XXVII. THE GREAT CIVIL WAR…

XXVII. THE GREAT CIVIL WAR

1642-1651.

Nine years of almost continuous war, broken by only one short interval in 1647-48, followed the raising of the royal standard at Nottingham, on the 22nd of August, 1642. The first half of the contest (1642-46) may be defined as the struggle against the person of Charles, the second as the struggle against the principle of kingly government after Charles himself had fallen.

[Sidenote: =Principles of the two parties.--The king.=]

When the war began there was hardly a man on either side who did not believe that he was fighting in behalf of constitutional monarchy. The king and his party disavowed all intention of restoring autocratic government. On the royal standard and the royal coinage Charles bade the motto be placed, "I will defend the laws of England, the liberties of Parliament, and the Protestant religion." He declared that he was in arms to protect the old constitution against the encroachments of a Parliamentary faction who wished to degrade the crown and to destroy the Church.

[Sidenote: =The Parliamentarians.=]

The followers of Pym and Hampden, on the other hand, were equally loud in protesting that they were in arms only to protect the ancient liberties of the realm, not to set up a new polity. They professed the greatest respect for the Crown, used the king's name in all their acts and documents, and stated that they were only anxious to come to terms with him on conditions which should give sufficient guarantees for the future welfare of the realm.

[Sidenote: =Mutual mistrust.=]

But there was a fatal weakness in the programme, both of the royal and the Parliamentary party. The king's friends could never trust the Parliament's professions, because they believed it to be led by a band of fanatical schismatics. The Parliamentarians could never bring themselves to confide in the ruler against whom there stood the evil record of the years 1629-1640, and the even more discreditable incident of the attempt to seize the five members. When two enemies cannot trust each other's plighted word, they can do nothing but fight out their quarrel to the bitter end.

[Sidenote: =Local distribution of the parties.=]

At the moment when Charles marched from Nottingham, and Lord Essex from London, in August, 1642, neither party had yet any correct notion as to its own or its enemy's strength. In every county and borough of England each side had a following; as to which following was the stronger in each case, it was hard to make a guess. One thing only was clear--rural England was, on the whole, likely to cleave to the king; urban England to oppose him. Wherever the towns lay thick, Puritanism was strong; London, the populous Eastern Counties, Kent, the cluster of growing places on the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire, from Leeds to Liverpool, were all Parliamentarian strongholds. On the other hand, in the West and the North, and among the Welsh hills, the Church was still omnipotent, and Nonconformity was weak. These districts were led by the local peers, and still more by the county gentry, and of both those classes a large majority held to the king.

But no general rule could be drawn. There were towns like Worcester, York, Oxford, Exeter, where for various local reasons the king's party was the stronger. Similarly, there were many peers--about a third of the House of Lords--who adhered to the Parliamentary interest, and where they dominated the countryside it stood by the cause of the Commons. We need only mention the local influence of the Earl of Warwick in his own district of the Midlands, of the Earl of Manchester in Huntingdonshire, of Lord Fairfax in Mid-Yorkshire, as examples of the fact that the Parliamentary cause could draw much assistance from the magnates of the land. Still more was this the case among the lesser landholders. In the east of England a very large proportion of the gentry and all the yeomanry were zealous Puritans; even in the west there was a sprinkling of "Roundheads"[41] among the Royalist majority.

[Sidenote: =Humane character of the war.=]

It was the saddest feature of the war, therefore, that every man had to draw the sword against his nearest neighbour, and that the opponents differed from each other, not so much on principle as on a point of judgment--the doubt whether the king or the Parliamentary majority could best be trusted to defend the old constitution. On each side there were many who armed with a doubting heart, not fully convinced that they had chosen their side wisely. This, at any rate, had one good effect--the war was, on the whole, mercifully waged; there were few executions, no massacres, very little plundering. If we compare it with the civil wars of France or Germany, we are astonished at the moderation and self-restraint of our ancestors.

[Sidenote: =The king's forces.=]

It was in August, 1642, as we have already mentioned, that King Charles bade his followers meet him at Nottingham. The Royalists of the Northern Midlands came to him in numbers far less than he had expected, wherefore he moved west to Shrewsbury, to rally his partisans from Lancashire, Cheshire, and Wales, where he knew that they were many and loyal. They came forward in great strength, and Charles was able to begin to organize his army into regiments and brigades. The cavalry was very numerous, if wholly untrained; the nobles and gentry turned out in vast throngs, and brought every tenant and servant that could sit a horse. The infantry were the weaker arm; the squires preferred to serve among the cavalry; the townsfolk and peasantry, who should have swelled the foot-levies, were often apathetic where they were not disloyal. It was only in certain limited districts--Wales, Cornwall, and the North were the most noted--that the king could raise a trustworthy foot-soldiery. In the army that mustered at Shrewsbury he had 6000 cavalry to 8000 infantry--far too large a proportion of the former. Nor was it easy to arm the foot; pikes and muskets were hard to procure, as compared with the trooper's sword. The king gave the command of the army to Lord Lindsey, but made his nephew, Rupert of the Palatinate, general of the horse.

[Sidenote: =The Parliamentary forces.=]

Among the troops which Essex was enrolling and drilling at Northampton, the exact reverse was the case. The infantry were numerous and willing; the artisans of London and the men of the Eastern Counties had volunteered in thousands. But the cavalry was weak; the admixture of gentry and yeomen in its ranks did not suffice to leaven the mass; many were city-bred men, unaccustomed to riding, many more were wastrels who had enlisted to get the better pay of the horse-soldier. Cromwell, who served in one of these regiments, denounced them to Hampden as "mostly old decayed tapsters and serving-men," and asked, "How shall such base and mean fellows be able to encounter gentlemen of honour and courage and resolution?"

[Sidenote: =Charles moves towards London.=]

In September the two raw armies were both moving westward, but when Charles had filled his ranks and got his men into some order, he determined to advance on London. Marching by Bridgenorth and Birmingham, he reached the slopes of Edgehill, on the borders of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, on October 23. He had slipped round the flank of Lord Essex, who was waiting for him at Worcester, and the Parliamentary army only overtook him by hard marching. When he saw the enemy approaching, Charles ranged his order of battle on the hillside, and charged down on Essex, who was getting into array on the plain below.

[Sidenote: =Battle of Edgehill.=]

The incidents of Edgehill were typical of the whole struggle. On each flank the king's gallant horsemen swept off the Parliamentarian cavalry like chaff before the wind; and a third of the infantry of Essex was also carried away in the disaster. But the reckless Cavaliers, headed by Prince Rupert, were so maddened by the joy of victory, that they rode on for miles, driving the fugitives before them, and gave no thought to the main battle. Meanwhile, in the centre, Lord Essex, at the head of the two-thirds of his infantry which had stood firm, had encountered the king's foot with very different results. After a short struggle, he burst through the Royalist centre, and captured the king's standard and the whole of his artillery. A few hundred Parliamentary horse--Oliver Cromwell was among them--had escaped from the general flight of their comrades, and by their aid Essex cut several regiments of the Royalists to pieces, and thrust the rest in disorder up the slopes of Edgehill.

[Sidenote: =Charles at Brentford.=]

When Rupert and his horse returned at eventide, they found to their surprise that they had taken part in a drawn battle, not in a victory. Both sides were left in the same position as before the fight, but the king had one advantage--he was the nearer to London, and was able to march off in the direction of the capital. Essex, with his cavalry gone and his infantry much mauled, could not detain him, and was constrained to make for London by the long route of Warwick, Towcester, and St. Albans, while the king moved by a shorter line through Oxford and Reading. But Charles lingered on the way, and the travel-worn troops of the earl reached the goal first. Even now, if Charles had struck desperately at London, he might perhaps have taken it. But his irresolute mind was cowed by a strong line of earthworks at Turnham Green, behind which lay not only Essex, but the whole train-bands of the capital, 20,000 strong. Instead of assaulting the lines, he drew back to Reading, and sent proposals of peace to the Parliament, hoping that their confidence was sufficiently shaken to make them listen to his offers (November 11).

[Sidenote: =Charles retires to Oxford.=]

This retrograde movement was his ruin. The City had trembled while the host of the Cavaliers lay at Brentford and Kingston; but when it withdrew without daring an assault, the spirits of leaders and people rose again, and there was no talk of surrender or compromise. For the rest of the winter, however, the operations languished in front of London. The king retired to Oxford, which he made his arsenal and base of operations; the Parliamentarians remained quiet, guarding the capital.

[Sidenote: =Local contests throughout England.=]

While the campaign of Edgehill and Brentford was in progress, there was fighting going on all over England. In each district the local partisans of king and Commons were striving for the mastery. In the East the Roundheads carried the day everywhere; the whole coast from Portsmouth to Hull, with all the seaboard counties, fell into their hands. In the West and North the result was very different; Sir Ralph Hopton beat the king's enemies out of Cornwall and the greater part of Devon. The whole of Wales, except the single port of Pembroke, was won for Charles. In Yorkshire there was fierce fighting between two local magnates, the Marquis of Newcastle on the royal, Lord Fairfax on the Parliamentary side. By the end of the winter Newcastle had got possession of the whole county except Hull, and the cluster of manufacturing towns in the West Riding and on the Lancashire border. He had raised an army of 10,000 men, and controlled the whole countryside from the borders of the Scots as far as Newark-on-Trent. But in the Midlands the first campaign settled nothing; districts that held for the king and districts that held for the Parliament were intermixed in hopeless confusion. It would obviously need much further fighting before any definite result could be secured.

[Sidenote: =Charles in want of money.=]

After futile negotiations had filled the winter months, the spring of 1643 saw the renewal of operations all over the face of the land. The negotiations, indeed, were but a foolish waste of time. It was not likely that the king would accept the two conditions which the Parliament made a sine quâ non--the grant to them of the power of the sword by the Militia Bill, and of the right to "reform" the Church by turning it into a Presbyterian Kirk. The struggle had to proceed, though both parties found it extremely hard to maintain. The king more especially had the greatest difficulty in finding the "sinews of war." The sale of the crown jewels was but a temporary expedient; the loyal offerings of the Oxford Colleges, who sent all their gold and silver plate to be melted down at the mint which the king had set up in their midst, could not last for long. The Royalist gentry soon stripped their sideboards and strong boxes bare. The want of a regular supply of money was always checking the king's movements. He called together a Parliament at Oxford, to which came a majority of the House of Lords, and nearly a third of the House of Commons, and this body granted him the right to raise forced loans under his privy seal, and to take excise duties all over the realm; but as the richest part of England was not in his hands, this financial scheme was not very successful. Charles was always on the verge of seeing his army disband for want of pay. The Parliamentarians were somewhat better off, owing to their control of London and the other chief ports of the kingdom, but even they were often in dire straits for money, and heard unpaid regiments clamouring in vain for food and raiment.

[Sidenote: =1643. Royalist successes--(1) in the West.=]

The events of the campaign of 1643 were no more decisive than those of the previous autumn. In the centre the king and Essex watched each other all through the summer without coming to a pitched battle. The only event of note in these months was the death of Hampden, the second man in importance among the Parliamentary leaders, in a cavalry skirmish at Chalgrove Field. But on the two flanks the Royalists gained important successes. Hopton, with the army of the West, swept over Somerset and Wilts, routing Sir William Waller--an enterprising but very unlucky general--at Lansdown (July 5), and afterwards at Roundway Down near Devizes (July 13). In consequence of these victories, Bristol, the second town in the kingdom, fell into Royalist hands (July 26). A further advance put the army of the West in possession of Hampshire and Dorsetshire, so the Roundheads retained nothing in the South, except the ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth, with a few scattered garrisons more.

[Sidenote: =(2) in the North.--The "Associated Counties."=]

At the same time, the Marquis of Newcastle beat Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas, the mainstays of the Parliamentary cause in the North--at Adwalton Moor (June 30)--a victory which enabled him to conquer the Puritan stronghold in the West Riding, and to drive the last wrecks of the enemy into Hull. Newcastle would have won Lincolnshire also, but for the resistance made by a new force, the levy of the "Associated Counties." The shires of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, had banded themselves together to raise a local army. It was a zealous and well-disciplined force, commanded by Lord Manchester, under whom Oliver Cromwell served as general of horse. It was Cromwell's ability as a cavalry leader which saved Lincolnshire to the Parliament, by the winning of the hard-fought engagements of Gainsborough (July 28) and Winceby (October 11).

[Sidenote: =Siege of Gloucester.--First Battle of Newbury.=]

Charles should now have called in Hopton and Newcastle to his aid, and marched straight on London. But both the West-country and the Yorkshire Royalists disliked leaving their own districts. Hopton's and Newcastle's men protested against being called up to Oxford before they had made a complete end of their own local enemies. Charles was weak enough to yield to their wish, and meanwhile resolved to take Gloucester, the one great Roundhead stronghold left in the West. He laid siege to it on August 10; but on the news of his march westward, the Parliament gave Lord Essex peremptory orders to attempt its relief at all costs. Reinforced by six strong regiments of London train-bands, zealous but new to war, he marched with 15,000 men into the West. When he approached the besiegers, Charles resolved not to fight in his siege-lines, but to attack Essex in the open. He therefore raised the siege, allowed the earl to revictual Gloucester, but placed himself across the line of retreat to London. At Newbury, in Berkshire, Essex found the king's army arrayed on both sides of the London road, and ready to receive him (September 19). There followed a fierce fight among lanes and hedges, as Essex strove to pierce or outflank the royal line. Prince Rupert threw away the best of his horsemen in attempts to break the solid masses of the London train-bands, who showed a steady power of resistance very admirable in such young soldiers. In one of these desperate charges fell Lord Falkland, the wisest and most moderate of the king's councillors, who is said to have deliberately thrown away his life because of his sorrow at the long continuance of the war. After a hard day's work, the earl had partly cut his way through; and in the night the king, alarmed at the fact that his infantry and artillery had exhausted all their powder, ordered his army to retreat on Oxford. Then the Parliamentarians were able to force their way to Reading without further molestation.

[Sidenote: =The Solemn League and Covenant.=]

Thus the end of the campaign of 1643 left matters in the centre much as they had been nine months before. But on the flanks, in Yorkshire and the south-west, the Royalists had won much ground, and were in full communication with the king through their strong posts in Bristol and Newark. While arms had proved unable to settle the struggle, both sides had been trying to gain help from without--the Parliament in Scotland, the king in Ireland. The zealous Covenanters of the North, before consenting to give armed support to the Roundheads, insisted on receiving pledges from their allies. Accordingly, the Parliament swore a Solemn League and Covenant, "to preserve the Kirk of Scotland in doctrine, worship, and governance, and to reform religion in the Church of England according to God's Holy Word." The second clause implied the destruction of Episcopacy, and the introduction of Presbyterianism into the southern kingdom (September 25). In return for this pledge the Scots promised to send an army of 10,000 or 15,000 men over the Tweed in the following spring. The conclusion of this treaty was the last work of Pym, the king of the Commons, who died six weeks later. No civilian came forward among the ranks of the Parliamentarians to take up his mantle.

[Sidenote: =Charles seeks aid from Ireland.=]

Meanwhile the king had sought aid from Ireland. Ever since the massacre of 1641, the Irish rebels had been fighting with the Marquis of Ormonde, Strafford's successor in the governance of that unruly realm. They had occupied six-sevenths of the country, and held Ormonde's men pinned up in Dublin, Cork, and a few other strongholds. Charles now conceived a scheme for patching up a peace with the rebels, and thus making it possible to bring over Ormonde's army, Strafford's veteran regiments, to join in the English war. With this end he negotiated a truce called "the Cessation" with the Irish (September 15), leaving the "Catholic Confederates" to govern all the districts that were in their hands, and promising to devise a scheme of toleration for Romanists. This truce enabled Ormonde to begin sending over his troops to England; it was also arranged that native Irish levies should be lent to the king by the "Catholic Confederates," and Lord Taaffe, one of the leading rebels, promised to make a beginning by bringing over 2000 men. This alliance with the fanatical Romanists of Ireland, the perpetrators of the Ulster Massacre of 1641, did Charles much harm. The Puritans began to dream of England dragooned by wild Irish Papists, and thought that the fires of Smithfield would ere long be relighted. They grew fiercer than ever against the king.

[Sidenote: =1644. Rout of the Irish levies.--The Scots in England.=]

In December, 1643, Ormonde's first regiments began to pass the Channel and arrive at Chester. In January, 1644, the Scots crossed the Tweed under the Earl of Leven. Before winter was over the strife had begun, and the new forces on each side were engaged. In January Sir Thomas Fairfax, with the Yorkshire Parliamentarians, had slipped out of Hull, whose siege had been raised by the Marquis of Newcastle, and fell suddenly upon the Irish army at Nantwich, near Chester. He completely routed it, and dispersed or took almost the whole. Meanwhile the Scots were slowly pushing southward, driving the marquis before them through Durham and the North Riding. In April they joined Fairfax at Selby, near York, and the united forces so much outnumbered Newcastle's force, that he sent in haste to the king at Oxford, to say that all the North would be lost if he were not promptly aided by troops from the Midlands. Charles, though he could ill spare men, gave his nephew Rupert a large force of cavalry, and bade him march rapidly on York, picking up on his way all the reinforcements he could raise in Shropshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire. In June the prince reached York with nearly 10,000 men, and joined Newcastle's army. Even before his arrival the enemy received a corresponding reinforcement: Lord Manchester and Oliver Cromwell, with the army of the "Associated Counties," had crossed the Trent and entered Yorkshire to join Fairfax and the Scots. A great battle was imminent, and one that would be fought by forces far larger than had yet met in line during the war, for each side mustered more than 20,000 men.

[Sidenote: =Battle of Marston Moor.--The North lost to Charles.=]

The fate of the Northern Counties was settled by the meeting of the two armies at Marston Moor, near York, on the 2nd of July. The Parliamentarians and their Scottish allies had drawn themselves up on a hillside overlooking the moor, Fairfax and his Yorkshiremen on the right, the Scots in the centre, Manchester and the men of the Eastern Counties on the left. Rupert marched out from York to meet them, and ranged his men on the moor below--he himself taking the right wing, while Newcastle's northern levies had the left. Before the prince's host was fully arrayed, the enemy charged down the hill, and the two armies clashed all along the line. On the Royalist left, Lord Goring with the northern horse completely routed the troops of Fairfax, and then turned against the Scots, and broke their flank regiments to pieces. Then, thinking the day their own, the Cavaliers rushed on in pursuit, and swept off the field. But on the Royalist right the matter had gone very differently. Cromwell, with the eastern horse, had there met the fiery Rupert in person; the struggle was long and fierce, but at last Cromwell's men, godly yeomen of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, whom their general had picked and trained with long care, showed that religious fervour was even better in battle than the reckless courage of the Cavaliers. Rupert's regiments were driven off the field, and then the cool-headed Cromwell, instead of flying in pursuit, led his troopers to aid the much-tried Scots in the centre. By his charge the Royalist foot was broken, and Goring's horse dispersed when it straggled back to the battle. The day, which had begun so doubtfully, ended in a complete victory for the Parliament. Rupert rallied 6000 horse, and took them back to Oxford, but the rest of the Royalist army was lost. Four thousand had fallen, many dispersed, the rest fell back into York, and there surrendered a few days later. Lord Newcastle, angry at Rupert's rashness before the fight and his mismanagement in it, took ship to Holland, and never struck another blow for the king. Meanwhile Manchester and the Scots overran all the North, and the land beyond Humber was wholly lost to the king. The northern Royalists had been utterly destroyed.

[Sidenote: =Battle of Lostwithiel.--Essex's army destroyed.=]

This disaster would have been completely ruinous to the king, if he had not partly preserved the balance of strength by winning a great victory in the south. The Parliament had hoped to do great things with their home army, and had started the campaign successfully, for Sir William Waller had beaten the west-country troops of Lord Hopton at Cheriton in March, and driven the Royalists out of Hampshire. But calamity followed this good fortune; in the summer the Earl of Essex led a great host into Wilts and Somerset, to complete Waller's success by recovering the whole of the South-Western Counties. But the king dropped down from Oxford with his main army, and placed himself between Essex and London. The position was much the same as it had been a year before at Newbury Field. But this time the earl displayed great indecision, and grossly mishandled his men. Instead of forcing his way home, at any cost, he retreated westward before Charles, and was gradually driven into Cornwall, where the country was bitterly hostile. After some ill-fought skirmishes, he was surrounded at Lostwithiel. His cavalry cut their way out, and got back to Hampshire; he himself escaped in a boat to Plymouth. But the whole of his infantry, guns, and stores were taken by the king. The Parliamentarian army of the South was as completely wiped out in September as the Royalist army of the North had been in July. But there was one important difference in the cases--Marston Moor stripped Charles not only of an army, but of six fair counties; Lostwithiel saw the troops of Essex annihilated, but did not give the king an inch of new ground. On the whole, the balance of the campaign of 1644 was against him.

[Sidenote: =Second battle of Newbury.=]

To cover London from the king, the Parliament hastily summoned down Manchester's victorious army from Yorkshire, and added to it Sir William Waller's force. Their united hosts fought the indecisive second battle of Newbury with the royal troops on the 22nd of October. Here Manchester, by his sloth and indecision, left Waller to do all the fighting, and almost lost the day. But in the end Charles withdrew to Oxford, leaving the field to his enemies.

[Sidenote: =Execution of Laud.=]

The winter of 1644-5 was fraught with events of deep importance. The Parliament made one final attempt to negotiate with the king, only to receive the answer, "I will not part with these three things--the Church, my crown, and my friends, and you will yet have much ado to get them from me." Irritated at the king's unbending attitude, they took a step which they knew must render all further attempts at peace impossible. Drawing out of prison the old Archbishop of Canterbury, they proceeded to pass a bill of attainder against him, and condemned him to death. Laud went piously and resolutely to the scaffold, asserting, and truly, that he died the martyr of the Church of England, not the victim of his political doings. This execution was an unpardonable act of cruelty and spite. The old man had lingered three years in prison, was perfectly harmless, and was slain partly to vex the king, partly to satiate the religious bigotry of the Presbyterians--a sect quite as intolerant as Laud himself.

