, when we consider what had been the conduct of the bishops before, and what it was afterwards. I do not know that any member of the church of England was imprisoned under the commonwealth, except for some political reason; certain it is that the gaols were not filled with them.

[549] The penal laws were comparatively dormant, though two priests suffered death, one of them before the protectorate. Butler's _Mem. of Catholics_, ii. 13. But in 1655 Cromwell issued a proclamation for the execution of these statutes; which seems to have been provoked by the persecution of the Vaudois. Whitelocke tells us he opposed it. 625. It was not acted upon.

[550] Several of these appear in _Somers Tracts_, vol. vii. The king's nearest friends were of course not backward in praising him, though a little at the expense of their consciences. "In a word," says Hyde to a correspondent in 1659, "if being the best protestant and the best Englishman of the nation can do the king good at home, he must prosper with and by his own subjects." _Clar. State Papers_, 541. Morley says he had been to see Judge Hale, who asked him questions about the king's character and firmness in the protestant religion. _Id._ 736. Morley's exertions to dispossess men of the notion that the king and his brother were inclined to popery, are also mentioned by Kennet in his _Register_, 818: a book containing very copious information as to this particular period. Yet Morley could hardly have been without strong suspicions as to both of them.

[551] He had written in cipher to Secretary Nicholas, from St. Johnston's, Sept. 3, 1650, the day of the battle of Dunbar, "Nothing could have confirmed me more to the church of England than being here, seeing their hypocrisy." Supplement to Evelyn's _Diary_, 133. The whole letter shows that he was on the point of giving his new friends the slip; as indeed he attempted soon after, in what was called the Start. Laing, iii. 463.

[552] 12 Car. II. c. 17. It is quite clear that an usurped possession was confirmed by this act, where the lawful incumbent was dead; though Burnet intimates the contrary.

[553] _Parl. Hist._ 94. The chancellor, in his speech to the houses at their adjournment in September, gave them to understand that this bill was not quite satisfactory to the court, who preferred the confirmation of ministers by particular letters patent under the great seal; that the king's prerogative of dispensing with acts of parliament might not grow into disuse. Many got the additional security of such patents; which proved of service to them, when the next parliament did not think fit to confirm this important statute. Baxter says (p. 241), some got letters patent to turn out the possessors, where the former incumbents were dead. These must have been to benefices in the gift of the Crown; in other cases, letters patent could have been of no effect. I have found this confirmed by the Journals, Aug. 27, 1660.

[554] Upon Venner's insurrection, though the sectaries, and especially the independents, published a declaration of their abhorrence of it, a pretext was found for issuing a proclamation to shut up the conventicles of the anabaptists and quakers, and so worded as to reach all others. Kennet's _Register_, 357.

[555] Collier, 869, 871; Baxter, 232, 238. The bishops said, in their answer to the presbyterians' proposals, that the objections against a single person's administration in the church were equally applicable to the state. Collier, 872. But this was false, as they well knew, and designed only to produce an effect at court; for the objections were not grounded on reasoning, but on a presumed positive institution. Besides which, the argument cut against themselves: for, if the English constitution, or something analogous to it, had been established in the church, their adversaries would have had all they _now_ asked.

[556] Stillingfleet's _Irenicum_; King's _Inquiry into the Constitution of the Primitive Church_. The former work was published at this time, with a view to moderate the pretensions of the Anglican party, to which the author belonged, by showing: 1. That there are no sufficient data for determining with certainty the form of church-government in the apostolical age, or that which immediately followed it. 2. That, as far as we may probably conjecture, the primitive church was framed on the model of the synagogue; that is, a synod of priests in every congregation having one of their own number for a chief or president. 3. That there is no reason to consider any part of the apostolical discipline as an invariable model for future ages, and that much of our own ecclesiastical polity cannot any way pretend to primitive authority. 4. That this has been the opinion of all the most eminent theologians at home and abroad. 5. That it would be expedient to introduce various modifications, not on the whole much different from the scheme of Usher. Stillingfleet, whose work is a remarkable instance of extensive learning and mature judgment at the age of about twenty-three, thought fit afterwards to retract it in a certain degree; and towards the latter part of his life, gave into more high-church politics. It is true that the _Irenicum_ must have been composed with almost unparalleled rapidity for such a work; but it shows, as far as I can judge, no marks of precipitancy. The biographical writers put its publication in 1659; but this must be a mistake; no one can avoid perceiving that it could not have passed the press on the 24th of March 1660, the latest day which could, according to the old style, have admitted the date of 1659, as it contains allusions to the king's restoration.

[557] Baxter's _Life_; Neal.

