Part 27
After the country and its dependencies had been thoroughly settled under the new government, the republican leaders resolved upon commencing hostilities against Holland, which, during the civil war, had manifested a decided leaning towards the king, and had recently treated the triumphant party with marked disrespect. In the summer of 1652, the Dutch fleet, under its famous commanders Van Tromp, De Ruyter, and De Witt, had several encounters with the English ships, under Admirals Blake and Ayscue, without any decided success on either side. But in the ensuing spring, an action was fought between Blake and Van Tromp, in which the latter lost eleven ships. The Dutch then sued for peace, which the Rump Parliament, for various reasons, were little inclined to grant. Their principal motive for prosecuting the war, was a conviction that it tended to restrict the power of Cromwell, to whom they now paid by no means a willing obedience. Cromwell, perceiving their design, proceeded with 300 soldiers to the House (April 1653), and entering with marks of the most violent indignation, loaded the members with reproaches for their robbery and oppression of the public; then stamping with his foot, he gave signal for the soldiers to enter, and addressing himself to the members, ‘For shame!’ said he; ‘get you gone! give place to honester men! I tell you you are no longer a Parliament: the Lord has done with you!’ He then commanded ‘that bauble,’ meaning the mace, to be taken away, turned out the members, and locking the door, returned to Whitehall with the key in his pocket.
Being still willing to keep up the appearance of a representative government Cromwell summoned one hundred and forty-four persons in England Ireland, and Scotland, to assemble as a Parliament. These individuals chiefly remarkable for fanaticism and ignorance, were denominated the _Barebones Parliament_, from the name of one of the members, a leather seller, whose assumed name, by a ridiculous usage of the age, was Praise-God Barebones. As the assembly obtained no public respect, Cromwell took an early opportunity of dismissing it. His officers then constituted him PROTECTOR of the Commonwealth of Great Britain and Ireland, with most of the prerogatives of the late king.
The war against Holland was still carried on with great spirit. In the summer of 1653, two naval actions, in which both parties fought with the utmost bravery, terminated in the triumph of the English, and the complete humiliation of the Dutch, who obtained peace on the condition of paying homage to the English flag, expelling the young king from their dominions, and paying a compensation for certain losses to the East India Company. In a war which he subsequently made against Spain, the fleets of the Protector performed some exploits of not less importance. The respect which he thus gained for the English name throughout Europe, is one of the brightest points in his singular history. But while generally successful abroad, he experienced unceasing difficulties in the management of affairs at home. Of the various Parliaments which he summoned, no one was found so carefully composed of his own creatures as to yield readily to his will: he was obliged to dissolve them all in succession, after a short trial. He also experienced great difficulty in raising money, and sometimes applied for loans in the city without success. His own officers could scarcely be kept in subordination, but were constantly plotting a reduction of his authority. The Royalists, on the other hand, never ceased to conspire for his destruction; one named Colonel Titus, went so far as to recommend his assassination in a pamphlet entitled ‘Killing no Murder,’ after reading which he was never seen again to smile.
The last Parliament called by Cromwell was in January 1656; when, besides the Commons, he summoned the few remaining peers, and endeavored, by ennobling some of his officers, to make up a kind of Upper House. This assembly proved as intractable as its predecessors, and he contracted such a disgust at the very nature of a representative legislature, as to resolve, like Charles I, never to call another. His health finally gave way, and he died on the 3d September 1658, a day which was thought to be propitious to him, as it was the anniversary of several of his victories. His eldest son, Richard, a weak young man, succeeded him as Protector, and was at first treated with all imaginable respect; but he could not long maintain a rule which even his father had ultimately failed in asserting. He quietly sunk out of public view, leaving the supreme authority in the hands of the Rump, which had taken the opportunity to reassemble.
THE RESTORATION――DUTCH WAR.
This remnant of an old Parliament continued in power till the autumn of 1659, when it gave way to a council of the officers who had been in command under Cromwell. The latter government, in its turn, yielded to the Rump, which sat down once more in December. The people, finding themselves made the sport of a few ambitious adventurers, began to long for some more fixed and respectable kind of government. At this crisis, General Monk, commander of the forces in Scotland, conceived the design of settling the nation. He left Scotland (January 2, 1660), with a considerable army; and though he kept his thoughts scrupulously to himself, all men bent their eyes upon him, as a person destined to realize their hopes. He reached London (February 3), and was received with feigned respect by the Rump. Some resistance was attempted by Lambert, one of Cromwell’s officers, but in vain. Ere long, Monk was able to procure the restoration of the members who had been excluded from Parliament by Cromwell, who, being a majority, gave an immediate ascendancy to anti-republican views. As soon as this was effected, an act was passed for calling a new and freely-elected Parliament; after which, the existing assembly immediately dissolved itself.
