Chapter III: Shaftesbury and Charles (2)

Violent distempers were now feared on all sides. Partisans of the Prince of Orange were intriguing keenly on his behalf. In the spring of the year Charles was ill again, and the several parties hastily met to concert action. “God keep the nation,” wrote Dorothy Sidney, “from the experiment what they could have done.” The danger may be gauged by the fact that, had the king’s illness continued, three hundred members of the Commons were determined to remain sitting despite the prorogation. A considerable movement was detected among the London prentices. The date of May 29 had been fixed for a large meeting to be held under pretence of burning the Rump; four or five thousand men had pledged themselves to attend, but information was laid, the leaders arrested, and the outbreak apprehended by the court did not take place.[437] Those of the opposite party were no less alarmed. Their chief enemy, James, was holding a brilliant court and still maintained himself against them. Shaftesbury left town for Easter, fearing a personal attack. Mr. William Harbord looked abroad to spy some safe retreat. Sir William Waller fled to Holland, thence to Italy, pursued by the watchful eye of the government. On the pretext of Catholic intrigues, the city guards were doubled.[438] A penetrating observer might have perceived a change drawing over the spirit of the times. While the Whig attack, far from having spent itself, grew only the more fierce, and a final struggle with authority seemed imminent, the nation had begun to reflect upon the turn of events. If passion was exasperated by the last bold step against the Duke of York, it shewed too the extremity to which his opponents were driving. Thereafter could be no thought of reconciliation: they must either ruin him or themselves end in ruin. It was not without some justice that Charles I called the English sober. As the future was dimly shaped to men in shadows of high misfortune, the fear of open strife and loss of all they had given so much to gain in recalling Charles II to the throne of his fathers weighed more heavily upon them. Innate reverence for authority, standing to the letter of its rights, returned in some of its ancient force. Though they were willing to see the royal prerogative curbed, there was no sympathy for those who would strike against its existence. And in the party which fostered terror and maddened the nation by the Popish Plot were not a few to whom this was the object, Independents and other sectaries, fierce republicans who had fought through the Civil War and might not be sorry at the chance of fighting through another. It was felt that the least accident might throw everything into confusion. People began at length to test the stories circulated for their consumption. Tales “that Holborn should be burnt down and the streets run with blood” were no longer accepted on the mere statement. The Irish Plot, loudly denounced about this time by Shaftesbury, found small credence except from the London mob, and even in London the busy merchants who feared disorder exercised an influence of restraint. At the end of July Sir Leoline Jenkins was able to write: “Letters from several parts beyond the seas do tell us that we are represented there as if we were already in a flame. God be praised! ’tis no such matter. All things are as still and peaceable as ever they were, only we are pelted at with impudent, horrid libels.” Evidently the English nation was in no humour for a second civil war.[439]

The king met Parliament on October 21, 1680. James was again on his way to Edinburgh, induced to withdraw himself by a promise of full support, but inwardly persuaded that he was lost. Seven of the council had favoured the journey, eleven were against it. “Since he has so many friends for him,” said Charles, “I see he must go.” In spite of gay hearts the royal prospect was not bright. The king had tried a bout with the Whigs over the city elections, and was forced to accept their choice; and the Duchess of Portsmouth, fearful of an attack on herself and with a heavy bribe in her purse, had gone over to the side of his enemies.[440] The session opened with turbulence almost unexampled even in the hot times that had passed. For discrediting the Plot in the last parliament, a member had been expelled by the Commons. He was now followed by two others. Petitioning was voted to be the right of the subject. Abhorrers were violently attacked. Charles had long expressed his willingness for any compromise that should leave his brother the title of king when he came to the throne, and offered Expedients, the effect of which would be to take all power from the hands of the sovereign. Similar proposals were made by others also. Halifax suggested that the duke should be banished for five years, Essex an association in defence of the Protestant religion, Shaftesbury would still be satisfied by a divorce. Otherwise he stood firm for Exclusion. James viewed the Expedients alike with horror, and the Commons rejected them with insult. Once let a popish king have the title, it was said, and he would take the power too. “Expedients in politics are like mountebanks’ tricks in physic,” cried Sir William Jones. The bill, the bill, and nothing but the bill, was the cry. Colonel Titus summed the matter up neatly. “You shall have the Protestant religion,” he said, “you shall have what you will to protect you, but you must have a popish king who shall command your armies and your navies, make your bishops and judges. Suppose there were a lion in the lobby, one cries: Shut the door and keep him out. No, says another, open the door and let us chain him when he comes in.” The metaphor became popular in verse:—

