History of England, Part II From the Accession of Henry VIII to the Revolution of 1689
Tout, T. F. --Powell, F. York
1898
CHAPTER V. Charles II., and the Restoration, 1660-1685.
1. On his thirtieth birthday, 29th May , . entered London. " He came," wrote John Evelyn in his Diary, "with a triumph of 20,000 horse and [1] foot, brandishing their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the ways strewed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapestry, fountains running with wine; the mayor, aldermen, and companies in their liveries, gold chains, and banners; lords clad in cloth of silver, gold and velvet; the windows and balconies well set with ladies; trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking, even so far as from Rochester." " I stood in the Strand," continued Evelyn, "and blessed God. And all this done without a drop of blood, and by that very army which rebelled against him. It was the Lord's doing. Such a restoration hath never been since the return of the Jews from Babylon, nor so joyful a day and so bright ever seen by this nation." But for the sullen discontent of the Puritan officers, and the despair of the sectaries, the new king was welcomed by all. | |
It was no easy matter to restore the old constitution or satisfy both the old Parliament's men, who had brought back the king, and the old Cavaliers, who now came home with him from banishment. Charles had been put on the throne by a combination between the Presbyterians and the old royalists, but the Presbyterians had taken the lead in bringing about his return. As the men in power they expected to be rewarded. But the ruined royalists called for vengeance on all rebels, and loudly demanded their lost estates. The Anglican bishops and clergy wanted the Presbyterians and sectaries alike to be turned out of their livings, and the property of the Church given back to its old owners. The army cried out for its arrears of pay. The king himself needed money badly. | |
2. The Convention was now turned into a Parliament. There were many Presbyterians in it who leant [2] towards moderation, and the king was unwilling to make enemies, and anxious to show his good faith by carrying out strictly the Declaration of Breda. The result was that the political conditions of the Declaration were very soon made into law. | |
273 | An Amnesty was granted, though the actual regicides and a few others were excepted. Thirteen of those who had to do with King Charles's trial were executed, including the fanatical preacher, Hugh Peters, and Thomas Harrison, the fiery Anabaptist general. As Harrison went cheerfully to his doom, some enemy cried from amidst the crowd: "Where is the good old cause now ?" " Here it is," he replied, clapping his hand on his breast, " I am going to seal it with my blood." Other regicides, like the intemperate and bitter Henry Marten, were shut up in prison. Many, like Ludlow, sought safety in exile. The bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were " dug out of their graves in drawn to the gallows, and there hanged and buried" ; " which, methinks," says Pepys, " do trouble me that a man of so great courage as Oliver should have that dishonour." Even the remains of the hero Blake were removed from the Abbey to the neighbouring churchyard. The old Cavaliers were strong enough to prevent an act being passed to confirm the sales of royalist property made by the Long Parliament or Oliver. Church, crown, and Cavaliers thus won back their confiscated estates ; but most of the royalists who had compounded with the former governments, or had sold their estates themselves, got no relief. An Act of Indemnity and Oblivion barred all their claims, and stopped those who regained their lands from claiming arrears of rent. Parliament voted Charles £1,200,000 a-year for life, and passed an Act (in this following the Long Parliament) abolishing Military Tenures, Purveyance and the oppressive Court of wards, giving Charles an Excise tax on beer and liquors to be paid by the whole nation, as a set-off to the feudal revenue, hitherto levied from the landlords. The army was paid off and disbanded, except about 5000 men, the beginning of our modern standing army. These were retained because of the alarm inspired by a rising of Fifty-monarchy men in London, headed by a cooper named Venner. A few regiments of regular soldiers might well prevent the fanatics again snatching at power. But the Cavaliers, hating a standing army such as had upheld the despotism of Oliver, would rather have had no troops at all. The steadfast and God-fearing Puritan veterans soon settled down in peaceful trades, and as a rule throve well in them. |
3. The Convention was dissolved in December, and in May a strong Church-and-King Parliament was chosen in its stead. It attacked the Amnesty. Though the king | |
274 [3] | and his ministers strongly upheld the indemnity, it insisted on further examples of vengeance. Vane and Lambert [4] were accordingly condemned as traitors. Lambert got off with imprisonment in return for a ,sorry submission. Vane was beheaded. "On the scaffold," says Pepys, " he changed not his colour nor speech to the last, but died justifying himself and the cause he stood for." |
With all its loyalty, the Cavalier Parliament (so it was often called) was of one mind with the Presbyterian Convention in upholding the great constitutional measures of and . All the ordinances passed by the Long Parliament since , and all the proceedings of Cromwell's Parliaments were regarded as null and void, since they had never received the royal assent. Only two acts that had received .'s assent were now formally repealed. One of these was the Triennial Act, though its principle was again affirmed that Parliaments should not be intermitted for more than three years. The other was the Act excluding bishops from the House of Lords. Parliament also passed resolutions denying some of the great principles upheld by the Long Parliament after . It declared that power over the militia rested exclusively with the crown. It also laid down that it was unlawful for subjects to wage even defensive war against the king. The great work of the new Parliament was to settle the affairs of the Church. The surviving bishops went back to their [5] sees. The empty bishoprics had already been filled up. The pious and venerable Juxon, the pupil of the martyred Laud, who had stood by King Charles on the scaffold, became Archbishop of Canterbury; but he was too old to take the first place, and the real leader of the bishops was the able, cultivated, and astute Gilbert Sheldon, a former friend of Falkland, now Bishop of London, and soon Juxon's successor as archbishop. " The clergy are so high," wrote Pepys, " that all people I do meet with do protest against their practice." But the Commons were hot on their side, and Charles and his ministers, old Cavaliers as they mostly were, sought in vain to teach moderation to angry men, smarting from a deep sense of wrong, and eager for revenge. It was hopeless to carry out Charles's Worcester House Declaration that the Church should be so reformed as to make it better liked by the Presbyterians. Even the promise at Breda of liberty for tender consciences could not be maintained, | |