[Sidenote: =The "Self-denying Ordinance."=]

But while Laud's attainder was passing, another important matter was in hand. The campaign of the previous year had been fatal to the reputation of the two chief Parliamentary generals, Essex and Manchester--the one for losing his army at Lostwithiel, the other for his perverse malingering at Newbury. Waller and several more were in little better odour. Cromwell, who had long served as Manchester's second in command, led a crusade against his chief, and accused him of deliberately protracting the war. It was generally felt that the armies of the Parliament would fare much better if they were entrusted to professional soldiers, and not to great peers or prominent politicians. Hence came the celebrated "Self-denying Ordinance," by which the members of the two Houses pledged themselves to give up their military posts, and confine their activity to legislative and administrative work. One exception was made--Oliver Cromwell, whom all acknowledged to be the best cavalry officer in the Parliamentary army, was permitted to keep his military post. But Essex, Manchester, and the rest retired into civil life.

[Sidenote: =The "New-Model Army."=]

At the same time, the Parliament resolved to remodel its army. Much inconvenience had arisen from the miscellaneous nature of the forces which took the field. County militia, London train-bands, voluntary levies, "pressed men" forced to the front, local organizations like the army of the "Associated Counties," had served side by side in some confusion. The conscripts were wont to desert, the militia protested against crossing their county boundary, the train-bands melted back to their shops if they were kept too long under arms. To do away with these troubles, the Parliament now created the "New-Model Army," a standing force of some 20,000 picked men, to be led by Sir Thomas Fairfax, with Cromwell as his second in command. This proved a very formidable host. The troops were mainly veterans, all were zealous and willing, and the officers were most carefully selected. The horsemen more especially were vastly superior to the old Parliamentary troopers. Cromwell modelled them on his own East-country regiment, filled the ranks with "men of religion," who looked upon the war as a crusade against Popery and tyranny, and drilled his cuirassiers--the "Ironsides," as they were called--into the highest state of efficiency.

[Sidenote: =1645. Battle of Naseby.--The Midlands lost to Charles.=]

Next spring the "New-Model" was sent out to try its fortune against the Cavaliers. The king had led his army northward to restore the fortunes of his party in the valley of the Trent, where Newark was now his most advanced post. On his way he stormed the important Parliamentary town of Leicester, but his progress was then stayed by the news of the approach of Fairfax. Despising the "New-Model," the Cavaliers turned fiercely to attack it, though the royal host was the smaller by several thousands. They seem to have put only 9000 men into the field against 13,000. Charles and Fairfax met at Naseby, in Northamptonshire, and there fought out the decisive battle of the first civil war. Once more it was Rupert who lost the day, and Cromwell who won it. The prince, with the right wing of the royal horse, routed his immediate opponents, and rode off the field in reckless pursuit of them. But on the king's left Cromwell and his Ironsides broke to pieces the Cavaliers of the North, and then steadied their ranks and rode against the flank of the Royalist infantry. Charles sent in his reserve to aid his flagging centre, and prepared to charge himself at the head of his body-guard. "Will you go to your death?" cried the Earl of Carnwath, who seized the royal rein, and turned his master out of the press. Charles yielded, and rode back. Far better would it have been for him and for England if he had gone on to make his end among the pikes. Cromwell's charge settled the day; the Royalist foot were ridden down or captured; the wrecks of the horse joined the late-returning Rupert, and escorted their master back to Oxford (June 14, 1645).

[Sidenote: =Charles a fugitive.--Career of Montrose.=]

Naseby decided the fate of the war. The king could never raise another army in the Midlands. His whole infantry force was gone, and for the next eight months he rode helplessly about the shires with 2000 or 3000 horse, vainly trying to elude his pursuers and scrape together a new body of foot. His only hope was in an ally who had arisen in Scotland. James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, a Scottish peer who had grown discontented with the Covenant, had raised the royal standard in the Highlands in the preceding year. He was a born leader of men, and, though at first followed by a mere handful of wild clansmen, soon made his power felt in the war. After routing two small armies in the north-east, he turned upon Argyleshire, and almost extirpated the whole Covenanting clan of the Campbells at Inverlochy (January, 1645). Then, descending upon the Lowlands, he cut to pieces a large army at Kilsyth (August 15), seized Glasgow, and mastered the greater part of Scotland. Charles resolved on joining him, and trusted to turn the fate of the war by his aid. But Montrose's Highland levies melted home to stow away their plunder, and he was left at the head of a comparatively small force for the moment. Then Leslie led back across the Tweed the Scottish army which had been serving in England, and surprised and routed Montrose at Philiphaugh (September, 1645).

[Sidenote: =1645-6. End of the war in the West.=]

There was no further hope for Charles from Scotland, and his sole remaining army, the force in the West, under Hopton and Goring, was also doomed. After Naseby, Fairfax led the "New-Model" into Somersetshire, beat Goring at Langport, and captured Bristol (September, 1645). The Royalists were driven westward towards the Land's End. In the next spring Fairfax followed them, took Exeter, beat Hopton at Torrington, and steadily drove the wrecks of the enemy onward till their back was to the Cornish sea. Escape was impossible, and the king's army of the West laid down its arms (March, 1646).

[Sidenote: =Charles gives himself up to the Scots.=]

The king had now lost all hope, and when the Roundhead armies began to muster for the siege of Oxford, his last stronghold, he took a desperate measure. He thought that the Scottish Covenanters were less bitterly hostile to him than the English Parliamentary party, and resolved to give himself up to them rather than to his English subjects. Slipping out of Oxford in disguise, he rode to the Scottish camp at Newark, and there surrendered himself (April, 1646). He was not without hope that he might yet save his crown by coming to terms with his subjects; for he had an overweening belief in his own power of diplomacy, and did not understand how deeply his old evasions and intrigues had shaken men's confidence in his plighted word. Yet he had his better side; he sincerely believed in his own good intentions and his hereditary rights, and there were two things which he would never give up under any pressure--his crown and his adherence to the Church of England.

[Sidenote: =The Scots deliver him to the Parliament.=]

The Scots were delighted to have Charles in their hands, and proposed to restore him to his throne if he would promise to take the Covenant and impose Presbyterianism on England. This demand hit the king on a point where his conscience was fixed and firm; he would never sell the Church to its foes, so he temporized and dallied with the Scots' proposals, but would not accept them. Disgusted at his refusal, the Covenanters resolved to surrender him to the English Parliament. After stipulating for the payment of all the arrears of the subsidies which were owed them for their services in England, they gave up the king to his enemies--a proceeding which contemporary opinion called "selling their master for £400,000" (January, 1647).

[Sidenote: =Presbyterians and Independents.=]

Even yet Charles had not abandoned all hope; he knew that his victorious enemies were much divided among themselves, and thought that by embroiling them with one another he might yet secure good terms for himself. The two parties which split the Parliament were the Presbyterians and the Independents. The former, of whom we have heard so much already, were desirous of organizing all England into a Calvinistic Church on the model of the Scottish Kirk; they were as intolerant as Laud himself in the matter of conformity, and intended to force the whole nation into their new organization. Papists, Episcopalians, and Nonconformists of every kind were all to be driven into the fold. This plan did not please the "Independents"--a party who consisted of men of all sorts and conditions, who only agreed in disliking a State Church and a compulsory uniformity. Some of the Independents were wild sectaries--Anabaptists, Levellers, and Fifth-Monarchy-men, who held the strangest doctrines of an immediate Millennium. Others were men who merely insisted on the responsibility of the individual for his own conscience, and thought that the State Church, with its compulsory powers, was a mistake, coming between God and man where no mediator was required. Hence the watchword of the Independents was the toleration of all sects, and they steadfastly resisted the Presbyterian doctrine of forced conformity. The Independents were very strong in the army, and Cromwell, the coming man, was a pillar of their cause. On the other hand, the Presbyterians had a decided majority among the members of the Parliament.

[Sidenote: =Parliament offers terms to Charles.=]

As representing the party of toleration, the Independents were quite prepared to leave Episcopalians alone, and it was therefore with them, rather than with the rigid and bigoted Presbyterians, that the king hoped to be able to ally himself. But it was the Presbyterians who swayed the House, and had possession of Charles's person; with them, therefore, he had to treat. The Parliamentary majority did not yet dream of abolishing the monarchy; they were bent on two things--on tying the present king's hands so tightly that he should never again be a danger to the common weal, and on forcing him to consent to the establishment of Presbyterianism as the State religion. The former was a rational end enough, for Charles could never be trusted; the latter was a piece of insane bigotry, for the Presbyterians were a mere minority in the nation, far outnumbered by the Episcopalians and the Independents. The "Propositions" of the Parliament took the form of a demand that Charles should surrender all claim to control the militia, the fleet, and taxation, for twenty years; that he should take the Covenant himself, assent to its being forced on all his subjects, and order the persecution of all Romanists.[42] He was also to assent to the outlawing of his own chief supporters in the civil war.

Now Charles had declared long ago that he would never sacrifice his crown, his Church, or his friends, and in captivity he did his best to keep his vow. But his method was not to give a steady refusal, and bid his enemies do their worst. He answered their demands by long counter-propositions, flagrant evasions, and endless hair-splitting on every disputed point. Where he might have appeared a martyr, he chose to stand as a quibbling casuist. The Parliament kept him in easy and honourable confinement at Holmby House, in Northamptonshire, while the negotiations were in progress, and he was so carelessly guarded that he was able to keep up secret correspondence with all kinds of possible allies--the King of France, the Scots, and the chiefs of the Independent party.

[Sidenote: =Parliament and the army.=]

But while king and Commons were haggling for terms, a new difficulty arose. The Presbyterian majority in Parliament were anxious to disband the army, both because of the expense of its maintenance, and still more because they knew it to be a stronghold of their enemies, the Independents. In March, 1647, they issued an ordinance for the dismissal of the whole force save a few regiments destined to suppress the Irish rebellion. But the "New-Model" refused to be dismissed; it hated Presbyterians, and it had learnt to look upon itself as a truer representative of the Puritan party than an out-of-date House which had been sitting more than seven years. Instead of disbanding, the army began to organize itself for resistance, and each regiment named two deputies, or "agitators," as they were called, to form a central military committee. This was done with the approval of Fairfax and Cromwell, the leaders of the host. The movement was natural, but quite unconstitutional; still more so was the next step of the soldiery. An officer named Joyce, with the secret sanction of the agitators and of Cromwell also, rode to Holmby with 500 men, seized the king's person, and took him to Newmarket, where the head-quarters of the army lay.

[Sidenote: =The Independents offer terms to Charles.=]

Next the army marched on London, and encamped before its gates (June 16, 1647). Many Presbyterian members fled in dismay from the House of Commons, and the Independents got for a moment a majority in Parliament. The victorious party then proceeded to treat with the king, offering him liberal terms--the complete toleration of all sects, the restriction of the royal power over the armed force of the realm for ten years only, and a pardon for all exiled Royalists except five.

[Sidenote: =Charles's intrigues.=]

In a moment of evil inspiration the king refused this moderate offer. Encouraged by the quarrel of the Presbyterians and the army, he had formed a secret plot for freeing himself from both. His old partisans all over England had agreed on a simultaneous rising, and they had obtained a promise of aid from the Scots; for those stern Presbyterians so hated the Independents and the English army, that they were prepared to join the king against them. On the 11th of November, 1647, Charles slipped away from his military captors, and succeeded in escaping to the Isle of Wight. Hammond, the governor of the island, kept him in security at Carisbrooke, but did not send him back to the army. From Carisbrooke, the king sent new offers of terms of accommodation both to the army and the Parliament, but he was merely trying to gain time for his friends to take arms.

[Sidenote: =Renewal of the war.=]

On the 28th of April, 1648, he saw his plot begin to work. A body of north-country Royalists seized Berwick, and raised the royal standard. A few days later the Scots took arms and raised a large force, which was placed under the Duke of Hamilton, and ordered to cross the Border. At the same time a committee of Scots lords sent to France for the young Prince of Wales, and invited him to come among them and put himself at the head of his father's friends. The movement in Scotland was a signal for the general rising of the English Royalists. Insurrections broke out in May and June all over the land--in Wales, Kent, Essex, Cornwall, and even among the Eastern Counties of the "Association," where Puritanism was so strong.

[Sidenote: =English Royalists suppressed.=]

For a moment it looked as if the king would win. It seemed that the army would be unable to cope with so many simultaneous risings. But Charles had not calculated on the military skill which Fairfax and Cromwell could display in the hour of danger. In less than three months' hard fighting the two generals had put down the whole insurrection. Fairfax routed the Kentishmen--the most dangerous body of insurgents in the South--by storming their stronghold of Maidstone. Then, crossing the Thames, he pacified the Eastern Counties, and drove all the insurgents of those parts into Colchester. In Colchester he met a vigorous resistance; the town held out for two months, and only yielded to starvation (August 27, 1648).

[Sidenote: =Battle of Preston.--The Scottish army dispersed.=]

Meanwhile Cromwell had first struck down the Welsh Royalists, and then ridden north to oppose the Scots. The Duke of Hamilton had already crossed the Tweed, and had been joined by 4000 or 5000 Yorkshiremen. He moved southward, intending to reach Wales, but in Lancashire Cromwell caught him on the march, with his army spread out over many miles of road. Falling on the scattered host, Cromwell beat its rear at Preston (August 17); then, pressing on, he scattered or captured the whole army in three days of fierce fighting, though his force was far inferior in numbers to that of the enemy. But the imbecile Hamilton had so dispersed his men that he never could concentrate them for a battle. On August 25 the duke, with the last wrecks of his army, surrendered at Uttoxeter.

[Sidenote: =Execution of Royalist leaders.=]

The second civil war thus ended in utter disaster to the king's friends. Moreover, it had sealed the fate of Charles himself. There arose a large party among the victors who were determined that he should be punished for the reckless intrigue by which he had stirred up the dying embers of strife, and set the land once more aflame. The temper of the army was so fierce that, for the first time since the war began, numerous executions followed the surrender of the vanquished Royalists. The Duke of Hamilton, who had led the Scots; Lucas and Lisle, who had defended Colchester; Lord Holland, who had been designated to command the Royalists of the south, all suffered death. Hundreds of prisoners of inferior rank were sent to serve as bondmen in the plantations of Barbados.

[Sidenote: =Pride's Purge.--The Rump.=]

Charles himself was removed from Carisbrooke--he had made two unsuccessful attempts to escape from its walls--and put under strict guard at Hurst Castle. The Parliament still continued to negotiate with him, only making its terms more rigorous. But the army did not intend that any such agreement should be concluded. While the House of Commons was still treating, it was subjected to a sudden military outrage. Colonel Pride, a leading Independent officer, marched his regiment to Westminster on the 6th of December, 1648, and, as the members began to muster, seized one by one all the chiefs of the Presbyterian party. Forty-one were placed in confinement, ninety-six were turned back and warned never to come near the House again. Only sixty Independent members were allowed to enter, a body which was for the future known by the insulting name of "the Rump," as being the "sitting part" of the House.

Thus ended the famous Long Parliament, destroyed by the military monster which it had itself created. The "Rump," a ridiculous remnant, the slave of the soldiery, was alone left to represent the civil power in England.

[Sidenote: =Trial of the king.=]

The king's fate was now settled. The army had resolved to punish him, and the Parliament was to be the army's tool. On December 23, the members of the Rump passed a bill for trying the king. On January 1, 1649, they voted that "to levy war against the Parliament and realm of England was treason," and appointed a High Court of Justice to try the king for that offence. When it was seen that the king's life as well as his crown was aimed at, many of the leaders of the Independents, both military men and civilians, began to draw back. Fairfax, the chief of the whole army, refused to sit in the High Court, and of 135 persons designated to serve in it, only some seventy or eighty appeared. But the majority of the army, and Cromwell, the guiding spirit of the whole, were determined to go through with the business. The High Court met, with an obscure lawyer named Bradshaw as its president; its ranks were packed with military men, who were blind to all legal considerations, and had come merely to condemn the king. Charles was brought before the court, but refused to plead. Such a body, he said, had no right to try a King of England--it was a mere illegal meeting, deriving its sole authority from a factious remnant of a mutilated House of Commons. This was undoubtedly true, and, considering the temper of his judges, the king knew that all defence was useless. The course that he took was the only one that suited his dignity and conscience. While he stood dumb before his judges, they passed sentence of death upon him (January 26, 1649).

[Sidenote: =His execution.=]

Four days later he was led to execution on a scaffold placed before the windows of Whitehall Palace. He died with a calm dignity that amazed the beholders. He was suffered to make a short speech, in which he bade the multitude remember that he died a victim to the "power of the sword," that the nation was now a slave to the army, and that it would never be free again till it remembered its duty to its God and its king. He must suffer, he said, because he would not assent to the handing Church and State over to "an arbitrary sway;" it was this that his captors had required of him. Finally, he said, he died a Christian according to the profession of the Church of England, which he had always striven to maintain. Then he laid his head upon the block and met the axe with unflinching courage, amid the groans of the people.

[Sidenote: =Was his fate deserved?=]

The hateful illegality of the king's trial, the violence of his enemies, and the dignity of his end have half redeemed his memory. In our dislike for those who slew him we almost forget his offences. But when we condemn his slayers we must not forget their provocation. Charles had ground the nation under his heel for eleven years of tyranny. He had involved it in a bitter civil war that lasted four years more. Then, when he fell into the victors' hands, he wasted two years in shifty and evasive negotiations, which he never intended to bring to an end. Finally, from his prison he had stirred up a second and wholly unnecessary civil war. Contemplating these acts, we must allow that he brought his evil end upon himself; violent and illegal as it was, we cannot say that it was undeserved.

[Sidenote: =The Commonwealth.=]

The king's execution was immediately followed by the proclamation of a republic. The Independents and the army wished to be rid of the monarchy, no less than of the person of Charles. Accordingly a sweeping series of bills, passed in February, 1649, declared England a "Commonwealth," and vested its government in a single House of Commons and a Council of State. The House of Lords was abolished; of late it had been little more than a farce, for not a dozen peers had been wont to attend. But the "Rump," which now assumed to be the representative of the Commonwealth of England, was itself hardly more than a mockery. It never permitted the victims of "Pride's purge" to return to its benches, so that it was nothing better than a factious minority, depending on the swords of the army.

[Sidenote: =Scotland and Ireland.=]

The Rump and the army were masters of England, but in Scotland and Ireland they were as yet powerless. Ireland was entirely in the hands of the Catholic confederates, save the two towns of Dublin and Londonderry. Scotland had never laid down its arms after Preston; there was no republican party north of the Tweed, and when the news of the king's execution arrived, it only led the Scots to proclaim his son the Prince of Wales, under the name of Charles II.

[Sidenote: =Preparations for war.--Mutiny of the Levellers.=]

Unless England, Scotland, and Ireland were to part company, and relapse into separate kingdoms, it was obvious that the new government must try its sword upon the lesser realms. This it was fully prepared to do. In the spring of 1649 an expedition for the conquest of Ireland was ordered, and the command of it was given to the formidable Cromwell, who since the king's death had become more and more the recognized chief of the army, Fairfax having stepped into the background. Before the expedition sailed, however, Cromwell had no small trouble with his soldiery. The bad example which the generals and colonels had set in driving out the Long Parliament and overturning the monarchy, had turned the rank and file to similar thoughts. There had grown up among them a body of extreme democratic republicans, called the Levellers, from their wish to make all men equal; they were mostly members of obscure and fanatical sects, who looked for the triumph of the saints and the coming of the millennium. While the army was preparing for the Irish war, the Levellers broke out into open insurrection, demanding the dismissal of the "Rump," the introduction of annual Parliaments, the abolition of the Council of State, and the grant of "true and perfect freedom in all things spiritual and temporal." The zealots, however, were weaker than they imagined, and their mutiny was easily put down. Cromwell shot three or four of their leaders, and pardoned the rest of the band.

[Sidenote: =Cromwell subdues Ireland.=]

In August, 1649, Cromwell took over a powerful army to Ireland, where the civil war had never ceased since the rebellion eight years before. The remnant of the Anglo-Irish Royalists, under the Marquis of Ormonde, joined with the Romanists to oppose him, but their combined efforts were useless. So strong a man had never before laid his hand on Ireland. Starting from Dublin, the only large town in Parliamentary hands, he began by the conquest of Leinster. From the first he had determined to strike terror into the enemy. His stern veterans were capable of any extreme of cruelty against Romanists and rebels. But Cromwell is personally responsible for the two horrible blows that broke the Irish resistance. The enemy had made himself strong in the two towns of Drogheda and Wexford. Cromwell stormed them both, and forbade the giving of quarter, so that the whole garrison was in each case slaughtered to a man. Eight or nine thousand Irish perished, and such terror was struck into the rebels by these massacres that they made little more resistance. Cromwell had overrun half the island, when pressing need recalled him to England. He left part of his army under his son-in-law Ireton to complete the conquest, and hastily returned with the remainder (May, 1650).

[Sidenote: =Prince Charles in Scotland.=]

The new danger was the Scottish war. Charles, Prince of Wales, had crossed to Scotland and put himself at the head of the national forces of the country. The unscrupulous young man had taken the "Covenant," and professed himself a Presbyterian to bind the Scots more closely to him. He suffered the execution of the gallant Marquis of Montrose, who had tried to raise a purely Royalist revolt in the Highlands, to pass without rebuke, and allied himself with the slayers of his friend. Charles was resolved to rouse the English royalists in his aid, and it was the news that he was proposing to cross the Tweed that called Cromwell home, for Fairfax had refused to lead an army against the Scots. Since the tragedy of January, 1649, he had lost his old confidence in the justice of the Puritan cause.

[Sidenote: =Battles of Dunbar and Worcester.=]

Cromwell entered Scotland in July, 1650, and beat a very superior army at Dunbar, owing to the bad generalship of his opponents Leven and Leslie (September 3). He then took Edinburgh, slowly and steadily conquered the whole of the Lowlands, and pushed on into the interior of Scotland. But next year, when he had won his way to Perth, he learnt that Prince Charles and the Scots army had slipped past him and entered England, trusting to rouse Lancashire and Wales to their aid. Cromwell followed with fiery speed, and caught the invaders at Worcester (September 3, 1651). His iron veterans once more carried the day; the Scots were beaten and dispersed. Prince Charles barely escaped, and wandered for many days in peril of his life, till faithful friends enabled him to cross England and take ship at Brighton. From thence he came safely to France.

[Sidenote: =End of the civil war.=]

The battle of Worcester, which Cromwell called "the crowning mercy," put a final end to the civil war. Scotland submitted, Ireland was thoroughly conquered by Ireton, and the Rump and the army stood victorious over the last of their foes. It now remained to be seen whether the three kingdoms could settle down into a united Commonwealth under their new conditions.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] The term "Roundhead," alluding to the close-cropped hair of the Puritans, which contrasted so strongly with the long locks which were then the fashion, is first found in use in the end of 1641.