I hear a lion in the lobby roar;
Say, Mr. Speaker, shall we shut the door
And keep him out?—or shall we let him in
To try if we can turn him out again?[441]

On November 4 the Exclusion bill was introduced, heralded by denunciations of James. The violence of the debates beggars description. If swords were not drawn, their use was not forgotten. The prospect of civil war was freely mooted. “The case, in short, is this,” exclaimed Mr. Henry Booth, “in plain English, whether we would fight for or against the law.” Sir William Jones pursued, “The art of man cannot find out any remedy as long as there is a popish successor and the fears of a popish king.” He was answered by Colonel Legge, a personal friend of the Duke of York: “There has been talk in the world of another successor than the duke, in a Black Box; but if Pandora’s box must be opened, I would have it in my time, not in my children’s, that I may draw my sword to defend the right heir.” On November 11 the bill was passed, and four days later with a mighty shout was carried to the Lords by Russell, followed by a great body of the Commons. To signify the attitude of the city, he was accompanied by the Lord Mayor and aldermen. At the debate which followed Charles was present. He heard the passionate attacks of Shaftesbury, the grave force of Essex’s oratory. He witnessed the treachery of Sunderland, who joined his enemies. He heard Monmouth urge Exclusion as the only safety for the king’s life, and broke in with a loud whisper, “the kiss of Judas.” He saw Halifax rise to champion the right, and heard him speak fifteen or sixteen times and carry the day by his inexhaustible powers of wit, sarcasm, and eloquence. At nine o’clock in the evening, after a debate of six hours, the bill was thrown out by sixty-three votes to thirty.[442] It was a memorable victory.

The fury of the Commons exceeded all bounds. Supplies were refused. Votes and addresses were passed against Halifax, against Jeffreys, Recorder of London, against Lord Chief Justice North, against placemen and pensioners, against the judges, against James. “No sooner does a man stand by the king but he is attacked,” wrote the duke to William of Orange. To the attack against Halifax Charles answered suavely that “he doth not find the grounds in the address of this House to be sufficient to induce him to remove the Earl of Halifax.” He told Reresby: “Let them do what they will, I will never part with any officer at the request of either House. My father lost his head by such compliance; but as for me, I intend to die another way.” And Halifax took occasion to say to Sir John: “Well, if it comes to a war, you and I must go together.” A bill for a Protestant association for the government of the country with Monmouth at its head was being prepared, when on January 10, 1681 the king suddenly prorogued and then dissolved Parliament, leaving twenty-two bills depending and eight more already ordered. The next parliament was summoned for March 21, and according to the old advice of Danby not in the capital, but at Oxford.[443]

Charles’ wisdom in this course cannot be questioned. Before the last session Ferguson the Plotter had returned from concealment in Holland. An agent of Essex was busy in London concerning “the linen manufacture,” for which he had enrolled three or four hundred men and spent as much as a thousand pounds. Hugh Speke sent down to the country to have his horse ready. “Get him in as good case as you can,” he wrote, “for God knows what use I may have for him and how suddenly.” There is reason to think that Shaftesbury had been planning to place Parliament under control of the city.[444] London had always armed the Whigs with the possibility of support other than parliamentary. The removal of Parliament to Oxford made it certain that the coming struggle would be fought on ground favourable to the king. No sooner was Charles’ determination known than Shaftesbury, Monmouth, and Essex, together with thirteen other peers, presented a petition shewing that evil men, favourers of popery and enemies of the happiness of England, had made choice of Oxford as a place where the Houses would be daily menaced by the swords of papists who had crept into the ranks of the king’s guards, and making their humble prayer and advice that the parliament should sit at Westminster as usual. “That, my lord, may be your opinion,” returned the king to Essex; “it is not mine.”[445] The Whigs promptly set to making the elections their own. Nothing was omitted to secure their success. Instructions from the Green Ribbon Club directed events in all parts of the country. Members bound themselves to prosecute the Plot, to demand restriction of the king’s power to prorogue and dissolve Parliament, to support the Exclusion, the right of petitioning, the Association.[446] When the means of man were exhausted, supernatural powers were called to assist. On the one side and on the other were raised ghosts, who foretold doom to their opponents. The city of London elected its old representatives. They were begged to refuse supplies and assured that in pursuit of their ends they should have the support of the citizens’ lives and fortunes. A host of scribblers, libellers, and caricaturists poured into Oxford. A rumour was spread that the city would be the scene of a massacre. The Whig chiefs rode down attended by bands of armed retainers. Guards of townsmen accompanied members from the boroughs. The Londoners appeared in a great company with bows of blue satin in their hats, on which were woven the inscription: “No Popery! No Slavery!” Tory crowds met them at the gates, red-ribboned, brandishing clubs and staves, and crying, “Make ready! Stand to it! Knock ’em down! Knock ’em down!” In the midst of his life-guards, among whom Essex had failed at Charles’ polite request to point out the creeping papists, the king drove from Windsor. Information had come to hand of a plot to kidnap him at Oxford. Measures were taken accordingly. A regiment was moved up to the Mews in case of an attack on Whitehall. The constable of the Tower was advised to hold himself in readiness. Attention was given to Lambeth Palace and the forts on the Thames. The cannon at Windsor were looked to, and Lord Oxford’s regiment was posted along the Windsor road, should Charles be compelled to retreat. “If the king would be advised,” said Halifax, “it is in his power to make all his opponents tremble.”[447] It was what he had come prepared to do.

