Chapter VI
THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION UNDER JAMES I., CHARLES I., AND THE COMMONWEALTH.
Manufactures and Commerce--Trade under the Stuarts--English Commerce and Dutch Competition--The East India Company--Vicissitudes of its Early History--Rival Companies--The American Colonies and West Indies--Growth of London--National Revenue--Extravagance of the Stuarts--Invention of the Title of Baronet--Illegal Monopolies--Cost of Government--Money and Coinage--Agriculture and Gardening--Dramatists of the Period--Shakespeare and his Contemporaries--Poets of the Occult School--Herbert, Herrick, Quarles--A Wealth of Poetry--Prose-Writers--Bacon's "Novum Organum"--Milton's Prose Works--Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Fuller, and other Theological Writers--Harrington's "Oceana"--Sir Thomas Browne--Historians and Chroniclers--First Newspapers--Harvey's Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood--Napier's Invention of Logarithms--Music--Painting, Engraving, and Sculpture--Architecture--Manners and Customs--Sports and Pastimes--Furniture and Domestic Embellishment--Costumes--Arms and Armour--Condition of the People.
In the reigns of James and Charles England neither maintained the reputation of her navy acquired under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, nor made great progress in foreign commerce. The character of James was too timid for maritime or any other war, and when he was forced into action it was only to show his weakness. He put to death the greatest naval captain of his time, Raleigh, who, if well employed by him, might have made him as much respected at sea as was Elizabeth. Nevertheless, he built ten ships of war, and for some years spent thirty-six thousand pounds annually on the navy. The largest ship which had yet been built in England was built by him, but it was only of fourteen hundred tons. As for commerce, he was too much engaged in theological disputations, in persecution of Papists, in wrangling with his Parliaments, and in following his hawks and hounds, to think of it, and consequently grievous complaints of the decay of trade were heard every session. The Dutch were fast engrossing both the commerce and the carrying trade of England. During James's reign they traded to England with six hundred ships, and the English traded to Holland with sixty.
The naval affairs of Charles were quite as inglorious as those of his father. As James beheaded the best admiral of England, so Charles chose for his the very worst in Europe, and the disgrace of Buckingham's expedition to the Isle of Rhé was the consequence. Charles's contests with his Parliaments, which terminated only with his life, destroyed all chance of his promotion of naval ascendency, and of the cultivation of commerce. All this was wonderfully changed by the vigorous spirits of the Commonwealth. The victories of Blake, by which the naval greatness of Holland and Spain was almost annihilated, raised the reputation of the British arms at sea as well as on land to the first place in the civilised world. St. John was no sooner despatched by Parliament to the Hague as ambassador, than, perceiving the immense advantage which Holland obtained from being the great carriers of Europe, he drew and got passed the celebrated Navigation Act, which--providing that no produce of Africa, Asia, or America, nor of any English colony should be imported into England except in English ships, and that the manufactures or merchandise of no country in Europe should be imported except in English ships, or the ships of the nation where they were produced--at once transferred an enormous maritime business to England.
Sir Walter Raleigh, in a treatise on the comparative commerce of England and Holland, endeavoured to draw the attention of James I. to the vast benefits that the Dutch were obtaining from our neglect. He showed that whenever there was a time of scarcity in England, instead of sending out our ships and supplying ourselves, we allowed the Dutch to pour in goods, and reap the advantage of the high prices; and he declared that in a year and a half they had taken from Bristol, Southampton, and Exeter alone, two hundred thousand pounds, which our merchants might as well have had. He reminded the king that the most productive fisheries in the world were on the British coasts, yet that the Dutch and people of the Hanse Towns came and supplied all Europe with their fish to the amount of two million pounds annually, whilst the English could scarcely be said to have any trade at all in it. The Dutch, he said, sent yearly a thousand ships laden with wine and salt, obtained in France and Spain, to the north of Europe, whilst we, with superior advantages, sent none. He pointed out equally striking facts of their enterprise in the timber trade, having no timber themselves; that our trade with Russia, which used to employ a large number of ships, had fallen off to almost nothing, whilst that of the Dutch had marvellously increased. What, he observed, was still more lamentable, we allowed them to draw the chief profit and credit even from our own manufactures, for we sent our woollen goods, to the amount of eighty thousand pieces, abroad undyed, and the Dutch and others dyed them and reshipped them to Spain, Portugal, and other countries as Flemish baizes, besides netting a profit of four hundred thousand pounds annually at our expense. Had James attended to the wise suggestions of Raleigh, instead of destroying him, and listening to such minions as Rochester and Buckingham, our commerce would have shown a very different aspect.
It is true that some years afterwards James tried to secure the profit pointed out by Raleigh from dyed cloths; but instead of first encouraging the dyeing of such cloths here, so as to enable the merchants to carry them to the markets in the South on equal or superior terms to the Dutch, he suddenly passed an Act prohibiting the export of any undyed cloths. This the Dutch met by an Act prohibiting the import of any dyed cloths into Holland; and the English not producing an equal dye to the Dutch, thus lost both markets, to the great confusion of trade; and this mischief was only gradually overcome by our merchants beginning to dye their yarn, so as to have no undyed cloth to export, and by improving their dyes.
During the reign of James commercial enterprise showed itself in the exertions of various chartered companies trading to distant parts of the world. The East India Company was established in the reign of Elizabeth, the first charter being granted by her in 1600. James was wise enough to renew it, and it went on with various success, ultimately so little in his time that at his death it was still a doubtful speculation; but under such a monarch it could not hope for real encouragement. In its very commencement he granted a charter to a rival company to trade to China, Japan, and other countries in the Indian seas, in direct violation of the East India Company's charter, which so disgusted that Company, as nearly to have caused them to relinquish their aim. In 1614 they obtained a charter from the Great Mogul to establish a factory at Surat, and the same year they obtained a similar charter from the Emperor of Japan. In 1615 Sir Thomas Roe went as ambassador from England to the Great Mogul, and resided at his court for four years. By this time the Company had extensively spread its settlements. It had factories at Acheen, Zambee, and Tekoa, in Sumatra; at Surat, Ahmedabad, Agra, Ajmere, and Burampore in the Mogul's territories; at Firando, in Japan; at Bantam, Batavia, and Japara, in Java; and others in Borneo, the Banda Isles, Malacca, Siam, and Celebes; and at Masulipatam and Petapoli, on the Coromandel coast; and at Calicut, the original settlement of the Portuguese on the coast of Malabar. Their affairs were, in fact, extremely flourishing, and their stock sold at 203 per cent.; but this prosperity awoke the jealousy of the Dutch, who carried on a most profitable trade with Java and the Spice Islands, and, in spite of a treaty concluded between the two nations in 1619, the Dutch Governor-General attacked and took from the Company the island of Pulo Rangoon. This was only the beginning of their envious malice, for in 1623 they committed the notorious massacre of the English Company at Amboyna, and drove the English out of all the Spice Islands. Had this occurred in Cromwell's days, they would soon have paid a severe retribution; but James was just then anxious to secure the aid of the Dutch in restoring his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, and these atrocities were quietly smoothed over, and left unavenged. The consequence was, that the affairs of the Company fell into a most depressed condition, and though in 1616, when their stock was worth 200 per cent., they had raised a new stock of one million six hundred and twenty-nine thousand and forty pounds, which was taken by nine hundred and fifty-four individuals, principally of the higher aristocracy, at the close of James's reign the stock had fallen to half its value.
Charles was not a more far-sighted or a juster patron of the India Company than his father. In 1631 they managed to raise a new stock of four hundred and twenty thousand pounds, but whilst they were struggling with the hostilities of their rivals, the Dutch and Portuguese, the king perpetrated precisely the same injury on them that his father had done, by granting a charter to another company, which embroiled them with the Mogul and the Chinese, causing the English to be entirely expelled from China, and injuring the India Company to a vast extent. The Civil War in England then prevented the attention of the Government from being directed to the affairs of this great Company. At the end of Charles's reign the Company's affairs were at the worst, and its trade appeared extinct. In 1649, however, Parliament encouraged the raising of new stock, which was done with extreme difficulty, and only amounted to one hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds. But in 1654, Parliament having humbled the Dutch, compelled them to pay a balance of damages of eighty-five thousand pounds and three thousand six hundred pounds to the heirs of the murdered men at Amboyna. It required years, however, to revive the prosperity of the Company, and it was only in 1657 that, obtaining a new charter from the Protector, and raising a new stock of three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, it sprang again into vigour and traded successfully till the Restoration.
During this period, too, the Incorporated Companies--Turkey Merchants, or the Levant Company; the Company of Merchant Adventurers, trading to Holland and Germany; the Muscovy Company, trading to Russia and the North, where they prosecuted also the whale fishery--were in active operation, besides a great general trade with Spain, Portugal, and other countries. The Turkey Merchants carried to the Mediterranean English cloths, lead, tin, spices, indigo, calicoes, and other Indian produce brought home by the East India Company; and they imported thence the raw silks of Persia and Syria, galls from Aleppo, cotton and cotton yarn from Cyprus and Smyrna; drugs, oils, and camlets, grograms, and mohairs of Angora. In 1652 we find coffee first introduced from Turkey, and a coffee-house set up in Cornhill. On the breaking out of the Civil War, the Muscovy Company were deprived of their charter by the Czar, because they took part with the Parliament against their king, and the Dutch adroitly came in for the trade.
These great monopolies of foreign trade were supposed to be necessary to stimulate and protect commerce; but the system of domestic monopolies which were most destructive to enterprise at home, and which had arrived at such a height under Elizabeth, was continued by both James and Charles to the last, notwithstanding the constant outcries against them, and their being compelled, ever and anon, by public spirit to make temporary concessions.
The commerce of England was now beginning to receive a sensible increase by the colonies which she had established in America and the West Indies. One of the earliest measures of James was the founding of two chartered companies to settle on the coasts of North America. One, called the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, was empowered to plant the coast from the 34th to the 41st degree of north latitude, which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. The other, the company of Plymouth Adventurers, was authorised to plant all from the 41st degree to the 45th, which now includes the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In 1612 a settlement was made in Bermuda. The State of New England was founded by the planting of New Plymouth in 1620, and about the same time the French were driven out of Nova Scotia, and the island of Barbadoes was taken possession of; and within a few years various other West India islands were secured and planted. James granted all the Caribbee Isles to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and the grant was confirmed by Charles, who also granted to Robert Heath and his heirs the Bahama Isles and the vast territory of Carolina, including the present North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the south of Louisiana. In 1632 Charles granted the present Maryland to Lord Baltimore, a Catholic (the charter being also renewed in favour of Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore), which became the refuge of the persecuted Catholics in England, as the New England States did of the Puritans.
These immense territories were gradually peopled by the victims of crime. According as the storm of religious persecution raged against the Catholics, the Puritans, or the Episcopalians and Royalists, they got away to New England, Maryland, or Virginia. By degrees the Indians were driven back, and cotton, tobacco, and (in the West Indies) the sugar cane became objects of cultivation. James abominated tobacco, and published his "Counterblast" against it, laying various restrictions upon its growth; but as the high duties imposed upon it proved very profitable to the revenue, gradually these restrictions were relaxed, and cultivation of it at home was prohibited in favour of the Colonies. The Dutch had managed, under James and Charles, to engross the carrying trade to the English American and West Indian colonies, having a strong position at New Amsterdam, afterwards known as New York; but of this Parliament deprived them in 1646, and extended, as we have seen, the famous Navigation Act of 1651 to all the foreign trade of England. In 1655 Cromwell's conquest of Jamaica completed English power in the West Indies.
The growth of English commerce was soon conspicuous by one great result, the growth of London. It was in vain that both James and Charles issued repeated proclamations to prohibit fresh building of houses, and to order the nobility and gentry to live more on their estates in the country, and not in London, in habits of such extravagance, and drawing together so much loose company after them. From the union of the crowns of Scotland and England, this rapid increase of the metropolis, so alarming to those kings, was more than ever visible. When James came to the throne in 1603, London and Westminster were a mile apart, but the Strand was quickly populated by the crowds of Scots who followed the Court; and though St. Giles's-in-the-Fields was then a distinct town, standing in the open country, with a very deep and dirty lane, called Drury Lane, running from it to the Strand, before the Civil War it had become united to London and Westminster by new erections in Clare Market, Long Acre, Bedfordbury, and the adjoining neighbourhood. Anderson in his "History of Commerce," gives us some curious insight into this part of London at that period. "The very names of the older streets about Covent Garden," he observes, "are taken from the Royal family at this time, or in the reign of Charles II., as Catherine Street, Duke Street, York Street. Of James and Charles I.'s time, James Street, Charles Street, Henrietta Street, etc., all laid out by the great architect, Inigo Jones, as was also the fine piazza there, although that part where stood the house and gardens of the Duke of Bedford is of much later date, namely, in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne. Bloomsbury, and the streets at the Seven Dials, were built up somewhat later, as also Leicester Fields, since the restoration of Charles II., as also almost all of St. James's and St. Anne's parishes, and a great part of St. Martin's and St. Giles's. I have met with several old persons in my younger days who remembered that there was but a single house, a cake-house, between the Mews-gate at Charing Cross and St. James's Palace Gate, where now stand the stately piles of St. James's Square, Pall Mall, and other fine streets. They also remembered the west side of St. Martin's Lane to have been a quickset hedge; yet High Holborn and Drury Lane were filled with noblemen's and gentlemen's houses and gardens almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Those five streets of the south side of the Strand, running down to the river Thames, have all been built since the beginning of the seventeenth century, upon the sites of noblemen's houses and gardens, who removed farther westward, as their names denote. Even some parts within the bars of the City of London remained unbuilt within about a hundred and fifty years past, particularly all the ground between Shoe Lane and Fewters, now Fetter, Lane, so called, says Howell in his 'Londonopolis,' from Fewters, an old appellation of idle people, loitering there, as in a way leading to gardens; which, in Charles I.'s reign, and even some of them since, have been built up into streets, lanes, etc. Several other parts of the City have been rendered more populous by the removal of the nobility to Westminster, on the sites of whose former spacious houses and gardens, whole streets, lanes, and courts have been added to the City since the death of Queen Elizabeth."
The extension of the metropolis necessitated the introduction of hackney coaches, which first began to ply, but only twelve in number, in 1625. In 1634 sedan-chairs were introduced to relieve the streets of the rapidly increased number of hackney-coaches, and other carriages; and in 1635 a post-office for the kingdom was established, a foreign post having been for some years in existence. In 1653 the post was farmed for ten thousand pounds a year.
The annual revenue of James I. has been calculated at about six hundred thousand pounds, yet he was always poor, and died leaving debts to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds. He was prodigal to his favourites, and wasteful in his habits. He left the estates of the Crown, however, better than he found them, having raised their annual income from thirty-two thousand pounds to eighty thousand pounds, besides having sold lands to the amount of seven hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. He still prosecuted the exactions of purveyance, wardship, etc., to the great annoyance of his subjects. On the occasion of his son being made a knight, he raised a tax on every knight's fee of twenty shillings, and on every twenty pounds of annual rent from lands held directly of the Crown, thus raising twenty-one thousand eight hundred pounds. On the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, he levied an aid of twenty thousand five hundred pounds, the last of these odious impositions which were demanded. The Customs on his coming to the throne brought in one hundred and twenty-seven thousand pounds a year; but towards the end of his reign, showing the great increase of commerce, they amounted to one hundred and ninety thousand pounds a year. But this was the tonnage and poundage which was so hateful to the nation, and which James had greatly augmented by his own act and deed; an encroachment which caused Parliament to refuse to his son Charles the usual grant of those duties for life; and his persistence in levying them, in spite of Parliament, was one of the chief causes of his quarrel with that body, and the loss of his crown.
James was also a great trader in titles of nobility. His price for a barony was ten thousand pounds, for the title of viscount, twenty thousand pounds, and for that of earl, thirty thousand pounds. He also invented the new title of baronet, and raised two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds by it, at the rate of one thousand and ninety-five pounds each baronetcy. From so dignified a source do many of our aristocracy derive their honours.
Charles, though he was driven to such fatal extremities to extort money from his subjects, is calculated to have realised the enormous revenue from 1637 to 1641 inclusive, of eight hundred and ninety-five thousand pounds, of which two hundred and ten thousand pounds arose from Ship-money and other illegal sources. Both he and his father dealt in wholesale monopolies to their courtiers and others, the profits of which were so embezzled by those greedy and unprincipled men, that Clarendon says that of two hundred thousand pounds of such income in Charles's time, only one thousand five hundred pounds reached the royal treasury. Charles raised two hundred thousand pounds in 1626 by a forced loan, and another hundred thousand by exacting the fees or compensation for exemption from the assumption of knighthood by every person worth forty pounds a year.
The income and expenditure of the Commonwealth are stated to have far exceeded those of any monarch who ever sat before on the throne of England, and to have been not less than four million four hundred thousand pounds per annum. The post office, as already stated, brought in ten thousand pounds per annum. A singular tax, called the Weekly Meal, or the price of a meal a week from each person, produced upwards of one hundred thousand pounds a year, or six hundred and eight thousand four hundred pounds in the six years during which it was levied. There was a weekly assessment for the support of the war, which rose from thirty-eight thousand pounds to one hundred and twenty thousand pounds per week, which was continued as a land tax under the Protectorate, producing from 1640 to 1659 no less than thirty-two million one hundred and seventy-two thousand three hundred and twenty-one pounds. The Excise also owes its origin to this period, and produced, it is said, five hundred thousand pounds a year. Large sums were realised by the sales of Crown and Church lands,--from the sale of Crown lands, parks, etc., one million eight hundred and fifty-eight thousand pounds; from the sale of Church lands, ten million pounds; from sequestration of the revenue of the clergy for four years, three million five hundred thousand pounds; eight hundred and fifty thousand pounds from incomes of offices sequestered for the public service; four million five hundred thousand pounds from the sequestration of private estates or compositions for them; one million pounds from compositions with delinquents in Ireland; three million five hundred thousand pounds from the sale of forfeited estates in England and Ireland, etc. The ministers and commanders are asserted to have taken good care of themselves. Cromwell's own income is stated at nearly two million pounds, or one million nine hundred thousand pounds; namely, one million five hundred thousand pounds from England, forty-three thousand pounds from Scotland, and two hundred and eight thousand pounds from Ireland. The members of Parliament were paid at the rate of four pounds a week each, or about three hundred thousand pounds a year altogether; and Walker, in his "History of Independency," says that Lenthall, the Speaker, held offices to the amount of nearly eight thousand pounds a year; that Bradshaw had Eltham Palace, and an estate of one thousand pounds a year, as bestowed for presiding at the king's trial; and that nearly eight hundred thousand pounds were spent on gifts to adherents of the party. As these statements, however, are those of their adversaries, they no doubt admit of ample abatement; but after all deduction, the demands of king and Parliament on the country during the contest, and of the Protectorate in keeping down its enemies, must have been enormous. Notwithstanding this, the rate of interest on money continued through this period to decline. During James's reign it was ten per cent.; in 1625, the last year of his reign, it was reduced to eight per cent., and in 1651 it was fixed by the Parliament at six per cent., at which rate it remained.
James issued various coinages. Soon after his accession he issued a coinage of gold and one of silver. The gold was of two qualities. The first of twenty-three carats three and a half grains, consisting of angels, half-angels, and quarter-angels; value ten shillings, five shillings, and two-and-sixpence. The inferior quality, of only twenty-two carats, consisted of sovereigns, half-sovereigns, crowns, and half-crowns. His silver coinage (see Vol. II., p. 436) consisted of crowns, half-crowns, shillings, sixpences, twopences, pence, and halfpence. The gold coins, being of more value than that amount of gold on the Continent, were rapidly exported, and the value of the finest gold was then raised from thirty-three pounds ten shillings to thirty-seven pounds four shillings and sixpence. The next coinage at this value consisted of a twenty-shilling piece called the unit, ten shillings called the double crown, five shillings or the Britain crown, four shillings or the thistle crown, and two-and-sixpence, or half-crown. (See Vol. II., p. 432.) This value of the gold was not found high enough, and the next year, in a fresh coinage, it was valued at forty pounds ten shillings, and consisted of rose rials of thirty shillings each, spur rials fifteen shillings, and angels at ten shillings each. But gold still rising in value, in 1611 the unit was raised to twenty-two shillings, and the other coins in proportion. In 1612 there was a great rise in gold, and James issued fresh twenty-shilling, ten-shilling, and five-shilling pieces, known as laurels, from the king's head being wreathed with laurel. The unit and twenty-shilling pieces were termed hood pieces. Besides the royal coinage, shopkeepers and other retailers put out tokens of brass and lead, which in 1613 were prohibited, and the first copper coinage in England, being of farthings, was issued.
The coins of Charles were, for the most part, of the same nature as those of his father. During his reign silver rose so much in value that it was melted down and exported to a vast extent. Though between 1630 and 1643 some ten million pounds of silver were coined, it became so scarce that the people had to give a premium for change in silver. In 1637 Charles established a mint at Aberystwith, for coining the Welsh silver, which was of great value to him during the war. From 1628 to 1640 Nicholas Briot, a Frenchman, superintended the cutting of the dies, instituted machinery for the hammer in coining and his coins were of remarkable beauty. (See Vol. II., p. 540.) Charles erected mints at most of his headquarters during the war, as Oxford, Shrewsbury, York, and other places, the coiners and dies of Aberystwith being used, and these coins are distinguished by the Prince of Wales's feathers. Many of these coins are of the rudest character; and besides these there were issued siege pieces, so called from the besieged castles where they were made, as Newark, Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract. Some of these are mere bits of silver plate with the rude stamp of the castle on one side and the name of the town on the other. Others are octagonal, others lozenge-shaped, others of scarcely any regular shape. (See p. 29.)
The Commonwealth at first coined the same coins as the king, only distinguishing them by a P for Parliament. They afterwards adopted dies of their own, having on one side a St. George's cross on an antique shield encircled with a palm and laurel, and on the other two antique shields, one bearing the cross and the other the harp, surrounded by the words GOD WITH US. Their small silver coins had the arms only without any legend.