[558] They addressed the king to call such divines as he should think fit, to advise with concerning matters of religion. July 20, 1660. Journals and _Parl. Hist._

[559] _Parl. Hist._; Neal, Baxter, Collier, etc. Burnet says that Clarendon had made the king publish this declaration; "but the bishops did not approve of this; and, after the service they did that lord in the Duke of York's marriage, he would not put any hardship on those who had so signally obliged him." This is very invidious. I know no evidence that the declaration was published at Clarendon's suggestion, except indeed that he was the great adviser of the Crown; yet in some things, especially of this nature, the king seems to have acted without his concurrence. He certainly speaks of the declaration as if he did not wholly relish it (_Life_, 75), and does not state it fairly. In _State Trials_, vi. 11, it is said to have been drawn up by Morley and Henchman for the church, Reynolds and Calamy for the dissenters; if they disagreed, Lords Anglesea and Hollis to decide.

[560] The chief objection made by the presbyterians, as far as we learn from Baxter, was, that the consent of presbyters to the bishops' acts was not promised by the declaration, but only their advice; a distinction apparently not very material in practice, but bearing perhaps on the great point of controversy, whether the difference between the two were in order or in degree. The king would not come into the scheme of consent; though they pressed him with a passage out of the _Icon Basilike_, where his father allowed of it. _Life of Baxter_, 276. Some alterations, however, were made in consequence of their suggestions.

[561] _Parl. Hist._ 141, 152. Clarendon, 76, most strangely observes on this: "Some of the leaders brought a bill into the house for the making that declaration a law, which was suitable to their other acts of ingenuity to keep the church for ever under the same indulgence and without any settlement; which being quickly perceived, there was no further progress in it." The bill was brought in by Sir Matthew Hale.

[562] Collier, who of course thinks this declaration an encroachment on the church, as well as on the legislative power, says, "For this reason it was overlooked at the assizes and sessions in several places in the country, where the dissenting ministers were indicted for not conforming pursuant to the laws in force." P. 876. Neal confirms this, 586, and Kennet's _Register_, 374.

[563] _Life of Clarendon_, 74. A plausible and somewhat dangerous attack had been made on the authority of this parliament from an opposite quarter, in a pamphlet written by one Drake, under the name of Thomas Philips, entitled "The Long Parliament Revived," and intended to prove that by the act of the late king, providing that they should not be dissolved but by the concurrence of the whole legislature, they were still in existence; and that the king's demise, which legally puts an end to a parliament, could not affect one that was declared permanent by so direct an enactment. This argument seems by no means inconsiderable; but the times were not such as to admit of technical reasoning. The convention parliament, after questioning Drake, finally sent up articles of impeachment against him; but the Lords, after hearing him in his defence, when he confessed his fault, left him to be prosecuted by the attorney-general. Nothing more, probably, took place. _Parl. Hist._ 145, 157. This was in November and December 1660: but Drake's book seems still to have been in considerable circulation; at least I have two editions of it, both bearing the date of 1661. The argument it contains is purely legal; but the aim must have been to serve the presbyterian or parliamentarian cause.

[564] Complaints of insults on the presbyterian clergy were made to the late parliament. _Parl. Hist._ 160. The Anglicans inveighed grossly against them on the score of their past conduct, notwithstanding the act of indemnity. Kennet's _Register_, 616. See, as a specimen, South's sermons, _passim_.

[565] Journals, 17th of May 1661. The previous question was moved on this vote, but lost by 228 to 103; Morice, the secretary of state, being one of the tellers for the minority. Monk, I believe, to whom Morice owed his elevation, did what he could to prevent violent measures against the presbyterians. Alderman Love was suspended from sitting in the house July 3, for not having taken the sacrament. I suppose that he afterwards conformed; for he became an active member of the opposition.

[566] Journals, June 14, etc.; _Parl. Hist._ 209; _Life of Clarendon_, 71; Burnet, 230. A bill discharging the loyalists from all interest exceeding three per cent. on debts contracted before the wars passed the Commons; but was dropped in the other house. The great discontent of this party at the indemnity continued to show itself in subsequent sessions. Clarendon mentions, with much censure, that many private bills passed about 1662, annulling conveyances of lands made during the troubles. Pp. 162, 163. One remarkable instance ought to be noticed, as having been greatly misrepresented. At the Earl of Derby's seat of Knowsley in Lancashire a tablet is placed to commemorate the ingratitude of Charles II. in having refused the royal assent to a bill which had passed both houses for restoring the son of the Earl of Derby, who had lost his life in the royal cause, to his family estate. This has been so often reprinted by tourists and novelists, that it passes currently for a just reproach on the king's memory. It was, however, in fact one of his most honourable actions. The truth is, that the cavalier faction carried through parliament a bill to make void the conveyances of some manors which Lord Derby had voluntarily sold before the restoration, in the very face of the act of indemnity, and against all law and justice. Clarendon, who, together with some very respectable peers, had protested against this measure in the upper house, thought it his duty to recommend the king to refuse his assent. Lords' Journals, Feb. 6 and May 14, 1662. There is so much to blame in both the minister and his master, that it is but fair to give them credit for that which the pardonable prejudices of the family interested have led it to mis-state.