Since the fall of Danby, Charles had lived in a state of poverty. Scarcely any supplies were furnished by Parliament. None came from France. His resources were at one moment so low that he even thought of recalling his ministers from the courts of foreign princes.[448] At the same time thousands of pounds were being absorbed by the informers against popish plotters, tens of thousands by the royal mistresses. The treasury was in the hands of Laurence Hyde, second son of Lord Chancellor Clarendon. That he was able to pay the way is a source of wonder and admiration. Such a state of affairs could not last for ever, and Charles had recourse to the mine whence he had drawn so much wealth before. Though Louis XIV had gained his immediate object by turning against his cousin, he felt as time went on that the tools he used might destroy his own work. His constant desire was to keep England in such a position that, if she would, she could not thwart his plans. For this he had joined the Whigs against Danby. From the same motive his ambassador supported Shaftesbury in his advertisement of Monmouth and bribed not only members of parliament, but city merchants and Presbyterian preachers. But there was a point beyond which he could not follow this line. It would be as little to his interest to see Charles’ authority overthrown and English policy directed by a Protestant parliament as to contend with Charles adopting and leading the same policy. Therefore in the autumn of 1679 Barillon had tried to come to an agreement with Charles. He offered the sum of £200,000 for three years but, attempting to get more than the king was willing to give, found the proposal fall to the ground. Charles threw himself on to the side of the allies against France and in July of the following year concluded a treaty with Spain to resist the pretensions of Louis. Alarmed by the violence of the Commons and realising that their hostility to France could not be cured by gold, Barillon again broached the subject. The king hung back until just before the dissolution of the last parliament at Westminster and by skilful play obtained what he wanted. A verbal treaty was concluded in the queen’s bedroom, between the bed and the wall. Charles agreed to disengage himself from the Spanish alliance and to prevent the interference of Parliament. In return he was to receive from Louis an amount equivalent to twelve and a half million francs in the course of the next three years. So close was the secret kept that besides the two kings only Barillon, Laurence Hyde, and the Duke of York had knowledge of the treaty.[449] Though he was tight bound by it for the matter of foreign policy, Charles had attained his object. Except for the advancement of his power at home and to quicken the growth of English commerce he did not care for foreign politics. So long as he could turn Louis’ ambition to his own advantage he was satisfied. This the new treaty accomplished, and although Louis too gained handsomely by it, he was obliged to confess the victory not altogether his by the complete reversal of his policy of the last four years in England. Charles met Parliament strong in the consciousness of his independence.