The coins of the Protectorate have on the obverse a bust of Cromwell, round which is this inscription: "Oliver D.G. R.P. Ang. Sco. Hib. &c. Pro." On the reverse they bear a shield, having in the first and fourth quarters St. George's cross, in the second St. Andrew's, in the third a harp, and in the centre a lion rampant on an escutcheon--Cromwell's own arms--surmounted by an imperial crown. The legend on this side is "Pax quæritur bello" (Peace is sought by war). The larger silver pieces have this motto round the edge: "Has nisi periturus mihi adimat nemo" (i.e. "Let no one take from me these letters unless about to die"). In those days the penalty for clipping and filing money was death. (See p. 121.)
The coins of the Commonwealth were the same for Ireland and Scotland as for England. This was not the case in the reigns of James and Charles, and the coins, though bearing the same arms, had generally a very different value. For Ireland James coined silver and copper money of about three-quarters the value of English, and called in the base coinage used by Elizabeth in the time of the rebellion. Charles only coined some silver in 1641, during the government of Lord Ormond, and therefore called Ormonds. Copper halfpence and farthings of that period are supposed to have been coined by the rebel Papists of 1642.
In agriculture and gardening the English were excelled by their neighbours the Dutch and Flemings. Towards the latter part of this period, however, they began to imitate those nations, and to introduce their modes of drainage, their roots and seeds. In 1652 the advantage of growing clover was pointed out by Bligh, in his "Improver Improved," and Sir Richard Weston recommended soon afterwards the Flemish mode of cultivating the turnip for winter fodder for cattle and sheep. Gardening was more attended to, and both vegetables and flowers were introduced. Samuel Hartlib, a Pole, who was patronised by Cromwell, wrote various treatises on agriculture, and relates that in his time old men recollected the first gardener who went into Surrey to plant cabbages, cauliflowers, and artichokes, and to sow early peas, turnips, carrots, and parsnips. Till then almost all the supply of these things in London was imported from Holland and Flanders. About that time (1650), however, cherries, apples, pears, hops, cabbages, and liquorice were rapidly cultivated, and soon superseded the necessity of importation; but onions were still scarce, and the supply of stocks of apple, pear, cherry, vine, and chestnut trees was difficult for want of sufficient nurseries for them. There was a zealous endeavour to promote the production of raw silk, and mulberry trees and silkworms were introduced, but the abundant supply of silk from India, and the perfection of the silk manufactured in France, rendered this scheme abortive.
Whilst James was hunting and levying taxes without a Parliament, and Charles was in continual strife with his people for unconstitutional power and revenue, literature and art were still at work, and producing or preparing some of the noblest and choicest creations of genius. Shakespeare and Milton were the great lights of the age; but around and beside them burned a whole galaxy of lesser, but not less exquisite, luminaries, whose selected beauties are just as delightful now as they were to their contemporaries. The names of this period, to which we still turn with admiration, reverence, and affection, are chiefly Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Marlowe, Massinger, Webster, Selden, Herrick, Herbert, Quarles, Bunyan, Bishop Hall, Hales, Chillingworth, Jeremy Taylor, Raleigh, Sir Thomas Browne, Burton (of the "Anatomy of Melancholy"), and Drummond of Hawthornden. But there are numbers of others, more unequal or more scholastic, to whose works we can occasionally turn, and find passages of wonderful beauty and power.
As we come first to Shakespeare, who figured largely on the scene in the days of Queen Bess, and whose poetry we have already reviewed (Vol. II., pp. 373-5), we may take the drama of this period also in connection with him. A formal criticism on Shakespeare would be superfluous. There are whole volumes of comment on this greatest of our great writers, both in this language and others. The Germans, indeed, pride themselves on understanding him better than ourselves. The Scandinavians equally venerate him, and have an admirable translation of his dramas. Even the French, the tone and spirit of whose literature are so different from ours, have, of late years, begun to comprehend and receive him. The fact is, Shakespeare's genius is what the Germans term spherical, or many-sided. He had not a brilliancy in one direction only, but he seemed like a grand mirror, in which is truly reflected every image that falls on it. Outward nature, inner life and passion, town and country, all the features of human nature, as exhibited in every grade of life--from the cottage to the throne--are in him expressed with a truth and a natural strength, that awake in us precisely the same sensations as nature itself. The receptivity of his mind was as quick, as vast, as perfect, as his power of expression was unlimited. Every object once seen appeared photographed on his spirit, and he reproduced these lifelike images in new combinations, and mingled with such an exuberance of wit, of humour, of delicious melodies, and of exquisite poetry, as has no parallel in the whole range of literature.
It has been said that his dramas cast into the shade and made obsolete all that went before him; but, indeed, his great light equally overwhelms also all that has come after him. Where is the second Shakespeare of the stage? He still stands alone as the type of dramatic greatness and perfection, and is likely to continue so. When we recollect his marvellous characters--his Hamlet, his Macbeth, his Lady Macbeth, his Othello, his Shylock, his Lear, his Ophelia, his Beatrice, his Juliet, his Rosalind--the humours and follies of Shallow, Slender, Dogberry, Touchstone, Bottom, Launce, Falstaff--or his ideal creations, Ariel, Caliban, Puck, Queen Mab--we cannot hope for the appearance of any single genius who shall at once enrich our literature with such living and speaking characters, such a profound insight into the depths and eccentricities of human nature, and such a fervent and varied expression of all the sentiments that are dearest to our hearts. But when we survey in addition the vast extent of history and country over which he has roamed, gleaning thence the most kingly personages, the most tragic incidents, the most moving and thrilling as well as the most amusing sensations and fancies, our wonder is the greater. Greece has lent him its Pericles, its Timon, its Troilus and Cressida--Rome its Cæsar, Brutus, Antony, Coriolanus--Egypt its Cleopatra. Ancient Britain, Scotland, and Denmark; all the fairest cities of Italy--Venice, Verona, Mantua; the forests of Illyria and Belgium, and the isles of the Grecian seas, are made the perpetually shifting arena of his triumphs. Through all these he ranged with a free hand, and, with a power mightier than ever was wielded by any magician, recalled to life all that was most illustrious there, giving them new and more piquant effect from the sympathetic nearness into which he brought them with the spectator, and from the enchanting scenery with which he surrounded them. All this was done by the son of the woolcomber of Stratford--the youthful ranger of the woods of Charlecote, and the uplands of Clopton,--the merry frequenter of country wakes, and then the player of London, who, so far as we know, was never out of his native land in his life.
If we are to take it for granted that after the year 1597, when he bought one of the best houses in his native town for his residence, Shakespeare spent his life there, except during the theatrical season, the greater part of his last nineteen years would be passed in the quiet of his country home. We may then settle his Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labours Lost, All's Well that Ends Well, Richard II. and Richard III., King John, Titus Andronicus (if his), the first part of Henry IV., and Romeo and Juliet, as produced in the bustle of his London life. But the far greater part, and the most magnificent and poetical, of his dramas were composed in the pleasant retirement of his native scenes; namely, the second part of Henry IV., Henry V., A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Merchant of Venice, in 1598 and 1600; the second and third parts of Henry VI., Merry Wives of Windsor, 1601; Hamlet, 1602; Lear, 1608; Troilus and Cressida and Pericles, 1609; Othello (not published till after the author's death, which was the case, too, with all his other plays, though brought on the stage in his lifetime), The Winter's Tale, As You Like It, King Henry VIII., Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, The Tempest, and Twelfth Night. Shakespeare died in 1616. Of the envy which the unexampled splendour of Shakespeare's genius produced amongst inferior dramatic writers, we have an amusing specimen in the words of Robert Greene: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shakscene in a country."
Amongst the most remarkable dramatic contemporaries of Shakespeare, or those who immediately followed him, were Chapman, Ben Jonson, Webster, Middleton, Dekker, Marston, Taylor, Tourneur, Rowley, Ford, Heywood, Shirley, and Beaumont and Fletcher. George Chapman (born, 1557; died, 1634) wrote sixteen plays, and, conjointly with Ben Jonson and Marston, one more, as well as three in conjunction with Shirley. The tragedies of Chapman are written in a grave and eloquent diction, and abound with fine passages, but you feel at once that they are not calculated, like Shakespeare's, for acting. They want the inimitable life, ease, and beauty of the great dramatist. Perhaps his tragedy of Bussy D'Ambois is his best, and next to that his Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron. Of his comedies, the best are, Eastward Ho! partly composed by Jonson and Marston, Monsieur d'Olive, and his All Fools. But Chapman's fame now rests on his translation of Homer, which, with all its rudeness of style and extreme quaintness, has always seized on the imagination of poets, and has been declared to be the best translation of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" that we possess. Pope was greatly indebted to it, having borrowed from it almost all the felicitous double epithets which are found in him.
The most celebrated of Webster's tragedies, The Duchess of Malfi, was revived by Richard Hengist Horne, and put on the stage at Sadler's Wells by Phelps with considerable success. He was the author of three tragedies, Appius and Virginia, Duchess of Malfi, and The White Devil, or, Vittoria Corombona; a tragic comedy, The Devil's Law Case, or, When Women Go to Law, the Devil is full of Business, besides two comedies in conjunction with Rowley, and two others in conjunction with Dekker. Webster exhibits remarkable power of language, and an imagination of wonderful vigour, but rather too fond of horrors. Undoubtedly he was one of the best dramatists of his age, and seemed fully conscious of it. That he had a true poetic vein in him is evidenced by such passages as the "Dirge of Marcello," sung by his mother, which reminds one of the like simple homely ditties in Shakespeare:--
"Call for the robin red-breast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole, To raise him hillocks that shall keep him warm, And when grey tombs are robbed, sustain no harm."
There are fine truths also scattered through his dramas as:--"To see what solitariness is about dying princes! As heretofore they have unpeopled towns, divided friends, and made great houses inhospitable, so now, O justice, where are their flatterers? Flatterers are but the shadows of princes' bodies; the least thick cloud makes them invisible."
Of Middleton, who wrote from twenty to thirty plays, in some of which, according to a very prevalent fashion of that age, he called in the aid of Rowley, Dekker, Fletcher, and Massinger; of Dekker, who wrote the whole or part of about thirty plays; of John Marston, who wrote eight plays; of Taylor, Tourneur, Heywood, and Ford, we can only say that their dramas abound with fine things, and would well repay a perusal. John Fletcher (born, 1576; died, 1625) and Francis Beaumont (born, 1586; died, 1616) require a more specific notice. They worked together on the same plays to the number of upwards of thirty, whilst John Fletcher wrote fourteen or fifteen himself. In fact, Fletcher, so far as can be known, was the more voluminous writer of the two, Beaumont having written little in his own name, except a masque, a few farces, dramatic pieces, and translations. The style of the two, however, was so much alike, that there is little to distinguish their productions from those of an individual mind. Beaumont and Fletcher were, as stated by Dryden, far more popular in their time than Shakespeare himself. The truth is, that they had less originality and were more compliant with the spirit of their age. They sought their characters more in the range of ordinary life, and therefore hit the tastes of a large and commoner class. They were extremely lively and forcible in dialogue, and had a flowery and dignified style which oftener approached the poetical than became it. We are everywhere met by admirable writing, and a finely-sustained tone, but we travel on without encountering those original characters that can never again be forgotten, and become a part of our world, or those exquisite gushes of poetry and poetic scenery which, like the music of Ariel, ring in the memory long afterwards. At the same time we are continually offended by extreme grossness and jarred by slovenliness and incongruity. They are of the class of great and able playwrights who command the popularity of their age, but whom future ages praise and neglect; and who are only read by the curious for the fragments of good things that they contain.
The fate of Ben Jonson (b., 1574; d., 1637) has been nearly the same. Excepting his comedies of Every Man in his Humour, Volpone, The Silent Woman, and The Alchemist, we are content to read the bulk of his dramas, and wonder at his erudition and his wit. His genius is most conspicuous in his masques and Court pageants, which were the delight of James's queen, Anne of Denmark, and the whole Court. In them the spirits of the woods seem to mingle with those of courts and cities; and fancy and a hue of romance give to royal festivities the impressions of Arcadian life. But the living poetry of the Midsummer Night's Dream or of Comus is yet wanting to touch them with perfection. Hence their chief charm died with the age which patronised them, and having once perused them, we are not drawn to them again by a loving memory, as we are to the Shakespearean woodlands and lyrical harmonies. In Jonson's graver dramas there is a cold classical tone which leaves the affections untouched and the feelings unmoved, while we respect the artistic skill and the learned dignity of the composition.
Philip Massinger (b., 1584; d., 1640), who wrote nearly forty dramatic pieces, is a vigorous writer, eloquent and effective. He is trenchant in his satire, and delights in displaying pride and meanness exposed and punished. Still he is greater as a dramatist than a poet. His New Way to Pay Old Debts and The Fatal Dowry are best known to lovers of the drama. The City Madam is a play which is full of strong features of the times. Dekker assisted him in The Virgin Martyr, and is supposed to have introduced a higher and richer vein of feeling than belonged to Massinger himself.
Altogether the dramatic writing of this period has never been surpassed, and in Shakespeare has never been equalled. There is mingled with much licentiousness and coarseness a manly and healthy strength in the writers of this department; and though the bulk of these compositions have vanished from the stage, they will be long studied with enjoyment by those who delight in living portraiture of past ages, and the strong current of genuine English sense and feeling. The arrival of the Commonwealth put down all theatres and scenic amusements. The solemn religion of the Puritans was death to what they called "the lascivious mirth and levity of players." After their suppression for six years, it was found that the ordinance of the Long Parliament was clandestinely and extensively evaded; and in 1648 an Act was passed ordering all theatres to be pulled down and demolished, and the players to be punished "as rogues according to law." Towards the end of the Protectorate, however, dramatic representations again crept in cautiously, and Sir William Davenant at first giving musical entertainments and declamations at Rutland House, Charterhouse Square, and afterwards in Drury Lane, calling his entertainments "operas," at length gave regular plays. The Restoration at last set the imprisoned drama altogether free.
Besides dramatic writers, poets abounded. It has been calculated that from the reign of Elizabeth to the Restoration, no less than four hundred writers of verse appeared. Some of these, who attained a great reputation in their day, and whose works are still retained in our collections, were rather verse-wrights than poets, and would now tax the patience of poetical readers beyond endurance. Such were William Warner, the author of "Albion's England," a history of England in metre extending from Noah's flood to the reign of Elizabeth; Samuel Daniel, the author of the "Civil Wars of Lancaster and York," in eight books; and Michael Drayton, who also wrote the "Barons' Wars" in verse, "England's Heroical Epistles," and, above all, the "Polyolbion," a topography in Alexandrine verse, in thirty books, and thirty thousand lines. Next came Giles and Phineas Fletcher, who employed their strength in composing allegoric poems. Phineas, under the delusive appellation of "The Purple Island," wrote an anatomical description of the human body, with all its veins, arteries, sinews, and so forth. This was extended to twelve books, on which an abundance of very excellent language was wasted. Besides this, he composed "Piscatory Eclogues," and other poems; and Giles, choosing a worthier subject, wrote "Christ's Victory," in the Italian ottava rima, or eight-lined stanzas. To such perversion of the name of poetry had men arrived in the age of Shakespeare.
There were sundry poets who were also translators. Of these, Edward Fairfax, of the same family as Lord Fairfax, was the most distinguished. He translated with singular vigour and poetic feeling Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." It is still referred to with intense pleasure by the lovers of our old poetry. Joshua Sylvester--who wrote like King James against tobacco, but in verse, "Tobacco Battered"--translated, amongst other things, "The Divine Weeks and Works" of the French poet Du Bartas. Sir Richard Fanshawe translated the "Lusiad," by the Portuguese poet Camoens. Fanshawe, moreover, translated the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini, from the Italian, the "Odes" of Horace, the fourth book of the "Æneid," and the "Love for Love's Sake," of the Spaniard Mendoza. Fanshawe seemed to have a peculiar taste for the European languages derived from the Latin as for the Latin itself; thus he translated from Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian poets, and from all with much taste and elegance.
Sir John Denham was a popular poet of the time, and his "Cooper's Hill" is still retained in our collections, and finds readers amongst admirers of descriptive poetry. Writers of much more sterling poetry were Sir John Davies, Drummond of Hawthornden, Bishop Hall, and Donne. Sir John Davies was long Attorney-General, and Chief-Justice of the King's Bench at the time of his death (b., 1570; d., 1626). He is author of a poem on dancing called the "Orchestra," but his great work is his "Nosce Teipsum," or "Know Thyself," a work which treats on human knowledge and the immortality of the soul. It is written in quatrains, or four-lined stanzas, and is one of the finest philosophical poems in the language as it was one of the first. There are a life and feeling in the poem which make it always fresh, like the waters of a pure and deep fountain. Speaking of the soul, he says:--
"Yet under heaven she cannot light on aught, That with her heavenly nature doth agree; She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought, She cannot in this world contented be.
"For who did ever yet in honour, wealth, Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find? Who ever ceased to wish when he had wealth, Or, having wisdom, was not vexed in mind?
"Then as a bee which among weeds doth fall, Which seem sweet flowers with lustre fresh and gay, She lights on that and this and tasteth all, But pleased with none, doth rise and soar away."
Drummond of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, wrote, besides considerable prose, some exquisite poems and sonnets formed on the Italian model; and Bishop Hall, in his satires, presents some of the most graphic sketches of English life, manners, and scenery. Dr. Donne, who was Dean of St. Paul's, and the most fashionable preacher of his day, was also the most fashionable poet--we do not except Shakespeare. He was the rage, in fact, of all admirers of poetry, and was the head of a school of which Cowley was the most extravagant disciple, and of which Crashaw, Wither, Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles had more or less of the characteristics. In all these poets there was deep feeling of spirituality, religion, and wit, and, in some of them, of nature, dashed and marred by a fantastic style, full of quaintnesses and conceits. In some of them these were so tempered as to give them an original and piquant air, as in Herrick, Herbert, and Quarles; in others, as in Donne and Cowley, they degenerated into disfigurement and absurdity. But Donne (b., 1573; d., 1631) had great and shining qualities, keen, bold satire, profound and intellectual thoughts, and a most sparkling fancy, embedding rich touches of passion and pathos, yet so marred by uncouth and strange conceits, that one scarcely knows how to estimate his compositions. In a word, they are the exact antipodes of the natural style, and this fashion was carried to its utmost extravagance by Cowley. A stanza or two from a parting address of a lover to his mistress may show something of Donne's quality and manner:--
"As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go; Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, and some say, no;
"So let us melt and make no noise, No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys, To tell the laity of our love.
"Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent."
George Wither (b., 1588; d., 1667) has much less of what a contemporary happily styled the "Occult School." He says himself that he took "little pleasure in rhymes, fictions, or conceited compositions for their own sakes," but preferred "such as flowed forth without study;" and indeed, he has far more nature. He was confined for years in the Marshalsea prison, for publishing a biting satire, called "Abuses Stripped and Whipped," and there he wrote a long allegorical poem, called "The Shepherds' Hunting," in which his description of Poetry is a perfect gem of fancy and natural feeling:--
"By the murmur of a spring, Or the least boughs rustling, By a daisy, whose leaves spread, Shut when Titan goes to bed; Or a shady bush or tree, She could more infuse in me Than all Nature's beauties can In some other wiser man."
Two songs of Wither's, quoted in Percy's "Reliques"--"The Steadfast Shepherd," and the one beginning
"Shall I, wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are? Be she fairer than the day, Or the flowery meads in May; If she be not so to me, What care I how fair she be?"--
are exquisite lines, that no reader ever forgets.
Crashaw (b., 1616; d., 1650) was of a deeply religious tone of mind, and became a Catholic. His finest poems are his religious ones, and they are full of music and passionate reveries, yet disfigured by the Donne fashion, which Dryden, and after him Johnson, inaccurately termed the Metaphysical School, instead of the Fantastic or Singularity School. His very first poem, called "The Weeper," shows how he treated even sacred subjects:--
"Hail, sister springs! Parents of silver-forded rills, Ever-bubbling things! Thawing crystal, snowy hills, Still spending, never spent, I mean Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene.
"Heavens thy fair eyes be, Heavens of ever-falling stars; 'Tis seed-time still with thee, And stars thou sow'st, whose harvest dares Promise the earth to countershine, Whatever makes heaven's forehead shine."
Carew, Suckling, Lovelace are poets whose merits, in their various styles, would deserve a separate examination, but we must pass on to three other poets, who have been more known to modern readers, and who would of themselves have stamped their age as one of genuine inspiration--Herbert, Herrick, and Quarles. Herbert and Herrick, like Donne, were clergymen, and in their quiet country parsonages poured forth some of the most exquisite lyrics which enrich any language. Herrick may be said to be the born poet of nature--Herbert of devotion. Robert Herrick (b., 1591; d., 1674) was of an old family of Leicestershire. His lyrics, so full of grace, are the very soul of Nature's melody and rapture. He revels in all the charms of the country--flowers, buds, fairies, bees, the gorgeous blossoming May, the pathos and antique simplicity of rural life; its marriages, its churchyard histories, its imagery of awaking and fading existence. The free, joyous, quaint, and musical flow and rhythm of his verse have all that felicity and that ring of woodland cadences which mark the snatches of rustic verse which Shakespeare scatters through his dramas. His "Night Piece to Juliet," beginning--
"Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee, The shooting stars attend thee, And the elves also Whose little eyes glow Like sparks of fire, befriend thee!"
is precisely of that character. His "Daffodils" express the beautiful but melancholy sentiment which he so frequently found in nature:--
"Fair daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon; As yet the early rising sun Has not attained his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hastening day Has run But to the evensong, And having prayed together, we Will go with you along.
"We have short time to stay as you, We have as short a spring, As quick a growth to meet decay As you, or anything. We die, As your hours do; and dry Away Like to the summer rain, Or as the pearls of morning dew, Ne'er to be found again."
Herrick's works are his "Hesperides" and his "Noble Numbers," the latter being religious, and not equal to the former.
In religious tone, intensity, and grandeur, George Herbert (b., 1593; d., 1633) is his superior. Herbert was in early life a courtier; his eldest brother being the celebrated sceptical writer, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Herbert's hopes of Court preferment fortunately ceasing with the death of King James, he took orders, grew extremely religious, married an admirable wife, and retired to Bemerton parsonage, about a mile from Salisbury, where he died of consumption at the age of forty. Herbert was the very personification of Chaucer's "Good Parson." His life was one constant scene of piety and benevolence. Beloved by his parishioners, happy in his congenial wife, and passionately fond of music and his poetry, his days glided away as already in heaven. The music which he loved was poured into his poetry, which overflows with tender and profound feeling, the most chaste and seraphic imagination, and the most fervent devotion. James Montgomery, of later times, not a little resembled him in his pure and beautiful piety; but there is in Herbert a greater vigour, more dignity of style, and finer felicity of imagery. There is a gravity, a sublimity, and a sweetness which mingle in his devotional lyrics, and endear them for ever to the heart. His "Temple" is a poetic fabric worthy of a Christian minstrel, and stands as an immortal refutation of the oft-repeated theory, that religious poetry cannot be at once original and attractive. What can be more noble than the following stanzas from his poem entitled "Man"?--
"For us the winds do blow; The earth doth rest, heavens move, and fountains flow. Nothing we see but means our good, As our delight, or as our treasure: The whole is either our cupboard of food Or cabinet of pleasure.