[42] The children of the Romanists were to be taken forcibly from them, and educated as Presbyterians.

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XXVIII. CROMWELL

1651-1660.

[Sidenote: =Power of Cromwell.=]

After the "crowning mercy" of Worcester fight, the rule of England lay nominally in the hands of its mutilated and discredited House of Commons, the representative of a mere fraction of the nation. But really the power to move the realm was in the hands of the army, which had made, and could as easily unmake, the mockery of representative government which sat at Westminster. And in the army Cromwell was growing more and more supreme; his old colleague Fairfax had sunk back into civil life; his mutinous subordinates the Levellers had been crushed; the colonels and generals who held power under him were for the most part his humble servants.

Cromwell had as yet no official post corresponding to his real omnipotence. He was commander of the army, and a member of the Council of State, but nothing more. His will, nevertheless, was the main factor in the governance of England.

[Sidenote: =His character and aims.=]

It is time to say a few words of the character of this extraordinary man, whom we have hitherto seen merely as the heaven-sent leader of the Parliamentary armies, and the guiding spirit of the Independent party. Oliver was a county gentleman of Huntingdonshire, a man of religion from his youth up, and a prominent member of the Parliaments of 1628 and 1640. He was more than forty years old before he ever drew sword or put a squadron in battle array. No general save Julius Cæsar ever started on a great military career so late in life. Cromwell himself aimed at being a reformer of the life and faith of the nation much more than a soldier. He had taken to war because the times required it, but military power and military glory was not his end in life. He wished to see England orderly, prosperous, and free, according to his ideas of freedom in things spiritual and temporal. In religion his ideal was the Independent system, in which the state tolerated most forms of worship, and was itself committed to none. In things temporal he wished to see the realm ruled by a truly representative House of Commons, where every district should be represented according to its population. He had no patience for the existing House, in which a haphazard arrangement, dating back from the middle ages, gave no fair representation to England--where the vanished boroughs of Dunwich or Sarum had as many members as Yorkshire or Norfolk. If Cromwell had found a House of Commons that agreed with his views, he would have worked smoothly with them, and lived and died no more than their first servant.

[Sidenote: =Cromwell driven into illegality.=]

Unfortunately, however, Cromwell's views did not happen to be shared by any large proportion of the nation. Half England was secretly Episcopalian; a large proportion of the rest was Presbyterian; among his own Independent party there were numberless sects and factions. In the constitution of England, then as now, there was no place for an over-great personality backed by a strong military force. But such a personage existed in Cromwell. The question now arose whether he would consent to see the land governed by men whom he despised, in ways of which he disapproved, or whether he would proceed to interfere. Interference would be unconstitutional; but everything had been unconstitutional in England for ten years, and the temptation to use force was irresistible to a man who had strong political theories, a self-reliant temper, and 20,000 formidable veterans at his back. He could never forget that the "Rump" was the army's creature, and that it had been created to carry out the army's views. His very energy and conscientiousness were certain to drive him into illegalities. It is customary to reproach Cromwell with dissimulation and ambition, to make his whole career turn on a settled desire to make himself despot of England. This view entirely misconceives the man. It is far more correct to look upon him as a man of strong principles and prejudices, who was carried away by his desire to work out his programme, and who struck down--often with great violence and illegality--all that stood in his way. If he finally seized autocratic power, it was because he found that in no other way could he put his plans in practice. Power, in short, was for him the means, not the end. Unfortunately for his reputation, England has always objected to being dragooned into the acceptance of any programme or set of views, and if she would not accept the theories of a Stuart, the child of a hundred kings, it was hardly likely that she would acquiesce tamely in those of a simple country gentleman of Huntingdonshire; the fact that he was the finest general of the seventeenth century did not make him an infallible law-giver.

[Sidenote: =Pretensions of the "Rump."=]

When Cromwell came back victorious from Worcester field, the small and one-sided House of Commons which had ruled England since Pride's purge was still supreme in the state. Before he had been three weeks in London, Oliver hinted to the members that it was time that they should dissolve themselves, and give place to a freely elected house, where every shire and borough should be represented. Such a house had not been seen since 1642, when the Royalist third of the Commons had seceded at the king's command. But the "Rump" had enjoyed its two years of power, and had no wish to disperse. It was gradually growing to believe itself to be an irresponsible oligarchy with no duties to the nation, and to forget that it purported to represent England. When the question of dissolution was mooted, it proceeded to fix a date three years off as a suitable time for its own suppression, making the excuse that it must recast the constitution of the realm before it dispersed. This gravely vexed Cromwell and all the friends of reform; still more was their anger raised when the members proceeded to waste month after month in fruitless legal discussions, without succeeding in passing any bill of importance.

[Sidenote: =Foreign relations.--Rivalry with the Dutch.=]

Meanwhile the country had become involved in a foreign war. All the powers of Europe looked unkindly upon the regicide Commonwealth of England, and its envoys were maltreated at more than one court. Two were actually murdered--Anthony Ascham at Madrid, Isaac Dorislaus, at the Hague; in each case the slayers were exiled English Royalists, and the foreign government gave little or no satisfaction for the crime. While English relations with Spain remained strained, those with Holland gradually grew to an open rupture. The Dutch had been interested in the Royalist cause because their stadtholder, William II., Prince of Orange, had married Mary, the eldest daughter of Charles I., and had sheltered the Prince of Wales at his court for many months. It was from Holland, too, that the Royalists had received their supplies of arms during the war. But there was more than this recent grudge in the ill-feeling between English and Dutch. They had grown of late to be rivals in the trade of East and West. Their merchants in the Spice Islands had come to blows as early as 1623, and in America the Dutch had planted the colony of "New Amsterdam," so as to cut the connection between Virginia and New England, as far back as 1625. At present they were competing for the carrying trade both of the Baltic and the Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: =The Navigation Act.=]

Hence it was that when the indignation of the Parliament against the Dutch came to a head, it found vent in the celebrated Navigation Act (1651). This bill provided that goods brought to England from abroad must be carried either in English ships, or in the ships of the actual country that grew or manufactured them. Thus the Dutch carrying trade would be severely maimed. It was not a wise bill, or one in accordance with the laws of political economy, but it suited the spirit of the times, and even the usually clear-headed Cromwell gave it his support. This obvious blow at Dutch interests led, as was intended, to war (July, 1652).

[Sidenote: =Dutch War.--Blake and Van Tromp.=]

In the struggle which followed, the English fleets were generally successful. Led by Robert Blake, a colonel of horse who became for the nonce an admiral, and showed no mean capacity in his new employment, they obtained several victories. The conflict was not without its vicissitudes, and on one occasion the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp won a battle, and sailed down the Channel with a broom at his masthead, to show that he had swept the seas clean. But his triumph was not for long; next spring Blake beat him in a fight off the North Foreland (June 3, 1653), and a final victory off the coast of Holland, in which the gallant Dutchman was slain, completed the success of the English fleet. A treaty followed in which the vanquished enemy accepted the bitter yoke of the Navigation Act, and promised to banish the Stuarts from Holland. This they did with the better grace because the republican party among them had just succeeded in excluding the House of Orange from the stadtholdership. The Orange interest, therefore, could no longer be exerted in favour of the exiled royal family of England (1654).

[Sidenote: =Discontent with Parliament.=]

But ere the Dutch war had come to an end, there had occurred a sweeping political change in England. The "Rump" Parliament had persevered in its unwise courses; it had carried no reforms, either in Church or State, but spent all its time in profitless debating. Nor had it improved its popularity in the country by raising taxes by a new system which recalled the "tallages" of John or Henry III. Making lists of all who had taken the Royalist side in the old civil war, it imposed heavy fines on them, for offences of six or seven years ago. The army began to grow desperately impatient with the Parliament that it had made. In August, 1653, a great body of officers petitioned Cromwell, as their chief, to insist on the Commons dissolving themselves. Somewhat frightened, the House passed a bill for a dissolution, but with the extraordinary and preposterous claim that all sitting members should appear again in the next Parliament without having to seek re-election by their constituents.

[Sidenote: =Cromwell dissolves Parliament by force.=]

This strange attempt to perpetuate themselves for ever provoked Cromwell's wrath to boiling-point. He resolved to take a step even more drastic than Pride's purge. On April 20, 1653, he went down to Westminster with a guard of musketeers, whom he left outside the door. Taking his seat as a private member, he presently arose and addressed his colleagues in a fiery harangue, in which he told them that they were a set of worthless talkers with no zeal for religion or reform. When shouted down by the angry Commons, he bade his soldiers enter, and thrust the dismayed politicians out of the door. The Speaker was hustled from his chair and Cromwell bade his men "take away that bauble," the great mace, which lay on the table and represented the dignity of the Commons of England.

Thus perished the last remnant of the mighty "Long Parliament," dissolved by the mere fiat of the great general. Nor did its fall cause much murmuring, for the nation had long ceased to regard it as anything more than a body of garrulous and self-seeking oligarchs.

[Sidenote: =The "Barebones'" Parliament.=]

For the moment there was no legal government in England, for Cromwell's position was quite unconstitutional. He felt this himself, and was anxious to create a new House, which should work with him and carry out his ideas of reform; as yet he had no intention of becoming an autocrat. Accordingly, he summoned in June an assembly which differed from all that had been before it, since the members were not elected by the shires and boroughs, but named by a committee of selection, at which Cromwell presided. This illegally created body was called the "Nominee Parliament," or more frequently "Barebones' Parliament," from a London merchant with the extraordinary name of Praise-God Barebones, who was one of its prominent members.

But Cromwell was to find by repeated experiments that it was impossible for him to discover any body of men who could work with him on exactly the lines that he chose. For his own opinions were not those of the majority of the nation, and hence any assembly that he called was bound, sooner or later, to quarrel with him. And since he possessed in his army a weapon able to dissolve any number of parliaments, he was tempted to bring every quarrel to an end by abruptly dismissing the recalcitrant House. A less self-confident man, or one who did not think that he possessed a mandate from above to reform England, might have learnt to co-operate with a Parliament. But Cromwell was so sure of his own good intentions, and so convinced that those who questioned them must be wrong-headed and factious, that he drove away three parliaments in succession with words of rebuke and of righteous anger.

Barebones' Parliament, a body full of stiff-backed and fanatical Independents, soon proved too restive for its creator. Cromwell smiled on their first efforts, when they began to codify the laws and abolished the Court of Chancery. But he began to frown when this conclave of "the Saints," as they called themselves, commenced to speak of confiscating Church-tithes--the maintenance of the clergy--and the rights both of state and of private patronage to livings. It is even said that they wished to substitute the Mosaic law from the Book of Deuteronomy for the ancient law of England. This drew down a rebuke from Cromwell, whereupon the House very honestly gave their power back into the hands from whence they had taken it, and dissolved themselves (December, 1653).

[Sidenote: =The "Instrument of Government."=]

The dispersion of this unconstitutional assembly was followed by another experiment in illegality. Cromwell published a paper-constitution drawn up by himself, called the "Instrument of Government." This provided that England should be governed by a "Lord Protector" and a House of Commons. Cromwell himself, of course, took the post of Protector, which was to be held for life, and had a quasi-royal character, for it was he who was to summon and dissolve Parliaments, and his assent was required to all bills; but it was stipulated that "the Protector should have no power to reject such laws as were themselves in accordance with the constitution of the commonwealth"--a vague check, since he himself would have to decide on the legality of each enactment. The new House of Commons was a fairly constituted body, for it included members from Scotland and Ireland, and among the English seats all the "rotten boroughs" were disfranchised, while their members were distributed among the rising towns, such as Leeds, Liverpool, and Halifax, and the more populous counties. The Protector was to have no power of dissolving the Commons till they had sat five months at least (December 16, 1653).

[Sidenote: =Cromwell Lord Protector.--His reforms.=]

For nine months Cromwell ruled as "Lord Protector" without any check on his power, for the Parliament was not to assemble till September, 1654. Pending its arrival, the Protector began to introduce many reforms; he recast the Courts of Justice, and introduced his favourite scheme for the government of the Church. This was the toleration of all Protestant sects, and the distribution of Church patronage among them by a committee of selection called "Triers." This body was only to inquire whether the candidate for a living was of a good life, and held the essential doctrines of Christianity. It was not to inquire whether he was Presbyterian, Independent, or Episcopalian; only Romanists were formally excluded. But, unfortunately for the content of the land, Cromwell's ordinance that the old Church of England Prayer-book was not to be used, effectually prevented any conscientious Episcopalian from applying to the "Triers." The Churchmen could only meet by stealth to celebrate their sacraments, and they formed at least half the nation. Cromwell's well-meant arrangements were gall and bitterness to them, and discontent was always rife.

[Sidenote: =The New-Model Parliament.=]

Cromwell's New-Model Parliament met on September 3, 1654, the third anniversary of Worcester fight. It was a body that well expressed the wishes of the Puritan half of the nation, but the Royalists were, of course, excluded. The sense that it was a strong and representative body made it confident and haughty; it at once began to discuss the legality of the "Instrument of Government," and to pass bills restricting the Protector's power. Cromwell with some difficulty kept his temper for the statutory five months, and then dissolved it (January 22, 1655).

[Sidenote: =Autocracy of Cromwell.--Attempted assassination.=]

Once more the Lord Protector was left alone as autocrat of Great Britain. He was not happy in the position; the dissolution of the New-Model Parliament had angered Independents and Presbyterians alike. They murmured that a despotic Protector was no better than a despotic King. Conspiracies began to be formed against Cromwell, both by Royalists and extreme republicans. Some were for open rebellion, some for secret murder, for autocrats are easy to make away with. No one save Guy Fawkes ever tried to slay a whole Parliament, but the power of the individual despot is often tempered by assassination. Cromwell promptly got the better of a few wild spirits who tried to raise open war, for the army was still devotedly loyal to him. But his spirit was sorely tried by the assassination plots; the pamphlet which Colonel Sexby, the Leveller, published, under the title of Killing no Murder, especially incensed him. For the future he went on his way resolute, but nervously expecting a pistol-shot from every dark corner.

[Sidenote: =Military despotism established.=]

For eighteen months after the dissolution of the New-Model Parliament Cromwell ruled as autocrat without any House of Commons to check him (January, 1655, to September, 1656). This time he tried another unconstitutional experiment for the governance of the realm. He divided England into twelve districts, and set over them twelve major-generals picked from the army, whose despotic power replaced that of lords-lieutenant and sheriffs. This expedient made even more evident than before the fact that the army was holding down the nation by force, and provoked much adverse comment. As a matter of fact, Cromwell's rule, though utterly illegal, was very efficient. He gathered around him many capable men: the poet Milton--though a convinced republican--served as his foreign secretary; Thurlow, a very able man, was his Secretary of State. Both Monk, who governed Scotland, and Henry Cromwell, the Lord-Deputy of Ireland, the Protector's youngest son, were skilled administrators; and Blake, who had charge of the fleet, was the greatest admiral that England had yet seen. But no amount of good governance suffices to content a nation held down by armed force against its will, and Cromwell's rule could never be popular.

[Sidenote: =Scotland and Ireland.=]

It was, however, successful and glorious, both in neighbouring lands and far abroad, if it was hated at home. Scotland was orderly and prosperous; Cromwell had much in common with the Covenanters, though he had suppressed them so sternly, and after 1651 there was not much opposition to him. In Ireland the matter was very different; Cromwell loathed Romanists with the hatred of the old Protestants of the Elizabethan age. His scheme of government for that realm was the drastic and cruel expedient of thrusting all the native Irish into the single province of Connaught, and of dividing up the rest of the land among English and Scots settlers, just as Ulster had been treated in the time of James I. The expulsion was carried out with merciless rigour, and thousands of Cromwell's discharged veterans and other colonists were planted in Munster and Leinster. But the settlement was only to be a very partial success; the old soldiers did not make good farmers in a pastoral country, and the native Irish gradually crept back to act as the servants and labourers of the conquerors, so that a homogeneous English and Protestant colony was never established. When the Protector died a few years later, many of the colonists departed, others were merged in the Irish masses, and only in limited districts did traces of his cruel work survive. But the "curse of Cromwell" remained the bitterest oath in the Irish peasant's mouth.

[Sidenote: =Cromwell's foreign policy.=]

Master of Great Britain, the Lord Protector resolved that this country should resume the great place in the counsels of Europe which it had held in the time of Elizabeth. His foreign policy was the same as that of the great queen--resolute opposition to Spain as the foe of Protestantism and the monopolist of the trade of the Indies. In 1655 Cromwell declared war on Philip IV., and sent forth his fleets under Blake to prey on the Spaniards. The great admiral stormed the strongly fortified harbour of Teneriffe, in the Canary Islands, and sent home several silver-laden galleons from America which were lying therein (April, 1656). After several other successes he died at sea, just as he was returning to England. Another expedition under Venables captured the fertile island of Jamaica, in the West Indies, though it failed to get possession of the larger and stronger island of San Domingo. On the European continent Cromwell allied himself with France, the eternal enemy of Spain, and sent a strong brigade of his formidable regulars to aid the troops of the young Lewis XIV. This force much distinguished itself in the war, and won the ports of Dunkirk and Mardyke in Flanders (1657-58), which by agreement with the French were kept as English possessions. At this time Cromwell's arm reached so far that he was even able to interfere to prevent the Duke of Savoy from persecuting his Protestant subjects the Waldenses (1655), an event which called forth Milton's celebrated sonnet, commencing--

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered o'er the Alpine valleys cold."

[Sidenote: =Constitutional experiments.--A House of Lords.=]

But though victorious abroad, the Lord Protector was still vexed that he could not build up a stable constitution at home. In the midst of his successes he summoned his third and last Parliament in September, 1656. He had now resolved to experiment in the direction of restoring many of the time-honoured arrangements of the monarchy. He had determined to create a second chamber, like the old House of Lords, and to assimilate his own position as Protector to that of the old kings. By excluding from election about a hundred persons who had been active in the Parliaments of 1653 and 1654, he obtained a House of Commons somewhat more docile than either of his earlier assemblies. In an address called "the humble Petition and Advice," they besought him to assume all the old prerogatives of royalty, and even the name of king. The last he refused, knowing the discontent it would arouse among his sternly republican followers in the army. But he accepted a status which gave him all that the regal name would have implied. At the same time he endeavoured to make his position less unconstitutional, by abolishing the major-generals, and giving the Commons complete control over taxation. But even with this loyal and obedient house the Lord Protector could not long agree. They fell out upon the question of the setting up of his new House of Lords, a body whose authority they utterly refused to acknowledge. On this point the Commons proved so recalcitrant that Oliver dissolved them after they had sat sixteen months (January, 1658).

[Sidenote: =Death of Cromwell.=]

This would not have been the last of his constitutional experiments if his life had been spared. But in the summer of the same year, while designs for a new Parliament were already being mooted, he was taken ill. His health had been broken by the constant nervous strain of facing perpetual assassination plots, and wrangling with refractory Parliaments. He died on September 3, 1658, the seventh anniversary of the "crowning mercy" of Worcester.

He left England great and prosperous, but discontented and unhappy. An autocrat, however well meaning, is never pardoned if he fails to understand and obey the feeling of the nation. Oliver was so much out of sympathy with the majority that he could not escape bitter hatred. Therefore all his work was built on the sand, and all that he had accomplished vanished with his death, save the mere material gains of commerce and colonies that he had won for England. His name, very unjustly, became a byword for ambition and religious cant. A whole generation had to pass before men dared speak well of him.

[Sidenote: =Richard Cromwell Protector.=]

The moment that Cromwell died, his system began to break up; in six months it had disappeared; in eighteen months England once more was ruled by a Stuart king. The Lord Protector had named no successor, but the Council of State took the step of nominating his son Richard to his place, as being the man who would divide parties the least. Richard Cromwell was an easy-going country gentleman, without any of his father's characteristics. He was neither self-confident, nor a soldier, nor a man of fervent religion. When saluted as Protector, he observed that he would never make anything more than a fair chief-constable. He bore himself modestly and discreetly, and proceeded at once to endeavour to put himself right with the nation by calling a Parliament. It met in January, 1659, and was found to contain many concealed Royalists, and many more stiff republicans of the old Presbyterian type, who objected on principle to the protectorship. Such a body was bound to fall into internal quarrels; all parties in it concurred in treating the unfortunate Richard with disregard.

[Sidenote: =Richard and the army.--He resigns.=]

But it was not the Parliament which was to upset the new Lord Protector. The army saw that with Oliver's death their old power was gone, for neither Richard nor the two Houses had any sympathy with them. A council of officers met, and resolved to seize control of affairs. They petitioned for the appointment of a general-in-chief who should represent them and act as their leader. When this was refused, a deputation of colonels called on the weak Richard, and hectored him, by threats of violence, into dissolving Parliament (April, 1659). Equally unwilling and unable to become a military autocrat, the Lord Protector immediately after resigned his office, and went off in joy to his quiet country seat of Hursley. He lived there as an obscure squire for more than forty years, and survived till the reign of Queen Anne.

[Sidenote: =Revival of the "Rump."=]

England was now without a Protector and without a Parliament, left in the hands of a ring of ambitious and fanatical military men. Looking round for the fittest tool to serve their purposes, the committee of officers resolved on restoring the old "Rump Parliament" which had disappeared so ignominiously six years before. Accordingly, they sought out the Independent members who had once sat in that body, and restored them to Westminster Hall. Forty survivors under Speaker Lenthall took their old places, and claimed to be the governing power of England (May 9).

[Sidenote: =Quarrels of the military leaders.=]

Of all the bodies which had ever ruled England, the "Rump" had been the most incapable and the most despised. The whole nation was indignant at seeing its miserable remnant replaced in power. Meanwhile the officers began to fall out with each other: Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, had each his party among the soldiery, and aspired to fill Oliver's vacant place. Eight months of anarchy followed; the various generals bullied the Parliament and intrigued against each other. Royalist risings took place in Cheshire and the West. Finally Lambert, the most vigorous of the military men, entered London with his regiments and drove out the Parliament, just as Oliver had done six years before. But Lambert was no Cromwell; he only ruled a fraction of the soldiery, and had no party among the people (October, 1659).

[Sidenote: =Popular wish for a Restoration.=]

The divisions of the army had at last broken the formidable military power which had so long repressed the wishes of the nation. Commonwealths and Protectors had been tried in the balance and found wanting. There was a general feeling that the only way out of anarchy was the restoration of the old constitution of England, with King, Lords, and Commons. The majority even of the original Parliamentarians of 1642 were ready to acknowledge that they had done unwisely, in breaking up the foundations of law and order by abolishing the monarchy. Calvinistic fervour had worked itself out; the majority of the old Puritans of the days of Charles I. had come to realize that Levellers, Fifth-monarchy men, and military saints were even more objectionable and impracticable than the Episcopalians whom they had once hated so sorely.