The new Parliament proved to be chiefly composed of Cavaliers and Presbyterians, men agreeing in their attachment to monarchy, though differing in many other views. After some cautious procedure, in which the fears inspired by the late military tyranny were conspicuous, they agreed to invite the king from his retirement in Holland, and to restore him to the throne lost by his father. They were so glad to escape from the existing disorders, that they never thought of making any preliminary arrangement with the king as to the extent of his prerogative. On the 29th of May, being his thirtieth birthday, Charles II entered London amidst such frantic demonstrations of joy, that he could not help thinking it his own fault, as he said, that he had been so long separated from his people.
One of the first measures of the new monarch was the passing of a bill of indemnity, by which all persons concerned in the late popular movements were pardoned, excepting a few who had been prominently concerned in bringing the king to the block. Harrison, Scrope, and a few other regicides, were tried and executed; and the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were raised from the grave and exhibited upon gibbets. In Scotland, only three persons suffered――the Marquis of Argyle, Johnston of Warriston, and Mr. Guthry, a clergyman: it was considered remarkable, that the marquis had placed the crown upon the king’s head at Scone in the year 1651. Excepting in these acts, the king showed no desire of revenging the death of his father, or his own exclusion from the throne. The Parliament which called him home was constituted a legal one by his own ratification of an act for that purpose. In the settlement of other matters, it seemed the prevailing wish that all the institutions of the country should be made as nearly what they were before the civil war as possible. Thus the Episcopal church was established both in England and Scotland, though not without causing about a third of the clergy in both countries to resign their charges. The stern and enthusiastic piety which prevailed during the civil war, was now treated with ridicule, and the most of the people vied with each other in that licentious riot and drunkenness which is condemned by all systems of faith. The nation, in fact, seemed intoxicated with the safety which they supposed themselves to have at length gained, in a restoration to the imperfect freedom they enjoyed before the civil war.
Ireland, which, during the Protectorate, had been managed by Henry, a younger son of Cromwell, acceded to the Restoration with as much readiness as any other part of the British dominions. An act was passed for settling property, by which the Catholics obtained some slight benefits, but which, in its main effects, tended to confirm the rights of the settlers introduced by Cromwell.
Though Charles had been restored with the approbation of a very large portion of his subjects, his most zealous friends were the Royalists and Episcopalians; hence he almost immediately subsided into the character of a party ruler. It was deemed necessary that he should maintain an armed force for the protection of his person, and to keep down popular disturbances. He therefore caused several horse regiments to be embodied under the name of Life Guards, being chiefly composed of Royalist gentlemen upon whom a perfect dependence could be placed; and he afterwards added two or three foot regiments, the whole amounting to about 5000 men. The King paid these troops chiefly out of the money allowed for his own support, for Parliament did not sanction his keeping up such a force, and the nation generally beheld it with suspicion. This was the commencement of a _standing army_ in England.
Personally indolent, dissolute, and deficient in conscientiousness, and surrounded almost exclusively by the ministers of the basest pleasures, Charles was not qualified to retain the sincere respect of a people whose habitual character is grave and virtuous. His extravagant expenditure soon cooled the affections of his Parliament, and he began to find considerable difficulties in obtaining money. To relieve himself from this embarrassment, he accepted £40,000 from the French king for Dunkirk, a French port, which had been acquired by Cromwell. For the same purpose, he married a Portuguese princess of the Catholic religion, who possessed a dowry of half a million. He also commenced (1664) a war against Holland, for apparently no better reason than that, in applying the Parliamentary subsidies necessary for keeping up hostilities, he might have an opportunity of converting part of the money to his own personal use.
This Dutch war was chiefly conducted by sea. On the 3d of June 1665, an English fleet of 114 sail met a Dutch one which numbered just one ship less, near Lowestoffe, and after an obstinate fight, gained a complete victory, depriving the enemy of eighteen vessels, and compelling the rest to take refuge on their own coast. The commander on this occasion was the Duke of York, the king’s younger brother; a man of greater application and more steady principles, but who soon after became unpopular, in consequence of his avowing himself a Catholic.