"The stars have us to bed; Night draws the curtain which the sun withdraws, Music and light attend our head. All things to our flesh are kind In their descent and being; to our mind In their ascent and cause.
"Each thing is full of duty: Waters united are our navigation; Distinguished, our habitation; Below, our drink--above, our meat: Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty? Then how are all things neat!
"More servants wait on man Than he'll take notice of: in every path He treads down that which doth befriend him When sickness makes him pale and wan. Oh! mighty love! man is one world, and hath Another to attend him."
Besides his "Temple," Herbert wrote a prose work, "The Priest to the Temple; or, the Country Parson," which is charmingly full of the simple, child-like piety of the author. He also collected a great number of proverbs, under the title of "Jacula Prudentum."
The third of the trio of poets who seem to class themselves together by their quaintness, their fancy, and their piety, is Francis Quarles, (b., 1592; d., 1644) a man who has been treated by many critics as a mere poetaster, but who is one of the most sterling poets which English genius has produced. Quarles was a gentleman and a scholar; in his youth he was cup-bearer to Elizabeth of Bohemia, and was finally ruined by taking the Royal side in the Civil Wars. He wrote various poetical works; "Argalus and Parthenia," "A Feast for Worms," "Zion's Elegies," and a series of elegies on the death of a friend, the son of Bishop Aylmer. But the great work of Quarles is his "Emblems," which originated in a Latin poem by Herman Hugo, a Jesuit, called "Pia Desideria." This book, condemned and overlooked by the great critics, like Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," has, from generation to generation, adorned with curious woodcuts, circulated amongst the people in town and country, till it has won an extraordinary popularity: and that it has well deserved it, we need only read such verses as these to convince ourselves:--
"I love, and have some cause to love, the earth: She is my Maker's creature--therefore good; She is my mother--for she gave me birth; She is my tender nurse--she gives me food. But what's a creature, Lord, compared with Thee? Or what's my mother, or my nurse, to me?
"I love the air: her dainty sweets refresh My drooping soul, and to new sweets invite me; Her shrill-mouthed quires sustain me with their flesh And with their Polyphonian notes delight me. But what's the air, or all the sweets that she Can bless my soul withal, compared to Thee?
"I love the sea: she is my fellow-creature-- My careful purveyor; she provides me store; She walls me round, she makes my diet greater; She wafts my treasure from a foreign shore. But, Lord of oceans, when compared to Thee, What is the ocean, or her health to me?
"To heaven's high city I direct my journey, Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye; Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney, Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky. But what is heaven, great God, compared to Thee? Without Thy presence, heaven's no heaven to me.
"Without Thy presence, earth gives no refection; Without Thy presence, sea affords no treasure; Without Thy presence, air's a rank infection; Without Thy presence, heaven itself's no pleasure. If not possessed, if not enjoyed in Thee, What's earth, or sea, or air, or heaven to me?"
William Browne's "Britannia's Pastorals," written at this period, have been much and justly celebrated for their faithful transcripts of nature and country life. There are others, besides, that sue for recognition as among the genuine poets of those times--Raleigh, as a lyrical poet; Sir Henry Wotton; Henry Vaughan, the author of "Silex Scintillans" and "Olor Iscanus," a disciple of Herbert's, who would demand a notice were it only to show how freely Campbell borrowed the poem of "The Rainbow" from him:--
"How bright wert thou when Shem's admiring eye Thy burning, flaming arch did first descry! When Zerah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot, The youthful world's grey fathers in one knot, Did with attentive looks _watch every hour For thy new light_."
And so Campbell:--
"When on the green, undeluged earth, Heaven's covenant, thou didst shine; How came the world's grey fathers forth To watch thy sacred sign."
Altogether, no age--not even our own--has produced such a constellation of poets, nor such a mass of exquisite, superb, and imperishable poetry. Whilst Shakespeare was fast departing, Milton was rising, and during this period wrote many of his inimitable smaller poems. Even honest Andrew Marvell, when freed from his labours in the great struggle for the Commonwealth, solaced himself with writing poetry, English and Latin, and some of it of no contemptible order, as in his boat-song of the exiles of the Bermudas:--
"Thus they sang in the English boat A holy and a cheerful note, And all the way, to guide the chime, They with the falling oars kept time."
So he forgot occasionally polemics and politics in "a holy and a cheerful note" of his own. Even the saturnine Sir Thomas Overbury, whom Somerset and his wife had murdered in the Tower, could brighten up in poetry as in his "Choice of a Wife:"--
"If I were to choose a woman, As who knows but I may marry, I would trust the eye of no man, Nor a tongue that may miscarry; For in way of love and glory Each tongue best tells his own story."
The prose of the age was equally remarkable. First and foremost stands Francis Bacon (b., 1561; d., 1626) with his "Novum Organum," a new instrument of discovery in philosophy, and other works of a kindred character. He tells us that in his youth he took a great aversion to the philosophy of Aristotle; being, he said, a philosophy only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the life of man; and in this mind he continued through life. Besides other works of less note, in 1605 he published one of great importance on "The Advancement of Learning;" soon after he published the outline or groundwork of his "Organum," under the title of "Cogitata et Visa; or, Things Thought Out and Seen," and proudly boasted of it as the greatest birth of time. He afterwards published the "Wisdom of the Ancients," and it was not till 1621, and when he had reached the summit of his profession, and been made Viscount of St. Albans, that he brought out his great work, "The Instauration of the Sciences," of which the "Novum Organum" is the second part. No work was so little understood at the time or has occasioned such a variety of opinions since. Bacon was well aware that such would be the case, for in his will he says that he leaves his name and memory to foreign nations, and to his own countrymen after some time be passed over. Bacon asserted that he had superseded the Aristotelian philosophy, and introduced a new and accurate method of inquiry, both into mind and matter, by experiment and induction. By one party he is declared to be the great renovator of true knowledge, and the father of the modern sciences by this method; by another, that he is nothing of the kind, and that modern discovery would have progressed as well without his New Instrument; that Aristotle pursued this method of induction himself, and that Galileo discovered the motion of the earth by the same means that Bacon taught at the same time. But whoever has acquainted himself with the system of Aristotle, and, still more, with the loose and absurd method by which it was taught in the schools before Bacon's time, must see that Bacon, if he did not altogether introduce the system, reduced it to precision and accuracy, and thus put an end to the windy logic and abortive practice of the schools. They were accustomed to assume false and visionary premises, and reason from them by syllogisms which, of course, proved nothing. Bacon, by proceeding by analysis and synthesis--by first extracting from a substance, or a topic, everything that did not really belong to it, and then bringing these expurgated matters into contrast--drew sure conclusions, and advanced towards positive discovery. True, Galileo worked by the same method; but Bacon taught it, and made it clear to all understandings. To say, therefore, that modern science owes nothing to Bacon is to utter a self-evident falsity. Both in experimental philosophy and in metaphysical inquiry, it is Bacon's light, and not Aristotle's, which is followed. That Bacon himself made no great discoveries in prosecuting his own method proves nothing; because, though he was not sufficiently advanced in the actual knowledge of the properties of Matter, he saw and taught clearly how such knowledge was to be acquired, and applied to the legitimate development of Science. How completely ignorant was the age of real experimental philosophy, is shown by the ridicule and contempt which was cast on the "Novum Organum." Such men as Ben Jonson and Sir Henry Wotton expressed their profound admiration of it, but by the wits of the time Bacon was laughed at as little better than a maniac. King James said, in his almost blasphemous way, that it was like the peace of God--passing all understanding; and Lord Coke said--
"It deserveth not to be read in schools, But to be freighted in the ship of fools."
He was represented by men eminent in the world's opinion as "no great philosopher--a man rather of show than of depth, who wrote philosophy like a lord chancellor." Abroad, as Bacon had foreseen, his work was received in a different manner, and pronounced by the learned one of the most important accessions ever made to philosophy. Whoever will carefully study it, will find not merely the exposition of his method, but views stretching into the heights and depths, not only of our own nature but of the nature and life of the Universe in which we move, thoughts which stamp the mind of Bacon as one of the most capacious, many-sided, and profound that ever appeared.
Next to Bacon's we should place the prose writings of John Milton (b., 1608; d., 1674) in general importance and intellectual greatness. As Bacon's were directed to the advancement of true liberty in philosophy, Milton's were directed to the liberation of the Church and State from the tyranny of king and custom. His "Areopagitica," a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, is a grand plea for the freedom of the press; his "Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes," and the "Best Means of Removing Hirelings out of the Church," go to the root of all hierarchical corruption. Besides these, his "Defence of the People of England" in reply to Salmasius, his "Second Defence," in reply to Peter du Moulin, and his "Eikonoklastes" in refutation of the "Eikon Basiliké," attributed to Charles I., but written by Dr. Gauden, and others of his prose works, are written in a somewhat stiff but lofty and massive style. They foreshow the great national poet of "Paradise Lost;" and cannot be read without a deep veneration for the great Puritan champion of the liberties and fame of England.
Next to these we should name the great advocates of Protestantism, Hales and Chillingworth. The "Discourse on Schism" is the writing of Hales which brought him into notice, and led to the most important consequences. It struck at the very root of tradition and submission to the authority of the Fathers, which Laud and his party had exerted themselves to establish; and it was followed out by Chillingworth (b., 1602; d., 1644) in his "The Religion of Protestants, a Safe Way to Salvation." In this work, which has since been styled the "bulwark of Protestantism," Chillingworth endeavoured to prove the Divine authority of the Bible on the basis of historic evidence, and having done that to his satisfaction, he declared that the religion of Protestants was the Bible, and nothing but the Bible. By this rule alone they are, in his opinion, to be judged; the Scriptures alone are to be the standard of their doctrines. He thus cut off all the claims of Popery built on tradition, and established the right of private judgment. In this he served not only the Established Church, to which he belonged, but every body of Christians whatever; for they had, according to his reasoning, the same right to interpret the Bible for themselves. This gave great scandal to the bigoted party in the Church. They declared that he had destroyed faith by reducing it to simple reason. He was violently attacked by both Catholics and Puritans. Knott, a Jesuit, and Dr. Cheynell, one of the Assembly of Divines, were his most determined opponents. Cheynell wrote against him, "Chillingworthi Novissima; or, the Sickness, Heresy, Death, and Burial of W. C., with a Profane Catechism selected out of his Works." Not satisfied with this, he attended his funeral, made a violent harangue against him, and flung the "Religion of Protestants" into his grave, crying, "Get thee gone, thou cursed book, which has seduced so many precious souls--get thee gone, thou corrupt, rotten book, earth to earth, dust to dust, go and rot with thy author." The Protestant Church has fully acknowledged the services of Chillingworth. Even those who deem that there are other evidences of Christianity than the historic evidences, or even the deductions of criticism, admit that his arguments go far to demonstrate the genuineness of the Bible records, and therefore of the Christian religion. The highest encomiums have been paid to the reasoning and eloquence of Chillingworth, by Locke, Clarendon, Gibbon, Dugald Stewart, and all our theological writers.
What Chillingworth did for Protestantism, Cudworth, in his great work, "The True Intellectual System of the Universe," did for religion in general, demolishing most completely the philosophy of atheism and infidelity. Barrow, Henry More, and Jeremy Taylor, added much wealth to the theological literature of the age. More and Barrow belong more properly to the next period. Taylor (b., 1613; d., 1677), who was the son of a barber, became one of the most celebrated preachers of that time, and both his sermons and his other works have received from many of our chief critics and historians the most encomiastic praises. He has been represented as a modern Chrysostom. Much of this praise he undoubtedly deserves, but readers coming to him after such extravagant laudation, experience a sensible disappointment. His "Holy Living and Dying" may be taken as the most favourable specimen of his writings; and though grave, pleasing, and consolatory, it does not strike us by any means as highly or brilliantly eloquent. His sermons, especially on the "Marriage Ring" and on the "House of Feasting," are of the same character. They are full of piety, sweetness, and grace, but they are not eloquence of the highest class. His sentences are often wearyingly long, his illustrations do not always appear very pertinent, and his manner is too much that of the father of the fourth century, whom he appears to have greatly formed himself upon.
The writings of Archbishop Ussher and the sermons of Bishop Andrews deserve mention; but the works of Thomas Fuller, the author of the "Worthies of England," "The Church History of Great Britain," "The Holy and Profane States," and other books, are undoubtedly the most witty and amusing of the whole period. Next to Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," a work, too, of this time, they have furnished to modern authors more original ideas, more frequent and pregnant sentiments and allusions than any others in the language. They have been rivers of thought to men who had very little of their own. Harrington's "Oceana"--a political romance, written to illustrate the opinion that the great power of nations consists in their property--has ideas to repay a reader who has leisure and patience. A writer who has always taken a high rank for originality is Sir Thomas Browne, the author of "Religio Medici," "Urn Burial," "The Garden of Cyrus," etc. Browne ranges freely from the "quincunx" of the gardens of the ancients to the highest flights of metaphysical speculation. He is quaint, abrupt, and singular, but at the same time he is extremely suggestive of thought, and extends the sphere of human inquiry and sympathy far beyond the physical limits of most writers of his class. There is also a school of historians of this age of eminent merit, at the head of which stands Sir Walter Raleigh with his "History of the World;" Knowles with his able "History of the Turks;" Daniel with his "History of England" to the reign of Edward III.; and Thomas May, with the "History of the Long Parliament," and his "Breviary of the History of Parliament," two invaluable works. Camden's "Britannia" and "Annals" appeared at this epoch. Various chronicles were also issued at this period--Hall's "Union of the Families of York and Lancaster," Grafton's "Chronicle," Holinshed's, and Baker's. The works of Stow and Speed appeared in the early part of it,--Stow's "Summary of the English Chronicles," in 1565; his "Annals," 1573; his "Flores Historiarum," an enlarged edition of his chronicle, 1600; his "Survey of London," 1598. Speed's "Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain" belongs to 1606; and his "History of Great Britain" to 1614. Besides these appeared the "Memoirs" of Rushworth. Thurloe's and Whitelock's were written, but did not appear till a later period. The commencement of the Long Parliament marked also a remarkable era, that of the first English newspapers, under the name of "Diurnals," or daily records of Parliamentary proceedings. The idea once started, newspapers rapidly spread, so that between the Civil War and the Restoration, nearly two hundred were published, but none more frequently than once a week for some time, nor afterwards oftener than twice or three times a week. It was, moreover, an age of political tracts and pamphlets. In science the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey, and the invention of logarithms by Napier, were the great events of that department. On the whole, the intellectual development of the age was as great and marvellous as was its political advance. To no other modern nation can we point, which in one and the same period has produced three such men as Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon, amid a host of lesser, but scarcely less precious lights, at the same time that it was working out one of the most stupendous revolutions in human government, and the imperishable principles of it, that the world has seen. On reviewing this period, well might Wordsworth exclaim:--
"Great men have been amongst us; hands that penned, And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none; The later Sydney, Marvell, Harrington, Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend. These moralists could act and comprehend; They knew how genuine glory is put on; Taught us how rightfully a nation shone In splendour."
And well did he add:--
"We must be free, or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spoke: the faith and morals hold That Milton held. In everything we are sprung Of earth's best blood--have titles manifold."
Some of the eminent musical composers already mentioned (See Vol. II., pp. 378-9) continued to embellish the reign of James. Amongst these were Ford, Ward, Weelkes, and Orlando Gibbons. The first three are distinguished for their madrigals, and Weelkes for ballads, which are unrivalled. Ward's "Die not, Fond Man," is still as popular as ever. Gibbons composed both madrigals and cathedral music. He was organist of the Royal Chapel, and was made Doctor of Music by the University of Oxford. The sacred music of Gibbons is enough of itself to exempt England from the often advanced charge of being unmusical. In 1622, Dr. Heyther, a friend of Camden, the antiquary, established a professorship of music at Oxford. Charles I. was not only fond of music, but played himself with considerable skill on the viol da gamba. Dr. William Child, himself an excellent composer, was the organist of his chapel, and Lawes, the friend of Milton, who is referred to in his sonnets and in "Comus," was patronised by him. Lawes was greatly admired, and justly, by other poets, especially Herrick and Waller. Charles I., however, set a bad example, by encouraging foreign musicians instead of his own subjects. He made Lanieri, an Italian, a man in real musical science far inferior to several Englishmen then living, "Master of our Music," and his example was only too diligently followed by princes and nobles in after times.
The rise of the Commonwealth was the fall of music in England. The stern Puritans, and especially the Scottish Presbyterians, who dubbed an organ "a kist o' whistles," denounced all music as profane, and drove organs and orchestras from the churches. Nothing was tolerated but a simple psalm tune. Cromwell, however, did not partake of this fanaticism. He was fond of music, and frequently had musical entertainments at Whitehall and Hampton Court. The great organ which had been pulled out of Magdalen College, Oxford, he had carefully conveyed to Hampton Court, where it was one of his greatest solaces. Under Cromwell the lovers of music brought out their concealed instruments, and there was once more not only domestic enjoyment of music, but open musical parties.
If the Civil War in England was auspicious to liberty, it was disastrous to art. From the time of Henry VIII. the British monarchs had shown a decided taste for the arts. Henry had munificently patronised Holbein, and had made various purchases of foreign chefs-d'œuvre. Prince Henry inherited the taste of his mother, instead of the coarse buffoonery of his father, and showed a strong attachment to men of genius and to works of genius. He began a collection of paintings, bronzes, and medals, which fell to his brother Charles. Charles was an enthusiast in art, and had he not possessed his fatal passion for despotism, would have introduced a new era in England as regarded intellectual and artistic pursuits. The study of Italian models, both in literature and art, by the aristocracy, enabled the nobles to embrace the tastes of the monarch; and England would soon have seen the fine arts flourishing to a degree which they had never enjoyed before, and which would have prevented the dark ages that succeeded. During Charles's early rule the greatest artists of the Continent flocked over to England, and found a liberal reception there. Rubens, Vandyck, Jansen, Vansomer, Mytens, Diepenbeck, Pölemberg, Gentileschi, and others visited London, and Vandyck, the greatest of them all, remained permanently. The works of Vandyck, in England, are numerous, and if we except his famous picture of "The Crucifixion" at Mechlin, we possess the best of his productions. At Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, Blenheim, Wilton House, and Wentworth House, the bulk of his finest pictures are to be seen. His portraits of our princes and the chief nobility of the time are familiar to all English eyes, and place him only second to Titian in that department. At Wilton House alone there are twenty-five of Vandyck's paintings; the portrait of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, with his family, is declared by Walpole to be itself a school of this master. His dramatic portrait of Strafford and his secretary, Mainwaring, at Wentworth House, Walpole asserts to be his masterpiece. Charles had proposed to him to paint the history of the Order of the Garter on the walls of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, but the sum he demanded--said to be eighty thousand pounds, but more probably a misprint for eight thousand pounds--caused Charles to delay it, and his political troubles soon put an end to the scheme. He painted several pictures of Charles on horseback, one of which is at Windsor, and another at Hampton Court.
Rubens came to England only as an ambassador, but Charles seized the opportunity to get him to paint the apotheosis of James, on the ceiling of the Banqueting House at Whitehall. This he, however, merely sketched whilst in London and painted it at Antwerp, receiving three thousand pounds for it. The Duke of Buckingham purchased Rubens's private collection of pictures, chiefly of the Italian school, but containing some of his own, for ten thousand pounds. These were sold by the Long Parliament, and now adorn the palaces of the Escurial at Madrid, and the Belvedere at Vienna. The large pictures in the latter gallery, "St. Francis Xavier preaching to the Indians," and "Loyola casting out Devils," are amongst the very finest of his productions.
Charles, besides making collections, and drawing round him great artists, projected the establishment of an academy of arts on a princely scale. But this remained only an idea, through the breaking out of the Revolution. Parliament, in 1645, caused all such pictures at Whitehall as contained any representation of the Saviour or the Virgin to be burnt, and the rest to be sold. Fortunately there were persons in power who had more rational notions, and much was saved. Cromwell himself secured the cartoons of Raphael for three hundred pounds, and thus preserved them to the nation, and as soon as he had the authority, he put a stop to the sale of the royal collections, and even detained many pictures that had been sold.
The native artists of this period were chiefly pupils of Rubens or Vandyck. Jamesone, called the Scottish Vandyck, was a pupil of Rubens at the same time with Vandyck--Charles sat to him. William Dobson, a pupil of Vandyck, was serjeant-painter to Charles, and Robert Walker, of the Vandyck school, was Cromwell's favourite painter, to whom we owe several admirable portraits of the Protector. There were also several miniature painters of the highest merit--the two Olivers, Hoskins, and Cooper.
Up to this period engravings had become by no means prominent in England. That there had been engravers we know from various books having been illustrated by them. Geminus and Humphrey Lloyd were employed by Ortelius, of Antwerp, on his "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum." Aggas had executed a great plan of London, and Saxon county maps. Various Flemish and French engravers found employment, as Vostermans, De Voerst, and Peter Lombard. Hollar, a Bohemian, was employed extensively till the outbreak of the Civil War, and illustrated Dugdale and other writers. But the chief English engraver of this period was John Payne.
Sculpture was by no means in great advance at this period. There were several foreign artists employed in England on tombs and monuments, but as they did not at that date put their names upon them, it is difficult to attribute to every man his own. Amongst these Le Sœur, who executed the equestrian statue of Charles I. at Charing Cross, Angier, and Du Val were the chief. John Stone, master mason to the king, was by far the most skilful native sculptor. Amongst his best efforts are the monuments of Sir George Holles at Westminster, and the statue of Sir Finnes Holles, also at Westminster. Sir Dudley Carleton's tomb at Westminster, and Sutton's tomb at the Charterhouse are also his. But the greatest boon to sculpture was the introduction at this period, by the Earl of Arundel, of the remains of ancient art, hence called the Arundel Marbles.