[Sidenote: =Monk marches to London.=]

Meanwhile there was a man who saw clearly the one way to restore a stable government and to content the nation. George Monk, a calm, self-reliant soldier who commanded the army in Scotland, had resolved to use his regiments, on whose obedience he could implicitly count, to restore legal and constitutional rule. His own private ambition lay in the direction of a quiet and assured competence, not of an unsteady grasp on supreme power. He put himself secretly in communication with the exiled Prince of Wales and the chiefs of the English Royalists. No one else knew his design. Crossing the Tweed with 7000 men, he scattered the troops of Lambert and seized London. Then he summoned all the surviving members of the old "Long Parliament," as it had sat in 1642, to meet at Westminster, on the ground that it had been the last undoubtedly legal and constitutional government that England had possessed. The members met, now for the most part elderly men, cured of their old fanaticisms by ten years of military despotism, and ready for any reasonable compromise. By Monk's direction they issued writs for a new Parliament, and then formally dissolved themselves.

[Sidenote: =The Convention Parliament.--Declaration of Breda.=]

The new or Convention Parliament met on April 26, 1660; it was full of Royalists, who for the first time since the civil war dared show themselves and avow their opinions. Monk now openly began to negotiate with Prince Charles for a restoration of the monarchy, on the basis of oblivion of the past, and toleration and constitutional government for the future. The exiled Stuart promised these things in his "Declaration of Breda," though there were in his promises certain reservations, which cautious men regarded with distrust.

[Sidenote: =Return of Charles II.=]

But the realm was yearning for repose and peace, and the Parliament accepted Charles's offer with haste and effusion. Lambert and a few fanatical regiments vainly attempted to struggle against the popular will, but Monk crushed them with ease. In May 1660, the Prince of Wales was formally invited to return and resume his hereditary rights. On the 29th of the month he landed at Dover, and was saluted as Charles II. by the unanimous voice of a rejoicing nation.

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XXIX. CHARLES II

1660-1685.

[Sidenote: =Character of Charles.=]

Charles Stuart, who now returned to fill the English throne, was a young man of thirty. He had spent the last fourteen years of his life in exile, the penniless guest of many unwilling hosts in Holland, France, and Germany. Save eighteen uncomfortable months passed in the camp of the Scottish Covenanters, none of the days of his manhood had been spent on this side of the sea. He was continental in his manners, thoughts, and life. He had picked up his personal morals at the French court, and his political morals from the group of intriguing exiles who had formed his wandering and impecunious court. He laughed at purity in women and honesty in men. He was grossly selfish and ungrateful. Knowing by long experience how bitter is the bread doled out by the exile's host, "how steep to climb another's stair," he had one fixed idea--"he would never," as he phrased it, "go on his travels again." He had resolved to stay in England at all costs, to enjoy the Promised Land, now, contrary to all expectation, fallen into his hands. Accordingly, he wished to get as much out of his kingdom as was compatible with the necessity of never offending the majority of the nation. His personal leanings lay in the direction of absolute power and Right Divine, but he was perfectly ready to sacrifice them to his prudence. If he had any religious bias, it led him in the direction of Romanism--a comfortable creed for kings--but he was quite prepared to pose as a zealous Anglican, just as during his stay in Scotland he had become a conforming Presbyterian.

Charles, though destitute of personal beauty--his features were thin and harsh--had an affable address, a lively wit, and perfect manners. Supple and suave, he could make himself agreeable among any company. He had the careless good-humour that so often accompanies selfishness, and his character was too light and easy to make him a good hater. He was quite prepared to take to himself any allies who might appear, and to sell himself to any bidder whose terms were high enough.

[Sidenote: =Charles and the Convention Parliament.=]

Charles appeared in England as the representative of legality and constitutional rule, as the saviour of society who was to lay once more the foundations of peace and order, after ten years of military despotism. He was ready to accept just so much power as might be offered him, with the full intention of ultimately gaining as much more as he could safely assume. The "Convention Parliament," with which he had at first to deal, was a cautious body, containing many elderly men, who had fought against Charles I. and only accepted his son because of the dismal experience of ten years of rule by military "saints." The new king was therefore bound to be careful at first. Any unwise movement of opposition might upset his still unsteady throne.

The Parliament, however, was prepared to deal very liberally with Charles. They disbanded the old Cromwellian standing army. They granted him an annual revenue of £1,200,000 for life, to be raised from customs and excise. In return, the old vexatious feudal dues of the crown from reliefs, wardships, alienations, etc., were abolished. An amnesty was voted to all who had fought against the king in the old wars, with the single exception of those who had sat in the "High Court of Justice" of 1649, and been concerned in the execution of Charles I. Eighty-seven persons, of whom twenty-four were dead, came under this category. Of the survivors some score fled over-seas; the remainder were tried before a court of High Commission. Thirteen were executed,[43] twenty-five imprisoned for life, the rest punished with less rigour; at the same time the Earl of Argyle, the chief of the Scottish Covenanters, was executed at Edinburgh. The bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton were ordered to be disinterred and gibbeted--an unworthy and uncomely act for which the spirit of the time is no sufficient excuse.

An "Act of Oblivion and Indemnity" was passed to cover acts of the governments of the last twelve years. It stipulated that Crown and Church lands which the Commonwealth had granted away should be restored by their present holders, who were not, however, to suffer any other penalty. Private lands were to be restored if they had been actually confiscated by the government, but not if they had been sold by the Cavalier owners under pressure of war or debt. Thus many who had served Charles I. to the best of their ability got no compensation from his son. Gratitude was not the new king's strong point.

[Sidenote: =The Church question.=]

There was a third problem on which the Convention Parliament found the gravest difficulty in arriving at an agreement--the settlement of the Church. The benefices of England were at the moment in the hands of Presbyterian and Independent ministers of various shades of creed. Many of them had replaced incumbents of the Church of England thrust out by the Long Parliament. Others had succeeded in more peaceful wise. On the other hand, the extruded clergy of the old Church were claiming restoration to the cures from which they had been so ruthlessly ejected. What was to be done between the old holders and the new? Was the Church of England to be restored in all its ancient organization, and to become Anglican and Episcopal once more, or was it to be a lax organization including all manner of beliefs within its fold? The Parliament included many who were for "comprehension," and many who were pledged to a rigid restoration of the old order. It had been unable to come to any conclusion when it was dissolved in December, 1660. The king, however, had issued a declaration that a conference should be held between an equal number of Presbyterian and Episcopal divines, with the object of arriving at a compromise.

[Sidenote: =The Cavalier Parliament.=]

The new House of Commons which met in the spring of 1661 was a very different body from the "Convention." Elected in the full flush of Royalist enthusiasm at the restoration of law and order, it contained a very small proportion of the old Roundhead party. Its members, young and old, were for the most part such zealous adorers of Church and King, that they received the name of the "Cavalier Parliament." Charles was ready to take all they cared to give him, while his prime minister Clarendon was a High Churchman, and an advocate of hereditary divine right; but even they found it necessary to restrain from time to time the exuberant loyalty of the Commons.

The "Cavalier Parliament" showed the blindest confidence in the king, whose real character his subjects had not yet discovered. They passed bills asserting the incompetency of the two Houses to legislate without the sovereign's consent, declaring that under no circumstances was it lawful to levy war against the king, and placing all the military and naval forces of the realm in his hands. The "Solemn League and Covenant," which had been the shibboleth of the old Roundheads, they ordered to be burnt by the common hangman.

[Sidenote: =The Act of Uniformity.=]

These comparatively harmless beginnings were followed by a series of bills prompted by a spirit of unwise rancour against the men who had ruled England from 1648 to 1660. The Cavaliers had twelve years of spiritual and temporal oppression to revenge, and were determined to do as they had been done by. The Church settlement, which had been left pending by the Convention, they carried out in the most summary way. The king had promised that a meeting between divines of the old Church and Presbyterian ministers should be held, in order to endeavour to bring about a union. But the scheme came to nothing; at the "Savoy Conference" of 1661, each side refused to move an inch from its position. The Parliament then proceeded to pass the "Act of Uniformity," to force the Puritans either to conform or to leave the Church. The Book of Common Prayer, slightly revised, and the Thirty-nine Articles were to be the rule of faith, and every minister was ordered to use and abide by them. Every incumbent was to declare his assent to them by August 24, 1662, or to vacate his benefice; such was also to be the fate of all who refused to accept Episcopal ordination. This left the Puritan ministers three months to choose between conformity and expulsion--a longer shrift than they had allowed the Anglican clergy in the days of the triumph of Presbyterianism. The large majority of them conformed, and accepted Episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer; these men became the parents of the "Low Church" party of the succeeding age. The more stubborn souls refused obedience; about 2000 of them were expelled from their livings on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662. They and their followers are the original progenitors of the dissenting sects of modern England. The extrusion of the Puritans was most thoroughly carried out, not only in the case of beneficed clergy, but in the Universities and schools. No University professor and no schoolmaster was to be allowed to teach, unless he got a certificate of orthodoxy from his bishop.

[Sidenote: =The Corporation Act.=]

Not content with thrusting out the Puritan ministers from the livings they had held, the Parliament went on to legislate against the Puritan laity. The "Corporation Act" of 1661 enacted that all mayors, aldermen, and other office-holders in the cities and boroughs of England should, on assuming their functions, abjure the Covenant, take the oath of supremacy and allegiance to the king, and receive the Holy Communion according to the rites of the Anglican Church. Thus the Sacrament was made into a political test, a scandalous perversion of the Holy Table. This bill excluded all sectarians of the more conscientious and honest sort from municipal authority, but it also produced the unsatisfactory class of "occasional conformists," dissenters who took the oaths and the Communion according to law, but remained outside the Church.

[Sidenote: =The Conventicle Act and the Five-Mile Act.=]

Before passing on to matters outside the sphere of things ecclesiastical, we must mention two other persecuting bills passed, at a somewhat later date, by the "Cavalier Parliament." The "Conventicle Act" of 1664 forbade religious meetings of dissenters. Family worship was to be allowed, but if any number of persons more than five were present, beyond the members of the family, such a gathering was to be held a "conventicle," and the hearers to be punished. Lastly, the "Five-Mile Act" of 1665 forbade any minister who had refused to sign the "Act of Uniformity" to dwell within five miles of any city or corporate borough. It also prohibited such men from acting as tutors or schoolmasters, unless they took an oath "to attempt no alteration of the constitution in Church or State." These acts were purely vexatious and spiteful, as the Nonconformists were now completely crushed and harmless. Their numbers were already rapidly dwindling, and by the end of the century they did not number a fifth of the population of the realm. The vast majority of them had gone to swell the Low Church party within the Anglican establishment.

[Sidenote: =Clarendon.=]

For the first seven years of the reign of Charles II., the days of the "Cavalier Parliament," the chief minister of the realm was Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon. He was a survivor from the days of the Long Parliament, being one of the original reforming members of that body who had gone over to the royal side when the Puritan majority commenced to attack the Church. He had been one of the wiser and more moderate councillors of Charles I., and had followed Charles II. all through the days of his exile. His daughter, Anne Hyde, had married James, Duke of York, the king's brother. Fourteen years of exile had put him somewhat out of touch of English politics, and his political ideals were more like those of the Elizabethan monarchy than those of his own day. He was an honest and capable, but not a very strong man. All through his life he preserved the theories which had guided him in the early days of the Long Parliament, wishing to keep a balance between the royal Prerogative and the power of the two Houses. Of course he failed to satisfy either king or Parliament, Charles thought that he was not so zealous a servant as he might have been; while the advocates of stringent checks on the monarchy thought him too subservient to his master. Clarendon was a strong Churchman, and must bear his share of the responsibility for the iniquitous "Conventicle" and "Five-Mile" acts. In secular matters he was more judicious; he always opposed the attempts of the king or Parliament to slur over the "Act of Oblivion and Indemnity" and hunt down the adherents of the Commonwealth. In foreign affairs he was a strong advocate of the old Elizabethan policy of war with Spain and friendship with France, a system which was rapidly becoming very dangerous, owing to the growing preponderance of France under the vigorous and ambitious young king, Lewis XIV. The first sign of his views was the sale of Dunkirk, Cromwell's old conquest, to the French for 5,000,000 francs.

[Sidenote: =Profligacy of the court.=]

Clarendon's great fault was that he had no influence over his master, the king. He allowed Charles to develop his unworthy personal habits without remonstrance. The king filled both his palace and the public service with disreputable favourites. He neglected his amiable but unattractive wife, Catherine of Portugal,[44] and filled his court with a perfect harem of mistresses, whose sons he made dukes and earls. England had never seen shameless immorality in high places so rampant in any previous age. The king's companions and servants were, as might have been expected, men of scandalous life, and quite unfit for the offices into which he thrust them. The tone of the court had a profound and unhappy influence on the manners of the day. Never were the private vices displayed so unblushingly; as if in protest against the formal piety and bleak austerity of the days of the Puritans, England--or at least its governing classes--plunged into extravagance and evil living of all sorts. Drunkenness, profanity, thriftless luxury, gambling, duelling, shameless lust, were accounted no discredit. The literature, and more especially the drama, of the Restoration is coarse and foul beyond belief. Even great poets like Dryden felt constrained to be scurrilous when they wished to please. The days of the great civil war had brought out the sterner virtues of Englishmen; the Restoration and the reign of domestic peace were marked by the outburst of all the folly and lewd frivolity which had so long been dormant beneath the surface.

[Sidenote: =The Dutch war.--1665-67.=]

The chief political event of Clarendon's administration was the second Dutch war, a struggle into which the minister was forced somewhat against his will. It was an unwise war, for, in spite of the fact that their commercial interests often clashed, England and Holland needed each other's aid against the dangerous and restless power of France. Narrow trade jealousy, however, sufficed to bring on a conflict which ended with little credit to England. The fleet was very unsuccessful at sea, not so much owing to its own fault, as to the unskilful hands of its admirals. Charles gave the command to two old military men--General Monk, the author of the Restoration, and Prince Rupert. These gallant cavalry officers were wholly unable to handle a fleet; they led their ships into battle, whatever the odds against them, and then left the day to be decided by hard fighting. At a great three-days' engagement in the Downs (January 1-2-3, 1666) Monk was totally defeated by the Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, and his ill-success was very insufficiently revenged by some predatory descents on the coast of Holland in the next autumn.

[Sidenote: =The Plague--1665.=]

The days of the Dutch war were some of the most unhappy that England has ever known. In the summer and autumn of 1665, the land was smitten with the worst outbreak of pestilence that it has ever suffered. The "Great Plague" raged in London with awful severity. The crowded and ill-built city, utterly destitute of any sanitary appliances, and foul with the accumulated filth of centuries, became a very hotbed of contagion. Whole streets and parishes were swept clear of their inhabitants by death or desertion; the clergy fled from their cures, the physicians from their patients. All who could escape removed into the country, and London in the late autumn looked like a city of the dead, the grass growing high in its streets. The great plague-pits by St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and Mile-end had been filled one after another, as fast as they could be opened, with huddled bodies gathered in the dreaded death-cart. At least a hundred thousand persons perished; contemporary rumour named an even greater figure.

[Sidenote: =The Fire in London.--1666.=]

London had hardly recovered from the Plague, when in the next year it suffered a fresh calamity, the Great Fire. A chance conflagration, bursting out in the heart of the city, was carried west and north by a strong wind, and swept away two-thirds of the inhabited houses of the capital. All the great buildings of mediaeval London perished in the flames, the old Gothic Cathedral of St. Paul's, eighty-eight other churches, the Guildhall, the historic mansions of the nobility, the halls of the rich City Companies, hospitals, old monastic remains, all were swept away. Hence it comes that central London is poorer in ancient architectural monuments than many a country town. The popular dismay at such an unexampled catastrophe was so great that a rumour went abroad that the conflagration was no accident, but had been planned and spread by the Papists, who were believed capable of any enormity since the wild attempt of Guy Fawkes. The Great Fire was not without its benefits; it swept away for ever a thousand mediaeval fever-dens, and allowed of the rebuilding of the city with wider streets and more direct communications. Perhaps we may add that it gave a unique opportunity to the great architect Christopher Wren, to display his talents in the new St. Paul's and the many other churches which he was commissioned to rebuild.

[Sidenote: =The Peace of Breda.=]

London was hardly beginning to rise again from its ashes, when the Dutch war ended, in some disgrace, but no loss to England. The English fleet had not recovered from the disaster in the Downs, for Charles II. had squandered on his palace and harem the liberal grants which Parliament made him to repair his navy. While the seas were unguarded, a Dutch squadron slipped up the Thames, burnt the English dockyard and ships at Chatham, and held the port of London blockaded for some days. But negotiations were already on foot before this disaster was suffered, and the Peace of Breda (1667) put an end to the war. The terms were less unfavourable than might have been expected; England modified the Navigation Act of Cromwell's day in favour of Holland, but kept the valuable conquest of New Amsterdam, a Dutch colony in North America, which lay between New England and Virginia. The settlement changed its name, and was called in the future New York, after the king's brother, James, Duke of York.

[Sidenote: =Fall of Clarendon.=]

Just after the Peace of Breda, Clarendon lost his place as the king's chief minister. The disasters and mismanagement of the war were, very unjustly, imputed to him rather than to his master. The Commons impeached him for permitting corruption among the public servants, and for wilfully misconducting the war. Bowing to the storm, he left England and dwelt in exile till his death.

[Sidenote: =The Cabal.=]

No one was more glad than the king at Clarendon's departure. He filled the place of his well-intentioned, if narrow-minded, minister with a clique of his disreputable friends. This administration was called the "Cabal" (from Cabala, the Hebrew word for strange and occult knowledge), as being the depository of the king's secrets. The name became popular because it chanced that the initials of the names of the five men who formed it spelt the word "Cabal." They were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Lord Clifford and the Earl of Arlington were Romanists, a fact which brought much odium and suspicion on their doings. George, Duke of Buckingham, the son of the favourite of Charles I., a volatile, insincere man--

"Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long,"

as Dryden wrote. He was the most profligate and unscrupulous man in England. Lauderdale, an ambitious Scottish peer, was a renegade Covenanter who had sold himself to the king for power. Anthony Ashley, Lord Shaftesbury, was also an old Roundhead, whose love of office and preferment had overcome his principles. He was an active, unscrupulous man, whose ready talents were only prevented from achieving greatness by his want of honesty and clear judgment.

[Sidenote: =Policy of Charles.=]

In replacing Clarendon by the "Cabal," Charles had two objects. So far as he cared for anything beyond his own pleasures, he was set on attaining two ends which he knew to be hateful to the nation: one was to render himself independent of Parliamentary control; the other to secure toleration, and if possible predominance, in England for Romanism. He thought that his new ministers were sufficiently free from scruples to aid him in his projects.

[Sidenote: =Schemes of Lewis XIV.=]

His main helper in the scheme was to be his cousin Lewis XIV., the zealous champion of Roman Catholicism on the continent, and the most busy and ambitious monarch that France had ever known. Lewis had already started on his long career of aggression against Spain, Holland, and Austria. He was set on seizing for himself the frontier of the Rhine, the dream of all French statesmen since his day. To achieve this, he wished to conquer the Spanish Netherlands--the modern Belgium--and the petty principalities of the middle and lower Rhine. At the same time he was set on striking a blow against Protestantism, whenever he had the chance, and most especially against the Protestant power of Holland--for the "United Provinces" were both republican and Calvinist, the two things that he hated most in the world.

[Sidenote: =The Treaty of Dover.=]

After diverting suspicions from his object for a moment, by concluding a treaty of alliance with Holland and Sweden, which met with universal approval, the king began to broach his scheme. It was worked out in the iniquitous "Treaty of Dover" (May, 1670). By this Charles undertook to join Lewis in destroying Holland and dividing up the Spanish Netherlands. In return for this service he was to receive a subsidy of £200,000 a year from France, and to have the aid of 6000 French troops to crush any rebellion that might arise in England when he took in hand the great project of restoring Catholic predominance in the realm. This last clause was only known to the king, and to Arlington and Clifford, the Romanist members of the Cabal. It was concealed from Lauderdale, Buckingham, and Shaftesbury, who only knew of the plan for the partition of Holland and the Spanish dominions.

[Sidenote: =Second Dutch war.=]

Having concluded this iniquitous agreement with his cousin, Charles prorogued Parliament--he kept it from meeting for two years--and declared war on the Dutch, without any ostensible cause or reason. At the same time the French king launched a great army over his northern frontier, overran the Spanish Netherlands, and penetrated far into Holland. The Dutch were only saved from destruction by their desperate resistance. Their fleet fought a drawn battle with the English at Southwold, and staved off a naval invasion. Meanwhile the young William of Orange, the heir of the old stadtholders, saved Amsterdam from the French by breaking down the dykes and inundating South Holland. Driven back by the floods, the French had to evacuate their Dutch conquests (1672).

[Sidenote: =The Declaration of Indulgence.=]

Meanwhile Charles began to carry out his agreement with Lewis for restoring Romanism, by issuing his "Declaration of Indulgence," suspending all the penal laws which imposed penalties on Roman Catholics. To cloak his design, he made the proclamations cover Protestant Nonconformists, as well as dissidents belonging to the older creed.

[Sidenote: =Popular indignation.--The Test Act.=]

But the king had miscalculated the feeling of England. The "Declaration of Indulgence" raised a storm about his ears which he dared not face. So wrathful were the Churchmen, Low Church and High Church alike, that he felt in serious danger of deposition. The Parliament met in February, 1673, and passed an address requiring the king to withdraw the "Declaration." Charles felt his nerve give way; instead of standing his ground, and calling in his French auxiliaries, he yielded, and withdrew his edict of toleration. The Parliament then passed the "Test Act," which excluded all Nonconformists, Protestant and Romanist alike, from all official positions. This made it impossible for Charles to retain his Catholic ministers, Arlington and Clifford, and caused the downfall of the Cabal, which went out of office in the end of 1673. The Test Act also drove from his place as Lord High Admiral the king's brother James, who had become an avowed Romanist.

[Sidenote: =Peace with Holland.--Danby chief minister.=]

The failure of the king's schemes was still further marked by the conclusion of peace with Holland in February, 1674, and the appointment as chief minister of Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby, a good Churchman and an enemy of France. Determined "not to go on his travels again," Charles gave way on all points, to the deep disgust of his cousin of France, who despised him greatly for his craven desertion of the cause of Romanism.