275 | largely because Parliament knew that Charles desired that any toleration granted should be extended to Roman Catholics. The only attempt at reconciliation proved a hopeless failure. In April the Savoy Conference was held at the Savoy Palace in the Strand between the bishops and the Presbyterian leaders; but it only led to greater ill-will on both sides. The bishops were not conciliatory, and the high-minded but crochety Richard Baxter, the Presbyterian leader, destroyed his case for moderate changes by proposing to set up a new Prayer Book altogether. Before the year was out the Corporation Act was passed, enacting that all mayors, aldermen, councillors, and other borough officers should receive the Holy Communion according to the rites of the Church, take the oaths of Supremacy, Allegiance, and Non-resistance, and abjure the Covenant. In May the Act of Uniformity was passed, requiring all beneficed clergy to use the Prayer Book, which had now been revised in ways that made it more distasteful to the Puritans. By the Episcopal Ordination Act all holders of livings were also required to be ordained by a bishop, or to give up their cures. On St. Bartholomew's Day, , nearly two thousand honest ministers resigned their benefices rather than accept the new settlement. They included Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, and their expulsion marks the last act of the Reformation, and the real beginning of Protestant Dissent on a large scale. Hitherto the mass of the Puritans had striven to bring about reforms of the Church from within. Comprehension not toleration had been their aim. That was no longer possible, so that even the Presbyterians went out, hoping no longer for domination, and expecting at the best some toleration for their separate forms of worship. But the mass of the nation rejoiced in the downfall of Puritanism, [6] . and few of the expelled ministers took with them the sympathy of their flocks. Their attempt to form congregations for themselves was prevented by the First Conventicle Act (May ), which enacted that any meeting of more than five people for religious worship not in accordance with the practices of the Church was an illegal conventicle, and all attending such an assembly for the third time should be punished by transportation. Next year a still crueller law-the Five Mile Act () -forbade Nonconformist ministers to teach in schools, or come within five miles of any town or any other place where they had once held a cure, unless they took an oath |
276 [7] | which few could conscientiously accept. Thus cut off from their best chance of earning a living, the persecuted ministers remained in a pitiable plight. The prisons were soon filled with Dissenters who, despite harsh laws, still gathered together to worship God in the way they thought best. John Bunyan, the village Baptist minister, wrote his Pilgrim's Progress in Bedford jail. Still harder was the lot of the Quakers and the other more enthusiastic sectaries. The Catholics were in practice much better off, for Charles and many of his courtiers had learnt in their exile to prefer the old faith to the new, and were quite uninfluenced by the doctrines of the English Church. |
Thus the Church system, which Laud had in vain tried to force on an unwilling people, was now restored, like the monarchy, by the people themselves. Yet the Long Parliament had not laboured in vain. Laud had failed because he had sought to make the Church independent of Parliament. The Church was now set up in a place as high as even Laud could have wished by the Parliament itself. The Commons had even followed Laud's persecuting methods. Henceforth Dissenters were persecuted according to law and not against the law. Of course the legality of persecution did not make it any better. But even the worst aspects of the Restoration showed how the Restoration was no mere reaction. If the king had come back, he had come back at the head of a great national party. The political struggle was no longer between king and people, but between two great parties, one of which had, or thought that it had, the king for its head. The greatest difficulty in the future was that the men who now controlled England and the Church were driven by the violence of the reaction to erect loyalty into a sort of religion. Charles the Martyr was almost worshipped. The rule of kings was glorified as the form of government specially pleasing to God. Divine right, passive obedience, non-resistance to the Lord's Anointed were generally taught. Yet some people still kept their heads even in the fierce loyalty of the Restoration period. The outwitted Presbyterians of the Convention, though conforming for the most part to the new Church settlement, still kept up the ideas of Pym and Hampden in political matters. They made the nucleus of the country party, that already formed a sort of opposition to the cavalier government. Before long the misdeeds of king, court, and ministers, made their opposition stronger and stronger. | |
277 | 4. . was not fond enough of constant work to take a large share himself in governing the country. The Privy Council, now restored, was too big, and [8] contained too many old friends of Oliver or the Rump. So, as in .'s time, the real management of affairs fell into the hands of a small Junto or cabal of Cabinet councillors, half recognised now as the Committee of Foreign Affairs. Monck, now made Duke of Albemarle, might have played a great part, but he cared nothing for politics, and soon fell into the background. The four leading ministers were the loyal Irish Cavalier, Ormonde, who had ruined a princely fortune in the Martyr's service, and whose honour and integrity were unquestioned; Colepepper, "a man of great parts, a sharp and present wit, and an universal understanding," Secretary Nicholas, "a man of general good reputation with all men, of unquestionable integrity, and long experience," and, above all, Edward Hyde (), now Earl of Clarendon, and Chancellor. Clarendon was a "fair, ruddy, fat, middlestatured handsome man," who suffered terribly from gout. He delighted in state and ostentation. [9] He was a sound lawyer, and a great lover of books and learned men. He was a good Englishman, a faithful and able minister, honest in the main, but not over scrupulous, a strong party man, and so great a friend of the Church, that the harsh laws against Dissenters were sometimes called the Clarendon Code. He still adhered to the views held by him and Falkland in , and sought to uphold both king and Parliament. He tried to govern the country as would have done. He was hated by the country-party, and laughed at by the wicked and corrupt courtiers that gathered round the restored king. James, Duke of York, the king's brother, now married his daughter, Anne Hyde, " a plain woman like her mother." But James was not liked, as he was known to be wavering in the Protestant faith. |
5. had ever been loyal after her fashion to the Stewarts, so that when Oliver's Ironsides were gone, the restoration of the monarchy there was easy work. [10] The union of the two countries, carried out, though in too arbitrary a way by the wise foresight of the Protector, was now ignored in deference to the strong feeling of the Scots themselves, and despite the advice of Clarendon. Thus again became, in name at least, a separate and independent nation, though really .'s | |