This was the epoch of the commencement of classical architecture. The grand old Anglo-Gothic had run its course. It fell with the Catholic Church, or continued only in a mongrel and degraded state, showing continually the progress of its decline. From Henry VIII. to James this state of things continued; the miserable tasteless style, which succeeded the downfall of the picturesque Tudor, being the only architecture. The change to the classical was destined to be made by Inigo Jones, whose is the great name of this period. Jones had studied in Italy, and became aware of the graceful style which Vitruvius had introduced by modulation of the ancient Greek and Roman, and which Palladio had raised to perfection. The merit of Jones is that he imported Palladio's style substantially and completely, ready as it was to his hands, and wholly unknown in England. By this means Jones acquired a reputation for genius to which nothing that he has left justifies his claim. He was first engaged in designing the scenery and machinery of the masques which Ben Jonson wrote for the queen of James I. He was appointed architect to the queen and Prince Henry. On the death of the prince he went back to Italy, but on his return to London he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Royal Buildings. The first thing which he planned was the design for an immense palace for James on the site of Whitehall. There is a simple grandeur in the drawings of it which are left, which may fairly entitle him to a reputation for the introduction of an elegant domestic architecture, although it does not warrant the extravagant terms of eulogy which have been lavished on him. The only portion of this palace which was built is the Banqueting House (afterwards the Chapel Royal) at Whitehall, being the termination of the great façade, and which contains nothing very remarkable. Jones added a chapel to Somerset House, and a west front to St. Paul's, neither of which remains. That he was far from having conceived the true principles of architecture was shown by the fact that his west front of Old St. Paul's was a classical one engrafted on a Gothic building, and this solecism he was continually repeating. One of the most glaring instances of the kind is a classical screen which he raised in the Norman Cathedral of Durham. Amongst the chief remaining buildings of Inigo Jones from which an idea of his talent may be drawn, are the Piazza and St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden, of which Quatremere de Quincy says that the most remarkable thing about it is the reputation that it enjoys; Ashburnham House, Westminster; a house on the west side of Lincoln's Inn Fields originally built for the Earl of Lindsay; an addition to St. John's College, Oxford; and by far his finest work,--if his it be, which is doubtful--Heriot's Hospital at Edinburgh. He also superintended the erection of Old Greenwich Palace.
The general aspect of the towns and streets remained the same at this period as in the former. James issued proclamation after proclamation, ordering the citizens to leave off the half-timbered style, and build the fronts, at least, entirely of brick or stone; but this was little attended to, and many a strange old fabric continued to show the fashions of past ages.
If we are to believe the memoir writers and dramatists of this period, the national manners and morals had suffered a decided deterioration. Licentious as was the court of Queen Elizabeth, there was a certain dignity and outward decorum preserved, but James introduced such coarseness and grossness of manner, such low debauch and buffoonery, that even the salutary restraint which fashion had imposed was stripped away, and all classes exhibited the most revolting features. In the reign of Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth, we had such women as the daughters of Sir Thomas More, Lady Jane Grey, Catherine Parr, and others, who cultivated literature and philosophy, the Queens Mary and Elizabeth themselves setting the example in reading and translating the most illustrious classical authors. But after James came in, notwithstanding all his learned pedantry, you hear nothing more of such tastes amongst the Court ladies, and it is very singular that amid that blaze of genius which distinguished the time under review, we find no traces of feminine genius there. On the contrary, both English dramatists and foreign writers describe the morals and manners of women of rank as almost destitute of delicacy and probity. They are described as mingling with gentlemen in taverns amid tobacco smoke, songs, and conversation of the most ribald character. They allowed liberties which would startle women of the lowest rank in these times, were desperate gamblers, and those who had the opportunity were wholesale dealers in political influence. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, boasts of the effect of the bribes that he was accustomed to distribute amongst them. Whilst such women as the infamous and murderous Countess of Essex and the Dowager Countess Villiers were the leading stars of the Court, the tone of morals must have been low indeed. Whilst the ladies were of this stamp, we cannot expect the gentlemen to have been better, and there is no doubt but that the honours and wealth and royal favour heaped on such men as Somerset, Hay, Ramsay, and Buckingham, made debauchery and villainy quite fashionable. The character of Englishmen on their travels, Howell tells us, was expressed in an Italian proverb:--
"_Inglese Italianato E Diavolo incarnato._"
"An Italianised Englishman is a devil incarnate." This was said of the debauched conduct of our young men on their travels. At home they were a contemptible mixture of foppery and profanity. Buckingham and the other favourites led the way. We have recorded the audacious behaviour of Buckingham at the courts of France and Spain, and the enormous foppery of his apparel. He had a dress of uncut white velvet, covered all over with diamonds, valued at eighty thousand pounds, a great feather of diamonds, another dress of purple satin covered with pearls, valued at twenty thousand pounds, and his sword, girdle, hatbands, and spurs were thickly studded with diamonds. He had, besides these, five-and-twenty other dresses of great richness, and his numerous attendants imitated him according to their means. They began now to patch their faces with black plaister, because the officers who had served in the German wars wore such to cover their scars; and the ladies did the same. Duelling was now introduced, cheating at play was carried to an immense extent, and the dandy effeminacy of the Cavaliers was unexampled. They had the utmost contempt of all below them, and any attempt to assume the style or courtesies of address which they appropriated to themselves was resented as actual treason. The term "Master" or "Mr." was used only to great merchants or commoners of distinction; and to address such as "gentlemen" or "esquires" would have roused all the ire of the aristocracy. In proceeding through the streets at night, courtiers were conducted with torches, merchants with links, and mechanics with lanthorns.
We may imagine the feeling with which the sober and religious Puritans beheld all this, and the proud contempt with which their strictures were received. When the Civil War broke out, which was a war of religious reform as much as of political, the Puritans displayed a grave manner, a sober dress, and chastened style of speech; and the Cavaliers, in defiance and contempt, swore, drank, and indulged in debauchery all the more, to mark their superiority to the "sneaking Roundhead dogs."
Charles endeavoured to restrain this loose and indecent spirit, but it was too strong for him; and though the Puritans put it effectually down during the Commonwealth, it came back in a flood with the lewd and ribald Charles II. Charles I. also introduced a more tasteful style of Court pageants and festivities. Under James all the old fantastic masques and pageantries--in which heathen gods, goddesses, satyrs, and giants figured--prevailed. Charles gave to his pageantries a more classical character, but when the Puritans came in they put them all down, along with Maypoles, and all the wakes, and church-ales, and the like, which James had encouraged by his "Book of Sports." The Court festivals, so long as the monarchy remained, were marked by all the profusion, displays of jewellery, and dresses of cloth of gold and embroidery, which prevailed in the Tudor times. The old-fashioned country life, in which the gentlemen hunted and hawked, and the ladies spent their leisure in giving bread to the poor and making condiments, preserves, and distilled waters, was rapidly deserted during the gay days of James and Charles, and the fortune-making of favourites.
Merchants and shopkeepers were growing rich, and though they still conducted their businesses in warehouses which would appear mean and miserable to City men of to-day, and in shops with open fronts, before which the master or one of his apprentices constantly paraded, crying, "What d'ye lack?" had stately suburban houses, and vied with the nobles in their furniture and mode of living. The moral condition of the people of London at this period, according to all sorts of writers, was something inconceivably frightful. The apprentices, as we have seen, were a turbulent and excitable race, who had assumed a right to settle political matters, or to avenge any imagined attack on their privileges. At the cry of "Clubs!" they seized their clubs and swords and rushed into the streets to ascertain what was amiss. They were easily led by their ringleaders against any body or any authority that was supposed to be invading popular rights. We have seen them surrounding the Parliament House, demanding such measures as they pleased, and executing their notions of suitable chastisement of offenders by setting fire to Laud's house, and breaking down the benches of the High Commission Court. They were equally ready to encounter and disperse the constabulary or the City Guard, and to fight out their quarrels with the Templars, or others with whom they were at feud.
The riots of the apprentices, however, had generally something of a John-Bullish assertion of right and justice in them; but the streets and alleys of London were infested with an equally boisterous and much more villainous crew of thieves and cut-purses. Pocket-picking was then, as now, taught as a science, and was carried to a wonderful perfection of dexterity. All kinds of rogueries were practised on country people, the memory of which remains yet in rural districts, and is still believed applicable to the metropolis. These vagabonds had their retreats about the Savoy and the brick-kilns of Islington, but their headquarters were in a part of Whitefriars called Alsatia, which possessed the right of sanctuary and swarmed with debtors, thieves, bullies, and every kind of miscreants, ready on an alarm, made by the sound of a horn, to turn out in mobs and defend their purlieus from constables and sheriffs' officers. Walking the streets in the daytime was dangerous from the affrays often going on between the apprentices and the students of the Temple, or between the butchers and weavers, or from the rude jostling and practical jokes of bullies and swashbucklers; but at night there was no safety except under a strong guard. Then Alsatia, the Savoy, and the numerous other dens of vice and violence, poured forth their myrmidons, and after nine o'clock there was no safety for quiet passengers. If we add to this description the narrowness of the roads and alleys, the unpaved and filthy state of the streets, and undrained and ill-ventilated houses, London was anything at this period but an attractive place. The plague was a frequent visitant, and we are told that kites and ravens were much kept to devour the offal and filth of the streets, instead of scavengers. In the country, things were not much better. The roads were terrible, and were infested by sturdy bands of robbers. In the neighbourhood of London, Finchley, Blackheath, Wimbledon, and Shooter's Hill were places of widespread fame for daring highwaymen. It was high time for the Puritans to come into power, and to put both town and country under a more wholesome discipline. Cromwell's soldiers, quartered in various parts of the metropolis, and his major-generals administering martial law in different parts of the country, soon altered the face of things. He shut up Spring Gardens, a place of nocturnal resort for assignations for traffickers in political corruption, and for various licentiousness; and instead of fellows prowling about the streets with sweetmeats in their pockets to kidnap children, and sell them to the plantations, he sent these scoundrels freely thither themselves. Amongst the gloomy features of this period was the relentless persecution of old women, under the belief that they were witches; a practice commenced by James, but continued by the Puritans, who sent out Hopkins, the notorious witchfinder, who, in the years 1645 and 1646, traversed the country, condemning and putting to death hundreds of them, till he himself was accused of being a wizard, and was subjected to the same fate. From 1640 to the Restoration, four thousand persons are said to have perished under charge of witchcraft. In Scotland this terrible practice was carried on with even aggravated cruelties, in order to extort confession.
The sports of the aristocracy, gentry, and merchants were much the same that they had been hitherto. Hunting was the favourite pastime of James, and therefore was not likely to be neglected by the country gentry. He was also fond of hawking, and kept alive that pastime, which was dying out, some time longer. Ball games had much superseded the jousts and tournaments of other days. Tennis retained its high favour, and billiards and pall-mall, or striking a ball through a ring suspended to a pole, were becoming fashionable. Bowling, cards, dice, dancing, masques, balls, and musical entertainments varied town life. The common people stuck to their foot-ball, quoits, pitching the bar, cricket, shovel-board, bull- and bear-baiting, and cock-fighting. The Puritans put down May-games, Whitsun-ales, morrice-dances, and all amusements that savoured of a Catholic origin. They also humanely suppressed, as far as they could, the savage sports of bear and bull-baiting. Pride and Hewson killed all the bears at the bear-garden to put an end to that cruel pastime, and thence originated Butler's "Hudibras." The bowling-greens of the English were famous, and horse-racing was much in vogue. In Scotland the Reformation put to flight all sorts of games, dancing, and merry-makings, as sinful and unbecoming of Christians, and polemic discussions were the only excitements which relieved the ascetic gloom.
The interiors of houses were in this period greatly embellished, and the splendour of hangings of beds and windows had strikingly increased. Rich velvets and silks embroidered with cloth of gold and cloth of silver, and coloured satins of the most gorgeous hues abounded. The cushions of couches and chairs were equally costly, and instead of the ancient tapestry, paper and leather hangings, richly stamped and gilt, covered the walls. The Flemish artists had been called in to paint the ceilings with historical or mythological scenes, and on the walls hung the masterpieces of Flemish and Italian art. Carpets were beginning to supersede rushes on the floors, but were more commonly used as coverings for tables. In addition to the carved cabinets of oak, ebony, and ivory, and the richly-covered cushioned and high-backed chairs of the Tudor dynasty, Flemish and Dutch furniture of somewhat formal but still elegant design abounded. Superb ornaments of ivory and china had found their way from the East, and became heirlooms in great mansions. Altogether, the houses of the wealthy of those times presented a scene of stately elegance and luxury that has not since been surpassed.
The costume of the reign of James was but a continuation of that of Elizabeth. The men still wore the stiff plated ruff, occasionally varied by a plain horizontal one with lace on its edges. The long peasecod-bellied doublet continued, and the large stuffed Gallic or Venetian hose, slashed and quilted, had assumed more preposterous dimensions from James's timidity; he having both these and the doublets quilted to resist the stabs of the stiletto. Towards the end of his reign a change was noticeable. Instead of the long-waisted doublet there were short jackets, with false hanging sleeves behind; the trunk hose were covered with embroidered straps, tucked short at the thigh, and the hose gartered below the knee. We are told how they covered their cloaks and dresses with jewels on State occasions. They wore feathers at such times in their hats. Taylor, the Water Poet, says the gallants of his time
"Wore a farm in shoestrings edged with gold, And spangled garters worth a copyhold; A hose and doublet which a lordship cost, A gaudy cloak, three mansions' price almost; A beaver band and feather for the head, Prized at the church's tithe, the poor man's bread."
The old cloth stockings were obsolete, and stockings of silk, thread, or worsted used.
The ladies of the Court were still in the stiff Elizabethan farthingale, elevated collar, and hair dressed in the lofty style. Anne of Denmark was Elizabeth over again. But in domestic life we find the ladies attired in a far more natural style, without the farthingale, with falling collars, plain or edged with lace, and the hair with ringlets falling on each side; and this simple and more elegant fashion became at length universal in Charles's reign.
The male costume of Charles's time was extremely elegant. At the commencement of the Civil War no contrast could be greater than that of the appearance of the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. The Cavalier dress consisted of a doublet of silk, satin, or velvet, with large loose sleeves slashed up the front, the collar covered by a falling band of the richest point lace, with Vandyck edging. The long breeches, fringed or pointed met the tops of the wide boots, which were also commonly ruffled with lace or lawn. A broad Flemish beaver hat, with a rich hatband and plume of feathers, was set on one side of the head, and a Spanish rapier hung from a most magnificent baldrick, or sword belt, worn sash-wise over the right shoulder, and on one shoulder was worn a short cloak with an air of carelessness. In war this short cloak was exchanged generally for the buff coat, which was also richly laced, and sometimes embroidered with gold and silver, and round the waist was worn a broad silk or satin scarf tied in a large bow behind or over the hip; or a buff jerkin without sleeves was worn over the doublet, and the lace or lawn on the boots dispensed with. The beard was worn very peaked, with small upturned moustaches, and the hair long and flowing on the shoulders. In contrast to this the Parliamentarians wore their hair cut short--whence the name of Roundhead--and studied a sober cut and colour of clothes. The first appearance of Cromwell in Parliament, described by Sir Philip Warwick, has been taken as a sufficient specimen of his costume when Protector. But Cromwell was then but a gentleman-farmer, and appeared in careless rustic habit. "I came one morning into the House," says Warwick, "well clad, and perceived a gentleman speaking whom I knew not, very ordinarily apparelled, for it was a plain cloth suit, which seemed to have been made by an ill country tailor. His hat was without a hatband." But no one knew better than Cromwell what was necessary to the decorum of station, and very different is the account of his appearance when going to be sworn Protector. "His Highness was in a plain but rich suit, black velvet, with cloak of the same; about his hat a broad band of gold."
The ladies' dresses of Charles's time rapidly changed from the stiff ruffs and farthingales to a more natural and elegant style. With Mrs. Turner, their introducer, went out in James's time the yellow starch ruffs and bands, for she appeared, when hanged for her share in Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, in her own yellow ornaments at the gallows. But all ruffs grew obsolete in Charles's reign, and a lady of that day would scarcely be distinguished from a lady of this. The hair was dressed much as in modern manner, the dress fell naturally without hoops, and the broad collar lay gracefully on the shoulders. The citizens' and Puritans' wives, as well as country women, wore the broad high-crowned hat, and country women appeared still in plaited ruff, and a muffler over the mouth in cold weather, tied up to the back of the head. A lady had generally her feather fan in her hand, as the modern one has her parasol.
Armour was fast disappearing; it was of little use against cannon and matchlocks. James thought armour a very good invention, for it hindered a man as much from hurting his enemy as it defended himself. But in his time little but a cuirass for the body and a helmet or bonnet was used. To the rest for the heavy matchlock in this reign was affixed a long rapier blade, called a "swine's feather," or "bristle," and used as a soldier now uses the bayonet. In the Civil War most of the officers wore only a cuirass over a buff coat; and though some of the infantry were almost fully sheathed in armour, it was soon found to be too cumbersome for rapid movements, and with the exception of the cuirassiers, who were clad in armour except the legs, they were seldom defended by more than a back- and breast-plate, and a head-piece. During the war the cavalry was divided into cuirassiers, lancers, arquebusiers, carbineers, and dragoons, according to the different weapon or armour which they carried,--the cuirass, the lance, the musket, the heavy arquebus, the carbine, or the dragon, a sort of blunderbuss. At this period the firelock was introduced by the poultry-stealers of Holland, and called after them the snaphance, or hen-stealer. The superiority of the flint-lock over the match- or cumbrous wheel-lock was soon seen and adopted.
The moral condition of the people, as we have just seen, was at this period deplorable. The neglect of education left the bulk of the working class ignorant and depraved, and the long peace which the reigns of Elizabeth and James maintained had so greatly augmented the wealth and prosperity of the nation, that the insolence of illiterate abundance added to the public exhibition of rudeness and riot. In one respect, however, the whole people had become enlightened--they had learned very extensively their political rights. The rise and opulence of the merchants and middle classes, through commerce and through the confiscation of Church lands, had impressed them with a feeling of their importance, and led them no longer to bow and cringe before the nobles, but to claim their proper authority as the third, and, indeed, the greatest estate. From the time when Henry VIII. set agoing discussions regarding religious liberty, and permitted the Bible to appear in good plain English, the light which sprang up on the subject of human rights was wonderful, and could never be withdrawn or extinguished. The mistake, as regarded royal prerogative, was soon seen, and an endeavour was made to limit the reading of the Bible to the nobles and the learned only, but it was in vain. Those who had the Scriptures soon spread abroad knowledge of their great principles, and as the Stuart government was daily found to be weaker, the sense of popular right was growing stronger and more general. So soon as Parliament began to resist the encroachments of the Crown, and even to do it with arms in their hands, it became necessary to convince the people at large that their rights were at stake, and to explain what these rights were. Such knowledge as this could never be taken back again, and accordingly from this period the principle that all power proceeds from the people and exists for the people, became the great fixed sentiment of the nation.
The physical condition of the kingdom, therefore, during the reign of James, was evidently much improved, and almost justifies the glowing description of Clarendon, made to set off the mischiefs of resistance to royalty. "For twelve years before the meeting of the Long Parliament," he says, "the kingdom enjoyed the greatest calm and the fullest measure of felicity that any people, in any age, for so long a time together, had been blessed with, to the wonder and envy of all other parts of Christendom." It was inevitable that much of this prosperity must be overthrown, or rather interrupted by a ten years' fierce contest, like that which arose between the Crown and the people. That the people were not only severely pressed by taxation to support this contest, but that they were harassed, plundered, and had their agricultural operations impeded, and their crops destroyed by the combatants is certain. Consequently, during the great struggle, the price of country produce rose extremely. Wheat, which in the early part of Charles's reign was as low as 44s. a quarter, rose after 1640 to 73s.; to 85s. in 1648; and in 1649 it was 80s.; but no sooner was the Commonwealth established, and peaceful operations were renewed, than it fell as rapidly, being, in 1650, 76s. 8d., and falling so much that in 1654 it was down to 26s. This was the lowest, and it averaged during the remainder of the Protectorate, 45s., as nearly as possible its price at the commencement of the war. Other articles of life rose and fell from the same causes in the same proportion; the prices of the following articles, except during the War, may be regarded as the average ones for this period:--A fat cygnet, about 8s.; pheasants, from 5s. to 6s.; turkeys, 3s. to 4s.; fat geese, 2s. each; ducks, 8d.; best fatted capons, 2s. 4d.; hens, 1s.; pullets, 1s. 6d.; rabbits, 7d.; a dozen pigeons, 6s.; eggs, three for 1d.; fresh butter, 6d. per pound. Vegetables, being so little cultivated, were very dear: cauliflowers, 1s. 6d. each; potatoes, 2s. per pound; onions, leeks, carrots, and potherbs, dear, but not quite so high-priced. Mutton and beef were about 3-1/2d. per pound. The wages of servants hired by the year and kept, were, for a farm servant man, from 20s. to 50s. a year, according to his qualifications; those obtaining more than 40s. were expected to be able to do all the skilled work, as mowing, threshing, thatching, making ricks, hedging, and killing cattle and pigs for daily consumption. Women servants, who could bake, brew, dress meat, make malt, etc., obtained about 26s. a year, and other women servants, according to age and ability, from that sum down to 14s. a year. A bailiff obtained 52s. Labourers, or artisans hired by the day, during harvest, had, a mower, 5d. a day and his food; a reaper, haymaker, hedger, or ditcher, 4d.; a woman reaper, 3d.; a woman haymaker, 2d.; if no food was given these sums were doubled. At other times labourers received from Easter to Michaelmas, 3d. a day with food, or 7d. without; and from Michaelmas to Easter, 2d. with food, and 6d. without. Carpenters and bricklayers received 8d. a day with meat, or 1s. without; sawyers, 6d. with meat, or 1s. without; and other handicrafts nearly the same, through the year till Michaelmas, after that much less.
The great extension of foreign commerce, and the introduction of coffee, spices, cottons, and other new tropical produce, increased the comfort of domestic life. Yet, with all this prosperity, there still abounded much pauperism and vagabondism. The war naturally had this consequence--great numbers of the dispersed Cavaliers and royal troopers taking to the highways, and to a loose and predatory life. Many parishes, too, were not disposed to burden themselves with the imposition of the poor laws, which had been strengthened by various enactments since the 43rd of Elizabeth, and they therefore drove out of their boundaries the unemployed to seek work elsewhere. This but increased the vagabondism and pilfering, and time alone could enable the Government to bring the poor-law into general operation.