[Sidenote: =Marriage of Princess Mary and William of Orange.=]

But the king had not really given up his design. He was quite ready to renew his alliance with France when the times should be more favourable. Meanwhile he was compelled to profess an attachment to Holland, and married his heiress, the Princess Mary, his brother James's daughter, to the young Prince of Orange, the sworn foe of France (1677). By such means he was able to keep himself safe, and to laugh at the efforts of the Low Church party in Parliament.

[Sidenote: =Shaftesbury and the "country party."=]

This faction, the "country party," as it called itself, was now headed by the unscrupulous adventurer Shaftesbury, who from being a minister had become the king's deadly enemy, and was trying to stir up trouble by warning the nation to beware of the Romanist and absolutist tendencies of his old master--of whose reality none had a better knowledge than himself.

[Sidenote: Fall of Danby.]

Danby was driven from office in 1678, owing to the discovery of some of the king's secret negotiations with France, to which he had been weak enough to give his assent for the moment, though his own views were opposed to the alliance with Lewis XIV. The French king knew this fact, and treacherously made the negotiations known, in order that Danby might be discredited, and replaced by a minister more suited to his tastes. His wily scheme was successful; Danby was hounded from office, impeached, and condemned to imprisonment in the Tower, though he produced the king's warrant for all he had done. But the Parliament voted that the king could do no wrong, and that a minister was responsible for all his acts, even when he acted under the strongest pressure from his master. Thus the theory of "ministerial responsibility" was fixedly and unequivocally proclaimed as part of the Constitution.

[Sidenote: =Shaftesbury's schemes.=]

The fact that secret treaties with France were again in the air, gave Shaftesbury and his friends, the ultra-Protestants, a fine opportunity for a demonstration. Soon after Danby's fall, they raised a cry that the kingdom was in danger from a plot to restore Romanism by the aid of armed force from France. This was true enough, and the criminal was the King of England. But Shaftesbury did not strike at the king; he feared the loyalty of the Churchmen to the heir of Charles I., and thought that his sovereign was so supple and weak that he might be terrorized into becoming his instrument. The king was to be reduced to nullity, not removed.

[Sidenote: =The Popish Plot.=]

When the cry against the Romanists was growing strong, there came forward a certain depraved clergyman named Titus Oates, who had been for a time perverted to Romanism, and had dwelt much with the Jesuits. He made himself Shaftesbury's tool, by declaring that he had gained knowledge of a great conspiracy against the peace of the realm. This "Popish Plot" was, he said, an agreement by a number of English Catholics to slay the king and introduce a French army into the realm in order to place James of York, the king's Romanist brother, on the throne. Now, it is probable enough that some of the accused were in correspondence with France, and letters were discovered from Coleman, secretary to the Duchess of York, written to friends abroad, which spoke of an approaching blow to the Protestant cause. But the blow was really to be dealt by Charles, not against him. It was he who was in truth conspiring to bring over the French and conquer his own realm by their aid.

[Sidenote: =Popular panic.=]

Oates, however, perjured himself up to the hilt, bringing forward accusations against all the leading English Romanists, and hinting that even Queen Catherine herself was privy to a plot to murder her husband. Many minor informers also sprang up to corroborate the venomous tale of Oates. The nation was seriously alarmed. A perfect outburst of frenzy followed, and every Romanist in England was denounced as a disciple of Guy Fawkes. Charles, to his shame, pretended to take the story seriously, though none knew better than he its folly.

[Sidenote: =The Exclusion Bill.--The Habeas Corpus Act.=]

A new Parliament met in March, 1679; it was elected in the full flood of indignation against the "Plot," and Shaftesbury found that he could command a clear majority of its votes. He used his power to bring in a bill excluding the Duke of York, as an avowed Romanist, from the throne. To save his brother's rights, Charles dissolved the Commons before they could pass it. The only work that this Parliament had succeeded in carrying through was the Habeas Corpus Act, a very important enactment prohibiting arbitrary imprisonment without a trial. No man was to be kept in gaol untried, and penalties were imposed on the gaoler who should detain him, and the judge who should refuse to hear him plead. This principle required to be explicitly reasserted under the later Stuarts, though it is found formulated in Magna Carta itself.

[Sidenote: =Pretensions of the Duke of Monmouth.=]

The second Parliament of 1679 was, to the king's disgust, almost as much under the influence of Shaftesbury and the alarmists as the first. The nation was still in a ferment; month after month prominent Catholics were imprisoned on the evidence of Oates and his gang, tried, and condemned to death. So great was the fear felt of the Romanist Duke of York, that a preposterous plan was formed by Shaftesbury and his friends to replace him as heir to the throne by the Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of the natural sons of King Charles. This was a manifest injustice to the Princess Mary, the Protestant daughter of Duke James. Her father's religion could not vitiate her rights. But Monmouth was a popular youth, of fair parts and abilities. He had won some military reputation by putting down a dangerous rebellion of the Scottish Covenanters, who had murdered the Archbishop of St. Andrews, risen in arms, and got possession of the Western Lowlands. After routing them at Bothwell Brig (June, 1679), Monmouth was saluted as a conquering hero, and rumours were put about that his mother, Lucy Walters, had been secretly married to the king. Charles himself hastened to deny this lie, but it had its effect, and a serious effort was made to substitute Monmouth for his uncle.

[Sidenote: =Shaftesbury loses ground.=]

All through 1680 the struggle was at its height, though Shaftesbury was gradually losing ground, owing to the unwise violence of his conduct, and the growing disrepute of his tool, Titus Oates, whose reckless falsehoods were beginning to be detected by sober men. The contest turned on the fate of the Exclusion Bill, which declared James incapable of reigning, and transferred his rights to his daughter Mary, the Princess of Orange, though many suspected that Shaftesbury intended to substitute Monmouth for the princess.

[Sidenote: ="Petitioners and Abhorrers."--Whigs and Tories.=]

It is at this moment that the famous political names which were to rule England for the next century and a half come into sight. At first the opponents of the Exclusion Bill, the supporters of the divine right of hereditary succession, and the defenders of the Duke of York, were called "Abhorrers," from the numerous addresses which they sent to the king declaring their abhorrence of the Exclusion Bill. On the other hand, the supporters of Shaftesbury, and the believers in the Popish Plot, were called "Petitioners," from the petitions which they kept signing in favour of the bill. But soon two less cumbrous, if stranger, names were found for the two parties. The "Abhorrers" were nicknamed "Tories" by their enemies, from the appellation of a horde of banditti, who lurked in the bogs of Ireland. The Petitioners, on the other hand, were christened "Whigs" by their rivals, after the name of a fanatical sect of Scottish Covenanters. These titles, bestowed in ridicule at first, were finally accepted in earnest, and became the usual denomination of the two great parties.

The Exclusion Bill was passed by Shaftesbury and his majority of Whigs in the Commons, once in 1679, and once in 1680. But the House of Lords threw it out, and Charles dissolved the Parliament once and again, till in 1681 the fear of the Popish Plot began to blow over, and the violence of Shaftesbury to disgust the moderate members of his own party. The cruel execution, in December, 1680, of Lord Stafford, an old Romanist peer of blameless life, whose innocence was known to all, was the last and most damaging triumph of the Whigs. Its injustice caused many of Shaftesbury's supporters to fall away. His intrigues in favour of Monmouth, and the open support which he gave to the lying Oates, had ruined him.

[Sidenote: =Fall of Shaftesbury.--The Rye-House Plot.=]

In 1681 the king accused him of high treason for collecting armed followers to overawe Parliament. A London jury refused to convict him, and he plunged into still more desperate courses. Conspiring with Lord William Russell and Algernon Sydney to raise rebellion, he was detected and fled over-sea to escape punishment. Some of his more desperate followers went on with his plot, which they developed into a plan for assassinating Charles as he passed the Rye House in Hertfordshire, on his way to Newmarket. The disclosure of this reckless conspiracy ruined the Whigs; the whole party was believed to have been privy to it, though it was in truth the work of a very small clique, headed by one Colonel Rumbold, an old Cromwellian officer (1682).

[Sidenote: =Execution of Russell and Sydney.=]

The king, finding that public opinion was veering round to his side, was emboldened to strike a blow at the whole Whig faction. Mixing up the Rye-House Plot with Shaftesbury's abortive plans, he seized all their chief leaders, and had them tried for high treason. Subservient judges and a packed jury made their fall easy. Lord William Russell and Algernon Sydney were beheaded; Lord Essex committed suicide in prison. The evidence connecting Russell and Sydney with the assassination plot was trivial, and their execution little else than a judicial murder (1683).

[Sidenote: =Death of Charles.=]

Charles was now in a better position to carry out his long-concealed plan for the restoration of arbitrary government and the furthering of Romanism than at any previous time in his reign. He left Parliament unsummoned for more than two years, prepared to renew his alliance with France, endeavoured to collect a body of ministers who would second his views, and largely increased his standing army. He made several unconstitutional encroachments on the liberty of his subjects--such as forfeiting the charters of many cities, including London itself--and was cautiously feeling his way towards more decisive measures. But on February 6, 1685, his plans were suddenly interrupted by a fatal apoplectic stroke, which carried him off before he had attained the age of fifty-five. On his death-bed he had himself openly received into the Roman Catholic faith, of which he had so long been the secret partisan. It was fortunate that his schemes were brought to such an untimely end, for if a cautious foe to the liberties of England, he was a very clever and insidious one. Of the stubborn folly which ruined his successor, he would never have been guilty.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] General Harrison and nine other members of the court, Colonels Axtell and Hacker, who had superintended the execution, and Sir Henry Vane, though he was not an actual regicide.

[44] Only notable in British history because she brought the isle of Bombay as her dowry.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXX. JAMES II

1685-1688.

No greater testimony to the caution and cleverness of Charles II. can be given than the fact that, after a reign of twenty-five stormy years, he died in possession of a very considerable measure of absolute power, having lived down his troubles, secured the devotion of the larger half of the nation, strengthened himself with a standing army, and dispensed for three years with any summons of Parliament.

His successor was to prove that a man without tact and pliability, pursuing the same schemes for the restoration of arbitrary government and Romanism, might wreck himself in three years and die an exile.

[Sidenote: =Character of James.=]

Yet James of York was in many ways a stronger and a better man than Charles II. He possessed conscience and courage in a far greater measure than his brother. His life was not an open scandal; his word could be relied upon; his attachment to his faith was devoted and sincere. But he had three ruinous faults: he was obstinate to blindness; long after a fact had become patent to all men, he would refuse to recognize its existence. He was full of a bigoted self-sufficiency that arose from an overweening belief in his own good intentions and wisdom. Lastly, he was a man unable to forgive or forget; there was no drop of mercy in his composition; he could understand nothing but the letter of the law. Blind, conceited, pitiless, he was bound to win the hatred of all who differed from him, and it was soon to be discovered that nine-tenths of the English nation were numbered in that class.

James was a man of business and method, as well as a man of action. He had commanded a fleet with credit in the Dutch war; he had presided with success at the Admiralty till he was compelled to resign that office by the Test Act. He had ruled Scotland for a time with a very firm, if a rigid, hand. But no amount of mere administrative ability could make up for his entire want of judgment, foresight, and geniality.

[Sidenote: =The Tory party.=]

Yet on his accession, the new king had everything in his favour. The Tory party was still in the ascendency which it had enjoyed ever since the Whigs had been discredited by the Rye-House Plot. It was resolved to trust and support James as long as he behaved in a constitutional manner, and had a strong confidence in his honesty. Accordingly, the king's first Parliament granted him the liberal income of £1,900,000 a year, and protested its complete reliance on his wisdom and good intentions. Nor was any objection made when James sought out and punished the informers who had fabricated the Popish Plot, though their chastisement was very barbarous. Oates, their chief, received 1700 lashes twice within forty-eight hours, yet survived, in spite of a sentence which had obviously been intended to kill him.

[Sidenote: =Rebellion of Monmouth and Argyle.=]

The first real shock to the confidence of the nation in the king was caused by the cruelty with which he put down an insurrection which broke out against him in the summer that followed his accession. The late king's bastard son, James, Duke of Monmouth, the tool of Shaftesbury in 1680, was living in exile in Holland, along with many violent Whigs, who were charged, truly or falsely, with participation in the Rye-House Plot. Monmouth, a vain and presumptuous young man, could not read the signs of the times, and thought that all England would rise to overturn a Romanist king, if only a Protestant leader presented himself to lead the people. Without securing any tangible promises of support from the chiefs of the Whig party in England, he resolved to attempt an invasion. He was to be aided by Archibald, Earl of Argyle, the exiled chief of the Scottish Covenanters, who undertook to stir up a rising among his clansmen in the Highlands.

[Sidenote: =Argyle taken and executed.=]

Argyle landed in Scotland in May, 1685; Monmouth came ashore at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, in June. Each had brought a very small force with him, and relied wholly on the support he hoped to find at home. Argyle raised the Campbells, but found none else to join him; after a few days his men dispersed, and he was taken and beheaded.

[Sidenote: =Battle of Sedgemoor.--Monmouth executed.=]

Monmouth was at first more fortunate. He was well known and popular in Dorset and Somerset, and some thousands of countrymen came flocking to his banner, though none of the gentry would adhere to such a reckless adventurer. The duke appealed to all Protestants to aid him against a Papist king, declared that his mother had been the lawful wife of Charles II., and claimed the crown of England. But his proclamation did him no good, and his army of ploughmen and miners was but a half-armed rabble. Nevertheless, they fought bravely enough against James's regulars at Sedgemoor (July 5, 1685), and only dispersed when their leader fled in craven fear from the field. Monmouth was caught in disguise, and taken to London. He grovelled at the feet of James, and offered to submit to any indignity if his life might be spared. But the pitiless king, after chiding him for half an hour, sent him to the scaffold.

[Sidenote: =Kirke and Jeffreys.--"The Bloody Assize."=]

His fate provoked little sympathy, for he had clearly brought his trouble on his own head. But the cruel punishment that was dealt out to the poor ignorant peasants who had followed him shocked the whole nation. Hundreds of rebels taken in arms were hung, or shot after a summary court-martial by the brutal Colonel Kirke, a veteran who had learnt ferocity by serving against the Moors in Africa. After the summary executions were over, Judge Jeffreys, a clever but worthless lawyer, whom the king made the chief instrument of his cruelties, descended on the south-western counties. In the "Bloody Assize," as his circuit was called, he put to death more than 300 persons, after the barest mockery of a trial, and sent 1000 more to work as slaves on the plantations of Jamaica and Barbados. Of all Jeffreys' judicial murders, the worst was that of the aged Lady Lisle. For having sheltered a fugitive from Sedgemoor, she was sentenced by this barbarian to be burnt, and he thought it an act of clemency when he commuted the penalty to beheading (September, 1685).

[Sidenote: =The king's Romanist schemes.=]

The ease with which he had crushed the rising of Monmouth and Argyle emboldened James to take seriously in hand the great project of his life, the restoration of Romanism. His plan was to fill all offices in Church and State with open or secret Papists, and to overawe discontent by the muskets of a large standing army. That such a plan was dangerous, and even impossible, when nine-tenths of the nation was devotedly attached to Protestantism, he does not seem to have realized. He relied on his observations of the men about his own person, for many of the demoralized courtiers of Charles II. were quite ready to become Romanists if only it brought them preferment. They would probably have become Jews or Moslems if it had been made worth their while. The basest of these degraded opportunists was James's chief minister, Lord Sunderland, the tool of all his worst acts of tyranny and folly. With such a man as his chief adviser, and the infamous Jeffreys--now made Lord Chancellor--as his chief executioner, the king was likely to go to any lengths. Of his other councillors the chief were Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, a bigoted Irish Romanist of very depraved manners, and Father Petre, a Jesuit priest.

[Sidenote: =The Test Act and the dispensing power.=]

James commenced his campaign against Protestantism in 1686. The chief bar to the admission of Papists to office in the public service and the army was the Test Act of 1673, which excluded all save English Churchmen from any post in the state. Knowing that no Parliament would repeal this act, James resolved to annul it on his own authority. One of the oldest weapons of the Stuarts was the claim to a "dispensing power," a right of the king to grant immunity on his own authority for offences against the law of the land. This was the tool which he had now resolved to employ against the Test Act. He appointed a Romanist named Sir Edward Hales colonel of one of the new regiments which he was busily employed in raising. Hales was prosecuted for illegally accepting the commission, and pleaded in defence that the king had dispensed him from taking the test. The case was brought before a bench of judges carefully packed by the orders of James, and they gave the wholly unconstitutional decision that the king's dispensation covered Hales from all penalties. Armed with this opinion of the judges, James began to give place and office to Romanists right and left; they were made judges, officers, sheriffs, lord-lieutenants, mayors, all by virtue of the king's dispensing power. None but Catholics could for the future hope for any preferment.

[Sidenote: =Attack on the Church and Oxford University.=]

The king next proceeded to attack the Church of England; once more pleading his dispensing power, he began to give Papists office in the Church. Not only did he make over crown livings to them, but he filled two vacant headships of Oxford colleges with notorious Romanists, showing thereby his intention to put the control of education into the hands of his own co-religionists. Somewhat later, he expelled the whole body of Fellows and Scholars of Magdalen College, for refusing to receive the President whom he had chosen for them [1687], herein following the example of Charles, who had deprived the philosopher John Locke of his studentship at Christ Church, for holding Whig opinions. To deal with things religious, James revived the Court of High Commission, one of the old despotic courts which the Long Parliament had abolished forty years before; he placed Jeffreys at its head, and used it for the oppression of all clergy who showed signs of opposing him. Meanwhile a large army, including several Irish regiments, was concentrated at Hounslow to overawe London.

The nation, though sorely tried by these exhibitions of James's high-handed bigotry, required still further provocation before it rose against him. The Tory party were so deeply committed to the doctrine of divine right and passive obedience, that it required an even more desperate attack on the Church of England to set them in arms against the king. The Whigs were so crushed and depressed, that they had not the heart to rebel. It may be added that the fact that the king was an elderly man, while his heiress Mary, Princess of Orange, was a firm Protestant, kept many men quiet. They held that the king must die ere long, and that his wild schemes would die with him.

[Sidenote: =The Declaration of Indulgence.=]

James began to embark on his last fatal measures of arbitrary power in the spring of 1688. Without calling or consulting a Parliament, he determined to issue on his own authority a "Declaration of Indulgence," which was to suspend all laws that were directed against Romanists. To partly cloak his plan, he added that the Declaration was also to free the Protestant Dissenters from the penal code of 1664-5. Toleration in itself is good, but toleration imposed by an autocratic and illegal mandate is a suspicious boon. The Dissenters themselves repudiated the gift, when given from such doubtful hands. To show his complete mastery over the Church of England, James ordered that the Declaration should be publicly read from the pulpit by every beneficed minister in the land.

[Sidenote: =The trial of the seven bishops.=]

This command provoked even the loyal Tories to resistance. When the appointed day came round, the clergy, almost without exception, refused to read the Declaration. The archbishop, William Sancroft, and six of his suffragans,[45] addressed a petition to the king begging that they might be excused from having to issue such a document. James was furious, and in his rage declared his intention of putting the bishops on trial for publishing a seditious libel--a most absurd description of their modestly worded plea. The seven prelates were arrested and sent as prisoners to the Tower. A month later they were brought before the Court of King's Bench. The whole nation was in agony as to their fate, but the preposterous nature of the prosecution abashed even the king's subservient judges. The charge was pressed in a half-hearted way, and the jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty." James's vexation at this acquittal was only surpassed by his outburst of wrath when he saw the universal demonstration of joy with which the news was received. Even his own soldiery in the camp at Hounslow lighted bonfires to celebrate the event.

[Sidenote: =Birth of "the Old Pretender."=]

In the very month of the acquittal of the seven bishops, an event happened which profoundly affected the king's prospects. His young second wife, Mary of Modena, bore him a son, the prince afterwards known as "the Old Pretender" (June 10, 1688). The birth of this child gave the king a Romanist heir, and cut the Princess of Orange out of the succession to the throne. This unexpected news filled England with dismay; it was evident that the king's schemes were no longer to be terminated with his own life; a dynasty of Romanists loomed on the horizon. In their wrath many men asserted that the child was supposititious, a changeling foisted on the nation by the king's malice. This groundless tale received much credit, for anything was believed possible in such a bigot as James.

[Sidenote: =Invitation to William of Orange.=]

The birth of the Prince of Wales was immediately followed by the formation of a serious conspiracy to overthrow the king. The Tories forgot their loyalty and joined the Whigs. The first sketch of the plot was drawn up by the old Tory minister, Danby, in conjunction with the Earl of Devonshire, the chief of the Whigs, and Henry Sydney and Edward Russell, the kinsmen of the two Whig leaders of those names who had been beheaded by Charles II. in 1683. Their plan was to call over to England the Princess Mary and her husband the Prince of Orange, and set them up against the king. William of Orange, the champion of Protestantism on the continent, and the deadly foe of James's ally, the King of France, was known to be ready to strike any blow that would bring England over to his side. He had long been in secret communication with many leading men among the Whigs, and welcomed the appearance of a definite invitation with joy. On receiving satisfactory assurances of support, he consented to raise every man that he could put into the field, and to cross to England.

James at first received the news of suspicious warlike preparations in Holland with indifference. He relied on the fact that William was at war with France, and reasoned that while the Low Countries were threatened by French troops, his son-in-law would never dare to leave his own country unprotected and invade England. But the French king was more set on an invasion of Germany than on the conquest of Holland, and when Lewis sent his armies across the Upper Rhine, William was left unwatched, and was able to make his preparations at leisure. Many Englishmen of mark, Tories as well as Whigs, slipped over to join him, and bade him strike as quickly as possible. Though the storms of autumn were already raging, the Prince set sail from Helvoetsluys on the 2nd of November, and steered down the Channel, with fifty men-of-war, and transports carrying some 13,000 men.

James had a much larger force garrisoning the south of England. Combining his regular army with a number of newly raised regiments of Irish Romanists, he had quite 40,000 men under arms. But he soon discovered that the temper of the greater part of them was very bad; except the numerous Catholic officers to whom he had given commissions, there was hardly a man who could be trusted.