278 [11] | policy of bringing it under English influence was kept up. She got back her own Parliament and her own Ministry, but this was at the price of losing that complete freedom of trade with England which Cromwell's union had allowed. A Rescissory Act abolished all laws passed since , so that bishops were restored in the Church, though none dared to bring back the hated Liturgy, which had been the beginning of all the troubles in , and the synods and sessions that the Presbyterians loved were kept up as before, save that the bishops or their nominees acted as moderators or chairmen in them. As in England, the Restoration went further than those who started it had meant. As in England, the Presbyterians (though here the mass of the nation) were outwitted. The Marquis of Argyll was arrested in London, hurried back to , and beheaded with the "maiden," on frivolous charges of complicity in .'s death. Johnston of Warriston, and the fiery minister Guthrie were also executed. The fall of the clergy brought back power to the Scots nobility, who now largely accepted Episcopacy. The brutal and drunken Lord Commissioner Middleton hunted out conventicles, and the selfish James Sharp, who came to London to urge the claims of Presbytery, turned traitor, and went back Archbishop of St. Andrews. John Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale, who had also abandoned his old Presbyterian connections, ruled as Secretary for . He was a strong, learned, and able, but coarse and harsh, man, who boasted "that he would rather hear a cat mew than the best music in the world," and ill-looking, with long red hair hanging in disorder over his face. His constant wish to keep the Scottish Government in Scottish hands, and his violent opposition to any union with England, gave him some following among his countrymen, despite his roughness and persecution of the Presbyterians. In he overthrew Middleton, and ruled henceforward as he pleased, for Charles trusted him completely. " Never was king so absolute," he boasted to Charles, "as in poor old ." |
6. In it was easy to bring back Charles; but very hard to settle the terms on which Cromwellian settlers, [12] loyal Cavaliers, and native Irish Catholics should live side by side. Common hatred of the down-trodden natives, as well as common Protestantism, bound together both parties among the Englishry. The Act of Settlement () allowed the Puritan adventurers | |
279 | and Cromwell's old soldiers to keep their estates, while all royalists, Protestant and Catholic alike, were also promised restoration to the lands they had lost. But it was soon found that there was not land enough [13] to satisfy all claimants, though the rebel forfeitures were very large. Ormonde, now a Duke and Lord Lieutenant, strove to make things as easy as possible, and in he carried an Act of Explanation of the Act of Settlement, under which a third of the Cromwellian grants confirmed in were given back to the royalists and the more influential Catholic claimants. The result was that not one-third of the soil of remained in Catholic, that is, in native Irish hands. From this flowed the great Agrarian Quesion of later Irish history. The keen sense of wrong under which the Irish were smarting was hardly increased by the restoration of Episcopacy in the Protestant Church, for they hated Anglicans and Puritans alike as heretics; but this was not liked by the Cromwellians and the Scotch Presbyterians of the north. Among the new Irish bishops was the pious and eloquent Jeremy Taylor. The Catholic worship was not absolutely put down, though the priests and bishops were badly treated. The fiercer Celts forsook their fields in despair, and formed bands of brigands called Rapparees and Tories, who preyed on the Englishry. Yet the country prospered during the next five-and-twenty years of comparative peace, though the fruits of that prosperity were mainly reaped by the Protestant minority. England's policy in was always much the same, whether it came from Strafford or Cromwell or .'s ministers. 7. The Restoration brought little change in foreign |
policy, for Charles liked Frenchmen and French ways, and Clarendon, like Oliver, clung fast to the old Elizabethan dislike of Spair as the home of the [14] Inquisition, and the rival of England on the seas. In France and had ended their long war by the Peace of the Pyrenees, but they were still jealous of each other. Louis XIV., a hard-working, clear-headed [15] king of great personal dignity and strong character, though only of average ability, became in , by the death of Cardinal Mazarin, ruler as well as king of. He persuaded the English to keep up Cromwell's old friendship with him, though far-seeing men understood that had begun to threaten the balance of power in Europe, and even Clarendon had no love of the French. The first sign of the two kings' friendship was the marriage | |
280 [16] | () of Charles to Catharine of Braganza, sister of the king of Portugal, a land which, since , had maintained, with French help, an heroic struggle for freedom against . A large marriage-portion, including the towns of Bombay, in the East indies, and Tangier, on the African side of the Straits of Gibraltar, was the price paid by the Portuguese for the English Alliance. But a Catholic marriage was not popular, and folks were still more discontented when, in , Charles sold Dunkirk (the Flemish port Oliver had taken from the Spaniards) to the French. Clarendon, though not taking a leading share in foreign policy, and anxious for general peace rather than particular alliances, was looked upon as responsible for this act, and was accused, very unjustly, of having been bribed by Louis. The mob nicknamed the stately palace, which the Chancellor was building near St. James, " Dunkirk House." Even when continuing the old policy of Cromwell, Charles carried it on in so different a spirit that he incurred blame while Cromwell had been greatly praised. |
More popular was the fresh attack on the carrying trade of Holland by the enactment, in , of the Navigation Act, which gave legal shape to the measures directed against the Dutch carrying trade that had been already passed as an ordinance of the Rump. Yet Clarendon, who had no wish for war, concluded, in , a treaty with the [17] Dutch in settlement of all disputes. But trade-jealousy between England and the Seven Provinces was now complicated by the king's dislike of the Dutch republicans, who, under the brothers De Witt now ruled the state, and were keeping his sister's son, ., Prince of Orange, out of the Stadtholdership. Hostilities soon broke out between English and Dutch merchants on the Gold Coast in Africa, and between the colonists of New England and New Holland in . At last the wishes of the merchants carried the day against the weak will of Clarendon. From a fierce struggle was fought out at sea, in which the Dutch quite held their own: for corruption and mismanagement paralysed the English navy, and the vast sums granted by Parliament for a popular war were shamefully wasted. " The Dutch do fight in very good order," said the admiralty official Pepys, "and we in none at all." In the Duke of York, who, as Lord High Admiral, proved a careful and skilful administrator though a mediocre commander, won a decided victory off Lowestoft, but lost the fruits of it through | |