The session that now opened gave little hope of a peaceful end. Meeting on March 21, the Houses listened to a speech of studious moderation from the throne. Charles promised consent to any means whereby under a Catholic successor the administration should remain in Protestant hands, but what he had already said with regard to the succession, by that he would abide—there should be no tampering with that. There could be no mistake as to his attitude. “I, who will never use arbitrary government myself,” he said with a proud lie, “am resolved never to suffer it in others.” Charles could well offer a compromise, for he knew it would never be accepted. The two parties, it was said, were like hostile forces on opposite heights. The Commons refused the Expedients. They adopted the cause of a wretch named Fitzharris, whose obscure intrigue, by whomever directed, was certainly most base and most criminal, and tried to turn him into an engine of political aggression. It was evident that they meant to force the king to abandon James and recognise the Duke of Monmouth. Shaftesbury once more tried negotiation. In conversation with Charles in the House of Lords he pressed him in the public interest and for the peace of the nation to accept the position and give way. The king returned: “My Lord, let there be no self-delusion, I will never yield and will not let myself be intimidated. I have the law and reason on my side. Good men will be with me. There is the church,” and he pointed to where the bishops sat, “which will remain united with me. Believe me, my Lord, we shall not be divided.” It was an open declaration of war. On March 26 the Exclusion bill was voted. Monday, March 28, was fixed for the first reading. On Sunday the king busied himself with preparing the Sheldonian theatre for the Commons, who complained that Convocation House was too small; he viewed the plans, strolled among the workmen, congratulated himself on being able to arrange for the better comfort of his faithful subjects, and made all show of expecting a long session. That night his coach was privately sent a stage outside Oxford with a troop of horse. Next morning he was carried as usual to the House of Lords in a sedan chair, followed by another with drawn curtains, seeming to contain a friend. When the king stepped out his friend was found to be a change of clothes. He had come to make his enemies tremble. At the last moment an accident nearly wrecked the scheme. The wrong robes had been brought. Hastily the chair was sent back for the robes of state, while Charles held an unwilling peer in conversation that he might not give the alarm. Then, when all was ready, he swiftly took his seat on the throne and, without giving the Lords time to robe, summoned the Commons to attend. As Sir William Jones was in the act of appealing to Magna Carta as the safeguard of the subject’s right, the Black Rod knocked at the door. The Commons thronged eagerly through the narrow passages to the king’s presence, the Speaker leading with Russell and Cavendish at either hand. They thought they had come to receive Charles’ surrender. When the tumult was calmed the king spoke; “My lords and gentlemen, that all the world may see to what a point we are come, that we are not like to have a good end, when the divisions at the beginning are such, therefore, my Lord Chancellor, do as I have commanded you.” Finch thereupon declared Parliament, which had lived for exactly one week, to be dissolved, and Charles immediately left the throne. As he reached his dressing-room he turned to a friend, his eyes gleaming, with the remark that it was better to have one king than five hundred. He made a short dinner and, leaving by the back stairs, drove off in Sir Edward Seymour’s coach to where his own was waiting. That night he was in Windsor.[450]

The dissolution scattered the opposition as a gust of wind the leaves of a tree in autumn. Shaftesbury in vain attempted to hold the Houses together. His followers in the Lords remained for an hour under pretence of signing a protest, while messengers were dispatched urging the Commons to fulfil their promises. But they were too much cowed by the stroke. They feared “if they did not disperse, the king would come and pull them out by the ears.” Presently they fled. In a quarter of an hour the price of coaches in the town doubled. Oxford had the appearance of a surrendered city disgorging its garrison.[451] And with their flight the history of the Popish Plot comes to an end. On that the Whigs had staked all, and they had lost. The country was alienated by their violence and rapacity and fearful of the horrors of civil war. Once deprived of their means of action in Parliament they could do nothing but go whither the king drove them, to plot frank rebellion without the shadow of legality. Up to this point Shaftesbury had led a bold attack, not without good hope of success. Now he was left to sustain the defence, stubborn and keen, but in the end incapable of avoiding ruin. The tide had at last turned, and Charles, who since the first appearance of Oates had borne with unexampled equanimity a series of the most fierce assaults, found himself upon a pinnacle of triumph, his enemies lying crushed beneath his throne until he should goad them to complete disaster. Had he struck twelve months sooner the country would in all likelihood have been on their side; but he had gauged the temper of his people correctly and knew now that they would be with him. The history of these years is in brief the history of Charles II’s reign, the history of a long struggle for the power of the crown. In the panic of the Popish Plot and the wild agitation of the Exclusion bill that struggle, exasperated by the Dover treaty and the Catholic intrigues, came to a head. Its consequence was the Rye House Plot, the perfection of Whig failure. In that struggle too the conflicting principles found their absolute exponents in the two wittiest and two of the most able statesmen in English history, each gifted with a supreme political genius, each exclusive of the other, each fighting for personal ascendency no less than for an idea, for principle no less than for power, Charles II and the Earl of Shaftesbury. Without a grasp of this the history of the times cannot be understood, and for this reason some historians have found in them, and more have left, a mere tangle of helpless chaos. Of the two Charles had the better fortune in his life, Shaftesbury after death. For Shaftesbury, ruined, disappointed, embittered at the loss of all his hopes, was yet the father of the Revolution: all that Charles had gained was thrown away by his less worthy brother. But the personal triumph of the king was unique. While to the world he seemed a genial debauchee, whose varied talents would have fitted him equally to be a chemist, shipwright, jockey, or dancing-master, the horseman, angler, walker, musician, whose energy tired while his company delighted the most brilliant of English courts, more admirable than Crichton had he not been more indolent, he laboured in an inner life at a great endeavour and, chiefly by letting himself be misunderstood, achieved it.[452] He restored the crown to its ancient place in the state, whence his father and his grandfather had let it fall. He gave Parliament just enough rope to hang itself.

TRIALS FOR TREASON