[567] Commons' Journals, 1st July 1661. A division took place, November 26, on a motion to lay this bill aside, in consideration of the king's proclamation, which was lost by 124 to 109: Lord Cornbury (Clarendon's son) being a teller for the Noes. The bill was sent up to the Lords Jan. 27, 1662. See also _Parl. Hist._ 217, 225. Some of their proceedings trespassed upon the executive power, and infringed the prerogative they laboured to exalt. But long interruption of the due course of the constitution had made its boundaries indistinct. Thus, in the convention parliament, the bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw, Ireton, and others, were ordered, Dec 4, on the motion of Colonel Titus, to be disinterred, and hanged on a gibbet. The Lords concurred in this order; but the mode of address to the king would have been more regular. _Parl. Hist._ 151.

[568] 3 Inst. 7. This appears to have been held in Bagot's case, 9 Edw. 4. See also Higden's _View of the English Constitution_, 1709.

[569] Foster, in his _Discourse on High Treason_, evidently intimates that he thought the conviction of Vane unjustifiable.

[570] "The relation that has been made to me of Sir H. Vane's carriage yesterday in the Hall is the occasion of this letter, which, if I am rightly informed, was so insolent, as to justify all he had done; acknowledging no supreme power in England but a parliament, and many things to that purpose. You have had a true account of all; and if he has given new occasion to be hanged, certainly he is too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way. Think of this, and give me some account of it to-morrow, till when I have no more to say to you. C." Indorsed in Lord Clarendon's hand, "The king, June 7, 1662." Vane was beheaded June 14. Burnet (note in Oxford edition), p. 164; Harris's _Lives_, v. 32.

[571] Vane gave up the profits of his place as treasurer of the navy, which, according to his patent, would have amounted to £30,000 per ann. if we may rely on Harris's _Life of Cromwell_, p. 260.

[572] 13 Car. 2, c. 1 and 6. A bill for settling the militia had been much opposed in the convention parliament, as tending to bring in martial law. _Parl. Hist._ iv. 145. It seems to have dropped.

[573] C. 1.

[574] C. 2. The only opposition made to this was in the House of Lords by the Earl of Bristol and some of the Roman catholic party, who thought the bishops would not be brought into a toleration of their religion. _Life of Clarendon_, p. 138.

[575] C. 5.

[576] 13 Car. 2, sess. 2, c. i. This bill did not pass without a strong opposition in the Commons. It was carried at last by 182 to 77 (Journals, July 5); but, on a previous division for its commitment the numbers were 135 to 136. June 20. Prynne was afterwards reprimanded by the speaker for publishing a pamphlet against this act (July 15); but his courage had now forsaken him; and he made a submissive apology, though the censure was pronounced in a very harsh manner.

[577] Journals, 3rd April 1662; 10th March 1663.

[578] _Parl. Hist._ 289. Clarendon speaks very unjustly of the triennial act, forgetting that he had himself concurred in it. P. 221.

[579] 16 Car. 2, c. 1. We find by the Journals that some divisions took place during the passage of this bill, and though, as far as appears, on subordinate points, yet probably springing from an opposition to its principle. March 28, 1664. There was by this time a regular party formed against the court.

[580] P. 383.

[581] Lords' Journals, 23rd and 24th Jan. 1662.

[582] 12th Feb.

[583] 19th March 1663.

[584] 13 Car. 2, c. 12.

[585] Clarendon, in his _Life_, p. 149, says, that the king "had received the presbyterian ministers with grace; and did believe that he should work upon them by persuasions, having been well acquainted with their common arguments by the conversation he had had in Scotland, and _was very able to confute them_." This is one of the strange absurdities into which Clarendon's prejudices hurry him in almost every page of his writings, and more especially in this continuation of his _Life_. Charles, as his minister well knew, could not read a common Latin book (_Clarendon State Papers_, iii. 567), and had no manner of acquaintance with theological learning, unless the popular argument in favour of popery is so to be called; yet he was very able to confute men who had passed their lives in study, on a subject involving a considerable knowledge of Scripture and the early writers in their original languages.

[586] Clarendon admits that this could not have been done till the former parliament was dissolved. 97. This means, of course, on the supposition that the king's word was to be broken. "The malignity towards the church," he says, "seemed increasing, and to be greater than at the coming in of the king." Pepys, in his _Diary_, has several sharp remarks on the misconduct and unpopularity of the bishops, though himself an episcopalian even before the restoration. "The clergy are so high that all people I meet with do protest against their practice." August 31, 1660. "I am convinced in my judgment, that the present clergy will never heartily go down with the generality of the commons of England; they have been so used to liberty and freedom, and they are so acquainted with the pride and debauchery of the present clergy. He [Mr. Blackburn, a nonconformist] did give me many stories of the affronts which the clergy receive in all parts of England from the gentry and ordinary persons of the parish." November 9, 1663. The opposite party had recourse to the old weapons of pious fraud. I have a tract containing twenty-seven instances of remarkable judgments, all between June 1660, and April 1661, which befell divers persons for reading the common prayer or reviling godly ministers. This is entitled _Annus Mirabilis_; and, besides the above twenty-seven, attests so many prodigies, that the name is by no means misapplied. The bishops made large fortunes by filling up leases. Burnet, 260. And Clarendon admits them to have been too rapacious, though he tries to extenuate. P. 48.