281 | the skill of his opponents. In Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle took the sea with a great fleet under their joint command. On 1st June the Dutch admiral Ruyter attacked Albemarle off the North Foreland, while Rupert with his squadron was away. The Dutch were superior in numbers, but Monck offered a gallant and long continued resistance. After two days' fighting he was, however, forced to retreat. On the third day Rupert rejoined him, and the battle was renewed. On the fourth day of the continued fighting, the English were finally forced to withdraw, but the victorious Dutch were so severely handled that they were obliged to go home to refit. In July the two English admirals were again at sea, and this time with better success. Their victory led to the burning of a fleet of Dutch merchantmen in harbour, an act which cost the enemy more than a million pounds. But in the English government, not knowing how to raise any more money, foolishly resolved to lay up the great warships in harbour. This fatal act gave the Dutch command of the seas, and in June they made a sudden and successful attack on the mouth of the Thames. They destroyed Sheerness, sailed up the Medway to Chatham, where they burnt eight great men-of-war that were uselessly laid up there, and cut off London from the sea for several weeks. Soon after (July ) a peace was made at Breda, by which each country was to keep the possessions of the other that it held at the moment. Thus New Amsterdam (between New England and the Virginian group of colonies) became English, and being granted to the king's brother, took the name of New York. Despite the concessions made to secure his friendship, Louis, afraid of the English becoming too strong at sea, supported the Dutch during the war, and so terrified the hired ally of England, the Bishop of Munster, in , that he desisted from the attack which he had threatened to make on the Dutch by land, with the object of diverting them from devoting all their strength to the naval struggle. Patriotic Englishmen already began to sigh for the old days of Blake and Oliver. |
8. Disasters at home followed disasters abroad. Reaction from Puritan strictness brought about a wild time of riot and dissipation in which the king and his courtiers took the lead. In a terrible Plague burst out amidst the close and unhealthy [18] streets of London. " The people die so," wrote Pepys in August, " that they are fain to carry the dead to be | |
282 [19] | buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in." " What a sad time," he lamented, " it is to see no boats on the river; and grass grow all up and down Whitehall court, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets." For many rich ran away from the danger, leaving the poor to suffer. After the plague died away a Great Fire broke out near London Bridge, and burnt down nearly half of the City (September ). "I saw the whole south of the City burning," wrote Evelyn, "from Cheapside to the Thames. The people hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation. All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seen above 40 miles round. I now saw 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of the flames, the shrieking of women, the hurry of people, the fall of towers and churches were like a hideous storm: the stones of St. Paul's flew like grenados, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream. The eastern wind drove the flames forward till it pleased God to abate it." At last the people took courage, and by blowing up houses stopped the flames. In some ways the Fire was a blessing in disguise, for it swept away the foul haunts of the plague, and enabled the City to be rebuilt in a healthier way. |
9. Bitter complaints arose of bad management, and of the moneys meant for the Dutch war being spent on the king's unworthy favourites, while men were [20] shocked at "the horrible crowd and lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving in the streets for lack of money." Clarendon was made the scapegoat, Charles and his courtiers giving him up very willingly. In August the Chancellor was dismissed from office, and in October he was impeached of high treason. But of the seventeen articles which the Commons drew up against him only one, which asserted that he had betrayed the king's secrets to his enemies, amounted to treason: and that article could not be proved. The Lords therefore declined to commit him to prison, whereupon Charles, who wanted Clarendon out of the way, recommended him to leave the kingdom. The fallen minister took the king's advice, and, instead of waiting his trial, fled to, where he passed the rest of his life, beguiling his leisure by writing in stately prose his famous History of the Rebellion. The Lords, taking his flight as a proof of guilt, passed an act for his banishment. Few | |
283 | lamented his fall. Soon after his friend Ormonde lost the Lord-Lieutenancy of . |
10. George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, son of Charles I.'s favourite, and the son-in-law of Lord Fairfax, had most to do with getting rid of Clarendon. The poet Dryden described this young statesman, not untruly, as Buckingham was a debauchee and a spendthrift, with neither earnestness nor principle. Careless about religion, he now sought to bring the king and the Dissenters together against the old Cavalier party. His best helper was Anthony Ashley Cooper, now Lord Ashley, Chancellor of the Exchequer since . Ashley was a strong upholder of Parliamentary government and toleration, a friend of the philosopher, John Locke, and the best party manager and cleverest debater of the age; but he was factious, ambitious, greedy, and unscrupulous. Dryden's famous lines bring out what his enemies thought about him:- Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, a selfish, pompous, able though slow-minded man, "who could never shake off a little air of formality that an embassy to had infected him with," but who had, however, a great knowledge of foreign affairs, had been Secretary of State since . He brought into power Sir Thomas Clifford, after Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, a hot Catholic, disliked for "folly, ambition, desire of popularity, rudeness of tongue, and passions," but loved by his friends for his generosity and sincerity. These four men gradually joined with Lauderdale, the dictator of , in a new Cabinet, which became infamous as the Cabal, [21] a word spelt, curiously enough, by the initials of their | |
284 [22] | names. They were all unscrupulous and self-seeking men, with many differences of policy, but they were now bound together on a common plan of toleration, in opposition to Clarendon's strong Church policy. Though Charles often took their advice, they formed no regular ministry, and did not even constitute a secret council, meeting together to agree on common action. But Parliament would have nothing to say to their fine schemes, and even the Dissenters were afraid of a toleration offered in the interest of the Catholics. In Parliament passed the Second Conventicle Act, imposing fresh penalties on Nonconformists. The Cabal therefore dropped constitutional courses, and sought to exalt the royal power. Their rule was marked by wiser policy but stained by shameless misgovernment and gross corruption. |