VII. CHARLES II
Character of Charles II.--The King's First Privy Council--The Convention Parliament--Submission of the Presbyterian Leaders--The Plight of those who took Part in the late King's Trial--Complaisance of the Commoners--Charles's Income--The Bill of Sales--The Ministers Bill--Settlement of the Church--Trial of the Regicides--Their Execution--Marriage of the Duke of York--Mutilation of the Remains of Cromwell--The Presbyterians Duped--The Revenue--Fifth-Monarchy Riot--Settlements of Ireland and Scotland--Execution of Argyll--Re-establishment of Episcopacy--The new Parliament violently Royalist--The King's Marriage--His Brutal Behaviour to the Queen--State of the Court--Trial of Vane and Lambert--Execution of Vane--Assassination of Regicides--Sale of Dunkirk--The Uniformity Act--Religious Persecution--Strange Case of the Marquis of Bristol--Repeal of the Triennial Act--The Conventicle and Five Mile Acts--War with Holland--Appearance of the Plague--Gross Licentiousness of the Court--Demoralisation of the Navy--Monk's Fight with the Dutch--The Great Fire.
Charles II. did not want sense. He was naturally clever, witty, and capable of a shrewd insight into the natures and purposes of men. He gave proof of all these qualities in the observation which we have recorded, at the close of the day when he was restored to his paternal mansion, that everybody assured him that they had always ardently desired his return, and that if they were to be believed, there was nobody in fault for his not having come back sooner but himself. Yet, with many qualities, which, if united to a fine moral nature, would have made him a most popular monarch, he was utterly destitute of this fine moral nature. He had had much, long, and varied experience of mankind, and had alternately seen their base adulation of royalty in power, and their baser treatment of princes in misfortune. But Charles had not the nobility to benefit by this knowledge. He had familiarised himself with every species of vice and dissipation. He was become thoroughly heartless and degraded. His highest ambition was to live, not for the good and glory of his kingdom, but for mere sensual indulgence. He was habituated to a life of the lowest debauchery, and surrounded by those who were essentially of the same debased and worthless character. To such a man had the nation--after all its glorious struggles and triumphs for the reduction of the lawless pride of royalty, and after the decent and rigorous administration of the Commonwealth--again surrendered its fate and fortunes, and surrendered them without almost any guarantee. The declaration of Breda was the only security which it had, and that was rendered perfectly nugatory by the reservation of all decisions on those questions to a Parliament which the Court could control and corrupt.
Monk presented to the king a paper containing a list of names of such persons as he professed to consider to be the most eligible for the royal service either in the Council or the Ministry. But Clarendon, who was the king's great adviser, having adhered to him and his interests ever since his escape to the Continent, perused the catalogue with no little surprise. It consisted, he tells us, "of the principal persons of the Presbyterian party, to which Monk was thought to be most inclined, at least to satisfy the foolish and unruly inclinations of his wife. There were likewise the names of some who were most notorious in all the factions; and of some who, in respect of their mean qualities and meaner qualifications, nobody could imagine how they came to be named." They were, in fact, such as had been thrust on Monk by the Parliamentary leaders, who were all striving to secure their own interests; not even the Presbyterians foreseeing how severely they were punishing themselves by the restoration of the monarchy. Monk, on the Chancellor's remonstrance as to many of these names--amongst which only those of the Marquis of Hertford and the Earl of Southampton belonged to men who had at all adhered to the Royal cause--soon let him into the secret, that they were such as had importuned him to do them good offices with the king, and that he never intended to do more than forward the paper, and leave the king to do as he pleased. Clarendon soon, therefore, made out a very different list of names for the Privy Council, though he found it politic to insert almost as many names of Presbyterians as of Royalists, but with the purpose of gradually changing them.
The first Privy Council of Charles, therefore, consisted of the king's brothers, the Dukes of York and Gloucester, the Marquis of Ormond, the Earls of Lindsay, Southampton, Manchester, St. Albans, Berkshire, Norwich, Leicester, and Northumberland, the Marquises of Hertford and Dorchester, Lords Saye and Sele, Seymour, Colepepper, Wentworth, Roberts, and Berkeley, Sir Frederick Cornwallis, Sir George Carteret, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Sir Edward Nicholas, General Monk, and Morrice, his creature, who had assisted in the negotiations with the king, Colonel Charles Howard, Arthur Annesley, Denzil Holles, and Montague, general, or rather admiral, for as yet no distinctly naval officer was known--military commanders fought both on sea and land.
Amongst these Clarendon was Lord Chancellor and Prime Minister, the Duke of York was already appointed Lord High Admiral, to which was now added the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports and other offices. Sir Edward Nicholas and Morrice were joint Secretaries of State; the Earl of Southampton was made Lord Treasurer, the Marquis of Ormond Lord Steward, and the Earl of Manchester Lord Chamberlain. Monk was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all the forces in the three kingdoms, according to stipulation, and to this office was now added Master of the Horse, and he was created Duke of Albemarle, in addition to several inferior titles. His wife, who was originally a milliner, and after that had been his mistress, now figured boldly and ambitiously amongst the ladies of the Court.
The Parliament, both Lords and Commons, lost no time in seizing all such of the late king's judges as survived or were within the kingdom. The Parliament, which had no proper election--having been summoned by no lawful authority, but at Monk's command, and had obtained the name of Convention Parliament--passed an Act, which Charles authenticated, to legalise themselves, notwithstanding which it was still called by the old name of the Convention. Before the king could arrive, however, they had seized Clement, one of the king's judges, and ordered the seizure of the goods and estates of all the other regicides. On the king's arrival Denzil Holles and the Presbyterians--whose resentment against the Independents, who had so often put them out of Parliament, was blinded by desire of vengeance to the fact that the Royalists would not be long in turning on them who had done their best to dethrone Charles I., though they had not joined in putting him to death--now went in a body to Whitehall, and throwing themselves at Charles's feet, confessed that they were guilty of the horrid crime of rebellion, and implored the king's grace and pardon. Charles affected the most magnanimous clemency, and advised them to pass a Bill of Indemnity, which he had promised from Breda. But this apparent liberality was only the necessary step to the completion of his vengeance, for the declaration left to Parliament such exceptions as it thought proper; and in the present complying mood of Parliament, these exceptions would be just as numerous as the Court required. Monk had, in negotiating with Charles and Clarendon, recommended that only four should be excepted, but Clarendon and the king had long made up their minds that few of the king's judges should escape; and in this they were boldly urged on by the Royalists, who, says Clarendon, could not bear to meet the men on the king's highways, now they were the king's again, who rode on the very horses they had plundered them of, and had their houses and estates in possession.
The Commons were as ready as the Court for vengeance against their late successful rivals and masters; and though Monk again urged that not more than seven should be excepted on a capital charge, they decided that ten should be tried for their lives, namely, Scott, Holland, Lisle, Barkstead, Harrison, Saye, Jones, Coke, the solicitor, Broughton, clerk to the High Court of Justice, and Dendy, who had acted as serjeant-at-arms during the trial. They then requested the king to order by proclamation all those concerned in his late father's trial to surrender themselves within fourteen days. About a score felt it much the safest to escape across the sea, but nineteen surrendered--all, but the ten doomed to death, imagining they should escape with some minor punishment. But the thirst for vengeance became every day more violent. The Commons named twenty more for exception, whose lives were to be spared, but who were to suffer forfeiture of estate and perpetual imprisonment. These were Vane, St. John, Haselrig, Ireton, brother of the deceased major-general, Desborough, Lambert, Fleetwood, Axtel, Sydenham, Lenthall, Burton, Keeble, Pack, Blackwell, Pyne, Deane, Creed, Nye, Goodwin, and Cobbett. Moreover, all such as had not surrendered to the late proclamation were excluded from the benefit of the Bill of Indemnity.
This sanguinary list, however, did not satisfy the Lords when the Bill was sent up to them. They had suffered such indignities from the Independent leaders, that they could not bring themselves to forgive, and they altered the Bill, voting that every man who had sat on the king's trial, or signed the death-warrant, should be tried as a traitor for his life. They went even further, and excepted six others, who had neither sat nor voted--namely, Vane, Hacker, Lambert, Haselrig, Axtel, and Peters; and, as if luxuriating in revenge, they allowed the relatives of several of their own body who had been put to death under the Commonwealth, amongst whom were the Earl of Derby and the Duke of Hamilton, to sit as judges. The Commons accepted the Bill as thus altered, and would have made it still more atrocious, but Charles, who was extremely pressed for money, sent desiring them to come to an end with this Bill, and hasten the money Bill.
The Commons voted the king seventy thousand pounds a month for present necessities, and then proceeded to pass not only the Indemnity Bill, but to vote the king a liberal permanent revenue. In striking contrast to the early Parliaments of his father, they at once gave him the tonnage and poundage for life. Although this was one of the chief causes of the quarrel between Charles I. and his Parliament, and one of the main causes of the war and of his decapitation, this Parliament yielded the point at once. They, moreover, ordered that the army, of which Charles was afraid, should be disbanded, and that the 29th of May should be kept as a day of perpetual thanks giving to Providence, for having restored his majesty to the nation. All these favours to Charles they offered with the humility of men who were seeking favours for themselves, and being urged by Charles to settle the amount of his revenue altogether, they appointed a committee of inquiry on the subject, which decided that, as the income of his father had been about one million one hundred thousand pounds, his income should, considering the different value of money, be fixed at the unexampled sum of one million two hundred thousand pounds per annum. This income was to be settled by a Bill in the next session.
The question of religion, and the question of forfeited property, whether belonging to the Crown, the Church, or individuals, was next brought on, and led to most stormy discussions. The result was that two Bills were passed, called the Bill of Sales and the Ministers Bill. By the Bill of Sales all the Crown lands were ordered to be restored forthwith; but the Church lands were left in abeyance for the present; the lands of individuals were also deferred to a future session. The Ministers Bill was intended to expel from the pulpits of the Church all such ministers as had been installed there since the Parliament came into power. It did not, however, give satisfaction to the Church, for it admitted all such as entered on livings legally vacant at the time to retain them. A considerable number of Presbyterian clergymen thus remained in possession, but the Independents were thoroughly excited by a clause which provided that all ministers who had not been ordained by an ecclesiastic, who had interfered in the matter of infant baptism, or had been concerned in the trial of the king, or in its justification from press or pulpit, should be excluded. Thus the Royalists were incensed at the Bill of Sales, which they called an indemnity Bill for the king's enemies, and of oblivion for his friends, and the clergy of the Church were equally enraged to see a great number of livings still left to the Presbyterians.
On the 13th of September Charles prorogued the Parliament till the 6th of November, and promised during the recess to have what was called the "healing question of religion," that is, the settlement of the Church, discussed by competent parties, and to publish a declaration on the subject. Accordingly the Presbyterians were very soon promised a meeting with some of the Episcopalian clergy, and they were quite willing, seeing that they could no longer have matters their own way in the Church, to accept a platform of compromise laid down by Archbishop Ussher before his death, in which scheme the Church was to be governed by a union of suffragan bishops and synods or presbyteries, so as to unite the two great sects. But the foremost prelates and clergy of the Episcopalian Church, who were resolved to have the whole State Church to themselves, would listen to nothing so liberal or unorthodox. They refused to meet the Presbyterian clergy, and therefore Charles summoned the leaders of this sect to meet some of his chief privy councillors and ministers, as well as various bishops, at Whitehall, where Baxter and Calamy again proposed Ussher's scheme, which was as zealously rejected by the Episcopalians. The Presbyterians quoted the Eikon Basilike, to show that Charles I. was favourable to Ussher's plan, but Charles, who knew very well that the book was Dr. Gauden's, and not his father's, drily remarked that all in that work was not gospel. But what proved a complete damper to all parties, was a proposal read by Clarendon as having the king's approbation, namely, that others, besides the two parties in question, should have full liberty for religious worship, and should not be disturbed by magistrate or peace officer, provided they themselves did not disturb the peace. This was at once felt to mean toleration to the Catholics as well as the Nonconformists, and was received with silent repugnance.
On the 25th of October was issued the promised declaration for healing the strife. It went to unite the Presbyterian form of government with the Episcopal. There were to be presbyteries and synods, and no bishop was to ordain ministers or exercise the censures of the Church without the advice and assistance of the presbyteries. Presbyters were to be elected deans and canons; a number of divines of each sect were to be chosen by the king to revise the Liturgy, and all points of difference should be left unsettled till this revision was made; and no person should be molested on account of taking the Sacrament standing or kneeling, for making or not making the sign of the cross in baptism, for bowing or not bowing at the name of Jesus, for wearing or not wearing the surplice. The Presbyterians were delighted at the prospect thus afforded of free admission to good livings and dignities; but the Episcopalians intended nothing less than that any such thing should ever come to pass.
With more earnest intention the Government proceeded to judge the Regicides, and soon stepped up to the knees in blood. On the 9th of October the trials commenced at the Old Bailey, before thirty-four Commissioners appointed for the purpose. True bills were found against twenty-nine of the prisoners--namely, Sir Hardress Waller, Harrison, Carew, Cook, Hugh Peters, Scott, Clement, Scrope, Jones, Hacker, Axtel, Heveningham, Marten, Millington, Tichbourne, Row, Kilburn, Harvey, Pennington, Smith, Downes, Potter, Garland, Fleetwood, Meyn, J. Temple, P. Temple, Hewlet, and Waite.
The first man tried was Waller, who pleaded guilty, and had his life spared; the second was Harrison, the late Major-General. Harrison was a sincere and honest Fifth-Monarchy man. He said, "I humbly conceive that what was done, was done in the name of the Parliament of England; that what was done, was done by their power and authority; and I do humbly conceive it is my duty to offer unto you in the beginning, that this court, or any court below the High Court of Parliament, hath no jurisdiction of their actions." But all argument was useless addressed to such ears. Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, who had the management of the trials, told the grand jury in his charge that no authority whatever, either of a single person or of Parliament, had any coercive power over the king. This man had received very different treatment under the Protectorate. He had submitted to Cromwell, who had not only accepted his submission, but had allowed him privately to practise the law, and in this capacity he had acted as spy and agent for Cromwell. He continually interrupted Scott, Carew, and others, when they justified their conduct on the same ground of Parliamentary sanction. The people, notwithstanding their late acclamations, could not help raising loud murmurs at these arbitrary interruptions. The prisoners defended themselves with calm intrepidity, and when Bridgeman retorted on Carew that the Parliament that he talked of was the Commons alone, a thing without precedent, Carew replied, "there never was such a war, or such a precedent;" and he boldly upbraided Bridgeman with giving evidence as a witness whilst sitting as a judge. All these were condemned to death. The clever and facetious Harry Marten made a most ingenious and persevering defence, and extremely puzzled the Commissioners. He took exception to the indictment, declaring that he was not even mentioned in it. When he was shown the name Henry Marten, he objected that that was not his name, which was Harry Marten. This was overruled, but he went on to plead that the statute of Henry VIII. exempted from high treason any one acting under a king de facto, though he should not be king de jure; that the Parliament at that time was the supreme power, including the functions of both king and Parliament; that it was, in fact, the only authority there was in the country; and that it had from age to age been contended and admitted that God indicated the rightful power by giving it victory. Such was the authority that God at the time had set over them, and under that they had acted. His arguments were thrown away, and it was on this occasion that the absurd story--a typical example of many other silly stories that continued to be circulated for generations--was first given in evidence by a soldier, of him and Cromwell, on the signing of the death-warrant of the king, wiping their pens on each other's faces.
After a trial in which every ingenious and valid plea was advanced by the prisoners to deaf ears, all were condemned to death, but ten only were at present executed--Harrison, Scott, Carew, Jones, Clement, Scrope, Coke, Axtel, Hacker, and Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain. Peters, by his enthusiasm and wild eloquence, had undoubtedly roused the spirit of the Parliamentarians, and especially of the army, but he had had no particular concern in the king's death, and had often exerted himself to obtain mercy and kind treatment not only for the king, but for suffering Royalists. He declared on the trial that he had never been influenced by interest or malice in all that he had done; that he never received a farthing from Cromwell for his services; and that he had no hand in exciting the war, for he was abroad fourteen years, and found the war in full action on his return. Peters, whose character has been greatly maligned by the Cavaliers and their historians, appears really to have been a sincere and upright patriot; but his pleas were as useless as those of all the others.
Harrison was drawn first to Charing Cross on a hurdle. His conduct was cheerful and even animated, as with triumph he declared that many a time he had begged the Lord, if He had any hard, any reproachful, or contemptible service to be done by His people, that he might be employed in it; and that now his prayers were answered. Several times he cried out as he was drawn along, that he suffered in the most glorious cause in the world; and when a low wretch asked him, "Where's your good old cause now?" he replied, "Here it is!" clapping his hand on his heart, "and I am going to seal it with my blood." He was put to death with all the horrors of the most barbarous times, cut down alive, his bowels torn out whilst he was alive, and then his quivering heart held up to the people. Charles witnessed this revolting scene at a little distance, and yet that heartless man let the whole of the condemned suffer the same bloody barbarities. They all went to their hideous death with the same heroic spirit, and in order to daunt the old preacher, Hugh Peters, he was taken to see the hanging, drawing, and quartering of Coke, but it only seemed to animate him the more. The effect of this and of the addresses of the undaunted Regicides from the scaffold was such, that the people began to show evident disgust of these cruelties; and when Scott's turn came, the executioners endeavoured to drown his words, so that he said it must be a very bad cause that could not hear the words of a dying man. But the words and noble courage of these dying men, Bishop Burnet observes, "their show of piety, their justifying all they had done, not without a seeming joy for their suffering on that account, caused the king to be advised not to proceed further, or at least not to have the scene so near the Court as Charing Cross."
About a month before Harrison's execution, the Duke of Gloucester died of small-pox; and scarcely were the royal shambles closed for awhile when the Princess of Orange, who had come over to congratulate her brother, the king, died of small-pox, too. "At Court," says Pepys, "things are in very ill condition, there being so much emulation, poverty, and the vices of drinking, swearing, and loose amours, that I know not what will be the end of it but confusion; and the clergy are so high that all people that I meet with do protest against their practice." Sober people must have looked back with a strange feeling to the earnest and manly times of the Protectorate. But death and marriage merriments were oddly mingled in this bacchanalian Court. The daughter of old Clarendon, Ann Hyde, was married to the Duke of York, and was delivered of a son just six weeks afterwards. The queen-mother (Henrietta Maria), the Princess of Orange, and the Princess Henrietta, were violently opposed to so unroyal a marriage, but the old Chancellor had the influence with Charles to carry it through, and, instead of a disgrace, to convert it into a triumph. The wily politician pretended himself to have been not only grossly deceived in the matter, but to be intensely angry, and told Charles, according to his own account in his autobiography, on hearing the news, that if the marriage had really taken place, he would advise that "the king should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon, under so strict a guard, that no living person should be permitted to come to her; and then that an Act of Parliament should be immediately passed for cutting off her head, to which he would not only give his consent, but would very willingly be the first to propose it." This picture of the heroism of a savage, however, ill agrees with the accounts of the Chancellor's real concern in the matter. Evelyn, in his diary, says, "The queen would fain have undone it, but it seems that matters were reconciled on great offers of the Chancellor's to befriend her, who was so much in debt, and was now to have the settlement of her affairs go through his hands." Accordingly, about six weeks after the arrival of Henrietta Maria at Whitehall the marriage was publicly acknowledged.
Amid all these disgraceful transactions Parliament met on the 6th of November, 1660. They proceeded to pass into a Bill the king's "healing declaration" regarding religion. The Presbyterians were in high spirits, but they were soon made to feel their folly in bringing back the Episcopalian Church with its Episcopalian head. The clergy were not so high for nothing. They knew very well what the king would do when the matter was pressed to an issue, and accordingly the expectant Presbyterians found the Court party not only voting, but openly speaking against the Bill. Morrice, the creature of Monk, and now Secretary of State, and Heneage Finch, the Solicitor-General, strenuously opposed it, Finch not scrupling to avow that "it was not the king's desire that the Bill should proceed." It was thrown out, and the duped Presbyterians, instead of being persecutors, found persecution let loose upon them. The Convention Parliament, having satisfied the Court in this measure, on the 8th of December voted the attainder of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, and, having got this sanction, on the 30th of January, 1661, the Court, under cover of the clergy's pious zeal, sent a rabble of constables to tear open the graves of these great Regicides, to drag their decaying corpses to Tyburn on hurdles, to hang them, to cut them down and behead them, and then, throwing their putrid bodies into a hole under the gallows, to stick their heads on poles on the top of Westminster Hall. They proceeded to perpetrate the same revolting atrocities on the bodies of innocent and virtuous women, and on some of the most illustrious men of our annals. The remains of the brave old mother of Cromwell; of his amiable daughter, Lady Claypole; of Dorislaus, the envoy of the Parliament who had been murdered by the retainers of this Charles II. at the Hague; of May, the historian of the Parliament, and the excellent translator of Lucan's "Pharsalia;" of Pym, the great and incorruptible champion of English liberty; and of Blake, the most famous admiral that the country had yet produced, whose name alone gave it a world-wide renown, were dragged forth out of their resting-places. These, and every other body which had been buried in the Abbey whilst the Commonwealth lasted, were flung into a pit in St. Margaret's churchyard.
The settlement of the revenue by the Convention Parliament was more successful than the legislation with regard to the Church. It was determined at all events to get rid of the vexatious duties of feudal tenure; for, though they had long ceased to have any real meaning, fines were still executed on alienation of property, and reliefs exacted on the accession to his property of each new Crown tenant. Minors were still wards of the Crown, and were still liable to the odious necessity of marrying at the will of their guardian. All these claims of the Crown were now abolished. Their place was supplied, not as might naturally be supposed by a land-tax, but by an excise upon beer and other liquors, the landed interests thus finding means to shift the burden upon the shoulders of the whole nation. The sum at which the revenue was fixed was one million two hundred thousand pounds a year.