[587] The fullest account of this conference, and of all that passed as to the comprehension of the presbyterians, is to be read in Baxter, whom Neal has abridged. Some allowance must, of course, be made for the resentment of Baxter; but his known integrity makes it impossible to discredit the main part of his narration. Nor is it necessary to rest on the evidence of those who may be supposed to have the prejudices of dissenters. For Bishop Burnet admits that all the concern which seemed to employ the prelates' minds, was not only to make an alteration on the presbyterians' account, but to straiten the terms of conformity far more than before the war. Those, however, who would see what can be said by writers of high-church principles, may consult Kennet's _History of Charles II._ p. 252, or Collier, p. 878. One little anecdote may serve to display the spirit with which the Anglicans came to the conference. Upon Baxter's saying that their proceedings would alienate a great part of the _nation_, Stearne, Bishop of Carlisle, observed to his associates: "He will not say _kingdom_, lest he should acknowledge a king." Baxter, p. 338. This was a very malignant reflection on a man who was well known never to have been of the republican party. It is true that Baxter seems to have thought, in 1659, that Richard Cromwell would have served the turn better than Charles Stuart; and, as a presbyterian, he thought very rightly. See p. 207, and part iii. p. 71. But, preaching before the parliament, April 30, 1660, he said it was none of our differences whether we should be loyal to our king; on that all were agreed. P. 217.

[588] _Life of Clarendon_, 147. He observes that the alterations made did not reduce one of the opposite party to the obedience of the church. Now, in the first place, he could not know this; and, in the next, he conceals from the reader that, on the whole matter, the changes made in the liturgy were more likely to disgust than to conciliate. Thus the puritans having always objected to the number of saints' days, the bishops added a few more; and the former having given very plausible reasons against the apocryphal lessons in the daily service, the others inserted the legend of Bel and the Dragon, for no other purpose than to show contempt of their scruples. The alterations may be seen in Rennet's _Register_, 585. The most important was the restoration of a rubric inserted in the communion service under Edward VI., but left out by Elizabeth, declaring against any corporal presence in the Lord's supper. This gave offence to some of those who had adopted that opinion, especially the Duke of York, and perhaps tended to complete his alienation from the Anglican church. Burnet, i. 183.

[589] 13 and 14 Car. 2, c. iv. § 3.

[590] _Life of Clarendon_, 152; Burnet, 256. Morley, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, was engaged just before the restoration in negotiating with the presbyterians. They stuck out for the negative voice of the council of presbyters, and for the validity of their ordinations. _Clar. State Papers_, 727. He had two schemes to get over the difficulty; one to pass them over _sub silentio_; the other, a hypothetical re-ordination, on the supposition that something might have been wanting before, as the church of Rome practises about re-baptization. The former is a curious expedient for those who pretended to think presbyterian ordinations really null. _Id._ 738.

[591] The day fixed upon suggested a comparison which, though severe, was obvious. A modern writer has observed on this, "They were careful not to remember that the same day, and for the same reason, because the tithes were commonly due at Michaelmas, had been appointed for the former ejectment, when four times as many of the loyal clergy were deprived for fidelity to their sovereign." Southey's _Hist. of the Church_, ii. 467. That the day was chosen in order to deprive the incumbent of a whole year's tithes, Mr. Southey has learned from Burnet; and it aggravates the cruelty of the proceeding--but where has he found his precedent? The Anglican clergy were ejected for refusing the covenant at no one definite period, as, on recollection, Mr. S. would be aware; nor can I find any one parliamentary ordinance in Husband's Collection that mentions St. Bartholomew's day. There was a precedent indeed in that case, which the government of Charles did not choose to follow. One-fifth of the income had been reserved for the dispossessed incumbents.

[592] Journals, April 26. This may perhaps have given rise to a mistake we find in Neal, 624, that the act of uniformity only passed by 186 to 180. There was no division at all upon the bill except that I have mentioned.

[593] The report of the conference (Lords' Journals, 7th May) is altogether rather curious.

[594] Lords' Journals, 25th and 27th July 1663; Ralph, 58.

[595] Neal, 625-636. Baxter told Burnet, as the latter says (p. 185), that not above 300 would have resigned, had the terms of the king's declaration been adhered to. The blame, he goes on, fell chiefly on Sheldon. But Clarendon was charged with entertaining the presbyterians with good words, while he was giving way to the bishops. See also p. 268. Baxter puts the number of the deprived at 1800. _Life_, 384. And it has generally been reckoned about 2000; though Burnet says it has been much controverted. If indeed we can rely on Calamy's account of the ejected ministers, abridged by Palmer under the title of _The Nonconformist's Memorial_, the number must have been full 2400. Kennet, however (_Register_, 807), notices great mistakes of Calamy in respect only to one diocese, that of Peterborough. Probably both in this collection, and in that of Walker on the other side, as in all martyrologies, there are abundant errors; but enough will remain to afford memorable examples of conscientious suffering; and we cannot read without indignation Rennet's endeavours, in the conclusion of this volume, to extenuate the praise of the deprived presbyterians by captious and unfair arguments.