11. The Cabal strove to reverse Clarendon's policy abroad as well as at home. Louis XIV. was now waging a new [23] war with in the Netherlands, parts of which he claimed to belong to his wife, Maria Theresa of , after the death of her father, Philip IV. of , in . Louis maintained that, by a local custom, the daughters of an earlier marriage had a right to succeed to certain. lands in Brabant before the sons of a second marriage, such as ., Maria Theresa's half-brother, the sickly child who now ruled over (). This right was called the Right of Devolution, and the war that now broke out was called the War of Devolution. Louis's successes soon filled Europe with alarm. At last, in June , Sir William Temple, a famous diplomatist and man of letters, arranged at the Hague a Triple Alliance between England, the United Provinces and Sweden to restore peace to Europe. For a time this alliance seemed brilliantly successful. Louis was forced to make the Peace of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle, ) and give up the Free County of Burgundy, which he had conquered, though he was permitted to keep a large number of Netherlandish towns, including Douai, Tournai and Lille. He never forgave the Dutch for their resistance to his plans, and he soon found means to win England from their side. Bennet and Clifford, and the king, as friends of the Catholics, had been no advocates of an alliance with the Protestant powers. Temple's scheme for extending the alliance into a lasting league was put aside. At last, in , Louis sent his sister-in-law, the beautiful Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, to conclude with her brother | |
285 | King Charles the secret Treaty of Dover, by which Charles agreed to help Louis against Holland and , and Louis promised Charles men and money to put down opposition, and to bring back Catholicism in England. Charles was afraid [24] to tell even Ashley, Buckingham, and Lauderdale of this wicked plot, although he got them to join his plan of war with Holland by showing them a sham treaty with in which the worst clauses of the real treaty were left out. |
12. In England and France began the attack on the Seven Provinces. To get money, Clifford advised Charles to stop all payments for a year from the Exchequer (). The result of this was that the goldsmiths and bankers, who had [25] advanced more than a million to the Government, could not get their principal back. It was thought a great favour to promise them half the usual interest. The bankers in their turn could only offer diminished interest to their customers, and the whole of English trade was disorganised. This was called the Stop of the Exchequer. Through it Charles, says Evelyn, " ruined many widows and orphans, whose stocks were lent him, and the reputation of his Exchequer for ever. Never did his affairs prosper after it, for it did not supply the expense of the war, but melted away, I know not how." | |
Louis XIV. invaded Holland by land, and the Duke of York fought, in June , a long and doubtful sea-fight with Ruyter off Southwold Bay, in . Four of the Seven Provinces were soon overrun, and Amsterdam itself was only saved by cutting the dykes and putting the country under water. The Dutch believed that the merchant princes, who, since , had ruled the republic, and had long upheld an alliance with, were to blame for the great peril that was upon them. Riots broke out; the reigning oligarchy was violently overthrown; the two De Witts, the leaders of the republican party, were cruelly murdered, and the stadtholdership restored and given to ., Prince of Orange. The new stadtholder was the son of Wiliam II. by Mary, daughter of ., and therefore .'s nephew, and, after York's two daughters, the next in succession to the English crown. William was a sickly, thoughtful, young man, unattractive in his private life, and cold and self-seeking, but of daring and heroic temper, who encouraged his countrymen to resist the invaders to the last, and set to work at once to build up | |
286 [26] | a fresh European alliance against. Brandenburg, and the Empire, alarmed at Louis's rapid progress, joined him, and the worst danger was soon over. Instead of having Holland at her mercy, had now to face a comparatively equal war against a great coalition. Thus was revived the policy of combined opposition to, which had been momentarily set on foot by Temple's Triple Alliance. For the rest of his life William devoted himself to strenuously opposing French ascendency, and was the soul of every movement directed against Louis XIV. He had, however, to contend against enormous difficulties, and it was long before he attained much success. |
13. Ashley was now Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Chancellor, being the last layman who ever held that office, and of exciting the laughter of the lawyers as he sat [27] on the bench "in an ash-coloured gown, silver-laced, and full-ribboned pantaloons displayed, without any black at all, and looking more like a university nobleman than a high chancellor." In March , he was able to persuade Charles to issue a Declaration of Indulgence for all Dissenters, though the proclamation was only legal if the king had, as he claimed, the power both to sus5entd altogether and to dispense in particular cases with Acts of Parliament. But suspicions of the Dover plot were abroad, and it was thought that this was the first step to bring back Popery and arbitrary power. When Parliament met in , Cavaliers themselves objected to the prerogative being used to take away the ascendency of their Church. In vain Shaftesbury thundered against the Dutch, crying " Delenda est Carthago," and declaring that they would ruin our trade. In vain Charles gave up his Declaration. The imminent danger to religion led even merchants and traders to think little of the need of crushing our commercial rivals, and much of the need of upholding Protestantism. Parliament insisted on passing the Test Act, which required all who held office in the state to receive the Holy Communion in the Church of England's the Test Act and fall ofthe Cabal, . way, and to renounce the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Seeing that his connection with the Catholics had damaged himself and his favourite cause, Shaftesbury hotly supported the bill. It broke up the Cabal, for Clifford (Lord Treasurer since ) would not take the test, and Arlington turned round to the Dutch interest, though he did not escape being impeached in as the great " conduit-pipe" of the king's misdeeds. | |
287 | This forced him to give up his secretaryship and politics altogether. The Duke of York, now an avowed Catholic, and the husband of a Catholic Italian princess, Mary Beatrice of Modena, resigned the office of Lord High Admiral. The Dutch still held their own at sea, Ruyter defeating Rupert in off the sandhills of Zeeland. In the Commons, who hated the war, forced Charles to make with the Seven Provinces the Peace of . Louis kept at war with the Dutch despite the loss of the English alliance and the European coalition that had been formed to support them. 14. The failure of the Cabal to secure religious toleration, and keep up the French alliance, brought into power Sir Thomas Osborne, a gentleman [28] of comely person and great political craft, who, since Clarendon's fall, had step by step become the leader of the Church party in Parliament. In June he became Lord High Treasurer, and in Earl of Danby, and he remained for nearly six years at the head of affairs. His revival of Clarendon's church-and-king policy made it easier for him to deal with the Commons, and he did not scruple to bribe and corrupt them. But his foreign policy was just the reverse of that pursued during Clarendon's Chancellorship. He went back to the principles of the Triple Alliance, which he sought to revive. was still winning victories, despite the heroic efforts of William III. and the conspicuous triumph of Frederick William (the Great Elector of Brandenburg, and the founder of Prus sian greatness) over the Swedes, now as of old in French pay. But Charles took Louis's bribes, and in his shiftless unsteady way still leant on his support. In Charles made a new secret treaty with Louis, which he copied out and signed with his own hand. In return for £Ioo,ooo a year, he agreed to enter into no engagements with any foreign power without the French king's consent. Yet the restoration of the house of Orange made it easier for him to keep friendly with the Dutch, and in , urged by Danby, he assembled a large army intended to be used against; but though the Commons cried for war, they were afraid to entrust the king with money to carry it on. In November , Danby procured the marriage of the Protestant princess, Mary of York, the elder daughter of James by his first wife, Anne Hyde, to the Prince of Orange. These acts of hostility showed Louis that, despite his secret treaties with Charles himself, he could not depend |