This great bargain having been completed at the close of the year, the Convention Parliament was dissolved. The year 1661 opened with a Fifth-Monarchy riot. Though Harrison and some others of that faith were put to death, and others, as Overton, Desborough, Day, and Courtenay, were in the Tower, there were secret conventicles of these fanatics in the City, and one of these in Coleman Street was headed by a wine-cooper of the name of Venner, who, as we have already seen, gave Cromwell trouble in his time. On the night of the 6th of January, Venner, with fifty or sixty other enthusiasts, rushed from their conventicle, where he had been counselling his followers not to preach, but to act. They marched through the City towards St. Paul's, calling on the people to come forth and declare themselves for King Jesus. They drove some of the train-bands before them, broke the heads of opposing watchmen, but were at length dispersed by the Lord Mayor, supported by the citizens, and fled to Caen Wood, between Highgate and Hampstead. On the 9th, however, they returned again, confident that no weapons or bullets could harm them, and once more they put the train-bands and the king's life-guards to the rout. At length, however, they were surrounded, overpowered, and, after a considerable number were killed, sixteen were taken prisoners, including Venner himself. He and eleven others were hanged, the rest being acquitted for want of evidence. Pepys says there were five hundred of the insurgents, and their cry was, "The King Jesus, and their heads upon the gates!" that is, the heads of their leaders who had been executed and stuck there.
Charles at the time was at Portsmouth with his mother, and Clarendon made the most of the riot, representing it as an attempt to liberate the Regicides in the Tower, and restore the Commonwealth. Fresh troops were raised and officered with staunch Royalists, and a large standing army of that stamp would soon have been formed, had not strong remonstrances been made by the Earl of Southampton and others, and equally strong obstacles being existent in the want of money. The House of Commons, moreover, spoke out plainly before its dissolution, as to the raising of a new army, saying, they were grown too wise to be fooled into another army, for they had discovered that the man who had the command of it could make a king of himself, though he was none before. The known intention to put the Duke of York at the head of it was another strong objection. So the design for the present was abandoned.
In England, Scotland, and Ireland the king was, of course, beset by the claims of those who had stood by his father, or could set up any plea of service. There were claims for restoration of estates, and claims for rewards. Charles was not the man to trouble himself much about such matters, except to get rid of them. In Ireland the Catholics and Protestants equally advanced their claims. The Protestants declared that they had been the first in Ireland to invite him back, and the Catholics that they had been strongly on the late king's side, had fought for him both in Scotland and England, and had suffered severely from the late usurpers. The Protestants, however, were in possession of the forfeited estates, and Charles dared not rouse a Protestant opposition by doing justice to the Catholics, who, though the more numerous, were far the weaker party. Besides, the different interests of the claiming parties were so conflicting, that to satisfy all sides was impossible. Some of the Protestants were Episcopalians, some Presbyterians. The latter had been vehement for the Commonwealth, but to ward off the royal vengeance they had, on the fall of Richard Cromwell, been the first to tender their allegiance to Charles, and propitiate him by an offer of a considerable sum of money. Then there were Protestant loyalists, whose property under the Commonwealth had been confiscated, and there were the Catholics, who had suffered from both parties, even when ready to serve the king. There were officers who had served in the Royal army before 1649, and had never received the arrears of their pay; there were also the widows and orphans of such. To decide these incompatible demands Charles appointed a Commission. But little good could possibly accrue from this, for though there were lands sufficient to have pacified all who had just claims, these had been lavishly bestowed on Monk, the Duke of York, Ormond, Kingston, and others. Every attempt to take back lands, however unjustly held by Protestants, threatened to excite a Protestant cry of a dangerous favouring of Catholics, and of a design to reinstate the Papists, who, they averred, had massacred a hundred thousand Protestants during the rebellion. Charles satisfied himself with restoring the bishops and the property of the Episcopalian Church, and left the Commission to settle the matter. But appeals from this impassive tribunal were made to himself, and he at length published his celebrated declaration for the settlement of Ireland, by which the adventurers and soldiers who had been planted on the estates of the Irish by the Commonwealth were to retain them, except they were the estates of persons who had remained entirely neutral, in which case adventurers and soldiers were to have an equivalent from the fund for reprisals. But this settled nothing, for so many charges were advanced against those who pleaded they were innocent, that few were allowed to be so. The matter was next brought before the Irish Parliament, and there again was division. The Commons, who had been appointed through the influence of the soldiers and adventurers, voted that the king's declaration should pass into law. The Lords, on the contrary, protested that it would ruin all the old families, both Catholic and Protestant. The contending parties once more appealed to the king, who, wearied with the interminable strife, seized the opportunity of the discovery of a paper formerly signed by Sir Nicholas Plunket, one of the agents of the appellants, offering Ireland to the Pope or any Catholic power who would defend them against the Parliament, to dismiss their appeal, and the Bill, based on the Royal declaration, was passed. It was soon found, however, that it was not easy to carry this law into execution.
Scotland was restored to its condition of an independent kingdom. The survivors of the Committee of Estates, which had been left in management on Charles's disastrous march into England, previous to the battle of Worcester, were ordered to resume their functions. Middleton was appointed Lord Commissioner; Glencairn Lord Chancellor; the Earl of Lauderdale Secretary of State; Rothes President of the Council; and Crawford Lord Treasurer. A Parliament was summoned to meet in Edinburgh in January, 1661, and its first measure was to restore the Episcopal hierarchy. To completely destroy every civil right of the Presbyterian Kirk, Middleton procured the passing of an Act to annul all the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament since the commencement of the contest with the late king. Even the Lord Treasurer Crawford opposed this measure, declaring that as the late king had been present at one of these Parliaments, and the present one at another, therefore to repeal the Acts of these Parliaments would be to rescind the Act of Indemnity and the approval of the Engagement. Middleton carried his point, and levelled every political right of the Kirk at a blow. The ministers of the Kirk in astonishment met to consult and to protest; they sent a deputation to the king with a remonstrance; but they arrived at a time likely to inspire them with awe, and did not escape without a painful evidence that they were no longer in the proud position of their fathers. Charles had shed the blood of vengeance plentifully in England, and there were those in Scotland whom he looked on with a menacing eye. The chief of these was the Marquis of Argyll. Argyll had been the head and leader of the Covenanters. He had counselled with and encouraged the General Assembly in its resistance to the late king's measures. He had been his most persevering enemy, and, finally, he had encouraged the invasion of England by the Scots, and had been the first to support Cromwell, even sitting in the Parliament of his son Richard. Argyll was well aware that he was an object of resentment, and kept himself secure in the Highlands. But his son, Lord Lorne, had been a steady and zealous opponent of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, and he was one of the first to congratulate Charles on his restoration. To lay hold on Argyll in his mountains was no easy matter, but if he could be beguiled from his fastnesses to Court, he might be at once punished. No symptoms of the remembrance of the past, therefore, escaped the king or his ministers, and Argyll deceived by this, and by the friendly reception of his son, wrote proposing to pay his respects to his sovereign in the capital. Charles returned him a friendly answer, and the unwary victim was not long in making his appearance in London. But he was not admitted to an audience at Whitehall, but instantly arrested and committed to the Tower. He was then sent down to Scotland to be tried by the king's ministers there, some of them, as Lauderdale and Middleton, hideous to their own age and to posterity for their sanguinary cruelty. Besides, they were eager to possess themselves of Argyll's splendid patrimony, and they pursued his impeachment with an unshrinking and unblushing ferocity which astonished even the king.
Argyll pleaded that he had only acted as the whole nation had done, and with the sanction of Parliament; that the late king had passed an Act of Oblivion for all transactions prior to 1641, and the present king had given an Act of Indemnity up to 1651; that, up to that period, he could not, therefore, be called in question; that he had been out of the country during the time that most of the barbarities alleged had been committed; and that as to the Marquis of Montrose, he had been the first to commence a system of burning and extermination, and that they were compelled to treat him in the same manner. And finally, his compliance with Cromwell was not a thing peculiar to himself. They had all been coerced by that successful man; so much so, that his Majesty's Lord Advocate, then his persecutor, had taken the Engagement to him. This latter plea was the most unfortunate one that he could have used, for nothing but augmented malice could be the result of it, and there was enough of that already in the minds of his judges. Fletcher, the Lord Advocate, was thrown into a fury by the remark, called the marquis an impudent villain, and added an additional article to the charges against him--that of having conspired the late king's death.
Lord Lorne procured a letter from Charles, ordering the Lord Advocate to introduce no charge prior to 1651, and directing that on the conclusion of the trial, the proceedings should be submitted to the king before judgment was given. This would have defeated Argyll's foes had the king been honest in the matter; but Middleton represented to Charles that to stay judgment till the proceedings had been inspected by the king would look like distrust of the Parliament, and might much discourage that loyal body. Charles allowed matters, therefore, to take their course; but Middleton was again disappointed by Gilmore, the President of the Court of Sessions, declaring that all charges against the marquis since 1651 were less valid for the purposes of an attainder than those which had excited so much controversy in the cause of the Earl of Strafford, and he carried the Parliament with him. Argyll and his friends now calculated on his escape, but this was not intended. A number of letters were hunted out, said to have been written to Monk and other Commonwealth men whilst they were in power, expressing his attachment to their cause, and his decided disapprobation of the king's proceedings. These were decisive. Though the time was passed when fresh evidence could legally be introduced, these letters were read in Parliament, and the effect was that of a thunderbolt falling in the midst of Argyll's friends. They at once disappeared, overwhelmed with confusion, and sentence of death was passed on the marquis. That no time might be allowed for an appeal to the king, who wished to be excused refusing the favour of his life to his son, Argyll's execution was ordered in two days. In vain the unfortunate nobleman pleaded for ten days, in order that the king's pleasure might be ascertained; it was denied him, and understanding from that the determination of the king, he remarked, "I set the crown on his head at Scone, and this is my reward." He employed the short space left him in earnest prayer, and in the midst of his devotions, believing that he heard a voice saying, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee!" he was wonderfully consoled and strengthened, and ascended the scaffold with a calm intrepidity which astonished and disappointed his enemies. Before laying his head on the block, he declared his ardent attachment to the Covenanters in words which flew to every quarter of Scotland, and raised him to the rank of a martyr in the estimation of the people. His head was stuck on the same spike that had received that of Montrose.
Next to Argyll, the malice of the king and Cavaliers was fiercest against Johnston of Warriston, and Swinton. Warriston was the uncle of Bishop Burnet, a most eloquent and energetic man, who had certainly done his utmost for the maintenance of the Covenant, and against the tyranny of Charles I. He was now an old man, but he fled to France, where, however, he was not long safe, for the French Government gave him up, and he was sent back and hanged. Swinton, who had turned Quaker, escaped, perhaps through Middleton's jealousy of Lauderdale, who had obtained the gift of Swinton's estate, but more probably by a substantial benefit from the estate to the Court.
The wrath of Charles next fell on the deputation of twelve eminent ministers, who had dared to present a remonstrance against the suppression of the privileges of the Kirk. They were thrown into prison, but were ultimately dismissed except Guthrie, one of the most daring and unbendable of them. He had formerly excommunicated Middleton, and had been one of the authors of the tract, "The Causes of God's Wrath." Since the Restoration he had called a public meeting to remind the king of having taken the Covenant, and to warn him against employing Malignants. Guthrie was hanged, and along with him a Captain Govan, who had, whilst the king was in Scotland, deserted to Cromwell; but why he was selected from among a host of such offenders no one could tell. This closed the catalogue of Scottish political executions for the present.
But in another form Charles and his brutal ministers were preparing deluges of fresh blood in another direction. Middleton assured Charles that the restoration of prelacy was now the earnest desire of the nation, and a proclamation was issued announcing the king's intention. Only one of the bishops of Laud's making was now alive, Sydserfe, a man of no estimation, who was sent to the distant see of Orkney, though he aspired to the archiepiscopal one of St. Andrews. That dignity was reserved for a very different man, Sharp, a pretended zealot for the Kirk, who, at the same time that he urged Middleton to restore episcopacy, persuaded his clerical brethren to send him up to London to defend the independence of the Kirk. He went, and to the astonishment and indignation of the ministers and people, returned Archbishop of St. Andrews. He endeavoured, in a letter to Middleton of May 28th, to prove that he had served the Kirk faithfully till he saw that it was of no avail, and that he took the post to keep out violent and dangerous men. This, after such a change, could be only regarded as the poor excuse of an unprincipled man. His incensed and abandoned friends heaped on him execrations, and accused him of incontinency, infanticide, and other heinous crimes. By this measure, and the co-operation of Middleton and Lauderdale, all the old bitterness was revived, and the horrors of a persecution which has scarcely an example in history, were witnessed. By Sharp's advice three other bishops were appointed, Fairfowl to the see of Glasgow, Hamilton to Galloway, and Dr. Robert Leighton to Dunblane. Leighton was the son of that Dr. Leighton whom Laud had so unmercifully treated and mutilated for his tract against prelacy. And now his son embraced prelacy, but was a very different man to Sharp--pious, liberal, learned, and a real ornament to the Church, though entering it by such a change. The four bishops went up to London to receive ordination, which was administered to them by Sheldon, Bishop of London, at Westminster, with a splendour which greatly offended the Puritan simplicity of Leighton. They were invited to take their seats in the House of Parliament, where Leighton had very soon an opportunity of opposing the introduction of the oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, which, however, all men were required to take. Sharp drove on this and other irritating measures; all meetings of presbyteries and synods were prohibited under penalty of treason, and Sharp soon recommended the enforcement of an oath abjuring the Solemn League and Covenant; and with these terrible weapons in their hands, Middleton, Sharp, and Lauderdale drove the Presbyterians from all offices in the Church, State, or magistracy, and many were compelled to flee from the country. The most astonishing thing was, that the spirit of the people had been so subdued by the arms and supremacy of Cromwell, that, instead of rising as their fathers did, they submitted in passive surprise. It required fresh indignities and atrocities to raise them again to the fighting pitch, and they came. In a short time the number of prelates was augmented to fourteen, and the Kirk appeared to be extinguished in Scotland.
Whilst these things were taking place in Ireland and Scotland, in England the king and his Cavalier courtiers were running a high career, and the new Parliament proved violently Royalist. The old great families, the old gentry, the Cavaliers, and the clergy, were all united to strain every old corrupt practice to pack a Parliament of their own fashion. Royalists, Cavaliers, and the sons of Cavaliers predominated in the new Parliament, which met on the 8th of May, 1661. Not more than fifty or sixty of the Presbyterian party were elected, for the Cavaliers everywhere proclaimed them the enemies of the monarchy, and they were scared into silence. This Parliament acquired the name of the Pension Parliament, and, to the disgrace of the country, continued to sit much longer than the so-called Long Parliament, of which the constitution was so altered as occasion demanded that it could not be properly regarded as one Parliament from 1640 to 1660--it continued eighteen years. The Parliament and the Church far outran the Court in zeal for the destruction of liberty and the restoration of a perfect despotism. The Commons commenced their proceedings by requiring every member, on pain of expulsion, to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. They ordered, in conjunction with the Lords, the Solemn League and Covenant to be burnt by the common hangman; they proposed to annul all the statutes of the Long Parliament, and restore the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission, but in this they failed. They passed a Bill declaring that neither House, nor both Houses together, had any legislative power without the king; that in him resided the sole command of the militia, and all other forces of land and sea; and that an oath should be taken, by all members of corporations, magistrates, and other persons bearing office, to this effect:--"I do declare and believe that it is not lawful upon any pretence whatever to take arms against the king, and that I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against those commissioned by him." This was called the Corporation Oath. They restored the bishops to their seats in the House of Peers; they made Episcopalian ordination indispensable to Church preferment; they revived the old Liturgy without any concession to the prejudices of the Presbyterians, and thus drove two thousand ministers from the Church in one day; they reminded the sufferers that the Long Parliament had done the same, but they did not imitate that Parliament in allowing the ejected ministers an annuity to prevent them from starving; they declared it a high misdemeanour to call the king a Papist, that is, to speak the truth, for he was notoriously one; increased the rigour of the law of treason, and knocked on the head the last chance of popular liberty by abolishing the right of sending petitions to Parliament with more than twenty names attached, except by permission of three justices of the peace, or the majority of the grand jury. When this Parliament had done these notable feats, and passed a Bill of Supply, Charles prorogued it till the 28th of November.
On assembling at this date Parliament was alarmed by Clarendon with rumours of fresh conspiracies in the country. The object was to obtain the death of more of the Regicides. The Commons fell readily into the snare. To make a spectacle of disaffected men, they ordered three eminent Commonwealth men--Lord Monson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Sir Robert Wallop, to be drawn with ropes round their necks from the Tower to Tyburn and back again, to remain perpetual prisoners. But this did not satisfy them; they must have more blood, and though Charles had promised their lives to Sir Harry Vane and General Lambert, they demanded their trial and execution; and Charles, who had no more regard for his word than his father, complied. They were to be tried the next session. Parliament then proceeded to draw up a more stringent Conformity Bill, which passed both Houses. This Bill enacted that every clergyman should publicly, before his congregation, declare his assent to everything contained in the Common Prayer Book, and that every preacher who had not received Episcopal ordination must do so before the next feast of St. Bartholomew. They added some new collects, in one of which they styled the lecherous monarch "our most religious king." They made the 30th of January a holiday for ever, in memory of "King Charles the martyr;" and voted the king a subsidy of one million two hundred thousand pounds, and a hearth tax for ever. The king then prorogued them on the 19th of May, 1662, with many professions of economy and reformation of manners, one of which he observed as much as the other.
Of the improvement of his morals he soon gave a striking example. The Duke of York, as has been stated, had married Anne Hyde, though she had been his mistress and was on the point of being delivered of an illegitimate child, which Charles Berkeley publicly claimed as his own, and brought forward the Earls of Arran, Talbot, Jermyn, and others to testify to her loose conduct. Berkeley was afterwards brought to contradict his own statement; but these circumstances, and James's gloomy and bigoted temper, rendered it desirable that Charles should marry. Heirs and heiresses he had in abundance, had they been legitimate. Besides Lucy Walters or Barlow, by whom he had the Duke of Monmouth, though the paternity of the child was generally awarded to the brother of Algernon Sidney--for Mrs. Walters or Barlow was very liberal of her favours--Charles had, on arriving in London, established a connection with the wife of a Mr. Palmer, whose maiden name was Barbara Villiers. The husband's connivance was purchased with the title of Earl of Castlemaine, and the countess was afterwards advanced to the rank of the Duchess of Cleveland.
As it was requisite for Charles, however, to marry, his ministers looked about for a suitable wife. Nothing could reconcile him to the idea of a German bride, and the Catholic princesses of the south were regarded by the nation with suspicion, both from the memory of the last queen, and the suspected tendency of Charles himself to Popery. Whilst Charles was in France, in 1659, he made an offer to the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, which that shrewd politician--who showed himself, however, a bad prophet--politely declined, for Charles was then a mere fugitive, and the cardinal did not foresee so sudden a change.
On the recall of Charles to the throne, both Mazarin and his master, Louis XIV., saw their mistake, for they had not only treated Charles with as much indifference as if it were a moral certainty that he could never again reach the throne of England, but had even sent him out of the country at the demand of Cromwell. Mazarin now offered his niece, but the scene was changed, and Charles no longer stooped to the niece of a cardinal. Louis, who had no suitable princess of France to offer him, and who wanted to prevent Portugal from falling into the power of Spain, recommended to him Donna Catarina of Braganza, the Portuguese monarch's sister. Could he accomplish this match, Louis, who was bound by treaty with Spain to offer no aid to Portugal, might be able to do it under cover of the King of England. The king's ministers, after some apprehension on the score of the lady's religion, were of opinion that the match was desirable, if it were only for the great dowry offered--five hundred thousand pounds, the Settlements of Tangier in Africa, and Bombay in the East Indies, besides a free trade to all the Portuguese colonies. De Mello, the Portuguese ambassador in London, was informed that the proposal met the approbation of the king. To link the interests of France and England closer, the Princess Henrietta, Charles's youngest sister, was married to the Duke of Orleans, the only brother of the French king.
On the 13th of May the Portuguese princess arrived at Spithead; Charles was not there to receive her, pretending pressure of Parliamentary business, but he sent to request of her that the marriage ceremony after the Catholic form, which he had promised, might be waived. Catherine would not consent. On the 20th, Charles having arrived at Portsmouth, they were, therefore, married in private by Catherine's almoner, Stuart D'Aubigny, in the presence of Philip, afterwards Cardinal Howard, and five other witnesses, and subsequently in public by the Bishop of London.
On the journey to Hampton Court, and for a few days afterwards, Charles appeared extremely pleased with his wife, who--though she could not compete in person with the dazzling Lady Castlemaine, and has been described by some contemporaries as a homely person, as "a little swarthy body, proud, and ill-favoured"--is stated by others also to have been "a most pretty woman." According to Lely's portrait of her, she is a very pleasing brunette beauty, and by all accounts she was extremely amiable; but the misfortune was, that she had been brought up as in a convent, completely secluded from society, and therefore was little calculated, by the amount of her information, or the graces of her manners, to fascinate a person of Charles's worldly and volatile character.
How was such a woman to support her influence with such a man against the beauty and determined temper of Lady Castlemaine, a woman as dissolute and unprincipled as she was handsome? In her fits of passion she often threatened the king to tear their children to pieces, and set his palace on fire; and when she was in these tempers, a contemporary says, "she resembled Medusa less than one of her dragons." Charles was the perfect slave of her charms and her passions. She had wrung from him a promise that his marriage should not cause him to withdraw himself from her, and having borne him a son a few days after his marriage, she only awaited her convalescence to take her place as one of the queen's own ladies. Catherine had heard of his amour before coming to England, for it was the talk of Europe, and her mother had bade her never to allow her name to be mentioned in her presence. But very soon the king presented her a list of the ladies of her household, and the first on the list she saw, to her astonishment, was Lady Castlemaine. She at once struck it out and, notwithstanding the king's remonstrances, declared that sooner than submit to such an indignity, she would return to Portugal. But she was not long in learning that no regard to her feelings was to be expected from this sensual and unfeeling monster. He brought Lady Castlemaine into the Queen's chamber, leading her by the hand, and presenting her before the assembled Court. Such a scandalous offence to public decorum, such a brutal insult to a young wife in a strange land, was perhaps never perpetrated before. Catherine, who did not recognise the name uttered by the king, received her graciously, and permitted her to kiss her hand; but a whisper from one of the Portuguese ladies made her aware of the outrage. She burst into tears, the blood gushed from her nostrils in the violent effort to subdue her feelings, and she fell senseless into the arms of her attendants. Instead of feeling any compunction for the pain thus inflicted on his wife, the demoralised reprobate was enraged at her for thus, as he called it, casting a slur on the reputation of the fair lady. He abused the queen for her perversity, and vowed that she should receive Lady Castlemaine as a lady of her bedchamber, as a due reparation for this public insult. It was in vain, however, that he stormed at his unhappy wife; she remained firm in her resolve, either to be freed from the pollution of the mistress's presence, or to return to Portugal. Clarendon and Ormond ventured to remonstrate with Charles on his cruelty, but Charles was especially indignant that they should "level the mistresses of kings and princes with other lewd women, it being his avowed doctrine that they ought to be looked upon as above other men's wives." However opposed such a doctrine may be to the more refined taste and purer morality of the present age, it was quite in harmony with the habits and feelings which regulated the social system of Europe at that period. Charles was at least no worse than Louis XIV., whose mistresses were admitted to the intimacy of married ladies of approved virtue and chastity. The same, too, may be said of the English Court under the first two kings of the House of Brunswick.