[Sidenote: =James reverses his policy.=]

When the news of William's final preparations reached England, James was suddenly struck by a panic as irrational as his previous over-confidence. He fell from blind arrogance into extreme depression, when he at last realized the universal discontent which his acts had created. With a craven and useless haste he suddenly began to endeavour to undo his policy of the last three years. He abolished the Court of High Commission, cancelled the appointments of many Romanist officials, recalled the Fellows whom he had banished from Oxford, and made the most profuse promises to respect all the rights and privileges of the Church of England for the future. But such conduct could not restore confidence; he could not make men forget the cruelties of the Bloody Assize, or the indignities which he had heaped on the seven bishops. Such a repentance at the eleventh hour deceived nobody.

[Sidenote: =Landing of William of Orange.--James deserted.=]

On the 5th of November, 1688, William of Orange landed at Torbay, and three days later he seized Exeter. James, who had looked for an invasion on the Eastern coast, at once began to march his numerous army towards Devonshire. There was a moment's pause ere the opponents met. For some days no one of note joined the Prince of Orange, and it seemed doubtful if those who had pledged themselves to his cause were about to keep their promise. But the hesitation was not for long. Ere a shot had been fired in the west, insurrections began to break out in all the parts of England where the king had no armed force in garrison. Lord Danby seized York and the Earl of Devonshire Nottingham. But this was not the worst; as James advanced westward, first single officers, then whole companies and regiments, began to slink away from his host and join the enemy. Even those whom he most trusted left him; his own son-in-law, Prince George of Denmark, the husband of his younger daughter Anne, was one of those who absconded. Another was one of his most trusted officers, John Churchill, afterwards the famous Duke of Marlborough. With abominable treachery, Churchill tried to kidnap his master before deserting, and almost succeeded in the attempt.

[Sidenote: =James flies to France.=]

Seeing his whole army melting away, James hastily returned to London, strove in vain to gain time by negotiating with the Prince of Orange, and then sent off his wife and son to France, and endeavoured to follow them himself. He was stopped by a mob at Faversham, in Kent, and forced back to the capital. But no one wished to keep him a prisoner, and, with the secret connivance of William of Orange, he was allowed to escape a second time, and to get clear away to France (December 18, 1688).

Thus ended in ignominious flight the preposterous attempt of a blind and arrogant king to coerce England into surrendering its constitution and its religion. The edifice which James had so laboriously reared, crumbled to pieces at the first touch of force from without.

FOOTNOTE:

[45] Their names were Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough, Lloyd of St. Asaph, Trelawney of Bristol, Lake of Chichester, and Turner of Ely.

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XXXI. WILLIAM AND MARY

1688-1702.

James II. had believed that by absconding to France he would plunge England into anarchy, and leave no constituted power behind him. With a childish worship of forms, he flung the Great Seal into the Thames as he fled, that no state document might be issued in due shape. His slow and pedantic mind conceived that the nation would be nonplussed by the loss of king and seal at once!

[Sidenote: =The Convention.=]

But Englishmen can always show a wise disregard for formulae when it is necessary. Though there was no king to summon a Parliament, yet a "Convention" at once met on the invitation of William of Orange. It consisted of the peers, and a lower House formed of all surviving members of the Commons who had sat under Charles II., together with the Aldermen and Common Councillors of London.

[Sidenote: =William and Mary to be joint sovereigns.=]

This body, though not a regularly constituted meeting of the two Houses, proceeded to deal at once with the question of the succession. There were three alternatives open--to make the Princess Mary queen in her father's room, or to crown both her and her husband William, or to declare them merely regents in the absence of the exiled king. The last alternative commended itself to many of the Tories, who still held strong theories about the divine right of kings, and were loath to surrender them by consenting to a deposition. But when the proposal was broached to William of Orange, he answered that he would never consent to be the mere locum tenens of his father-in-law. He would leave England if nothing more than the power of regent were granted him. It was then proposed that the Princess Mary should be queen regnant; but this too the prince refused--he would not become his wife's servant and minister. When the Tories showed signs of insisting on this project, William began to make preparations for returning to Holland. This brought the Convention to reason; they knew that they could not get on for a moment without the prince's guiding hand. Accordingly they were constrained to take the third course, and to offer the crown to William and Mary, as joint sovereigns with equal rights. No one spoke a word for Mary's infant brother, the Prince of Wales: not only was he over-seas in France, but most men believed him to be no true son of James II.

[Sidenote: =The Declaration of Rights.=]

Before the throne was formally offered to William and Mary, the Convention proceeded to draw up the famous Declaration of Rights. This document contained a list of the main principles of the constitution which had been violated by James II., with a statement that they were ancient and undoubted rights of the English people. It stigmatised the powers claimed by the late king to dispense with or suspend laws as illegal usurpations. It stated that every subject had a right to petition the king, and should not be molested for so doing--an allusion to the case of the seven bishops. It stipulated for the frequent summoning of Parliaments, and for free speech and debate within the two Houses. The raising and maintenance of a standing army without the permission of Parliament was declared illegal. In a clause recalling the most famous paragraph of Magna Carta, it was stated that all levying of taxes or loans without the consent of the representatives of the nation was illegal. The Declaration then proceeded to provide for the succession: William and Mary, or the survivor of them, were first to rule; then any children who might be born to them. If Mary died childless, the Princess Anne and her issue were to inherit her sister's rights. Finally, any member of the royal house professing Romanism, or even marrying a Romanist, was to forfeit all claim to the crown. The Declaration was afterwards confirmed and made permanent as the "Bill of Rights."

William and Mary swore to observe the Declaration, and were proclaimed on February 13, 1689, after an interregnum which had lasted two months since the flight of James II. to France.

[Sidenote: =Character of William.=]

The new king and queen were not a well-matched pair, though, owing to Mary's amiable and tactful temper, they agreed better than might have been expected. The queen was lively, kind-hearted, and genial, well loved by all who knew her. William was a morose and unsociable invalid, who only recovered his spirits when he left the court for the camp. In spite of his wretched health, he was a keen soldier, and had the reputation of being one of the best, if also one of the most unlucky, generals of his time. His talent chiefly showed itself in repairing the consequences of his defeats, which he did so cleverly that his conquerors seldom drew any advantage from their success. In private life William was cold, suspicious, and reticent. He reserved his confidence for his Dutch friends, openly saying that the English, who had betrayed their natural king, could not be expected to be true to a foreigner. He knew that he was a political necessity for them, and nothing more. Hence he neither loved them nor expected them to love him.

[Sidenote: =William and Lewis XIV.=]

William had expelled his father-in-law, not from a disinterested wish to put down his tyranny, nor merely from zeal against Romanism, but because he wished to see England drawn into the great European alliance against France, which it was his life's work to build up. He had spent all the days of his youth in opposing the ambition of the bigoted Lewis XIV., and all his thoughts were directed towards the construction of a league of states strong enough to keep the French from the Rhine. For Lewis was set on annexing the Spanish Netherlands, the Palatinate, and the duchy of Lorraine, so as to bring his frontier up to the great river. He had already made several steps towards securing his end, by seizing Alsace, the Franche Comté, and part of Flanders. If William had not hindered him, he would probably have accomplished his whole desire. But the Prince of Orange had induced the old enemies Spain and Holland to combine, and had enlisted the Emperor Leopold of Austria in his league. With the aid of England he thought that Lewis could be crushed beyond a doubt.

[Sidenote: =War with France declared.=]

On the 13th of May, 1689, William had his wish, for England declared war on Lewis. It was already made inevitable by the conduct of the French monarch, who had not only received the fugitive James, but had lent him men and money to aid him in recovering his lost realms.

But William was not to be able to divert the strength of England into the continental war quite so soon as he had expected. He was forced to fight for his new crown for nearly two years, before he was able to turn off again to lead the armies of the coalition against Lewis.

[Sidenote: =English opposition.--The Non-jurors.=]

The proclamation of William and Mary proved the beginning of new troubles both in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In England things were not serious: a certain portion of the Tory party declined to accept William as king, though they had been ready to take him as regent. For refusing to take the oath of allegiance to him, Archbishop Sancroft--the hero of the trial of the seven bishops--four other prelates, and four hundred clergy had been removed from their preferments. Some Tory laymen of scrupulous conscience gave up their offices. But these "Non-jurors," as they were called, made no open resistance, though many of them began to correspond secretly with the exiled king.

[Sidenote: =Scotland.--Career of Claverhouse.=]

In Scotland, the crisis was far more serious. Both Charles II. and James II. had governed that realm with an iron hand. They had placed the rule of the land in the hands of the Scottish Episcopalians, who formed a very small minority of the nation. The Covenanters had been sternly repressed, and their ineffective rising, ending in the fight of Bothwell Brig, had been put down with the most rigorous harshness.[46] When James was overturned, the persecuted Presbyterians rose in high wrath, and swept all his friends out of office. They followed the example of the English in offering the crown to William and Mary, and began to revenge their late oppression by very harsh treatment of their former rulers, the Scottish Episcopalians. But James II. had a following in Scotland; though not a very large one, it had an exceedingly able man at its head--John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, who had commanded the royal forces in the realm for the last ten years. Dundee succeeded in rousing a number of the Highland chiefs to take arms for James II., not so much because they loved the king as because they hated the great clan of the Campbells, now, as always, the mainstay of the Covenanting interest north of Clyde and Forth. The new government collected an army under General Mackay, and sent it against Dundee. But the Jacobite leader retired before it till Mackay's men had pushed up the long and narrow pass of Killiecrankie. When the Lowland troops were just emerging from the northern end of the pass, Dundee fell on from an ambush. The wild rush of his Highlanders swept away the leading battalions,[47] and Mackay's entire force fled in disgraceful rout back to Dunkeld. The Jacobite general, however, fell in the moment of victory, and when his strong and able hand was removed, the rebel clans dropped asunder, and ceased to endanger the stability of William's throne (June 17, 1689). The insurrection, however, continued to linger on in the remoter recesses of the Highlands for two years more.

[Sidenote: =Ireland.--Tyrconnel and the Catholic army.=]

In Ireland the struggle was far longer and more bitter than in Scotland. In that country the old quarrel between the natives and the English settlers broke out under the new form of loyalty to James or William. In the time of Charles II., the old Irish or Anglo-Irish proprietors had been restored to about one-third of the lands from which they had been evicted by the Cromwellian settlement of 1652. They hoped, now that they had a king of their own faith, to recover the remaining two-thirds from the English planters. From the moment of his accession, James had done his best for the Irish Romanists. He had decreed the revocation of Cromwell's settlement, he had filled all places of trust and emolument with natives, and had raised an Irish army in which no Protestant was admitted to serve either as soldier or officer. His Lord-Deputy was Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, a violent and unscrupulous man, who was prepared to go even further than his master in the direction of suppressing Protestantism.

When the news of the landing of William of Orange at Torbay reached Ireland, the Lord-Deputy kept faith with James, and began arming the whole nation in his cause, till he is said to have had nearly 100,000 undisciplined levies under his orders. At the same time he summoned all Protestants in Ireland to give up their arms. The English settlers saw that the predominance of Tyrconnel and his hordes meant danger to themselves, and promptly fled by sea, or took refuge in the few towns where the Protestants had a majority, leaving their houses and property to be plundered by the Lord-Deputy's "rapparees." In Ulster, where they mustered most strongly, they shut themselves up in the towns of Derry and Enniskillen, proclaimed William and Mary as king and queen, and sent to implore instant aid from England.

[Sidenote: =James II. in Dublin.=]

In March, 1689, James II. landed in Ireland, convoyed by a French fleet, and bringing a body of French officers, 10,000 stand of arms, and a treasure of £112,000 pounds, all given him by Lewis XIV. He found himself master of the whole country except Derry and Enniskillen, and promptly ordered the siege of these places to begin. He summoned a Parliament to meet in Dublin, and there undid, so far as words and acts could do, all the doings of the English in Ireland for the last two centuries. The Irish peers and commons voted the resumption by the old native houses of all the lands confiscated by Elizabeth, James I., and Cromwell. They made Romanism the established religion of the land, and declared Ireland completely independent of the English Parliament. All this was natural and excusable enough; but a bloodthirsty act of attainder followed, condemning to death as traitors no less than 2500 Protestant peers, gentry, and clergy, who had either declared for William, or at least refused to join James.

[Sidenote: =Siege of Derry and Enniskillen.=]

This made the civil war an affair of life and death, since the Protestants of Derry and Enniskillen dared not surrender when they knew they would be treated as convicted traitors. Hence it came that both places held out with desperate resolution, though help was long in coming from England. Derry held out unsuccoured for 105 days (April to August, 1689) till it was relieved by a small fleet, which burst the boom that the Irish had thrown across Loch Foyle, and brought food to the starving garrison. The Protestants of Enniskillen saved themselves by an even more desperate exhibition of courage. Sallying out of their town, they beat the force that blockaded them at the battle of Newtown Butler (August 2, 1689), and drove them completely away.

In spite of these successes, the Ulstermen must have been crushed if the long-expected English army had not begun to cross the channel. But in October a force at last appeared in Down, under the Duke of Schomberg, a veteran French officer in the service of William. Schomberg had been expelled from the French army for refusing to become a Romanist, and devoted the last years of his life to a crusade against the bigoted Lewis XIV., who had driven him from home and office for religion's sake.

[Sidenote: =William lands in Ireland.=]

Through the winter of 1689, the Irish and English faced each other in Ulster without coming to a decisive engagement. But in the spring of 1690, William arrived in person with large reinforcements, and began to advance on Dublin with an army of 35,000 men.

James had done but little to strengthen his position during the eighteen months that Ireland had been in his hands. His army was still half trained and unpaid. He had caused untold distress to all classes by issuing a forced currency of copper crowns and shillings, which his creditors were compelled to accept or incur the charge of treason. His councillors, English and Irish, were quarrelling fiercely. His troops were unwisely dispersed, so that on the news of William's approach he found himself unable to concentrate them in time.

[Sidenote: =The Battle of the Boyne.=]

He gathered, however, some 30,000 men, of whom 6000 were French, and took up a strong position behind the river Boyne, to cover Dublin. In this position he was attacked by William, whose troops forded the river and charged up the opposite slope. The Irish cavalry fought well enough, but many regiments of their undisciplined infantry broke and fled after a few discharges. The wreck of the Jacobite army was only saved by the French auxiliaries, who stubbornly defended the pass of Duleek till the fugitives had got away (July 1, 1690).

[Sidenote: =Ireland subdued.--"The Pacification of Limerick."=]

James seemed panic-stricken by the result of the battle of the Boyne. Abandoning Dublin without firing a shot, he fled in craven haste and took ship for France. His deserted followers, however, made a long and gallant resistance in the West. William returned to England, leaving his army under the Dutch general Ginckel to subdue Connaught and Munster (September, 1690). The task proved harder than had been expected; Ginckel was unable to move till the next spring for want of food and transport. He forced the line of the Shannon by storming Athlone in June, 1691, but did not break the back of the Irish resistance till he had won the well-fought battle of Aughrim, scattered the army of Connaught, and slain its commander, the French marshal St. Ruth. Even after this decisive fight, Limerick held out for nearly three months. It surrendered on October 3, 1691, on terms which permitted the Irish army to take ship for France, and 11,000 men passed over-seas to serve Lewis XIV. At the same time, the representatives of William signed the "Pacification of Limerick," which granted an amnesty to all Irish who did not emigrate, and stipulated that they should be left unmolested in possession of the very limited civil and religious rights that they had enjoyed under Charles II.

[Sidenote: =The Protestant ascendency.=]

These terms were broken in a most faithless manner by the Irish Parliament, now entirely in the hands of the victorious Protestant minority, only a few years after they had been signed (1697). By a new penal code that body prohibited Romanists from practising as lawyers, physicians, or schoolmasters, took away from them the right of sitting in Parliament, made marriages of Protestants and Romanists illegal, banished all monks and all clergy except registered parish priests from the realm, and prohibited any Romanist from possessing arms. But their worst device was a cruel scheme for promoting conversions, by a law which gave any son of a Romanist who abjured his religion, the right to succeed to all his father's property, to the exclusion of his unconverted brothers and sisters. Under this harsh code the Irish groaned for a whole century, but they had been so crushed by William's blows that they never rose in rebellion again till 1798.

The whole of Ireland was subdued ere the spring of 1692 began. A month later occurred the cruel deed which marked the final end of the revolt in the Scottish Highlands. The wrecks of Dundee's followers had been scattered at the skirmish of Cromdale in 1690. But a few chiefs still refused their submission. William proclaimed that there should be an amnesty for all who surrendered before January 1, 1692. This opportunity was taken by all the Highlanders, save Macdonald of Glencoe, a petty chief of 200 families in Argyleshire. He made his submission a few days later than the appointed time. Lord Stair, the Secretary of State for Scotland, prevailed upon William to give him leave to make an example of Macdonald and his tribe. A regiment was sent to Glencoe, and courteously received by the chief, who thought his tardy submission had brought him impunity. But, obeying their orders, the soldiery fell at midnight upon their unsuspecting hosts, shot Macdonald and all the men they could catch, and drove the survivors out of their valley. This cold-blooded outrage was sanctioned by William, but only because he had been carefully kept in ignorance of the fact that Macdonald had submitted a few days after the appointed date.

[Sidenote: =The French war.--Tory disaffection.=]

While the Irish war had been in progress, important events had been taking place nearer home. The war on the continent had proved indecisive, though if either party had a slight advantage, it was the French. Even at sea the fleets of Lewis at first gained some successes, mainly owing to the culpable slackness of the English admiral, Lord Torrington. His negligence--treachery would perhaps be the more appropriate word--was only a symptom of a very widespread spirit of disloyalty among the Tory party. Many persons had not got out of the Revolution the private advantages for which they had hoped. William III. had endeavoured to hold an equal balance between the English parties, but could not wholly conceal his suspicions of the Tories and his private preference for the Whigs. In consequence, some of those who had been foremost in expelling James II., now began to intrigue with him, and expressed a more or less real sympathy with his plans for recovering his crown. Among these traitors were the best sailor and the best soldier that England owned, Admiral Russell, who succeeded Torrington in command of the Channel fleet, and John Churchill--the Marlborough of later days--who had been appointed commander of the English troops whom William had taken to the continent. It is some palliation to their guilt that they neither of them actually did desert William in the moment of trial, but both were undoubtedly guilty of habitual correspondence with the enemy. Churchill even descended so far into the depths of baseness as to send secret intelligence of William's plans to the French--though, with characteristic duplicity, he sent them too late to be of any use.

[Sidenote: =The battle of La Hogue.=]

How much these secret protestations of loyalty to James meant, was shown in 1692 by the event of the battle of La Hogue. The French king had collected an army in Normandy to invade England, and ordered up his ships from Brest to convoy it, relying on the promise of Russell that he would bring over the Channel fleet. But when the squadron of De Tourville came in sight, the admiral promptly attacked it. Either the spirit of fighting had overcome him, or compunction for his treachery smote him at the last moment. At any rate, he fell briskly upon the French--whose squadron was much inferior in numbers--destroyed twelve ships, and completely scattered the rest. This victory gained Russell a very undeserved peerage, and saved England from all danger of a French invasion or a Jacobite rising (May 19, 1692).

[Sidenote: =The war in the Netherlands, 1692-1695.=]

Meanwhile the armies of Lewis XIV. and William were contending obstinately in the Netherlands, without any marked success on either side. William was opposed by a general as able as himself in Marshal Luxembourg, and met his usual ill luck in the field. He was defeated at two great pitched battles, Steenkerke (August, 1692), and Landen (July, 1693), yet after each engagement he made such a formidable front, that the enemy gained nothing by his victory, and hardly won a foot of ground in the Spanish Netherlands. At each of these fights the English troops were in the thick of the fray, and justified by their conduct the anxiety that William had always shown to have England on his side. Yet Churchill, their best general, was not leading them; he had been deservedly disgraced in 1692, when his intrigues with James II. were discovered. When at last the fortune of war began to turn in favour of the allies (mainly owing to the death of William's great opponent, Marshal Luxembourg), it was again the English troops who got the chief credit in the one great success of the king's military life--the storm of Namur. When that great fortress, whose lofty citadel, overhanging the Meuse, was the strongest place in Belgium, was taken by assault in the very face of a French army of 80,000 men, it was the English infantry, under Lord Cutts, who forced their way into the breaches and compelled Marshal Boufflers to surrender (August, 1695).

[Sidenote: =The treaty of Ryswick.=]

After the fall of Namur the war languished: the King of France saw his resources wasting away, and, in spite of all his efforts, had utterly failed to conquer the Netherlands, though his armies had been somewhat more successful in Italy and Spain. He finally consented to treat for peace, which, after long negotiations, was at last secured by the treaty of Ryswick (1697). This was the first occasion on which the ambitious and grasping king had to own defeat. Making terms with England, Holland, Spain, and Austria, he surrendered all that he had gained since 1678, with the single exception of the town of Strasburg. He was also compelled to recognize William as the lawful King of England, though he refused to expel James II. and his family from their asylum at St. Germains, where they had been dwelling since 1691.

[Sidenote: =English factions.=]

English domestic politics during the time of the struggle with Lewis XIV. had presented a shameful spectacle. It is difficult to say whether the Whigs or the Tories disgraced themselves the more, by their factious violence and treacherous intrigues. In all her history Britain has never known such a sordid gang of self-seeking, greedy, and demoralized statesmen, as the generation who had been reared in the evil times of Charles II. Danby, the corrupt old Tory minister of 1674; Sunderland, the renegade tool of James II.; the traitors Russell and Churchill, were typical men of the day. The party warfare of Whig and Tory was prosecuted by disgraceful personalities--impeachments for corruption, embezzlement, or treacherous correspondence with France; and, to the shame of England, the accusations were generally true. Even the unamiable William III. appears a comparatively dignified and sympathetic figure among these squalid intriguers. We cannot wonder that he disliked and distrusted Englishmen, when those with whom he had most to do were such a crew of sharpers and hypocrites. For eight years he contrived to combine Tories and Whigs in his ministry, an extraordinary testimony to his powers of management, and to his subjects' blind love of office. His own troubles were constant and galling; not only was he abused by both political parties for his moderation, but he was openly accused of favouritism and even of corruption. His very life was not safe: a conspiracy formed by some extreme Tories and Jacobites, headed by a member of Parliament named Sir John Fenwick, came to light in 1696, which was found to involve a plot to shoot the king as he was on his way to hunt in Richmond Park. When the conspirators were arrested and examined, evidence came to hand which proved that half the statesmen in England had been corresponding with James II., though it is true that no one of importance had been implicated in the actual assassination plot. It is no wonder that William grew yet more sour and cold as the years passed over his head. He had lost his bright and able wife, Queen Mary, on December 28, 1694, and after her death he felt himself more than ever a stranger in England. If only the political exigencies of his situation would have allowed it, he would have preferred to return to Holland for good.