288 [29] | upon controlling the foreign policy of England. Fearing that England might join the coalition against him, Louis made up his mind to end the war. In he succeeded in signing the Treaty of Nijmegen (Nimeguen) with Holland and her allies, securing this time the Free County, and twelve more Netherlandish cities, among which were Valenciennes, Cambrai and Ypres. He was tired of wasting his money on Charles, and now set himself to bribe the chiefs of the opposition, who were as ready as the king to take his gold. He perceived that his best plan was to play off king and Parliament against each other, so that England would remain too weak and divided to take a strong line abroad. The results of this subtle policy were soon seen in a rank growth of faction. |
15. In terrible consternation was excited by the rumour of a great Popish Plot. " The Parliament and the whole nation were now alarmed about a conspiracy of some [30] eminent Papists for the destruction of the king and the introduction of Popery, discovered by one Titus Oafes, lately an apostate to the Church of Rome, and now back in the English Church with this discovery. Everybody believed what he said, and it quite changed the genius and motions of the Parliament, now corrupt and interested with long sitting and Court practices; but with all this Popery would not go down. This discovery turned them all as one man against it, and nothing was done but to find out the depth of this. The murder of Sir Endmundbury Godfrey, found strangled about this time, as was manifest, by the Papists, he being a justice of the peace, who knew much of their practices, put the whole nation into a new ferment against them." Oates's first victims were tried and executed. On this Oates grew so presumptuous as to accuse the queen of attempting to poison the king. But Charles refused to listen to this absurd charge, and even Oates did not venture to press it for long. Several Roman Catholic peers were, however, sent to the Tower, accused by Oates. Bedloe, Dangerfield, and other knavish informers followed Oates in his profitable trade of denouncing Papists. The judges, led by Chief-Justice Scroggs, did their best to frighten juries into giving verdicts. A blind panic seized on the whole nation. Though Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, was acquitted, the aged and virtuous Lord Stafford (one of the Howards), and many lesser but equally innocent sufferers, fell, in , a victim to | |
289 | the popular fears. Constant Catholic intrigues half explain the nation's uneasiness, but nothing can excuse the blind way in which every one listened to the tales of the informers. There may have been a " Popish plot," but Oates's stories were all false. As Dryden said: |
The opposition, led by Shaftesbury, made a clever but wicked use of the passion of the people and the increasing disgust felt for the Court, and Parliament now passed an Act disabling all Roman Catholics, except the Duke of York, from sitting in it. In December Danby was impeached and driven from office, Louis XIV. (who hated him for his friendship for William of Orange) supplying the chief evidence against him by revealing a treaty to which he was an unwilling partner, and by which Charles was to have got a huge bribe from the French king. To save Danby, Charles, in January , dissolved the Parliament, which had been sitting since . Many years of misgovernment, and the accession of many new opposition members at by-elections, had cured this Long Parliament of the Restoration of its blind love for royalty, though to the last it was bigoted against all non-churchmen. | |
16. In March the new Parliament, in which the "country party" was overwhelmingly strong, met and at once took up Danby's impeachment. Shaftesbury now had everything his own way with the indignant [31] Commons. The panic about the "Plot" terrified folks at the chance of a Papist, like the Duke of York, becoming king. In the fierce temper Act, that had lately grown up, the Commons cared little for the notions of Divine Right and hereditary succession, which had been so popular in the early days of the Restoration. They now believed that at all costs England must be ruled by a Protestant king. An Exclusion Bill was therefore brought in to keep the Duke of York out of the succession, and read a second time. At the same time the Habeas Corpus Act was passed "for the better securing the liberty of the subject, and for preventing imprisonment beyond the seas." | |
By it the various obstacles in the way of getting a Writ of Habeas Corpus [see page 206] were removed. All judges were empowered and obliged to issue the writ, and severe penalties were imposed on gaolers who refused to obey it. The custom, very common since the | |
290 [32] | Restoration, of sending political prisoners to places like the Channel Islands or , outside the jurisdiction of the English courts, to avoid the writs, was now abolished. |
So strong were Shaftesbury and his friends that Charles tried to make terms with them. He called on Sir William Temple to invent a New Council of ministers, less unwieldy and less dependent than the Privy Council, and wider and more popular than the hated cabals of cabin counsellors. Temple's Council consisted of thirty very rich men, including many opposition leaders, with Shaftesbury himself as President. But it proved a failure, having neither the old traditions of the Privy Council nor the usefulness of the Cabinet. In July Charles dissolved Parliament to save his brother's prospects of becoming king. | |
17. Fresh elections were held in the autumn, but Charles was afraid, if he allowed the new Parliament to meet, that it would prove as unruly as the last one. He [33] hoped "to wait till this violence should wear off, and meanwhile hold his realms, and do all he could to satisfy his people." The party which desired to pass the Exclusion Bill was much disgusted at this inactivity, and sent many petitions to the king, begging him to let Parliament meet to transact business. But Shaftesbury and his followers had now gone too far, and a large number of friends of order, disgusted at their reckless violence, joined the courtiers in sending to Charles counter-petitions, declaring that they abhorred those that sought to interfere with the king's prerogative of summoning Parliament at his own pleasure. The two parties thus got the names of Petitioners and Abhorrers, before long changed into Whig and Tory. These words, at first insulting nicknames, were soon used by every one to describe the two great parties into which the country had been divided ever since the Restoration. The word Whig or Whigamore was taken from the name of the bitter Covehanters of south-western . The word Tory came from the Catholic Irish outlaws who lurked in the bogs and mountains, and plundered and killed their Protestant tyrants. | |