The part which Clarendon played on this occasion is greatly at variance with that reputation for honour, wisdom, virtue, and true dignity with which his admirers invest him. It shows that however much he might recoil at it, however deeply disgraceful and degrading he might feel it, he was ready to stoop to this disgrace and degradation, rather than sacrifice his interest at Court. Accordingly Charles let him know that he expected him not only to cease to object to his unmanly conduct to his wife, but to make himself the instrument of inducing her to submit to the ignominy; and the hoary moralist, the great minister and historian, showed himself humbly pliant, and set to work in earnest to bend the mind of this virtuous and outraged woman to the shame of receiving her husband's harlot as her daily companion and attendant. And this Clarendon did perseveringly, and at length successfully. When Catherine talked of returning to Portugal, he bade her understand that she was utterly in the power of her husband; that so far from going to Portugal, she could not even go out of the palace without his permission; and, in fact, he so worked upon the poor creature's terrors, backed by the savage threats of the king, that he broke her spirit, and taught her to acquiesce in an example of profligacy, which at once scandalised and corrupted the morals of the age. Charles, when Catherine repeated her determination to return to Portugal, told her rudely that she must first see whether her mother would receive her, and that he would send her Portuguese servants to ascertain that point; and he discharged all her attendants. Thus abandoned in a foreign country, the miserable queen told the Chancellor that she had to struggle with greater difficulties than any woman of her condition before; but that pattern minister only showed her that it was the more necessary to submit. And thus Clarendon complacently writes:--"In all this the king preserved his point; the lady came to Court, was lodged there, was every day in the queen's presence, and the king in continual conference with her, whilst the queen sat untaken notice of; and if her Majesty rose at the indignity, and retired into her chamber, it may be one or two attended her; but all the company remained in the room she left, and too often said those things aloud which nobody ought to have whispered. She alone was left out in all jollities, and not suffered to have any part of those pleasant applications and caresses which she saw made abroad to everybody else; a universal mirth in all company but in hers, and in all places but in her chamber, her own servants showing more respect and more diligence to the person of the lady than towards their own mistress, who, they found, could do them less good. All these mortifications were too heavy to be borne, so that at last, when it was least expected or suspected, the queen of a sudden let herself fall first to conversation, and then to familiarity, and even in the same instant to a confidence with the lady; was merry with her in public, talked kindly of her, and in private used nobody more friendly."
Catherine was subdued to her yoke, and this was the treatment of an English king to a princess who brought him besides a splendid money dowry, the Settlement of Tangier, which might in any reign of sense and policy have been made a commanding station in the Mediterranean, and Bombay, our first Settlement in India, the nucleus of our present magnificent Indian empire.
Whilst these scenes had been passing in the palace, the lives of Cromwell's supporters were brought into question without. Vane and Lambert were put upon their trial before the Court of King's Bench on the 2nd of June. The prominent actors in the drama of the late Rebellion had both in their different ways done immense damage to Royalty; and though the Convention Parliament had requested Charles to leave them unpunished--notwithstanding that they were not included in the Bill of Indemnity--and Charles had assented, the Cavaliers could not rest satisfied without their blood. Lambert had been one of Cromwell's chief generals--one of his major-generals--and to the last he had done his best to maintain the cause of the Commonwealth by his sword, and had attempted to prevent the march of Monk at the very time that he was planning the return of the king. Vane had been one of the very ablest counsellors and diplomatists that the Commonwealth had had. True, he had not sat on the trial of the king, he had had no hand whatever in his death; but he had done two things which could never be forgotten or forgiven by the Royalists. He had furnished the minutes of the Privy Council from his father's cabinet, which determined the fate of Strafford, and the Court held him to be the real author of his death; next, though he did not assist in condemning the king, he accepted office under what was now termed the rebel Government. Besides and beyond these, he was a man of the highest diplomatic abilities, and of a spotless character and high religious temperament, which caused the vile spirit and lives of the new reigning power and party to look even viler by the contrast. The prisoners were charged with conspiring and compassing the death of the present king, and the recent acts in proof of this were alleged to be consulting with others to bring the king to destruction, and to keep him out of his kingdom and authority, and actually assembling in arms. These were vague and general charges, which might have been applied to all who had been engaged in the late Government, and on the same pleas all the Commonwealth men might have been put to death.
Lambert, who had been most courageous in the field, appeared, before a court of justice, a thorough coward. His late transactions had shown that he was a man of no military genius, and now he trembled at the sight of his judges. He assumed a very humble tone, pretended that when he opposed General Monk he did not know that he was a favourer of the house of Stuart, and he threw himself on the royal clemency. As there was clearly nothing to be feared from such a man, he received judgment of death, but was then sent to a prison in Guernsey for life, where he amused himself with painting and gardening.
But Vane showed by the ability with which he defended himself that he was a most dangerous man to so corrupt and contemptible a dynasty as now reigned. The nobility of his sentiments, the dignity of his conduct, and the acuteness of his reasonings, all marked a man who kept alive most perilous and disparaging reminiscences. Every plea that he advanced, and the power with which he advanced it, which before a fair and independent tribunal would have excited admiration, and ensured his acquittal, here only inspired terror and rage, and ensured his destruction. He contended that he was no traitor. By all principles of civil government, and by the statute of Henry VII., he had only contended against a man who was no longer king de facto. The Parliament, he said, before his union with it, had entered on the contest with the late king, and put him, on what they held to be sufficient grounds, out of his former position and authority. Moreover, by the law of the land--the statute of the 11th of Henry VII., and the practice based upon it--the Parliament were become the reigning and rightful power. Under that power, and by the constitutional, acknowledged Government he had acted, taking no part in the shedding of the king's blood; and what he did after he did by the authority of the only ruling Government. He therefore denied the right of any court but the High Court of Parliament to call him in question, and he demanded counsel to assist him in any case in rebutting the charges against him. But every argument that he advanced only the more militated against himself. The court was met to condemn him and get rid of him, and the more he could prove its incompetence, the worse must their arbitrary injustice appear. The more he could prove the Commonwealth a rightful Government, the more must the present Government hate and dread him. The judges declared that Charles had never ceased to be king either de facto or de jure from the moment of his father's death. That he was not king de facto, but an outcast from England, deprived of all power and name, was notorious enough, but that mattered little; they were resolved to have it so. In order to induce Vane to plead, they promised him counsel, but when he had complied, and pleaded not guilty, they answered his demand for counsel by telling him they would be his counsel.
Before such a tribunal there could be but one result--right or wrong, the prisoner must be condemned; but Vane made so able and unanswerable a defence, that the counsel employed against him were reduced to complete silence: whereupon Chief-Justice Foster said to his colleagues, "Though we know not what to say to him, we know what to do with him." And when he adverted to the promise of the king that he should not be condemned for what was past, and to his repeated demand for counsel, the Solicitor-General exclaimed, "What counsel does he think would dare to speak for him in such a manifest case of treason, unless he could call down the heads of his fellow traitors--Bradshaw or Coke--from the top of Westminster Hall?" He might have added--in that vile state of things, that disgraceful relapse of the English public into moral and political slavery--what jury would dare to acquit him? The king was so exasperated at the accounts carried to him at Hampton Court of the bold and unanswerable defence of Vane, that he wrote to Clarendon, "The relation that hath been made to me of Sir Harry Vane's carriage yesterday in the hall is the occasion of this letter, which, if I am rightly informed, was so insolent as to justify all that he had done, acknowledging no supreme power in England but Parliament, and many things to that purpose. You have had a true account of all, and if he has given new occasion to be hanged, certainly he is too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way. Think of this, and give me some account of it to-morrow." What account Clarendon gave we may imagine, for he is careful in his own autobiography to pass over altogether so small a matter as the trial and death of this eminent man.
Vane was condemned, and executed on Tower Hill on the 14th of June, 1662, on the very spot where Strafford suffered, thus studiously making his death an act of retribution for his evidence against that nobleman. On taking leave of his wife and friends, Sir Harry confidently predicted--as the former victims, Harrison, Scott, and Peters had done--that his blood would rise from the ground against the reigning family in judgment, on earth as well as in heaven. "As a testimony and seal," he said, "to the justness of that quarrel, I leave now my life upon it, as a legacy to all the honest interests in these three nations. Ten thousand deaths rather than defile my conscience, the chastity and purity of which I value beyond all this world." So alarmed were the king and courtiers at the impression which this heroic and virtuous conduct was likely to make on the public, that they took every means to prevent the prisoner from being heard on the scaffold. They placed drummers and trumpeters under the scaffold, to drown his voice when he addressed the people. When he complained of the unfairness of his trial, Sir John Robinson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, rudely and furiously contradicted him, saying, "It's a lie; I am here to testify that it is a lie. Sir, you must not rail at the judges." When he began again, the drummers and trumpeters made the loudest din that they could, but he ordered them to be stopped, saying he knew what was meant by it. Again, as he attempted to proceed, they burst forth louder than ever; and Robinson, furious, attempted to snatch the paper out of his hand which contained his notes. Vane, however, held it firmly, and then Robinson, seeing several persons taking notes of what the prisoner said, exclaimed in a rage, "He utters rebellion, and you write it;" and the books were seized, or all that could be discovered. They next, two or three of them, attempted to wrest his papers from him, and thrust their hands into his pockets, on pretence of searching for others. A more indecent scene never was witnessed, and Vane, seeing that it was useless to attempt being heard, laid his head on the block, and it was severed at a stroke.
But the effect of Vane's words and conduct died not with him. The people, degraded as they had become, could not avoid perceiving that the spirit of evil was abroad; that revenge was being taken for the virtue and the great principles of the Commonwealth; that the base and worthless were exterminating the true--those who were the real glory of the nation. Burnet says, "It was generally thought that the Government lost more than it gained by the death of Vane;" and even the gossiping Pepys said that he was told that "Sir Harry Vane was gone to heaven, for he died as much a saint and martyr as ever man did, and that the king had lost more by that man's death than he would get again for a long while."
But these plain signs could not stop the thirst for blood. Colonels Okey, Corbet, and Barkstead, three of the Regicides, had got away to Holland, as Goffe, Whalley, and Dixwell had to the New England settlements. The last three managed, in various disguises, but in continual fears, to escape; but Okey, Corbet, and Barkstead were hunted out by Downing, who, having been Cromwell's ambassador at the Hague, had made his peace with the new Government, and was ready to earn favour by making himself its bloodhound in running down his former friends. He had once been chaplain to Okey's regiment. Having secured them, the States were mean enough to surrender them, and they suffered all the horrors of hanging and embowelling at the gallows. General Ludlow, Mr. Lisle, and others of the Commonwealth men had retired to Switzerland, which nobly refused to give them up; but the Royalists determined to assassinate them if they could not have them to hack and mangle at the gibbet. Murderers were sent after them to dog them, and though Ludlow escaped, as by a miracle, from several attempts, Lisle was shot, on Sunday of all days, as he was entering the church at Lausanne; and the murderers rode away shouting, "God save the king!" and made their escape into France.
If the country was discontented at the destruction of its most eminent and virtuous men, it found that it must prepare to see its foreign prestige sold to France. The king wanted money; Louis XIV. wanted Dunkirk back again, which Cromwell had wrested from France, and which remained a proof of the ascendency of England under that great ruler. Clarendon, who should have endeavoured to save the nation from that disgrace, did not know where else to look for the necessary supplies for Charles's pleasures, and if he did not suggest, actually counselled the measure. It was contended that Dunkirk was useless to England, and that the expense of maintaining it was onerous. But not only France, but Spain and Holland, knew very well its value as a bulwark against the notorious designs of Louis of adding Belgium, and if possible Holland, to France. Charles knew this very well, too, and was ready to sell it to the highest bidder. Spain and Holland were eager to make the purchase, but Charles was expecting other favours from France, and could not get them if he sold Dunkirk to either of those nations. He was in treaty with Louis for ten thousand foot and a body of cavalry, to enable him to tread down the remaining liberties of the people. He therefore gave the preference to France--for not a patriotic feeling, but the most base personal views swayed him in such matters--and struck a bargain with D'Estrades for five million livres. Charles struggled for the payment in cash, but Louis would only give bills for the amount; and then, knowing Charles's necessity, he privately sent a broker, who discounted the bills at sixteen per cent.; and Louis himself boasts, in his published works, that he thus saved five hundred thousand livres out of the bargain, without Charles being aware of it. The indignation of the public at this transaction was loud and undisguised; the merchants of London had in vain offered themselves to advance the king money, so that Dunkirk might not be sacrificed, and now the people openly said that the place was sold only to satisfy the rapacity of the king's mistresses, of whom he was getting more and more--Miss Stewart, Nell Gwynn, and others of less mark. The reprobation of the affair was so universal and violent, and Clarendon was so fiercely accused of being a party to it, that from this hour his favour with the nation was gone for ever.
Whilst the king was thus spilling the best blood, and selling the possessions of the country, the Nonconformists were vainly hoping for his fulfilment of his Declaration of Breda, as it regarded liberty to tender consciences. The Act of Uniformity came into force on the 24th of August, St. Bartholomew's Day, on which day the deprivation of two thousand Presbyterian ministers would be enforced. They therefore petitioned for three months' delay, which Charles promised, on condition that during that time they should use the Book of Common Prayer. But no sooner was this promise given than the Royalists, and especially the bishops, contended that the king was under no obligation to keep the Declaration of Breda, inasmuch as it had only been made to the Convention Parliament, which had never called for its fulfilment. Clarendon did not venture to counsel Charles to break his word, but he advised the summoning of the bishops to Hampton Court, where the question was discussed in the presence of Ormond, Monk, and the chief law-officers and ministers of State. The bishops expressed much disgust at "those fellows," the Nonconformists, still insisting on interrupting the king in the exercise of his undoubted prerogative; they were supported by the Crown lawyers, and the Act was enforced in all its rigour, despite the royal promise, which had over and over lost its slightest value. The storm of persecution burst forth on the Nonconformists with fury. Their meetings were forcibly broken up by soldiery, and their preachers and many of themselves thrust into prison on charges of heresy and violation of the laws. Numbers again prepared for flight to New England, and to prevent this sweeping emigration of useful artisans, the Earl of Bristol, the former impetuous and eccentric Lord Digby of the Civil Wars, and Ashley Cooper planned a scheme which should at once relieve both Dissenters and Catholics. This was to induce the king, on the plea of fulfilling his Declaration of Breda, to issue a declaration of indulgence of a broad and comprehensive character. This was supported in the Council by Robartes, Lord Privy Seal, and Bennet, the new Secretary of State. Accordingly, Charles, on the 6th of December, issued his declaration, called "a Declaration for Refuting Four Scandals cast on the Government"--namely, that the Act of Indemnity had been merely intended to be temporary; that there was an intention to keep a large standing army; that the king was a persecutor; and that he was a favourer of Popery. In answer to the third scandal, he declared he would submit to Parliament a Bill for ample indulgence to tender consciences; and though he would not refuse to make the Catholics, like the rest of his subjects, a partaker in this privilege, yet to show the fallacy of the fourth scandal, if they abused his goodness he would pursue them with all the rigour of the laws already existing against them.
This announcement was received with an outburst of indignation by all parties except the Independents and the other Dissenters who partook of their ideas of general toleration. But the Presbyterians adhered to their ancient bigotry so firmly, that rather than Catholics should enjoy toleration, they were ready to forego it themselves. The Church, and a vast number of people of no religion at all, joined in the cry out of their hereditary alarm at Popery. The moment that the session of 1663 opened, on the 18th of February, both houses attacked the Declaration, and the Commons, though the Bill was not before them, sent an address to the king, thanking him for the other parts of the Declaration, but represented the third clause as pregnant with schism, endless liberties and importunities of sects, and certain disturbance of the national tranquillity. In the Lords the Lord-Treasurer led the opposition, and the bishops supported him with all their energies, and, to the astonishment of Charles himself, Clarendon, who had been laid up with gout, on the second day of the debate went to the House, and attacked it with a vehemence of language which gave great offence to the king. Probably Clarendon calculated on more serious damage from the popular feeling, of which his Dunkirk policy had recently given him a sharp taste, than on any strong resentment of Charles, but he was mistaken; the Bill was defeated, but the king expressed his wrath to Southampton, the Treasurer, and Clarendon, in such terms as struck terror into them, and from that time it was evident that neither of them possessed his confidence any longer. Nor did he spare the bishops. He reproached them with bigotry and ingratitude. He told them that it was owing to his Declaration of Breda that they owed their restoration, and that now they were driving him to break that promise. The intolerance of the bishops in his father's time had caused, he said, the destruction of the hierarchy, and done much to ruin the monarchy itself; and no sooner were they reinstated, than they were pursuing the same blind and fatal course. From that day, too, his manner to them changed, and his courtiers, quick to perceive the change, imitated it, and, glad to excuse their profligacy, indulged in ridicule of their persons, and mockery of their sermons.
But though Charles had boldly spoken much severe truth in the moment of his resentment, all parties calculated too well on the evanescence of anything in him like a wise or virtuous perseverance, and they pursued their object with an obstinacy which compelled the ease-loving monarch to give way. The Commons passed a Bill to check the growth of Popery, and another that of Nonconformity, but though strongly supported in the Lords, they were defeated by the Presbyterian and Catholic members. They then changed their tack, and presented an address to the king, praying him to put in force all the penal laws against the Catholics and sectaries of every description. Having expressed their wishes, the Commons granted the king four subsidies, and he was about to prorogue Parliament, when a strange incident delayed this event for some time. The king, during the discussion on the Supplies, made a statement which seemed to commit the Earl of Bristol with Parliament. The earl and the king becoming warm in mutual explanation before Lord Arlington, Charles used strong language, and Bristol, losing his temper, reproached the king with his amours, his indolence, and the sacrifice of his best friends to the malice of Clarendon, and vowed that unless justice was done him within twenty-four hours, he would do a thing that would astonish both the king and the Chancellor. This thing was to impeach Clarendon of high treason on the ground that he had, both publicly and privately, endeavoured to fix the character of a papist on the king, and had represented that he alone protected the Protestant establishment. Bristol's hasty temper had betrayed him into a charge which he could not substantiate. He was foiled with disgrace, and he only escaped being arrested by flight.
When the next session of Parliament opened, on the 16th of March, 1664, the Commons returned with unabated animus, and circumstances in the interim had occurred, which, as they favoured both the orthodox scheme and a scheme of the king's, enabled them to carry their point by conceding his. In October, a trifling insurrection broke out at Farnley Wood, in Yorkshire. The people, who were of an obscure class, appeared to be Fifth-Monarchy men and Republicans, who complained of the persecutions for religion, and of the violation of the Triennial Act, and contended that as the present Parliament had sat more than three years, it was illegal, and the people had nothing to do but to elect another of their own accord. This was a mistake; the Act did not limit the duration of Parliament, but the interval between one Parliament and another. The Triennial Act, passed in the 16th of Charles I., when his Parliament wrung a number of those guarantees from him, authorised the sheriffs to issue writs for an election after any Parliament had ceased to sit three years, if the Government did not summon one, and in default of the sheriffs issuing such writs, the people might assemble, and proceed to election without writs.
The Government wanted to be rid of this Act, and therefore the Duke of Buckingham set Gere, sheriff of Yorkshire, and others, to send incendiaries amongst the people to excite them to proceedings of this sort. They were then arrested to the number of about fifty persons in Yorkshire and Westmoreland, on the plea that they were assembled without lawful cause, the Parliament, so far from having ceased to sit three years, being still sitting. The ignorant people had been probably purposely misinformed, and some of them were hanged for it. The end of Charles was gained. He told the Parliament that the Act thus encouraged seditious meetings, and that though he never wished to be without a Parliament for three years, he was resolved never to allow of a Parliament summoned by such means as prescribed by that Act. The Parliament readily repealed the Act, and passed another, still requiring a Parliament at farthest after three years' interval, but sweeping away what Charles called the "wonderful clauses" of the Bill.
In return for this favour, the Commons now solicited his assent to the Conventicle Act, which it was hoped would extinguish Dissent altogether. This was a continuation of those tyrannic Acts which were passed in this infamous reign, some of which, as the Corporation and Test Acts, even survived the revolution of 1688. The Test Act, the Act of Uniformity, by which Bishop Sheldon, the Laud of his time, ejected two thousand ministers, now the Conventicle, and soon after this the Five Mile Act, completed the code of despotism.
Here was the king, who, in the last session of Parliament, published his declaration for the indulgence of tender consciences, now wheeling round like a weathercock, and consenting to the Conventicle Act. And what was this Act? It forbade more than five persons to meet together for worship, except that worship was according to the Common Prayer Book. All magistrates were empowered to levy ten pounds on the ministers, five pounds on every hearer, and twenty pounds on the house where this conventicle, as it was called, was held. This fine, or three months' imprisonment, was the punishment for the first offence; ten pounds a hearer or six months' imprisonment for the second offence; one hundred pounds a hearer or seven years' transportation for the third; and death without benefit of clergy in case of return or escape. This diabolical Act Clarendon applauded, and said that if rigorously executed, it would have produced entire Conformity. What was Clarendon's idea of rigour?