[596] See Clarendon's feeble attempt to vindicate the king from the charge of breach of faith. 157.

[597] A list of these, published in 1660, contains more than 170 names. Neal, 590.

[598] Sir Kenelm Digby was supposed to be deep in a scheme that the catholics, in 1649, should support the commonwealth with all their power, in return for liberty of religion. Carte's _Letters_, i. 216 _et post_. We find a letter from him to Cromwell in 1656 (Thurloe, iv. 591) with great protestations of duty.

[599] See Lords' Journals, June and July 1661, or extracts from them in Kennet's _Register_, 469, etc., 620, etc., and 798, where are several other particulars worthy of notice. Clarendon, 143, explains the failure of this attempt at a partial toleration (for it was only meant as to the exercise of religious rites in private houses) by the persevering opposition of the Jesuits to the oath of allegiance, to which the lay catholics, and generally the secular priests, had long ceased to make objection. The house had voted that the indulgence should not extend to Jesuits, and that they would not alter the oaths of allegiance or supremacy. The Jesuits complained of the distinction taken against them; and asserted, in a printed tract (Kennet, _ubi supra_), that since 1616 they had been inhibited by their superiors from maintaining the pope's right to depose sovereigns. See also Butler's _Mem. of Catholics_, ii. 27; iv. 142; and Burnet, i. 194.

[600] The suspicions against Charles were very strong in England before the restoration, so as to alarm his emissaries: "Your master," Mordaunt writes to Ormond, Nov. 10, 1659, "is utterly ruined as to his interest here in whatever party, if this be true." Carte's _Letters_, ii. 264, and _Clar. State Papers_, iii. 602. But an anecdote related in Carte's _Life of Ormond_, ii. 255, and Harris's _Lives_, v. 54, which has obtained some credit, proves, if true, that he had embraced the Roman catholic religion as early as 1659, so as even to attend mass. This cannot be reckoned out of question; but the tendency of the king's mind before his return to England is to be inferred from all his behaviour. Kennet (_Complete Hist. of Eng._ iii. 237) plainly insinuates that the project for restoring popery began at the treaty of the Pyrenees; and see his _Register_, p. 852.

[601] 13 Car. 2, c. 1.

[602] Burnet, i. 179.

[603] _Life of Clarendon_, 159. He intimates that this begot a coldness in the bishops towards himself, which was never fully removed. Yet he had no reason to complain of them on his trial. See, too, Pepys's _Diary_, Sept. 3, 1662.

[604] _Parl. Hist._ 257.

[605] Baxter intimates (429) that some disagreement arose between the presbyterians and independents as to the toleration of popery, or rather, as he puts it, as to the active concurrence of the protestant dissenters in accepting such a toleration as should include popery. The latter, conformably to their general principles, were favourable to it; but the former would not make themselves parties to any relaxation of the penal laws against the church of Rome, leaving the king to act as he thought fit. By this stiffness it is very probable that they provoked a good deal of persecution from the court, which they might have avoided by falling into its views of a general indulgence.

[606] _Parl. Hist._ 260. An adjournment had been moved, and lost by 161 to 119. Journals, 25 Feb.

[607] 19 Feb. Baxter, p. 429.

[608] Journals, 17 and 28 March 1663; _Parl. Hist._ 264. Burnet, 274, says the declaration of indulgence was usually ascribed to Bristol, but in fact proceeded from the king, and that the opposition to it in the house was chiefly made by the friends of Clarendon. The latter tells us in his _Life_, 189, that the king was displeased at the insolence of the Romish party, and gave the judges general orders to convict recusants. The minister and historian either was, or pretended to be, his master's dupe; and, if he had any suspicions of what was meant as to religion (as he must surely have had), is far too loyal to hint them. Yet the one circumstance he mentions soon after, that the Countess of Castlemaine suddenly declared herself a catholic, was enough to open his eyes and those of the world.

The Romish partisans assumed the tone of high loyalty, as exclusively characteristic of their religion; but affected, at this time, to use great civility towards the church of England. A book, entitled _Philanax Anglicus_, published under the name of Bellamy, the second edition of which is in 1663, after a most flattering dedication to Sheldon, launches into virulent abuse of the presbyterians and of the reformation in general, as founded on principles adverse to monarchy. This indeed was common with the ultra or high-church party; but the work in question, though it purports to be written by a clergyman, is manifestly a shaft from the concealed bow of the Roman Apollo.