18. A popular revolt now broke out in , where the restoration of bishops was still bitterly resented, despite the concessions that had been made to meet Presbyterian feeling. The curates, as the Episcopalian clergy were called, were almost universally despised. " Men think it," wrote a friend of bishops, " a stain to their blood to place | |
291 | their sons in that function; and women are ashamed to marry with any of them. They are accounted by many as the dross and refuse of the nation." But they were upheld by the corrupt and careless nobles who now ruled , relying on English support. Dissent, as in England, had been made penal, and the hillside meetings were ruthlessly broken up. The stern Covenanters or Cameronians (so the extreme Presbyterians were called [34] from their preacher, Richard Cameron) had been brutally persecuted during the long rule of Lauderdale. In a little band of about a thousand took up arms, believing "that God was able to save by few as well as by many" ; but they were overwhelmed in a fight among the Pen/land Hills (south of Edinburgh). In a gang of wild Highlandmen, called the Highland Host, was quartered on the most disaffected regions to overawe them into loyalty. However, Archbishop Sharp, " the Judas who had sold the kirk of Christ for 50,000 marks," was caught and murdered on Magus Muir, near Cupar Fife, May , by a gang of Covenanters headed by Hackston of Rathillet and Balfour of Kinloch, who took refuge in the south-west, where the cause was strongest. Here the fierce enthusiasts stirred up the whole countryside, and many drilled and armed Covenanters flocked together to hold a great conventicle to protest against the proscription of the Covenant. The royalist commander,John Graham of Claverhouse, attempted to disperse the conventicle at Drumclog, but his dragoons fled in disorder before the scythes and pitchforks of the peasantry. After this unexpected success, the revolt spread like wild-fire. By Shaftesbury's advice, James Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of .'s numerous natural children, was sent down to suppress the rising. On 22nd June , Monmouth ended the revolt by his victory at Bothzwell Bridge, on the Clyde, a few miles above Glasgow. But he was hand and glove with the English Whigs and was unwilling to be too harsh on their Scottish namesakes. However, ere long he came home, and the Duke of York went to , and set to work to stamp out the Covenanters by imprisonment, torture, executions, and harsh martial law. In Cameron himself came back from Holland, and slunk about the country preaching, attended by a band of armed followers, till he was surprised and slain at Airdsmoss in Ayrshire. Next year, Archibald, Earl of Argyll, son of the beheaded Marquis, and as zealous as |
292 [35] | his father on the Presbyterian side, was condemned, on technical grounds, of "leasing making," or treason; he, however, escaped from prison through the devotion of his step-daughter, and, after lurking long in London, took refuge in Holland, which had become the rallying-place of all Whig exiles. |
19. Monmouth was "the darling of his father and the ladies; extremely handsome and adroit; an excellent [36] soldier and dancer, a favourite of the people," and from his weak shallow nature easily led astray by stronger heads than his own. Shaftesbury now brought him forward in opposition to the Duke of York. The simple Absalom soon followed the crafty Achitophel in intriguing against his father. "The bells and bonfires of the city welcomed him back to London; the people made their idol of the Protestant Duke." It was even said that Charles had married his mother, a Welshwoman of low character, named Lucy Walters. The cry was raised that he ought to be the next king. This was a fatal mistake for Shaftesbury and his friends. Not only was the Court disgusted, but Shaftesbury lost all his influence with Charles. He was turned out of the presidency of the new Council, and all his friends soon after resigned. Temple's Council had already broken down. A little cabinet had formed within it, of which the chief was the brilliant and fair-minded George Savile, Earl and afterwards Marquis of Halifax, "a man of a great and ready wit, full of life and very pleasant, and much given to satire." Halifax boasted that he was neither Whig nor Tory, but a Trimmer between the two factions. In him Charles now put his chief trust. The other leading ministers were Laurence Hyde, the second son of Clarendon, Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, and Sidney Godol5hin, all young men, who were spoken of as the " young statesmen " or the " chits." As Dryden wrote:- | |
| |
In Charles's Fourth Parliament, that had been elected a year earlier, was at last suffered to meet. Its session was short and stormy. The Exclusion Bill was again brought forward and easily passed through the Commons, but in the Lords the convincing eloquence | |
293 |
of Halifax "was much too hard for Shaftesbury, who had
never been so outdone before." Chiefly through Halifax's
efforts the Lords rejected the Bill by 63 to 30.
The furious Commons stopped supplies, refused to
pass laws, and declared the Great Fire
[37]
of London to be the work of Papist incendiaries. In
Charles ventured to dissolve Parliament. In
March a new Parliament, the fifth and last of the reign, met
at Oxford. The king thought that in Tory Oxford, far from
the support of the City mob, Parliament might be more
tractable. But the Whig members came there with bands
of armed followers, and all believed that a new civil war
must soon break out. In vain Charles offered his consent
to his brother's banishment and to the Prince of Orange
being regent with full powers, so long as James kept the
name of king. The Commons would hear of nothing but
absolute exclusion. Fortunately for James, a fierce quarrel
broke out between Lords and Commons, which gave the king
a pretext for dissolving the Parliament after it had only sat a
week. But the violence, factiousness, and unscrupulousness
of the Whigs had overshot their mark. " The Popish Plot,"
wrote Evelyn, " which had hitherto made such a noise, now
began sensibly to dwindle, through the folly, knavery,
impudence, and giddiness of Oates, so that the Papists
began to hold up their heads higher than ever, and those
who had fled, flocked to London from abroad. Such
sudden changes and eager doings there had been without
anything steady or prudent for these last seven years !"
20. The Tories had at last the upper hand. Laurence
Hyde, now made Earl of Rochester, was the chief agent of
the reaction, and, until the end of the reign, remained
foremost in the king's favour. Halifax
now began slightly to lose influence with his
[38] counsels of moderation, though he remained in
office until the end of the reign. The Court party
now sought for vengeance, and the same corrupt judges
and frightened juries that in previous years had brought
about the scandalous condemnations of the Catholics, were
now set to work to bring about equally scandalous condemnations
of the fallen Whigs. Their first victim was
Stephen College, the "Protestant joiner " who had invented
the "Protestant flail," a sort of life-preserver to ward off
Papist assassins, and who had ridden armed to Oxford.