Some other well-contested actions took place at sea, and the English, upon the whole, confirmed their naval supremacy. Owing, however, to a failure of the supplies, the king was obliged to lay up his best vessels in ordinary, and to send only an inferior force to sea. The Dutch took advantage of this occurrence to send a fleet up the Thames (June 10, 1667), which, meeting with no adequate resistance, threatened to lay the capital in ruins and destroy its shipping. Fortunately, the Dutch admiral did not think it expedient to make this attempt, but retired with the ebb of the tide, after having sunk and burnt nearly twenty vessels, and done much other damage. The king, finding himself rather impoverished than enriched by the war, soon after concluded a peace.
PLAGUE AND FIRE OF LONDON――PERSECUTION IN SCOTLAND.
In the meantime two extraordinary calamities had befallen the metropolis. In the summer of 1665, London was visited by a plague, which swept off about 100,000 people, and did not experience any abatement till the approach of cold weather. On this occasion the city presented a wide and heartrending scene of misery and desolation. Rows of houses stood tenantless, and open to the winds; the chief thoroughfares were overgrown with grass. The few individuals who ventured abroad, walked in the middle of the streets, and when they met, declined on opposite sides to avoid the contact of each other. At one moment were heard the ravings of delirium, or the wail of sorrow, from the infected dwelling; at another the merry song or careless laugh from the tavern, where men were seeking to drown in debauchery all sense of their awful situation. Since 1665, the plague has not again occurred in London, or in any other part of the kingdom.
The second calamity was a conflagration, which commenced on the night of Sunday the 2d of September 1666, in the eastern and more crowded part of the city. The direction and violence of the wind, the combustible nature of the houses, and the defective arrangements of that age for extinguishing fires, combined to favor the progress of the flames, which raged during the whole of the week, and burnt all the part of the city which lies between the Tower and the Temple. By this calamity, 13,200 houses and 89 churches, covering in all 430 acres of ground, were destroyed. The flame at one time formed a column a mile in diameter, and seemed to mingle with the clouds. It rendered the night as clear as day for ten miles around the city, and is said to have produced an effect upon the sky which was observed on the borders of Scotland. It had one good effect, in causing the streets to be formed much wider than before, by which the city was rendered more healthy. By the populace, this fire was believed to have been the work of the Catholics, and a tall pillar, with an inscription to that effect, was reared in the city, as a monument of the calamity. This pillar with its inscription still exists; but the fire is now believed to have been occasioned purely by accident.
THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE――THE FRENCH ALLIANCE.
The kingdom of France was at this period, under Louis XIV, rising into a degree of power and wealth which it had never before known. Louis had some claims through his wife upon the Netherlands (since called Belgium), which were then part of the Spanish dominions. He accordingly endeavored to posess himself of that country by force of arms. A jealousy of his increasing power, and of the Catholic religion, professed by his people, induced the English to wish that his aggressions should be restrained. To gratify them, Charles entered into an alliance with Holland and Sweden, for the purpose of checking the progress of the French king. In this object he was completely successful, and consequently he became very popular. The Parliament, however, having disappointed him of supplies, he soon after changed his policy, and with the assistance of five abandoned ministers――Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale, who were called the CABAL, from the initials of their names forming that word, resolved to render himself, if possible, independent of Parliament; in other words, an absolute prince. In consideration of a large bribe from Louis, he agreed to join France in a war against Holland, with a view of putting an end to that example of a Protestant republic.
War was accordingly declared in May 1672, and the naval force of England was employed in meeting that of the Dutch by sea; while Louis led a powerful army across the Rhine, and in a very short time had nearly reduced the whole of the Seven Provinces. In this emergency the Dutch could only save themselves from absolute ruin by laying a great part of their country under water. The English, who had not entered heartily into this war, soon began to be alarmed for the fate of Holland, which was almost their only support against the dread of Popery; and though forbidden under severe penalties to censure the government measures, they soon contrived to exhibit so much dissatisfaction, as to render a change of policy unavoidable.
The king found it necessary to assemble his Parliament (February 1673), and it was no sooner met than it passed some acts highly unfavorable to his designs. Among these was the famous Test Act, so called because it enacted the imposition of a religious oath upon all persons about to enter the public service, the design being to exclude the Catholics from office. Above all things, the House of Commons declared that it would grant no more supplies for the Dutch war. The king resolved to prorogue the assembly; but before he could do so, they voted the alliance with France, and several of his ministers to be _grievances_. Charles, who, in wishing to be absolute, had been inspired by no other motive than a desire of ease, now saw that there was a better chance of his favorite indulgence in giving way to his subjects than in any other course; and he at once abandoned all his former measures, and concluded a separate peace with Holland. This country was now beginning, under the conduct of the Prince of Orange, to make a good defense against the French, which it was the better enabled to do by obtaining the friendship of Germany and Spain. In the year 1678, after a war which, without any decisive victories, will ever reflect lustre upon Holland, a peace was concluded. The Prince of Orange, in the previous year, had married the Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of the Duke of York, and educated in the reformed faith――an alliance which pleased the English, from its strengthening the Protestant interest, and which was destined, some years after, to bring about important results.