[609] See proofs of this in Ralph, 53; Rapin, p. 78. There was in 1663 a trifling insurrection in Yorkshire, which the government wished to have been more serious, so as to afford a better pretext for strong measures; as may be collected from a passage in a letter of Bennet to the Duke of Ormond, where he says, "The country was in a greater readiness to prevent the disorders than perhaps were to be wished; but it being the effect of their own care, rather than his majesty's commands, it is the less to be censured." Clarendon, 218, speaks of this as an important and extensive conspiracy; and the king dwelt on it in his next speech to the parliament. _Parl. Hist._ 289.

[610] 16 Car. 2, c. 4. A similar bill had passed the Commons in July 1663, but hung some time in the upper house, and was much debated; the Commons sent up a message (an irregular practice of those times) to request their lordships would expedite this and some other bills. The king seems to have been displeased at this delay; for he told them at their prorogation, that he had expected some bills against conventicles and distempers in religion, as well as the growth of popery, and should himself present some at their next meeting. _Parl. Hist._ 288. Burnet observes, that to empower a justice of peace to convict without a jury, was thought a great breach on the principles of the English constitution. 285.

[611] P. 221.

[612] 17 Car. 2, c. 2.

[613] Burnet; Baxter, Part III. p. 2; Neal, p. 652.

[614] Burnet: Baxter.

[615] Mr. Locke, in the "Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country," printed in 1675 (see it in his works, or in _Parliamentary History_, vol. iv. Appendix, No. 5), says it was lost by three votes, and mentions the persons. But the numbers in the Journals, October 27, 1665, appear to be 57 to 51. Probably he meant that those persons might have been expected to vote the other way.

[616] A pamphlet, with Baxter's name subscribed, called "Fair Warning, or XXV Reasons against Toleration and Indulgence of Popery," 1663, is a pleasant specimen of this _argumentum ab inferno_. "Being there is but one safe way to salvation, do you think that the protestant way is that way, or is it not? If it be not, why do you live in it? If it be, how can you find in your heart to give your subjects liberty to go another way? Can you, in your conscience, give them leave to go on in that course in which, in your conscience, you think you could not be saved?" Baxter, however, does not mention this little book in his life; nor does he there speak violently about the toleration of Romanists.

[617] The clergy had petitioned the House of Commons in 1664, _inter alia_, "That for the better observation of the Lord's day, and for the promoting of conformity, you would be pleased to advance the pecuniary mulct of twelve pence for each absence from divine service, in proportion to the degree, quality, and ability of the delinquent; that so the penalty may be of force sufficient to conquer the obstinacy of the nonconformists." Wilkin's _Concilia_, iv. 580. Letters from Sheldon to the commissary of the diocese of Canterbury, in 1669 and 1670, occur in the same collection (pp. 588, 589) directing him to inquire about conventicles; and if they cannot be restrained by ecclesiastical authority, to apply to the next justice of peace in order to put them down. A proclamation appears also from the king, enjoining magistrates to do this. In 1673, the archbishop writes a circular to his suffragans, directing them to proceed against such as keep schools without licence. P. 593.

See in the _Somers Tracts_, vii. 586, a "true and faithful narrative" of the severities practised against nonconformists about this time. Baxter's _Life_ is also full of proofs of persecution; but the most complete register is in Calamy's account of the ejected clergy.

[618] Pepys observes, 12 July 1667, "how everybody nowadays reflect upon Oliver and commend him, what brave things he did, and made all the neighbour princes fear him."

[619] The _Mémoires de Grammont_ are known to everybody; and are almost unique in their kind, not only for the grace of their style and the vivacity of their pictures, but for the happy ignorance in which the author seems to have lived, that any one of his readers could imagine that there are such things as virtue and principle in the world. In the delirium of thoughtless voluptuousness they resemble some of the memoirs about the end of Louis XV.'s reign, and somewhat later; though I think, even in these, there is generally some effort, here and there, at moral censure, or some affectation of sensibility. _They_, indeed, have always an awful moral; and in the light portraits of the court of Versailles (such, sometimes, as we might otherwise almost blush to peruse) we have before us the handwriting on the wall, the winter whirlwind hushed in its grim repose, and expecting its prey, the vengeance of an oppressed people and long-forbearing Deity. No such retribution fell on the courtiers of Charles II.; but they earned in their own age, what has descended to posterity, though possibly very indifferent to themselves, the disgust and aversion of all that was respectable among mankind.

[620] This was carried on a division by 172 to 102. Journals, 25 November 1665. It was to be raised "in a regulated subsidiary way, reducing the same to a certainty in all counties, so as no person, for his real or personal estate, be exempted." They seem to have had some difficulty in raising this enormous subsidy. _Parliamentary History_, 305.

[621] 17 Car. II. c. 1. The same clause is repeated next year, and has become regular.

[622] _Life of Clarendon_, p. 315; Hatsell's _Precedents_, iii. 80.

[623] _Life of Clarendon_, p. 368. Burnet observes it was looked upon at the time as a great innovation. P. 335.