|
294 [39] | In Shaftesbury himself was sent to the Tower on a charge of treason. But in November the grand jury threw out the bill against him. The Londoners, among whom Whig feeling lingered longest, rang their bells and kindled bonfires. Shaftesbury lived for the next year entirely within the City, trusting to its privileges and its Whig magistrates. But the Court procured the election of a Tory lord mayor, whereupon Shaftesbury, after failing to arrange with Monmouth for a rising in the west, fled to Holland, where he died early in . His friend John Locke followed him into exile. Monmouth, unforgiven by his father, was banished also. In despair the fiercer Whigs turned to treason. They were guided by the Scot, Robert Ferguson, "the Plotter," a "tall lean man, with thin jaws, heat in his face, sharp piercing eye and a shuffling gait," who was at the bottom of most conspiracies for nearly a generation. "After the Popish Plot," says Evelyn, " there was now a new Protestant plot discovered that certain lords and others should design the assassination of the king and the duke as they were to come from Newmarket, with a general rising of the nation and especially of the City of London disaffected to the present government." This plot was called the Rye House Plot (), from a house of that name near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, where a sturdy Whig, Richard Rumbold, once an officer in Oliver's own regiment, now traded as a maltster. There the conspirators planned to murder Charles and James, as they passed by on their road to London, after attending horse races at Newmarket. But the plot was discovered, and the Whig leaders were arrested. The Rye House Plot was mixed up with the more general conspiracy before Shaftesbury's escape. Among the victims were William, Lord Russell, eldest son of the Earl of Bedford, and a man of upright and blameless character, and Algernon Sidney, son of the Earl of Leicester, who maintained the old doctrines of the "Commonwealth's men" of the Rump, and wished to make England an aristocratic republic. Lord , son of the royalist Lord Capel, executed in , and a " sober, wise, judicious and pondering person," cut his throat in the Tower to avoid an attainder, and the forfeiture of the family estates. "Every one," says Tory Evelyn, "deplored and Russell, as being drawn in on pretence of endeavouring to rescue the king from his present counsellors; while the rest who were fled, especially Ferguson and his gang, had doubtless some bloody design to set |
295 | up a commonwealth." The evidence against both Russell and Sidney was weak, though decided to be legally sufficient, and their trials were mere mockeries of justice. |
The Duke of York now again took his seat in Council and at the Admiralty, despite the Test Act. Writs of quo warranto were issued inquiring by what authority the corporations of boroughs, most of which were nests of Whiggism, exercised their privileges. The object was to frighten them to give up their old charters and issue new ones which secured for the Tories the chief place in the Borough Councils. As the borough members were mostly returned by the Town Councils, it was hoped that this would secure a majority for the Tories in future Parliaments. But the king would not call a new Parliament yet, though the three years of the Triennial Act were overpast, and the Trimmer Halifax urged strongly that a popular king like Charles need not be afraid to meet his faithful Commons. | |
21. Never was the Court braver than in the early months of , and never were grave men more shocked by the " inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming, and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of God, which was then to be seen in the glorious gallery of Whitehall." But on [40] 2nd February Charles, a hale and hearty man for his years, was suddenly smitten with an apopletic fit. He rallied for a while, but it was only a short reprieve. Fresh fits followed, with fever and great weakness. He refused to receive the Holy Communion from Archbishop Sancroft, and was privately reconciled to the Church of Rome as he lay a-dying by Father Huddleston, "the priest that had a great hand in saving him after Worcester fight, for which he was excepted out of all the severe acts against priests." He died on 6th February. | |
Charles was "a tall man, about two yards high, his hair a deep brown, near to black," and of a harsh, dark complexion, " his countenance fierce, his voice great, proper of person, every motion became him." He lived an active life, delighting in walking and exercise, and always taking great care of his health. "He was debonair, easy of access, not bloody or cruel; a lover of the sea, and skilful in shipping, not affecting other studies. Yet he had a laboratory, and knew many empirical medicines, and the easier mathematics; he loved planting and building, and brought in a politer way of living, which passed to luxury and intolerable expense. He had a particular talent for | |
296 [41] | telling a story, and facetious passages of which he had innumerable: this made some buffoons and vicious wretches too presumptuous and familiar. He took a delight in having a number of little spaniels follow him, and lie in his bed-chamber." He had a strong memory, great power of observation, an even temper, and an extraordinary quickness of apprehension. His kindly manners made him much beloved, but he was idle, improvident, selfish, and extravagant. His wife, Catharine of Portugal, had little or no influence over him, and played but a small part in the gay life of his Court. He was governed by a long succession of worthless female favourites, such as the handsome and greedy Barbara Villiers, whom he made Duchess of Cleveland, Eleanor Gwyn, a witty comic actress, and Louise de Keroualle, a Breton lady, " a famous beauty, but of a childish, simple, and baby face," who came over to England in the days of the treaty of Dover, became Duchess of Portsmouth, and long kept him to his unworthy dependence on Louis XIV. As a man he set an evil example, which too many of his subjects faithfully followed. As a politician he played an almost equally degrading part. He sold himself and his country to the French king, and would willingly have brought in Popery and arbitrary power, though he was too lazy and careless to make the continued effort necessary to carry out a consistent policy. But he never wavered in supporting what he thought his brother's lawful claims, and, alone of the Stewart kings, he had shrewdness and common sense enough to see things as they really were. He made up his mind never to "go on his travels again," and discreetly stood aside whenever public opinion raged too high against his policy. Thus he in some ways played the part of a constitutional king. It was this shrewd recognition of public opinion that enabled Charles to maintain his throne despite all the troubles-many of his own making-that beset him, and thus to save England from the danger of more revolutions when she most wanted quiet and rest. Laughing at religion when well, and turning to Catholicism when sick and serious, he was no Tory nor Church of England man. But he used the devotion of those at whose prejudices he scoffed, and whose good qualities he was not earnest enough to understand. It speaks well for his good humour, his politeness and his wits that he died popular. |
Footnotes: [1] TheRestoration, 1660. [2] The work of the convention, 1660. [3] 1661--1665 [4] The Long Parliament of Charles II. 1661-1679. [5] The Restoration Settlement of the Church, 1661-1665 [6] Persecution of Dissenters [7] 1665--1667 [8] The King's Ministers,1660-1667. [9] Clarendon. [10] The Restoration in Scotland. [11] 1660--1661 [12] The Restoration in Ireland. [13] Act of Settlement, 1661. [14] Foreign policy,1660-1667. [15] The French Alliance. [16] 1662--1667 [17] The Dutch War,1665-1666. [18] The Great Plague, 1665, and the Fire of London,1666. [19] 1666-1667 [20] Impeachmentof Clarendon,1667 [21] The Cabal, 1667-1673. [22] 1668-1672 [23] The Triple Alliance, 1668. [24] The Treaty of Dover, 1670. [25] War against Holland, 1672-74. [26] 1672--1677 [27] DeclarationIndulgence,1672. [28] The Rule of Danby,1673-78 [29] [1678--1679 [30] The PopishPlot, 1678-80. [31] The Exclusion Bill and the Habeas Corpus 1679. [32] 1679-1680 [33] Whigs andTories, 1679 [34] The cameronian revolt in Scotland,1679. [35] 1680--1681 [36] Monmouth. [37] The Pariaments of1680-1681. [38] The Tory Reaction, 1681-1685, andthe Rye House Plot 1683 [39] 1681--1685 [40] Death and Character of Charles II,1685 [41] 1685-1685 |