Sheldon, the Bishop of London, let loose all the myrmidons of the law on the devoted country. The houses of Nonconformists were invaded by informers, constables, and the vilest and lowest rabble of their assailants. They broke open the houses of all Nonconformists, in search of offenders, but still more in search of plunder; they drove them from their meetings with soldiery, and thrust them into prisons--and such prisons! No language can describe the horrors and vileness of the pestiferous prisons of those days. The two thousand Nonconformist ministers were starving. "Their wives and children," says Baxter, "had neither house nor home." Such as dared to preach in fields and private houses were dragged to those horrible prisons; those who ventured to offer them food or shelter, if discovered, were treated the same. To prevent the Nonconformist ministers from remaining amongst their old friends, Sheldon, the very next session, procured the Five Mile Act, which restrained all dissenting clergy from coming within five miles of any place where they had exercised their ministry, and from teaching school, under a penalty of forty pounds for each offence.
In Scotland it was not against sects, but against the whole Presbyterian Church that the fury of the persecutors was directed. The Presbyterians had effectually crushed out all Dissenters, and now they themselves felt the iron hand of intolerance. No sooner did the Conventicle Act pass in England than the Royalist Parliament passed one there in almost the same terms, and another Act offering Charles twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse to march into England, to assist in putting down his subjects there, if necessary. Sharp was wonderfully elated by the Conventicle Act, and, establishing what proved to be a High Commission Court, he managed to place his creature, Lord Rothes, at the head of the law department as Chancellor, who brow-beat magistrates and lawyers, and twisted the laws as Sharp thought fit. The prisons were soon crammed as full as those in England, and proceedings of the law courts more resembled those of an inquisition than anything else, till the peasantry rose and endeavoured to defend themselves. The names of Lauderdale and Archbishop Sharp are made immortal for the infliction of infernal tortures; their racks and thumbscrews, their iron boots and gibbets are riveted fast and firm to their names.
And now the king was about to plunge into war to serve the purposes of his paymaster, the ambitious French king. Whatever could weaken or embarrass Holland suited exactly the plans of Louis XIV., and to have England contending with Holland whilst he was contemplating an attack on Spain was extremely convenient. The immediate cause, however, came from the complaints of the merchants, or rather of the Duke of York. The duke was governor of an African company, which imported gold dust from the coast of Guinea, and was deeply engaged in the slave trade, supplying West Indian planters with negroes. The Dutch complained of the encroachments of the English, both there and in the East Indies, and the English replied by similar complaints. The duke advocated hostilities against the Dutch, but found Charles unwilling to be diverted from his pleasures by the anxieties of war. He was worked on, however, by appeals to his resentment against the Louvestein faction in Holland, which had treated him with great indignity whilst he was an exile, and though the differences might have been readily settled by a little honest negotiation, the duke was desirous of a plea for further aggression on the Dutch, and his plans were fostered by Downing, the ambassador at the Hague, a most unprincipled man, who under Cromwell had held the same post, and traded most profitably on the fears of the Dutch.
In the spring of 1664, James's admiral, Sir Robert Holmes, arrived on the coast of Africa with a few small ships of war, to recover the castle of Cape Coast, which the Dutch had claimed and seized. He exceeded his commission as an officer of the African Company, and not only reduced the castle of Cape Coast, but the forts of Goree, and then sailed away to America, and cast anchor at the settlement of New Amsterdam, lately taken from the Dutch by Sir Richard Nicholas, and named it after his patron, New York. The Dutch ambassador now presented the strongest remonstrances, and the king, excusing himself on the plea that Holmes had gone out on a private commission, assured the ambassador that he would have him recalled and put upon his trial. Holmes, indeed, was recalled, and sent to the Tower, but was soon after liberated. The Dutch were not disposed to sit down under this indignity, and De Ruyter attacked the English settlements on the coast of Guinea, committed great depredations, and then, sailing to the West Indies, captured above twenty sail of English merchantmen. There was now a vehement cry for war, and Charles appealed to Parliament, which granted the unprecedented supply of two millions and a half. The City of London also presented several large sums of money, for which they received the thanks of Parliament. A very remarkable circumstance attended the Act granting this Parliamentary supply. The ancient mode of subsidies was abandoned, and a mode of assessment, copied from the plan of the Commonwealth, was adopted; the first time that the Royalists practically paid homage to the Republican superiority of finance. The tax was to be raised by quarterly assessments. Moreover, the clergy, instead of voting their money separately in Convocation, were called upon to pay their taxes with the laity, and thus ended the separate jurisdiction of Convocation: it became a mere form.
The Duke of York, who, with all his faults, was by no means destitute of courage, took the command of the fleet as Lord Admiral against the Dutch, and showed much ability in his command. He divided the fleet into three squadrons, one of which he commanded himself, the second he gave to Prince Rupert, who here again appeared in English affairs, and the third to the Earl of Sandwich, formerly Admiral Montagu. The whole fleet consisted of ninety-eight sail of the line and four fire-ships. On the 4th of June, 1665, he came to an engagement near Lowestoft with the Dutch under Admiral Opdam, a gallant and experienced seaman, followed by a hundred and thirteen men-of-war, manned by the most spirited and distinguished youth of Holland. The battle was terrible, but James, discharging all his guns into Opdam's vessel, caused it to blow up, and thus destroyed the admiral with five hundred men. The Dutch having lost their chief commander, drew off towards the Texel, but Van Tromp collected the scattered vessels, and there was a prospect of a second fight; but the duke went to bed, and Lord Brounker, a gentleman of the bedchamber, went on deck and ordered Penn to slacken sail. The consequence was that the Dutch were allowed to retire in safety, and much of the honour won by the duke was lost again by this circumstance. It was said that the duke knew nothing of it, and that Brounker had given the order of his own accord; but the prevailing opinion was that the duke thought he had got honour enough, and the Earl of Montague, who was serving as a volunteer, said the duke had been much impressed by seeing, in the heat of the action, the Earl of Falmouth, Lord Muskerry, and Boyle, son of the Earl of Burlington, killed by his side. Penn, moreover, was said to have told the duke that if they engaged again, the fight would be more bloody than ever, for the Dutch would grow desperate with revenge. The fleet, therefore, made homeward, and, says Pepys, the duke and his officers returned from sea "all fat and ruddy with being in the sun." It was given out as a great victory, and the duke received one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for his services; but the public was far from satisfied, and Lord Sandwich far less so. He complained to Pepys that he had borne the brunt of the battle, and that all the honour was given to the duke in the printed account. That there was much in these statements was sanctioned by the fact that the duke was removed from the fleet, and the command restored to the brave but unprincipled Sandwich. In the battle the Dutch are stated to have lost seven thousand men, and eighteen sail burnt, sunk, or taken. The English are reported to have lost only one ship, and six hundred men in killed and wounded. Amongst the slain were the Earls of Marlborough and Portland, and Admirals Lawson and Sampson.
Sandwich was scarcely in independent command when he heard of a most magnificent chance. Two Dutch merchant fleets, one from the East Indies and one from the Levant, to avoid the English fleet at the Texel, united and sailed round the north of Ireland and Scotland, and took shelter in the neutral harbour of Bergen, in Norway. They were jointly valued at twenty-five millions of livres. Sandwich sailed thither after them, and the King of Denmark, the sovereign of Norway, though at peace with the Dutch, was tempted, by the hope of sharing the booty, to let Sandwich attack them in port. Sandwich, however, was not satisfied to give the king half, as demanded, and in spite of Alefeldt, the governor, who begged him to wait till the terms were finally settled with the monarch, he ordered Captain Tyddiman to dash in and cut the ships out and all the Dutch vessels. But Tyddiman found himself between two fires; the Dutch defended themselves resolutely and the Danes, resenting this lawless proceeding, fired on them from the fort and batteries. Five of Sandwich's commanders were killed, one ship was sunk, much damage was done to the fleet, and it was glad to escape out of the harbour. Sandwich, however, was lucky enough soon after to secure eight men-of-war and about thirty other vessels, including two of the richest Indiamen, which were dispersed by a storm whilst under the convoy of De Witt. The unscrupulous Sandwich made free to appropriate two thousand pounds' worth of the booty, and allowed his officers to do the same, which occasioned his dismissal from the fleet; but to soften his disgrace, he was sent as ambassador to Spain. Parliament, to carry on the war, granted the king a fresh supply of one million two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and, at the same time, voted the one hundred and twenty thousand pounds to the duke.
Whilst these events had been transpiring the plague had been raging in the City of London, and had thence spread itself to various parts of the country. It raged with a fury almost unexampled in any age or nation. It had shown itself during the previous winter in a few individual cases, and as spring advanced, it terribly extended its devastations. In May it burst forth with frightful violence in St. Giles's, and, spreading over the adjoining parishes, soon threatened both Whitehall and the City. The nobility fled to the country, the Court retreated to Salisbury, and left Monk to represent the Government in his own person, and he boldly maintained his ground through the whole deadly time. As the hot weather advanced the mortality became terrible, and the people fled in crowds into the country, till the Lord Mayor refused to grant fresh bills of health, and the people of the neighbouring towns and villages declined to receive any one from London into them. Those who escaped out of the metropolis had to camp in the fields, whichever way they turned the inhabitants being in arms to drive them away. In June the City authorities put in force an Act of James I. They divided the City into districts, and allotted to each a staff of examiners, searchers, nurses, and watchmen. As soon as the plague was ascertained to be in a house, they made a red cross upon the door a foot in length, and wrote over, "Lord, have mercy upon us!" No one was allowed to issue out of the houses bearing that fatal sign for a month, if they could keep them in. Persons escaping out of these infected houses, and mingling with others, were liable to suffer death as felons. But to remain in these houses was to perish of plague or famine, and numbers broke wildly from them at all hazards, thus carrying the infection on all sides. Many in their frenzy jumped naked from the windows, rushed wildly through the streets, and plunged into the river.
It was calculated that forty thousand work-people and servants were left destitute by the flight of their employers, and subscriptions were made to prevent them from starving, for they were not allowed to leave the City. The king gave one thousand pounds a week, the City, six hundred pounds, the Queen Dowager, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and many noblemen contributed liberally. But the aspect of the place was terrible. The dead carts were going to and fro continually to collect the bodies put out into the streets, announced by the tinkling of a bell, and at night by the glare of links. The corpses were cast into pits, and covered up as fast as possible. The most populous and lately busy streets were grass-grown; the people who walked through them kept along the middle, except they were meeting others, and then they got as far from each other as possible. Amid all this horror, the sight of ghastly death, and the ravings of delirium, whilst some brave souls devoted themselves to the assistance of the suffering and dying, crowds of others rushed to taverns, theatres, and places of debauch, and a strange maniacal mirth startled the silence of the night, and added horror to the work of death. The weekly numbers who perished rose from one thousand to eight thousand. The wildest rumours of apparitions and strange omens were afloat. The ghosts of the dead were said to be seen walking round the pits where their bodies lay; a flaming sword was said to stretch across the heavens from Westminster to above the Tower, and men, raised by the awful excitement of the scene into an abnormal state, went about, as was done at the destruction of Jerusalem, announcing the judgments of God. One man cried as he passed, "Yet forty days, and London shall be destroyed;" another stalked nakedly along, bearing on his head a chafing-dish of burning coal, and declaring that the Almighty would purge them with fire. Another came suddenly from side streets and alleys in the darkness of the night, or in open day, uttering in a deep and fearful tone, the unvarying exclamation, "Oh, the great and dreadful God!" The confounded people declared that it was a judgment of God on the nation for its sins, and especially the sins of the King and Court, and the dreadful persecution of the religious by the Government and clergy. The Presbyterian ejected preachers frequently mounted into the pulpits now deserted by their usual occupants, and preached with a solemn eloquence to audiences who listened to them from amid the shadows of death, and thus gave great offence to the incumbents, who had abandoned their own charges. This was made one plea, after the danger was over, for passing the Five Mile Act in October of this year (1665). Many other metropolitan clergy stood by their flocks, and displayed the noblest characters during the pestilence. This terrible plague swept off upwards of one hundred thousand people during the year; and though it ceased with the winter, it raged the following summer in Colchester, Norwich, Cambridge, Salisbury, and even in the Peak of Derbyshire.
Whilst the plague had been raging, numbers of the Republicans, Algernon Sidney among the rest, had gone over to Holland and taken service in its army, urging the States to invade England, and restore the Commonwealth, and a conspiracy was detected in London itself for seizing the Tower and burning the City. Rathbone, Tucker, and six others, were seized and hanged, but Colonel Danvers, their leader, escaped. Parliament attainted a number of the conspirators by name, and also every British subject who should remain in the Dutch service after a fixed day. But neither plague nor insurrection had any effect in checking the wild licence and riot of the Court. The same scenes of drinking, gambling, and debauchery went on faster than ever after the Court removed from Salisbury to Oxford. The king was in pursuit of a new flame, Miss Stewart, one of the queen's maids of honour, and the Duke of York was as violently in love with her. Charles could not eat his breakfast till he visited both her and Castlemaine; and even Clarendon complains that "it was a time when all licence in discourse and in actions was spread over the kingdom, to the heart-breaking of many good men, who had terrible apprehensions of the consequences of it."
The war, meanwhile, went on, and now assumed a more formidable aspect, for Louis XIV. made a sudden veer round in his politics, and joined the Dutch. He was actually under conditions of peace and assistance with them, and they called upon him to fulfil his engagements; but they publicly would have called in vain, had not Charles of late become too independent of his French paymaster, by having received liberal supplies from Parliament. Louis liked extremely to see Holland and England exhausting one another whilst he was aiming at the acquisition of the Netherlands; but it was not his policy to leave Charles free from his control. Charles, meanwhile, had been neglecting the very sailors who were to fight his battles against the united power of France and Holland. The sailors who had fought so gallantly last summer had lain during the winter in the streets, having received no pay. Pepys says that, whilst the plague was raging in London, they were besieging the Navy Office with clamorous demands. "Did business, though not much, at the Navy Office, because of the horrible crowd and lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving in the streets for lack of money, which do trouble and perplex me to the heart; and more at noon when we were to go through them, for then above a whole hundred of them followed us, some cursing, some swearing, and some praying to us."
Whilst the royal duke had received one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for fighting one battle and leaving it unfinished, and the poor men were thus turned adrift to starvation and danger of death from the plague, the fleet had lost nearly all its experienced officers, who had been turned off because of their having helped the immortal Blake to shed glory on the Commonwealth, and their places were supplied by young, insolent, ignorant sprigs of the aristocracy, who neither knew their business, nor were disposed to do it if they did. Pepys, who, as Secretary to the Admiralty, saw all this, says that Admiral Penn spoke very freely to him on the subject, and lamented the loss which the fleet had experienced in the cashiered officers.
Such was the state of our navy when it put to sea to face the enemy. The command was entrusted to Monk and Prince Rupert. And here were fresh proofs of the wretched management of this miserable monarch. Monk had taken desperately to drinking, and to this commander the fortunes of England were entrusted in conjunction with Rupert, who, with the courage of a lion, was never in the right place at the right time. On the 1st of June, 1666, Monk discovered the Dutch fleet under De Ruyter and De Witt lying at anchor off the North Foreland. They had eighty-four sail, and Monk would have had an equal number, but Rupert had received an order to go in quest of the French fleet with thirty sail. Monk, therefore, having little more than fifty sail, was strongly advised by Sir John Harman and Sir Thomas Tyddiman not to engage with such unequal numbers, especially as the wind and sea were such as would prevent the use of their lower tier of guns. But Monk, who was probably drunk, would not listen, and was encouraged by the younger and more inexperienced officers. He bore down rapidly on the Dutch fleet, having the weather gauge, and the Dutchmen were taken so much by surprise that they had not time to weigh anchor, but cut their cables, and made for their own coast. But there they faced about, and Monk, in his turn, was obliged to tack so abruptly, that his topmast went by the board, and whilst he was bringing his vessel into order, Sir William Berkeley, who had not noticed the accident, was amid the thick of the enemy, and, being unsupported, was soon killed on his quarter-deck, and his ship and a frigate attending him were taken. Sir Thomas Tyddiman refused to engage, and Sir John Harman, surrounded by the Dutch, had his masts shot away, and was severely wounded. The masts and rigging of the English vessels were cut to pieces by chain shot, a new invention of Admiral De Witt's, and Monk, with his disabled ships, had to sustain a desperate and destructive fight till it was dark. He then gave orders to make for the first English port, but in their haste and the darkness they ran upon the Galloper Sand, where the Prince Royal, the finest vessel in the fleet, grounded, and was taken by the Dutch. The next day Monk continued a retreating fight, and would probably have lost the whole fleet, but just then Rupert, with the White squadron, appeared in sight. The next morning the battle was renewed with more equal forces till they were separated by a fog, and when that cleared away the Dutch were seen in retreat. Both sides claimed the victory, but the English had certainly suffered most, and lost the most ships. The only wonder was that they had not lost the whole. Nothing, however, could exceed the lion-like courage of the seamen. "They may be killed," exclaimed De Witt, "but they cannot be conquered." They very soon reminded him of his words, for before the end of June they were at sea again, fought, and defeated him and De Ruyter, pursued them to their own coast, entered the channel between Vlie and Schelling, and destroyed two men-of-war, one hundred and fifty merchantmen, and reduced the town of Brandaris to ashes. De Witt, enraged at this devastation, vowed to Almighty God that he would never sheath the sword till he had taken ample revenge.
In August a French fleet, under the Duke of Beaufort, arrived from the Mediterranean to join the Dutch fleet, under De Ruyter, which was already in the Channel watching for position. Rupert, however, was on the look-out, and De Ruyter took refuge in the roadstead of Boulogne, but whilst Rupert was preparing to prevent the advance of Beaufort up the Channel, a storm obliged him to retreat to St. Helier, by which Beaufort was enabled to reach Dieppe; and the Dutch, severely damaged by the tempest, returned home. But this storm had produced a terrible catastrophe on land. A fire broke out in the night, between the 2nd and 3rd of September, in Pudding Lane, near Fish Street, where the Monument to commemorate the event now stands. It occurred in a bakehouse, which was built of wood and had a pitched roof, and the buildings in general being of timber, it soon spread. The wind was raging furiously from the east, and the neighbourhood being filled with warehouses of pitch, tar, resin, and other combustible materials, the conflagration rushed along with wonderful force and vehemence. The summer had been one of the hottest and driest ever known, and the timber houses were in a state to catch and burn amazingly. Clarendon says, "The fire and the wind continued in the same excess all Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, till afternoon, and flung and scattered brands into all quarters; the nights more terrible than the days, and the light the same, the light of the fire supplying that of the sun." The timidity of the Lord Mayor favoured the progress of the flames. He at first refused to admit the military to prevent the plunder of the houses, and to keep off the crowds where efforts were attempted to stop the fire; but nothing of this sort could be done, for the pipes from the New River were found to be empty, and the machine which raised water from the Thames was burnt to ashes. It was proposed to blow up some of the houses with gunpowder, to arrest the progress of the fire; but the aldermen, whose houses would be the first to be exploded, would not allow it, and thus permitted the advance of the raging element without saving their own property. Nearly the whole of the City from the Tower to Temple Bar was soon one raging mass of fire, the glare of which lit up the country for ten miles around.
The terrors of the catastrophe were fearfully aggravated by the wild rumours and suspicions that flew to and fro. It was declared to be the doings of the Papists in combination with the French and Dutch, and the pipes of the New River works at Islington being empty confirmed it. One Grant, a Catholic and partner in the works, was accused of having turned off the water on the preceding Saturday, and carried away the keys; but it was afterwards shown by the books of the company that Grant was not a partner there till the 25th of September, three weeks afterwards. There were plenty of people ready to depose that they had seen men carrying about parcels of combustibles, which, on being crushed, burst out in inextinguishable flame, and others throwing fire-balls into houses. There were twenty thousand French resident in the city, and they were declared to be engaged with the Catholics to massacre the whole population during the confusion of the fire. Distraction and terror spread on every side--some were labouring frantically to extinguish the flames, others were hurrying out their goods and conveying them away, others flying from the expected massacre, and others coming out armed to oppose the murderers. Not a foreigner or Catholic could appear in the streets without danger of his life. What made it worse, an insane Frenchman, of the name of Hubert, declared that it was he who set fire to the first house, and that his countrymen were in the plot to help him. He was examined, and was so evidently crazed, the judges declared to the king that they gave no credit whatever to his story, nor was there the smallest particle of proof produced; but the jury, in their fear and suspicion, pronounced him guilty, and the poor wretch was hanged. The inscription on the Monument after the fire, however--and which was not erased till December, 1830--accused the Catholics of being the incendiaries, for which reason, Pope, a Catholic, referring to this particular libel, says:--
"Where London's Column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies."
"Let the cause be what it would," says Clarendon, "the effect was terrible, for above two parts of three of that great city, and those the most rich and wealthy parts, where the greatest warehouses and the best shops stood, the Royal Exchange, with all the streets about it--Lombard Street, Cheapside, Paternoster Row, St. Paul's Church, and almost all the other churches in the City, with the Old Bailey, Ludgate, all Paul's Churchyard, even to the Thames, and the greatest part of Fleet Street, all which were places the best inhabited, were all burnt without one house remaining. The value or estimate of what that devouring element consumed over and above the houses, could never be computed in any degree." The houses were calculated at thirteen thousand two hundred, covering, more or less, one hundred and thirty-six acres. Eighty-nine churches were consumed.
Towards the evening on Wednesday the wind abated, and buildings were blown up to clear the ground round Westminster Abbey, the Temple Church, and Whitehall. The next day, the weather being calm, the danger was thought to be over, but in the night the fire burst out again in the neighbourhood of the Temple, in Cripplegate, and near the Tower. The king, the Duke of York, and many noblemen assisted to blow up houses in those quarters, and thus contributed to save those places, and finally stop the conflagration. Nothing is said so completely to have roused Charles as this catastrophe, and both he and the duke were indefatigable in giving their personal attendance, encouragement, and assistance. They placed guards to prevent thieving, and distributed food to the starving inhabitants. In the fields about Islington and Highgate two hundred thousand people were seen occupying the bare ground, or under huts and tents hastily constructed, with the remains of their property lying about them. Charles was indefatigable in arranging for the accommodation of this unfortunate mass of people in the neighbouring towns and villages, till their houses could be rebuilt. But for months afterwards the enormous field of ruins presented a burning and smoking chaos. Had Charles and his brother conducted themselves at other times as during this brief but awful time, they had left very different names and effects behind them. The great misfortune for the moment even softened down the acrimony of bigotry and party; but this did not last long. An inquiry was instituted, both by the Commons and the Privy Council, into the cause of the calamity, but nothing was elicited to prove it the work of incendiaries.
The people at large firmly believed that the plague and the fire were judgments for the sins of the King and Court.