[Sidenote: =Reform of the coinage--The Bank of England founded.=]

Only two successful political experiments emerged from the faction-ridden times of William III. The first was the reform of the coinage in 1695, when the clipped and worn money of the Tudors and Stuarts was honestly redeemed by the government for new and good pieces--in earlier days the state had always cheated the public on the occasion of a recoinage. The other was the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694. This excellent device was intended to give the nation a solid and solvent bank, provided with a government guarantee, that should be above the dangers of fraud and ill luck which render private banks dangerous to the investor. At the same time, in return for the grant of the government guarantee, the new Bank of England contracted to lend the state money, and took over the management of the National Debt, then a small matter of a very few millions.

[Sidenote: =The Spanish Succession.=]

The peace which followed the treaty of Ryswick lasted for four uneasy years only. The old war had hardly ceased before a new trouble began to appear on the horizon. This was the vexed question of the Spanish Succession. The reigning king of Spain, Charles II. was a hypochondriacal invalid. His next of kin was his eldest sister, Maria Theresa, who had wedded Lewis XIV.; her son, the Dauphin, would have been the natural heir to Spain, if his mother had not executed on her marriage a deed of renunciation of her rights of succession. After the Dauphin, the nearest relative of Charles II. was his younger sister Margaret, the wife of the Emperor Leopold I.; but the rights of this princess and her daughter, Maria Antonia, were also barred by a renunciation, made when she married the Emperor. Next in the family came Leopold himself, as the son of an aunt of Charles II., who had made no such engagement at her espousals. The question turned on the validity of the renunciations made by the two infantas. Lewis XIV. said that his wife's agreement was worthless, because no one can sign away the rights of their heirs. Yet the document had been solemnly sanctioned by the Cortes, the Spanish Parliament. The Emperor stood out for the validity of the document, and urged, not the claims of his Bavarian daughter, who had also been the victim of her mother's renunciation, but his own right as grandson of Philip III.

PHILIP III., 1598-1621. | +----------------------+--------------+ | | PHILIP IV., Maria = FERDINAND 1621-1665. | III., | | Emperor. +--+---------+-------------------------+ | | | | +---+ | | | | CHARLES II., Maria = Lewis XIV. Margaret = Leopold, = Eleanor 1665-1700. Theresa. | of France. | Emperor. | of | | | Neuburg. Lewis, Maximilian = Maria | the of | Antonia. | Dauphin. Bavaria. | | | | +-----+----+ +-------------+---+ | | | | | Joseph of Joseph I, Charles, Lewis, Philip, Bavaria, Emperor. Archduke. Duke of Burgundy. Duke of Anjou. died 1699.

The real difficulty of the situation lay in the fact that all Europe viewed with dismay the union of Spain and France, and was very little better pleased at the idea of the union of Spain and the Empire. The Spanish dominions were still so broad and so wealthy, that they would throw out the balance of power in Europe, if they were united to any other large state. For Charles II. reigned not only over Spain, but in Belgium, in Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, and over the rich Spanish colonies in Mexico, the West Indies, South America, and the Malay Archipelago.

[Sidenote: =The first Partition Treaty.=]

While Charles II. was slowly sinking into his grave, all his heirs were busily engaged in discussing the changes that must follow his decease. Both Lewis and the Emperor saw that it would be unwise to claim Spain for themselves, therefore the French king named his youngest grandson, Philip, Duke of Anjou, as his representative, while the Austrian passed on his personal claims to his younger son, the Archduke Charles. They then arrived at an agreement that neither Philip nor Charles should have Spain itself, but that each should have compensation for resigning his full claim--the archduke was to take Milan, Duke Philip Naples and Sicily. Meanwhile Spain, Belgium, and the Indies were to go to the young Prince of Bavaria, the one claimant who was unobjectionable to all Europe; a secret treaty to this effect was signed, and carefully kept from the knowledge of the Spaniards, to whom it would have been very offensive, as taking away their obvious right to choose their own king. England and Holland, however, were both made consenting parties to the treaty, of which William III. fully approved.

[Sidenote: =The second Partition Treaty.=]

But in 1699 the young Prince of Bavaria died, leaving no brother or sister to succeed to his claim. The whole matter of the succession was again thrown into confusion. But after long negotiation, Lewis XIV. agreed to permit the Archduke Charles to become King of Spain, if he were himself bought off with Naples, Sicily, and Milan.

[Sidenote: =Last will and death of Charles II.=]

But this compromise was never to come into operation. The news of it got abroad and reached Spain. Both Charles II. and his people were much enraged at seeing their empire parcelled out by foreigners without their own consent. Rousing himself on his very death-bed, the king solemnly declared Philip of Anjou his heir in the whole of the Spanish possessions, and expired immediately after (1700).

[Sidenote: =Philip of Anjou King of Spain.=]

The temptation to accept the legacy of King Charles, and to claim Spain and the Indies for his grandson, was too much for Lewis XIV. In spite of the elaborate engagements with the Emperor Leopold to which he had plighted his faith, he resolved to snatch at the prize. If Spain, Belgium, and half Italy fell into his grandson's hands, he thought that the house of Bourbon must give the law to the whole of Europe. Accordingly, the Duke of Anjou was allowed to accept the Spanish throne when the Cortes offered it to him, and was proclaimed king as Philip V.

[Sidenote: =William's war policy opposed by the Tories.=]

This was bound to lead to war. Austria could not brook the breach of faith, Holland and the minor German states could not tolerate the idea of seeing the Spanish Netherlands falling into the hands of a French prince. But if unaided by England, it was doubtful if the powers of Central Europe could face the united force of France and Spain. It was now all-important to know whether England would join them. William III. was eager to renew his old crusade against French aggression, but the English Parliament and people were far less certain of their purpose. The Tories, who were now dominant in Parliament, had of late been carping at every act of the king; they had cut down his revenue, forced him to reduce the standing army to 7000 men, and confiscated many estates in Ireland, which had been granted to his friends, Dutch and English. While William was dreaming of nothing but war, the Tory majority in the Lower House were solely intent on the impeachment of the Whig ministers who had been in office in 1696-1700, and on regulating the succession to the crown after William's death.

[Sidenote: =The Act of Settlement.=]

The important act which settled this question had become necessary on the death of William's nephew, the little Duke of Gloucester, the only surviving son of the Princess Anne. He was the sole near relative of the king who was not a Romanist, and, lest the crown should lapse back to James II. and his heirs, some new measures had to be taken. Accordingly the Parliament, Tory though it was, voted that the next Protestant heir should succeed on the death of William and his sister-in-law, the Princess Anne. This heir was a granddaughter of James I., the aged Electress Sophia of Hanover, the child of Frederic of the Palatinate and his wife Elizabeth of England, whose fortunes had moved the world so deeply some eighty years back. Her brother's children were all Romanists, and she was therefore preferred to them in the Act of Settlement. The crown was ensured to her and her heirs, to the prejudice of some dozen persons who stood before her in the line of succession.[48]

The act also laid down two important constitutional doctrines. In future the judges were to hold office quamdiu se bene gesserint, not at the king's pleasure, and only to be removable for misconduct upon an address of both Houses of Parliament. No pardon granted by the sovereign was to stand in the way of an impeachment by the Commons; ministers, therefore, would not be able to plead that they were irresponsible because the king had pardoned them.

[Sidenote: =Lewis acknowledges the Old Pretender.=]

It is very doubtful if the English Parliament would have consented to join in an alliance against France, if Lewis XIV. had not at this moment indulged in an ill-timed act of bravado which seemed especially designed to cast contempt on the "Act of Settlement." In 1701, the exiled James II. died at St. Germains. Lewis at once saluted his heir, the prince born in 1688, as rightful King of England, and hailed him by the title of James III.

[Sidenote: =England declares for war with France.=]

The whole English nation was deeply excited and angered at this breach of the agreement in the treaty of Ryswick, by which Lewis had recognized William III. as legitimate ruler of Britain. Thus it became easy for the king to urge them into the breach with France and alliance with the Emperor, which it was his aim to bring about. The Whigs got a majority in the new Parliament, which met in the winter of 1701-2, and showed themselves enthusiastically ready for a war with France.

[Sidenote: =Death of William.=]

Just as his schemes were on the point of success, King William was suddenly removed from the scene. He broke his collar-bone while out hunting at Hampton Court, his enfeebled constitution could not stand the shock, and he expired in a few days (March 8, 1702). But he could die in peace. His work had not been wasted; England was committed to the new war, and the ambition of Lewis XIV. was to be effectually bridled by the great alliance which William left behind him. The lonely and morose invalid regretted but little his own release from an existence of pain and toil, when he saw that the great aim of his life had been achieved.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] See p. 433.

[47] Killiecrankie was interesting, from the military point of view, for the complete victory of men armed with sword and target over regular troops carrying the musket. In close fight, the latter, for want of an easily fixed bayonet, proved inferior.

[48] See genealogical table of the Stuarts on p. 481.

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XXXII. ANNE

1702-1714.

[Sidenote: =Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark.=]

According to the provisions of the "Act of Settlement," the English crown passed, on the death of William III., to his sister-in-law, the Princess Anne, the second daughter of James II. The new sovereign was a worthy, pious woman, of simple domestic tastes, without a spark of intelligence or ambition. She was by far the most insignificant personage who had ever yet sat upon the throne of England. Her husband, Prince George of Denmark, was a fit match for her; he was reckoned the most harmless and the most stupid man within the four seas. "I have tried him drunk," said the shrewd Charles II., "and I have tried him sober, and there is nothing in him." He was the best of husbands, and always acted as his wife's humble attendant and admirer. He and his good-natured, placid, lymphatic spouse might possibly have managed a farm; it seemed almost ludicrous to see them set to manage three kingdoms.

[Sidenote: =Ascendency of Lady Churchill.=]

The worthy Anne was inevitably doomed to fall under the dominion of some mind stronger than her own. It was notorious to every one that for the last twenty years she had been managed and governed by her chief lady-in-waiting, Sarah, Lady Churchill, the wife of the intriguing general who had betrayed James II. in 1688, and William III. in 1692. They had been friends and companions from their girlhood, and the imperious Sarah had always had the mastery over the yielding Anne. The princess saw with her favourite's eyes, and spoke with her favourite's words. Any faint symptoms of independence on her part were promptly crushed by the hectoring tongue of Lady Churchill, who had acquired such an ascendency over her mistress that she permitted herself the strangest licence, and cowed and deafened her by her angry and voluble reproaches. It is only fair to say that she exercised almost as great a tyranny over her own husband. The suave and shifty general looked upon his wife with doting admiration, and yielded a respectful obedience to her caprices.

[Sidenote: =Ministerial changes.=]

It is a curious testimony to the survival of the personal power of the sovereign in England, that Anne's predilection for the two Churchills changed the face of domestic politics on her accession. During William's life, they had been eyed with distrust; now they became the most important personages in the realm. The queen dismissed most of the Whig ministers who had been in power when her brother-in-law died, and filled their places with Tories, or rather with friends and adherents of Churchill, who, though he called himself a Tory, was in reality a pure self-seeker who cared nothing for either party. The chief minister was Lord Godolphin, whose son had married Churchill's daughter, as shifty a politician as any of his contemporaries. He had long maintained a fruitless intrigue with the exiled Stuarts, but, when he came into power, dropped his correspondence with St. Germains, and ultimately became a Whig.

[Sidenote: =Policy of Churchill and Godolphin.=]

It was fortunate for England that Churchill and Godolphin were as clever as they were selfish. Though personally they were mere greedy adventurers, yet their policy was the best that could have been found. Churchill's military ambition made him anxious to proceed with the war which William III. had begun. The complete mastery over the queen which his wife possessed, made him firmly resolved to keep Anne on the throne at all costs. Hence there was no change either in the foreign or domestic policy of England: the new ministry were as much committed to maintaining the Protestant succession and the French war as their predecessors, though almost every individual among them had at one time or another held treasonable communications with James II.

[Sidenote: =Completion of the alliance against France.=]

The great alliance, therefore, which William III. had done his best to organize, was completed by the Godolphin cabinet, England, Holland, Austria, and most of the smaller states of the Empire bound themselves to frustrate the union of France and Spain, and to secure the inheritance of Charles II. for his namesake, the Austrian archduke. Portugal and Savoy joined the alliance ere the year was out.

[Sidenote: =Position and resources of Lewis XIV.=]

On the other side, Lewis XIV. had the support of Spain: for the first time for two centuries the Spaniards and French were found fighting side by side. Only a small minority of the people of the Peninsula refused to accept Philip of Anjou as their rightful sovereign, and adhered to the archduke; this minority consisted of the Catalans, the inhabitants of the sea-coast of North-Eastern Spain, who had an old grievance against their kings for depriving them of certain local rights and privileges. By reason of the Spanish alliance, Lewis started on the war in complete military possession of two most important frontier regions, the Milanese in Italy, and the whole of the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) in the North. He had also a strong position in Germany, owing to the fact that he had secured the alliance of those powerful princes, the Elector of Bavaria and the Prince-archbishop of Cologne, two brothers of the house of Wittelsbach who had an old family grudge against the Emperor.

War had been declared by England and her allies in 1702, but it was not till 1703 that important operations began. They were waged simultaneously on four separate theatres--the Spanish Netherlands, South Germany, North Italy, and Spain. It appeared at first as if Lewis XIV. was to be the aggressor; from his points of vantage in Alsace, Milan, Bavaria, and the Spanish Netherlands, he seemed about to push forward against Holland and Austria. But he had now to cope with two generals such as no French army had ever faced--the Emperor's great captain, Prince Eugéne of Savoy; and the wary Churchill, now, by Queen Anne's favour, commander-in-chief of the English and the Dutch armies.

[Sidenote: =The campaign of 1703.=]

The first campaign was indecisive, the only considerable advantage secured by either side being that Churchill rendered a French invasion of Holland impossible, by capturing the north-eastern fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands, Venloo and Ruremonde, and by overrunning the electorate of Cologne and the bishopric of Liège. On his return to England, he was given the title by which he is best known, that of Duke of Marlborough.

[Sidenote: =Military genius of Marlborough.=]

Hitherto Churchill had shown himself an able general, but no one had taken the true measure of his abilities, or recognized the fact that he was by far the greatest military man that England had ever known. But now the ignominious political antecedents of Queen Anne's favourite were about to be hidden from view by the laurels that he was to win. John Churchill, when once he had intrigued his way to power, showed that he was well fitted to hold it. As a soldier he was the founder of a new school of scientific strategy: on the battle-field he was alert and vigorous, but he was greater in the operations that precede a battle. He had an unrivalled talent for careful and scientific combinations, by which he would deceive and circumvent an enemy, so as to attack him when least expected and at the greatest advantage. Where generals of an older school would run headlong into a fight and win with heavy loss, he would outflank or outmarch his enemy, and hustle him out of his positions with little or no bloodshed. On one occasion--as we shall see--he drove an army of 60,000 French before him and seized half the duchy of Brabant, without losing more than 80 men. Yet when hard blows were necessary he never shrank from the most formidable problems, and would lead his troops into the hottest fire with a cool-headed courage that won every man's admiration.

[Sidenote: =Marlborough as a diplomatist.=]

Great as were Marlborough's talents as a general, he was almost as notable as a diplomatist and administrator. He had all the gifts of a statesman: suave, affable, patient, and plausible, he was the one personage who could keep together the ill-assorted allies who had combined to attack Lewis XIV. The Dutch, the Austrians, and the small princes of the Empire had such divergent interests that it was a hard task to get them to work together. That they were kept from quarrelling and induced to combine their efforts was entirely Churchill's work. The organization of the allied army was in itself no mean problem; the English troops in it formed only a quarter or a third of the whole, and to manage the great body of Dutch, Prussians, Hanoverians, and Danes, who formed the bulk of the host, required infinite tact and discretion. Yet under Marlborough this motley array never marched save to victory, and never failed from lukewarmness or disunion.

[Sidenote: =His avarice.=]

When we recollect all Churchill's intellectual greatness, we are more than ever shocked with his moral failings. Not only was he an intriguer to the backbone, but he was grossly and indecently fond of money: he levied contributions on all the public funds that passed through his hands, was open to presents from every quarter, and did not shrink from gross favouritism where his interests moved him.

[Sidenote: =1704--Marlborough moves to Bavaria.=]

The first great campaign in which Marlborough showed his full powers was that of 1704. When it opened, his army lay on the Meuse and Lower Rhine, holding back the French from Holland. But meanwhile Lewis XIV. had pushed forward another army into South Germany to join the Bavarians, and their united forces held the valley of the Upper Danube, and seriously threatened Austria. Seeing that the sphere of decisive action lay in Bavaria, and not on the Meuse, Marlborough resolved to transfer himself to the point of danger by a rapid march across Germany. After with great difficulty persuading the Dutch to allow him to move their army eastward, he executed a series of skilful feints which led the French to imagine that he was about to invade Alsace. But having thoroughly misled them as to his intentions, he struck across Wurtemburg by forced marches, and appeared in the valley of the Danube. By storming the great fortified camp of the Bavarians on the Schellenberg, he placed himself between the enemy and Austria, and rendered any further advance towards Vienna impossible to them. When joined by a small Austrian army under Eugéne of Savoy, he found himself strong enough to fight the whole force of the French and Bavarians.

[Sidenote: =The Battle of Blenheim.=]

Accordingly he marched to attack them, and found them 56,000 strong, arrayed in a good position behind a marshy stream called the Nebel, which falls into the Danube near the village of Blenheim. Formidable though their line appeared, Marlborough thought that it might be broken. He sent Prince Eugéne with 20,000 men to keep employed the enemy's left wing, where the Bavarians lay. He himself with 32,000 assailed the French marshals Marsin and Tallard, who formed the hostile centre and right. On the two flanks the Anglo-Austrian army was brought to a standstill opposite the fortified villages of Blenheim and Oberglau, and could advance no further. But between them Marlborough himself found a weak point, just where the French and Bavarian armies joined. He made his men wade through the marshy stream, and then directed a series of furious cavalry charges against the hostile centre. After a stout resistance it broke, and the French and Bavarians were thrust apart. The Elector and his men got off without much hurt, for Prince Eugéne's force had been too much cut up early in the day to be able to pursue them. But the enemy's right wing fared very differently: Marlborough's victorious cavalry rolled it up and drove it southward into the Danube. The French had no choice but to drown or to surrender. Tallard was captured on the river-bank. Eleven thousand men laid down their arms in Blenheim village when they saw that their retreat was cut off; 15,000 more were drowned, slain, or wounded, and not half the Franco-Bavarian army succeeded in escaping (August 13, 1704).

This crushing blow saved Austria. The whole of Bavaria fell into Marlborough's hands, the French retired behind the Rhine, and for the future Germany was quite safe from the assaults of King Lewis. The duke then transferred himself back to the Dutch frontier so rapidly that the French had no time to do any mischief before his return. Next spring he was again on the Meuse, and threatening the Spanish Netherlands on their eastern flank.

[Sidenote: =Gibraltar taken by the English.=]

It was not in Bavaria alone that the English arms fared well in the year 1704. A fleet under Admiral Rooke and a small army had been sent to Spain, to help the Catalan malcontents, who were ready to rise in the name of the Archduke Charles. They were foiled before Barcelona, but on their return took by surprise the almost impregnable fortress of Gibraltar, a stronghold which has remained in English hands ever since. The possession of this place, "the Key of the Mediterranean," has proved invaluable in every subsequent war, enabling England to watch, and often to hinder, every attempt to bring into co-operation the eastern and the western fleets of France and Spain. Cadiz cannot communicate with Cartagena, or Toulon with Brest, without being observed from Gibraltar, and a strong English fleet based on that port can practically close the entrance of the Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: =The campaign of 1705.=]

In 1705 Marlborough had intended to attack France by the valley of the Moselle, but owing to the feeble help given by the Austrians--Prince Eugéne had been sent off to Italy--he was compelled to try a less adventurous scheme in the Spanish Netherlands. The armies of King Lewis, now under Marshal Villeroi, had ranged themselves in a long line from Antwerp to Namur, covering every assailable point with elaborate fortified lines. By a system of skilful feints and countermarches, Marlborough broke through the lines with the loss of only 80 men, and got possession of the plain of Brabant. He would have fought a pitched battle on the field of Waterloo, but for the reluctance of the Dutch Government, who wished to withdraw their troops at the critical moment, and prevented the campaign from being decisive.

[Sidenote: =1706.--Battle of Ramillies.=]

The next spring, however, brought Marlborough his reward. When he threatened the great fortress of Namur, Marshal Villeroi concentrated all the French troops in the Netherlands, and posted himself on the heights of Ramillies to cover the city. Marlborough's generalship was never better displayed than in the battle which ensued. Threatening the French left wing, he induced Villeroi to concentrate the stronger half of his army on that point. Then suddenly changing his order of attack, he flung himself on the extreme French right, and had taken Ramillies and stormed the heights behind it before Villeroi could hurry back his troops to the point of real danger. Each French brigade as it arrived was swept away by the advancing allies, and Villeroi lost his baggage and guns and half his army. The consequences of the fight were even more striking: Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and all Flanders and Hainault fell into Marlborough's hands. In the whole of the Spanish Netherlands, Lewis XIV. now held nothing but the two fortresses of Mons and Namur. The French frontier was laid open on a front of more than 200 miles.

[Sidenote: =French reverses in Italy and Spain.--Lewis XIV. sues for peace.=]

While the arms of France were faring so badly in the North, they were equally unsuccessful in the South. On September 6th of the same year, Prince Eugéne and the Duke of Savoy routed the French army of Italy in front of Turin; in consequence of this battle the generals of Lewis were obliged to evacuate the Milanese and Piedmont, and to retire behind the Alps. At the same time a second assault of the allies on Spain met with signal good fortune. The Catalans had risen in favour of the Archduke Charles, Barcelona had been stormed in 1705 by an Anglo-Austrian force under the Prince of Hesse,[49] and all Eastern Spain submitted. In 1706 an English force, reinforced by Portuguese, marched up to Madrid and seized it. It seemed that Philip V. would ere long be forced to leave Spain, and retire beyond the Pyrenees. The spirits of Lewis XIV. were so much dashed by this series of reverses that he, for the first time in his life, humbled himself to sue for peace from the allies--offering to waive his grandson's rights to Spain, Belgium, and the Indies, if he were allowed to keep the Spanish dominions in Italy--Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia.