[624] Pepys's _Diary_ has lately furnished some things worthy to be extracted. "Mr. W. and I by water to Whitehall, and there at Sir George Carteret's lodgings Sir William Coventry met; and we did debate the whole business of our accounts to the parliament; where it appears to us that the charge of the war from Sept. 1, 1664, to this Michaelmas will have been but £3,200,000, and we have paid in that time somewhat about £2,200,000, so that we owe about £900,000; but our method of accounting, though it cannot, I believe, be far wide from the mark, yet will not abide a strict examination, if the parliament should be troublesome. Here happened a pretty question of Sir William Coventry, whether this account of ours will not put my lord treasurer to a difficulty to tell what is become of all the money the parliament have given in this time for the war, which hath amounted to about £4,000,000, which nobody there could answer; but I perceive they did doubt what his answer could be." Sept. 23, 1666.--The money granted the king for the war he afterwards (Oct. 10) reckons at £5,590,000, and the debt £900,000. The charge stated only at £3,200,000. "So what is become of all this sum, £2,390,000!" He mentions afterwards (Oct. 8) the proviso in the poll-tax bill, that there shall be a committee of nine persons to have the inspection on oath of all the accounts of the money given and spent for the war, "which makes the king and court mad; the king having given order to my lord chamberlain to send to the play-houses and brothels, to bid all the parliament men that were there to go to the parliament presently; but it was carried against the court by thirty or forty voices." It was thought, he says (Dec. 12) that above £400,000 had gone into the privy purse since the war.

[625] _Life of Clarendon_, p. 392.

[626] 19 and 20 Car. II. c. 1. Burnet, p. 374. They reported unaccounted balances of £1,509,161, besides much that was questionable in the payments. But, according to Ralph, p. 177, the commissioners had acted with more technical rigour than equity, surcharging the accountants for all sums not expended since the war began, though actually expended for the purposes of preparation.

[627] Burnet, p. 130. Southampton left all the business of the treasury, according to Burnet, p. 131, in the hands of Sir Philip Warwick, "a weak but incorrupt man." The king, he says, chose to put up with his contradiction rather than make him popular by dismissing him. But in fact, as we see by Clarendon's instance, the king retained his ministers long after he was displeased with them. Southampton's remissness and slowness, notwithstanding his integrity, Pepys says, was the cause of undoing the nation as much as anything; "yet, if I knew all the difficulties he has lain under, and his instrument Sir Philip Warwick, I might be of another mind." May 16, 1667.--He was willing to have done something, Clarendon tells us (p. 415) to gratify the presbyterians; on which account, the bishops thought him not enough affected to the church. His friend endeavours to extenuate this heinous sin of tolerant principles.

[628] The behaviour of Lord Clarendon on this occasion was so extraordinary, that no credit could have been given to any other account than his own. The Duke of York, he says, informed the king of the affection and friendship that had long been between him and the young lady; that they had been long contracted, and that she was with child; and therefore requested his majesty's leave that he might publicly marry her. The Marquis of Ormond by the king's order communicated this to the chancellor, who "broke out into an immoderate passion against the wickedness of his daughter; and said, with all imaginable earnestness, that as soon as he came home, he would turn her out of his house as a strumpet to shift for herself, and would never see her again. They told him that his passion was too violent to administer good counsel to him; that they thought that the duke was married to his daughter, and that there were other measures to be taken than those which the disorder he was in had suggested to him. Whereupon he fell into new commotions; and said, If that were true, he was well prepared to advise what was to be done; that he had much rather his daughter should be the duke's whore than his wife: in the former case, nobody could blame him for the resolution he had taken, for he was not obliged to keep a whore for the greatest prince alive; and the indignity to himself he would submit to the good pleasure of God. But, if there were any reason to suspect the other, he was ready to give a positive judgment, in which he hoped their lordships would concur with him, that the king should immediately cause the woman _to be sent to the Tower and cast into a dungeon_, under so strict a guard that no person living should be admitted to come to her; and then that _an act of parliament should be immediately passed for cutting off her head, to which he would not only give his consent, but would very willingly be the first man that should propose it_. And whoever knew the man, will believe that he said all this very heartily." Lord Southampton, he proceeds to inform us, on the king's entering the room at the time, said very naturally, that the chancellor was mad, and had proposed such extravagant things that he was no more to be consulted with. This, however, did not bring him to his senses; for he repeated his strange proposal of "sending her presently to the Tower, and the rest;" imploring the king to take this course, as the only expedient that could free him from the evils that this business would otherwise bring upon him.