During the whole of this reign the corruptness of the court was very great; but it was in some measure the protection of the public. Charles spent vast sums in debauchery, and thus made himself more dependent on his Commons than he would otherwise have been. Many of the Commons were exceedingly corrupt, and all kinds of evil methods were adopted to render them more so. Bribes were distributed among them, and they were frequently _closeted_; that is, brought into the presence of the king individually, and personally solicited for votes. Still a considerable party maintained its purity and independence, and long kept the majority against the court.
THE RYE-HOUSE PLOT――DEATH OF CHARLES II.
A fit of slavishness now befell the English nation, as remarkable in its extent as the late fury against the court and the Catholics. Supported by this mood of the people, Charles caused all the corporations in the kingdom to give up their old charters, and accept of new ones, by which he became all-powerful over the elections of magistrates, and consequently, over those of parliamentary representatives should ever another election of that kind take place. The leaders of the late majority in Parliament, comprising the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Russell (son of the Earl of Bedford), the Earl of Essex, Lord Howard, the famous Algernon Sydney, and John Hampden, grandson of the patriot who first resisted Charles I, being reduced to absolute despair, formed a project for raising an insurrection in London, to be supported by one in the west of England, and another under the Earl of Argyle in Scotland, and the object of which should be confined to a melioration of the government. They were betrayed by an associate named Rumsay, and implicated, by a train of unfortunate circumstances, in a plot for assassinating the king (styled the Rye-house Plot), of which they were perfectly innocent. By the execution of Russell and Sidney, and some other severities, the triumph of the king might be considered as completed. After having been an absolute sovereign for nearly four years, he died (February 6, 1685), professing himself at the last to be a Catholic, and was succeeded by the DUKE OF YORK.
Charles II was a prince of a gay and cheerful disposition, and so noted a sayer of witty things, and so addicted to humorous amusements, that he was called ‘the Merry Monarch.’ His wit, shrewdness, and good humor, form the best side of his character. On the other side, we find a deficiency of almost every active virtue and of all steady principle. He never allowed any duty of his station, or any claim upon his justice or clemency, to interfere with his own interests, or even to disturb him in his indolent and vicious pleasures. Neglecting his wife, who never had any children, he spent most of his time with his various mistresses, who openly lived at court, and were even received by the queen. Of these ladies, the most remarkable were Louisa Querouaile, whom he created Duchess of Portsmouth, and Barbara Villiers, whom he made Duchess of Cleveland. Six sons of the king by his mistresses were made dukes, and five of these were the progenitors of families in the present English nobility.
During the reign of Charles II, the nation advanced considerably in the arts of navigation and commerce; and the manufactures of brass, glass, silk, hats, and paper, were established. The post-office, set up during the Commonwealth as a means of raising money, was advanced in this reign, and the penny-post was now begun in London by a private person. Roads were greatly improved, and stage-coach traveling was commenced, though not carried to any great extent. During this reign, tea, coffee, and chocolate, which have had a great effect in improving and softening manners, were first introduced. In 1660, the Royal Society was established in London, for the cultivation of natural science, mathematics, and all useful knowledge. The science of astronomy was greatly advanced by the investigations of Flamstead and Halley. But the greatest contribution to science was made by Sir Isaac Newton, whose Principles of Natural Philosophy were published in 1683: in this work, the true theory of planetary motion was first explained, in reference to the principle of gravitation. Among the literary men of the period, the first place is to be assigned to John Milton, author of the ‘Paradise Lost’ and other poems: Samuel Butler shines as a humorous and satirical poet, and Edmund Waller as a lyrist. Amongst divines, the highest names connected with the church are those of Jeremy Taylor and Isaac Barrow; while the highest among the Nonconformists are those of Richard Baxter and John Bunyan. The theatre, which had been suppressed during the Commonwealth, was revived in this reign; but the drama exhibited less talent and more licentiousness than it did in the previous reigns. Female characters, which had formerly been acted by men, were now for the first time performed by females.
JAMES II――EXPEDITION OF MONMOUTH.