[Sidenote: =1707.--Battle of Almanza.--Reverses of the allies.=]

The allies were unwise enough to reject these terms; Holland and the German states would have accepted them, but the Emperor was set on gaining the Milanese, and Marlborough, who loved the war for the wealth and glory that it brought him, persuaded the English Government to refuse to treat. This obstinate determination to push matters to extremity met with a well-deserved retribution. The fortune of war in 1707 commenced to turn against the allies. In Spain their army lost Madrid, and was almost annihilated at the battle of Almanza by the French and Spaniards. In consequence they lost all their foothold in the peninsula except Catalonia and Gibraltar. About the same time Eugéne of Savoy and the Austrians crossed the Alps and invaded Provence, but were beaten out of France after a disastrous failure before Toulon. Marlborough himself won no new successes in the Netherlands; the Austrians gave him little help, and his attention was distracted from Flanders by the enterprises of Charles XII. of Sweden. That brilliant and headstrong monarch, an old ally of France, had just invaded Germany from the rear, pursuing a quarrel with the Elector of Saxony. In great fear lest he might interfere in the war and join the French, Marlborough hastened to the far east, visited Charles at his camp in Saxony, and flattered and cajoled him into retiring. The Swede marched off into Poland, and Marlborough was able to return to Flanders with a quiet mind; but he had lost the best months of the campaigning season in his excursion to meet Charles.

[Sidenote: =1708.--Battle of Oudenarde.--Capture of Lille.=]

In the next year his old fortune returned to him. Lewis XIV., encouraged by the events of 1707, had raised a great army for the invasion of Flanders. It was headed by his eldest grandson and heir, Lewis, Duke of Burgundy, who was to be advised by Marshal Vendôme, the best officer in the French service. They crossed the Lys into Flanders and captured Ghent, but Marlborough soon concentrated his forces and fell upon them at Oudenarde. The French army was mismanaged. Burgundy was obstinate, and Vendôme brutal and overbearing; they gave contradictory orders to the troops, and were caught in disorder by Marlborough's sudden advance. In a long running fight on the heights above Oudenarde, the French right wing was surrounded and cut to pieces; the remainder of the host fled back into France (July 11, 1708). They were soon pursued; the Austrian army came up under Prince Eugéne to help the English, and the allies crossed the frontier and laid siege to the great fortress of Lille, the northern bulwark of France. It fell, after a long siege, on December 9, 1708, when Marshal Boufflers and 15,000 men laid down their arms before the allied generals.

[Sidenote: =Lewis again asks for peace.=]

Lewis was now brought very low, lower even than in 1706. Once more he asked the allies for terms of peace. This time they were even harsher in their reply than at the previous negotiations. They demanded not only that he should surrender his grandson's claims to any part of the Spanish inheritance, but that he should guarantee to send an army into Spain to evict King Philip, if the latter refused to evacuate the realm which he had been ruling for the last six years. Lewis was also bidden to surrender Strasburg and some of the fortresses of French Flanders.

[Sidenote: =Lewis rejects the terms of the allies.=]

Though his armies were starving, and his exchequer drained dry, the King of France could not stoop to the humiliation of declaring war on his grandson. "If I must needs fight," he is reported to have said, "I would rather fight my enemies than my own children." So, protesting that the continuance of the war was no fault of his, he sent his plate to the mint, sold his costly furniture and pictures, and made a desperate appeal to the French nation to maintain the integrity of its frontiers and its national pride. By a supreme effort nearly 100,000 men, under Marshal Villars, were collected and ranged along the borders of Flanders.

[Sidenote: =1709.--Battle of Malplaquet.=]

With this army Marlborough had to deal in the next year. He was proceeding with the siege of the fortress of Mons, when Villars came up to hinder him, and took post on the heath of Malplaquet. The French position was very strong, covered on both flanks with thick woods, and defended with entrenchments and heavy batteries. Nevertheless Marlborough attacked, and met with his usual success, though on this occasion his victory was very dearly bought. His left wing, headed by the headstrong young Prince of Orange, made a rash and desperate assault on the French lines before the rest of the army had begun to advance, and was beaten back with fearful loss. But the duke broke through the centre of Villars' entrenchments by bringing up his reserves, and won the field, though he lost more men than the French, who had fought under cover all day. In consequence of this victory Mons fell, and the allies advanced into France, and began to besiege the fortresses of French Flanders and Artois. Their progress seemed to slacken among these thickly set strongholds, and the once rapid advance of Marlborough grew slow. This was more in consequence of the internal politics of England than of any falling off in the great general's capacity. The duke had ceased to command the obedience of the English ministry, and his friends had just been turned out of office.

[Sidenote: =Godolphin's ministry.=]

From 1702 to 1710 Marlborough's connection, Godolphin, remained the chief minister. He had kept himself in power by utilizing the jealousies of Whig and Tory, and allying himself alternately to either party. Till 1706 Godolphin had posed as a Tory himself, but finding that the majority of the Tory party were lukewarm in supporting the war, and pressed for an early peace with France, he resolved to break with them. Accordingly he dismissed most of his old colleagues, and took into partnership Marlborough's son-in-law, the Earl of Sunderland, who, though the heir of the time-serving favourite of James II., was a violent Whig. It was the Godolphin-Sunderland ministry which rejected the French proposals for peace in 1708, when the most favourable terms might have been secured. But to subserve Marlborough's ambition and the fanatical hatred of the Whigs for Lewis XIV., the war was continued.

[Sidenote: =The Union with Scotland.=]

The only important event of domestic politics which occurred in this part of Anne's reign was the work of the Godolphin-Sunderland ministry. This was the celebrated "Union with Scotland" in 1707, which permanently united the crowns and parliaments of the two halves of Britain. The separation of the two kingdoms had many disadvantages, both commercial and political, and William III. had wished to unify them. But old local patriotism had frustrated the scheme hitherto, and the unfortunate Darien Scheme[50] had caused much bitter feeling in William's later years. Early in Anne's reign this took the ominous shape of an attempt to change the law of succession to the throne in Scotland, so that there appeared a grave danger of the separation of the two crowns at the queen's death. Fearing this, Godolphin's ministry made a resolute attempt to bring about a permanent union of the two crowns. An act to that effect was ultimately carried through the Scottish Parliament, but with the greatest difficulty. National pride, the fear lest England might endeavour to Anglicize the Kirk, the dislike of the citizens of Edinburgh to see their city lose its status as a capital, the secret hopes of the Jacobites to win the Scottish crown for James the Pretender, worked on one side. On the other the arguments used were the political and commercial convenience of the change, and the absolute necessity for making sure of the Protestant succession. When the English Government gave pledges for the security of the Kirk, and for the perpetuation of the Scottish law courts and universities, the majority yielded, and the bill passed (1707). For the future Scotland was represented in the United Parliament of Great Britain by 45 members of the Commons and 16 representative peers. The arms of England and Scotland were blended in the royal shield, and in the new British flag, the "Union Jack," the white saltire of St. Andrew and the red cross of St. George were combined.

It was many years, however, before the Scots came to acquiesce cordially in the Union, and the Jacobite party did their best to keep up the old national grudge, and to persuade Scotland that she had suffered by the change. But the allegation was proved so false by the course of events, that the outcry against the Union gradually died away. Scotland has since supplied a much larger proportion of the leaders of Britain alike in politics, war, literature, and philosophy, than her scanty population seemed to promise.

[Sidenote: =Growing unpopularity of the Whigs.=]

The domination of the Whigs was not to last much longer. They fell into disfavour for two reasons: the first was that the people had begun to realize the fact that the costly and bloody struggle with France ought to end, now that Lewis was humbled and ready to surrender all claims to domination in Europe. The second was that the Whigs had contrived to offend the religious sentiments of that great majority of the nation which clung to the Church of England and resented any action that seemed to put a slight upon her.

[Sidenote: =The Tories denounce the war.=]

The Tories set to work to preach to the people that the war only continued because Marlborough profited by it, and because the Emperor and the Dutch wished to impose over-heavy terms on the French. This was on the whole quite true, and it was dinned into the ears of the nation by countless Tory speeches and pamphlets, of which the best-known is Dean Swift's cogent and caustic "Conduct of the Allies" (1711).

[Sidenote: =The trial of Sacheverell.=]

But a more active part in the fall of the Whig ministry was played by the Church question. High Churchmen had always suspected the Whigs of lukewarm orthodoxy, because of the attempts which were made by them from time to time to secure toleration for Dissenters. This, the best and wisest part of the Whig programme, brought them much enmity. They were already looked upon askance by many Churchmen, when they contrived to bring a storm about their ears by an attempt to suppress the liberty of the pulpit. Dr. Sacheverell, a Tory divine, had preached two violent political sermons, "On the Peril of False Brethren in Church and State." They were stupid and bombastic utterances, in which he compared Godolphin to Jeroboam, and called him "Volpone, the Old Fox." The minister was foolish enough to take this stuff seriously: he arrested Sacheverell, and announced his intention of impeaching him for sedition before the House of Lords. He carried out his purpose; the doctor was tried, and condemned by the Whig majority among the peers to suspension from his clerical function for three years, while his sermons were burnt by the common hangman. This decision produced riots and demonstrations over the whole country; the Whigs were denounced as violators of the freedom of the Church and as the secret allies of schism. The windy Sacheverell became the party hero of the day, and made a triumphal progress through the midlands. The agitation was still in full blast, when it was suddenly announced that the queen had dismissed her ministers, and charged Harley, the chief of the Tory party, to form a new cabinet.

[Sidenote: =The Duchess of Marlborough disgraced.=]

Queen Anne's decisive and unexpected action was mainly due to personal causes. The domestic tyranny which the Duchess of Marlborough had exercised over her for so many years, had at last reached the point at which it became unbearable. The duchess had grown harsher and ruder with advancing years, and treated her royal friend with such gross impertinence that even the placid Anne became resentful. She gradually transferred her friendship to a new favourite, Mrs. Masham, one of her ladies in waiting, and a cousin of the Tory leader Harley. Provoked by some final explosions of the jealous wrath of the duchess, the queen sought the secret advice of Harley, and suddenly dismissed her from her offices, and bade her leave the court. After a scene of undignified recrimination with her mistress, the disgraced favourite was forced to retire: on her departure she completely wrecked, in a fit of anger, the rooms which she had so long occupied in St. James's Palace (1710).

[Sidenote: =Godolphin and Sunderland dismissed.--A Tory ministry.=]

Godolphin and Sunderland were dismissed from power immediately after the disgrace of the duchess, and Harley and the Tories were at once installed in office. They left Marlborough in command in the Netherlands for a time, but began at once to open negotiations for peace with France. This was an honest attempt to carry out the Tory programme, but it was made in an underhand way, for the Dutch and Austrians were kept entirely in the dark, and received no news of the step that England was taking.

[Sidenote: =Marlborough superseded.=]

Meanwhile Marlborough fought his last campaign in France; Marshal Villars had endeavoured to stop him by a long system of entrenchments and redoubts stretching from Hesdin to Bouchain. But Marlborough always laughed at such fortifications: he deceived Villars by his skilful feints, and easily burst through the vaunted lines, which the Frenchman had called his ne plus ultra. He took Bouchain, and was preparing to advance into Picardy, when he suddenly received the information that he was dismissed from his post and recalled to England. Harley had found the French ready to treat, and was resolved to stop the war. He gave the Duke of Ormonde, a Tory peer, the command of the English army, with the secret instructions that he was not to advance, or help the Austrians in any way (1711).

[Sidenote: =His peculations exposed.--He leaves England.=]

Marlborough returned to England to protest, but found himself involved in serious troubles when he landed. The Tories had laid a trap for him, which his own avarice had prepared. He was accused of gross peculations committed while in command in Flanders. It was proved that he had taken presents to the amount of more than £60,000 from the contractors who supplied his army with food and stores. He had also received from the Emperor Joseph a douceur of 2-1/2 per cent. on all the subsidies which the English ministry had paid to Austria. More than £150,000 had gone into his pocket on this account alone. The discovery of these instances of greed blasted the duke's character; it was to no purpose that he pleaded that the money was a free gift, and that such transactions were customary in foreign services. He found himself looked upon askance by all parties, even by his old friends the Whigs, and retired to the continent.

[Sidenote: =The treaty of Utrecht.=]

In 1712, Harley, who had now been created Earl of Oxford, brought his negotiations with France to a close. They resulted in the celebrated treaty of Utrecht. By this agreement England recognized Philip V. as King of Spain and the Indies, stipulating that Austria and Holland were to be compensated out of the Spanish dominions in Italy and the Netherlands. France ceded to England Newfoundland, Acadia--since known as Nova Scotia--and the waste lands round Hudson's Bay. Spain also gave up Gibraltar and the important island of Minorca. Both France and Spain signed commercial treaties giving favourable conditions for English merchants. Even the long-closed monopoly of Spanish trade in South America was surrendered by the Asiento, an agreement which gave England certain rights of trade with those parts, especially the disgraceful but profitable privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies with negro slaves. Spain and France also recognized the Protestant succession in England, and agreed not to aid "the Pretender," as the young son of James II. was now called.

The minor allies of England also obtained advantages by the treaty of Utrecht. Holland was given a favourable commercial treaty and a line of strong towns in the Spanish Netherlands known as the "Barrier fortresses," because they lay along the frontier of France. They included Namur, Tournay, Ypres, and six or seven other places. The Duke of Savoy received Sicily and the title of king; the Elector of Brandenburg took Spanish Guelders--a district on the Meuse--and was recognized as King of Prussia. But Austria, our most powerful ally, does not appear in the agreement. The Emperor wished to continue the war, and refused to come into the general pacification.

[Sidenote: =Austria deserted by the allies.=]

The treaty of Utrecht was on the whole profitable to England, though it is certain that better terms could have been extorted from Lewis XIV. and Philip V., both of whom were in the last stage of exhaustion and despair. But in signing it England committed a grave breach of faith with Austria, who wished to continue the war. The English army, under Ormonde, was actually withdrawn in the middle of the campaign of 1712, so that the Austrian troops were left unsupported in France, and severely handled by the enemy. Harley's reason for refusing to stand by his allies was that Joseph I. had lately died, and had been succeeded by his brother, the Archduke Charles, who had so long claimed the Spanish throne. It seemed to the Tory ministry just as unwise to allow the house of Hapsburg to appropriate the bulk of the Spanish dominions as to allow them to fall into the hands of Lewis XIV. Accordingly, they refused to listen to the Emperor's plans for bringing further pressure on the enemy and for demanding harder terms. Left to himself, Charles VI. fared ill in the war, and was forced to sign the treaty of Rastadt in 1714. This agreement--a kind of supplement to the treaty of Utrecht--gave to the Austrians Naples, Sardinia, the Milanese, and most of the Spanish Netherlands; but a small part of the last-named country fell to Holland and Prussia, who, as we have already mentioned, acquired respectively the "Barrier fortresses" and the duchy of Guelders.

[Sidenote: =The question of the succession.=]

The peace of Utrecht had been signed early in 1713, and the Tory party could now settle down to administer England after their own ideas, undisturbed by alarms of war from without; but all other subjects of political importance were now thrown into the background by the question of the succession to the crown. The queen's health was manifestly beginning to fail, and it was evident that ere many years the Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, would come into operation, and Sophia of Hanover be called to the English throne. But there were many persons within the Tory party who viewed the approaching accession of this aged German lady with dislike, and wished, if it were but possible, to put the son of James II. on the throne. The exiled prince was now a young man of twenty-five, slow, apathetic, and deeply religious in his own narrow way. He was not the stuff of which successful pretenders are made, and played his cards very ill.

[Sidenote: =Position of the Pretender.=]

Nevertheless, there was for a time a considerable possibility that James III. might sit on the throne of England. It was generally felt that to exclude Anne's brother from the succession, in favour of her distant cousin, was hard. The large section of the Tory party who still clung to the old belief in the divine right of kings, were not comfortable in their consciences when they thought of the exclusion of the rightful heir. Another section, who had no principles, but a strong regard for their own interests, looked with dismay on the prospect of a Hanoverian succession, because they knew that the Electress Sophia and her son, the Elector George Lewis, were closely allied with the Whigs, and would certainly put them in office when the queen died.

If James Stuart had been willing to change his religion, or even to make a pretence of doing so, the Tory party would have accepted him as king, and his sister would have presented him to the people as her legitimate heir; but the Pretender was rigidly pious with the narrowest Romanist orthodoxy. He would not make the least concession on the religious point to his secret friends on this side of the water, when they besought him to hold out some prospect of his conversion. This honesty cost him his chance of recovering England.

[Sidenote: =The Tory split.--Schemes of Bolingbroke.--The Schism Act.=]

When the Tories ascertained that James would never become a member of the Church of England, the party became divided. Harley, the prime minister, and the bulk of his followers would not lend themselves to a scheme for delivering England over to a Romanist. They continued to correspond with the Pretender, but refused to take any active steps in his cause, and let matters stand still. But there was another section of the party which was not so scrupulous, and was prepared to plunge into any treasonable plot, if only it could make sure of keeping the Whigs out of office. These men were led by Henry St. John Viscount Bolingbroke, one of the two Secretaries of State. St. John was a clever, plausible man, a ready writer and a brilliant speaker, but utterly unscrupulous, and filled with a devouring ambition. Though in secret a free-thinker, he pretended to be the most extreme of High Churchmen, and led the more bigoted and violent wing of the Tory party. St. John was set on becoming the ruler of England, and saw his way to the post if he could place James III. on the throne. His cautious colleague Harley stood in his way, so he set himself to expel him from office, by playing on the foibles of the queen and the High Churchmen. With this end he brought in the "Schism Act," a persecuting measure recalling the old legislation of Charles II. It proposed to prohibit Dissenters from keeping or teaching in schools, so as to force all Nonconformists under the instruction of the Church. Harley would not give this bigoted measure his support, and so lost the confidence of half his own party, and, moreover, the favour of the queen, who was persuaded by St. John to give her patronage to the bill.

[Sidenote: =Bolingbroke chief minister.=]

In consequence Harley was dismissed from office, the Schism Act was passed, and Bolingbroke became the queen's chief minister. He set to work to prepare for a Jacobite restoration, filling all posts in the state with partisans of the exiled prince. So able and determined was he, that the Whigs took alarm, and began to make preparation to defend the Protestant succession. They put themselves into communication with George of Hanover, whose aged mother the electress was just dead, and swore to secure him the throne, even at the cost of civil war.

[Sidenote: =Illness of the queen.=]

But the new ministry had only been in power a few days, when Queen Anne was stricken with a mortal sickness. Bolingbroke had not reckoned on this chance, and was caught but half prepared. He saw that unless he acted, and acted promptly, the law of the land must take its course, and the Elector George become King of England. But action was difficult; the army was Whig at heart, and even the majority of the Tories were not prepared to draw the sword to place a Romanist on the throne. While Bolingbroke hesitated, his enemies struck their blow.

[Sidenote: =Action of the Hanoverian dukes.--Death of Anne.=]

As the English Constitution then stood, the Cabinet system was but half developed. The modern idea that the queen's advisers should be a small homogeneous body of men of the same party, meeting together under the presidency of the prime minister, was only just coming into being. It was still a moot point whether, during the sovereign's illness or at his or her death, the executive power lay in the hands of the whole Privy Council or of the members of it alone who were actually ministers and members of the Cabinet. The supporters of the Protestant succession took advantage of this doubt. While the queen lay speechless and dying, three dukes, Shrewsbury, a "Hanoverian Tory," and Argyle and Somerset, two Whigs, presented themselves at the meeting of the Cabinet and claimed a seat in the assembly as privy councillors. Bolingbroke did not dare to exclude them, and thereby lost his chance of carrying out a coup d'état. For the dukes called in all the other privy councillors, a majority of whom were Whigs or moderate Tories, and took the conduct of affairs out of the prime minister's hands. The queen died that night (August 1, 1714), and the Privy Council at once proclaimed the elector under the name of George I. Bolingbroke retired in wrath, muttering that if he had been granted six weeks for preparation, he would have given England a different king.

THE STUARTS.

JAMES IV. = Margaret = Archibald Douglas, of Scotland, | of England. | Earl of Angus. 1488-1513. | | | | Mary of Guise = JAMES V., Margaret = Matthew, | 1513-1542. Douglas. | Earl of | | Lennox. | +----+-------+ | | | (1) Francis II. = MARY, = (2) Henry Lord Charles, of France. 1542-1567.| Darnley. Earl of Lennox. (3) James Earl | | Bothwell. | Arabella Stuart. | JAMES VI. of Scotland, 1567-1625. = Anne of I. of England, 1603-1625. | Denmark. | +-----------+-----------------------------+-------+ | | | Henry CHARLES I., = Henrietta Elizabeth = Frederick, died 1612. 1625-1649. | of France. | Elector | | Palatine. | | | +--------+-------+-------+ | | | | | | Charles Rupert. Maurice. Sophia = Ernest, | Lewis, | Elector | Elector | of | Palatine. | Hanover. | | | | Elizabeth = Philip. GEORGE I., | | Duke of Orleans. 1714-1727. | | | Dukes of Orleans. | +-----------+---------+-------------------+-----------------------+ | | | | CHARLES II., JAMES II., = (1) Anne Hyde. Mary = William II. | 1660-1685. 1685-1688. | (2) Mary of | of | | Modena. | Orange. | | | | | WILLIAM III., = MARY II., | | 1689-1702. his | | cousin. | +--------------------+-+--------------------+ | | | | | (1) (1) (2) | MARY II., = William ANNE, = George JAMES, +----+ 1689-1694. of 1702-1714. | of the old | Orange. | Denmark. Pretender, | | died 1765. | | | | William, | | Duke of Gloucester, | | died 1701. | | | | +--------------------+--------------+ | | | | Charles Edward, Henry Cardinal, Philip = Henrietta. the young Pretender, Duke of York, of | died 1788. died 1807. Orleans.| | | | Victor = Anne of | Savoy. | | Dukes of Savoy.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] For this success the volatile and unscrupulous Earl of Peterborough claimed all the credit. But his account of his doings in Spain is a mere romance, and he was in truth a hindrance rather than an aid to the allies.

[50] A Scottish Colonial Company had been formed to seize and colonize the pestilential region about the Isthmus of Panama--then known as Darien--so as to obtain access to the Pacific (1698). The Scottish Parliament gave it great privileges, but William III. refused to confirm them, and would not commit England to the scheme. The colonists all perished of disease and tropical heat; but the Scots ascribed the failure to English jealousy.

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