That any man of sane intellects should fall into such an extravagance of passion, is sufficiently wonderful; that he should sit down in cool blood several years afterwards to relate it, is still more so; and perhaps we shall carry our candour to an excess, if we do not set down the whole scene to overacted hypocrisy. Charles II., we may be very sure, could see it in no other light. And here I must take notice, by the way, of the singular observation the worthy editor of Burnet has made: "King Charles's conduct in this business was excellent throughout; that of Clarendon _worthy an ancient Roman_." We have indeed a Roman precedent for subduing the sentiments of nature rather than permitting a daughter to incur disgrace through the passions of the great; but I think Virginius would not quite have understood the feelings of Clarendon. Such virtue was more like what Montesquieu calls "l'héroïsme de l'esclavage," and was just fit for the court of Gondar. But with all this violence that he records of himself, he deviates greatly from the truth: "The king (he says) afterwards spoke every day about it, and told the chancellor that he must behave himself wisely, for that the thing was remediless, and that his majesty knew that they were married; which would quickly appear to all men who knew that nothing could be done upon it. In this time the chancellor had conferred with his daughter, without anything of indulgence, and not only discovered that they were unquestionably married, but _by whom, and who were present at it, who would be ready to avow it_; which pleased him not, though it diverted him from using some of that rigour which he intended. And he saw no other remedy could be applied but that which he had proposed to the king, who thought of nothing like it." _Life of Clarendon_, 29 _et post_.

Every one would conclude from this, that a marriage had been solemnised if not before their arrival in England, yet before the chancellor had this conference with his daughter. It appears, however, from the Duke of York's declaration in the books of the privy council, quoted by Ralph, p. 40, that he was contracted to Ann Hyde on the 24th of November 1659, at Breda; and after that time lived with her as his wife, though very secretly; he married her 3rd Sept. 1660, according to the English ritual, Lord Ossory giving her away. The first child was born Oct. 22, 1660. Now whether the contract were sufficient to constitute a valid marriage, will depend on two things; first, upon the law existing at Breda; secondly, upon the applicability of what is commonly called the rule of the _lex loci_, to a marriage between such persons according to the received notions of English lawyers in that age. But, even admitting all this, it is still manifest that Clarendon's expressions point to an actual celebration, and are consequently intended to mislead the reader. Certain it is, that at the time the contract seems to have been reckoned only an honorary obligation. James tells us himself (Macpherson's _Extracts_, p. 17) that he promised to marry her; and "though when he asked the king for his leave, he refused and dissuaded him from it, yet at last he opposed it no more, and the duke married her privately, and owned it some time after." His biographer, writing from his own manuscript, adds, "it may well be supposed that my lord chancellor did his part, but with great caution and circumspection, to soften the king in that matter which in every respect seemed so much for his own advantage." _Life of James_, 387. And Pepys inserts in his diary, Feb. 23, 1661, "Mr. H. told me how my lord chancellor had lately got the Duke of York and duchess, and her woman, my Lord Ossory and a doctor, to make oath before most of the judges of the kingdom, concerning all the circumstances of their marriage. And, in fine, it is confessed that they were not fully married till about a month or two before she was brought to bed; but that they were contracted long before, and [were married] time enough for the child to be legitimate. But I do not hear that it was put to the judges to determine so or not." He had said before that Lord Sandwich told him (17th Oct. 1660) "the king wanted him [the duke] to marry her, but he would not." This seems at first sight inconsistent with what James says himself. But at this time, though the private marriage had really taken place, he had been persuaded by a most infamous conspiracy of some profligate courtiers that the lady was of a licentious character, and that Berkeley, afterwards Lord Falmouth, had enjoyed her favours. _Life of Clarendon_, 33. It must be presumed that those men knew only of a contract which they thought he could break. Hamilton, in the _Memoirs of Grammont_, speaks of this transaction with his usual levity, though the parties showed themselves as destitute of spirit as of honour and humanity. Clarendon, we must believe (and the most favourable hypothesis for him is to give up his veracity), would not permit his daughter to be made the victim of a few perjured debauchees, and of her husband's fickleness or credulity.

[629] Hamilton mentions this as the current rumour of the court, and Burnet has done the same. But Clarendon himself denies that he had any concern in it, or any acquaintance with the parties. He wrote in too humble a strain to the king on the subject. _Life of Clar._ p. 454.

[630] Burnet says that Southampton had come into a scheme of obtaining £2,000,000 as the annual revenue; which was prevented by Clarendon, lest it should put the king out of need of parliaments. This the king found out, and hated him mortally for it. P. 223. It is the fashion to discredit all Burnet says. But observe what we may read in Pepys: "Sir W. Coventry did tell me it as the wisest thing that was ever said to the king by any statesman of his time; and it was by my lord treasurer that is dead, whom, I find, he takes for a very great statesman, that when the king did show himself forward for passing the act of indemnity, he did advise the king that he would hold his hand in doing it, till he had got his power restored that had been diminished by the late times, and his revenue settled in such a manner as he might depend upon himself without resting upon parliaments, and then pass it. But my lord chancellor, who thought he could have the command of parliaments for ever, because for the king's sake they were awhile willing to grant all the king desired, did press for its being done; and so it was, and the king from that time able to do nothing with the parliament almost." March 20, 1669. Rari quippe boni! Neither Southampton nor Coventry make the figure in this extract we should wish to find; yet who were their superiors for integrity and patriotism under Charles II.? Perhaps Pepys, like most gossiping men, was not always correct.