But to return. It was in 1659 when the army, with Lambert at its head, expelled the Parliament. All England was now divided into parties, some for the Parliament, some for the army, some for the king. There was a distinguished general in Scotland at this time named Monk. He had been left there by Cromwell in command of the military forces in that country. He was a man considerably advanced in life, and of great circumspection, prudence, and steadiness of character. All parties wished to gain his influence, but he kept his own counsel, and declared openly for neither.
He, however, began to get together his forces, and to make preparations to march into England. People asked him what he intended to do, but he would give no definite answer. He was six weeks getting ready for his expedition, during which time many deputations were sent to him from the various parties, making different propositions to him, each party being eager to obtain his adhesion to their cause. He received all their deputations, heard what they had to say, made no definite reply to any of them, but went on quietly with his work. He got the various divisions of his army at length together, made provisional arrangements for the government of Scotland during his absence, and set out on his march.
He entered England in January, 1660, and advanced toward London. The English army was scattered all over the kingdom; but Monk opened negotiations with the leaders of it, and also with the members of Parliament, and, without committing himself absolutely to either party, he managed to have the Parliament restored. They assembled peaceably in London, and resumed their functions. A part of the English army was there for their protection. Monk, as he approached London, sent word to Parliament asking that quarters might be provided for him and his army there. Parliament, desirous of conciliating him and securing his co-operation in sustaining their power, acceded to this request. The other troops were removed; Monk entered London in triumph, and took possession of all the strong holds there, holding them nominally under Parliamentary authority Monk still kept his ultimate designs profoundly secret. No party very strongly opposed him, for no party knew whether to regard him as an enemy or a friend. The Royalists, however, all over the kingdom, took new courage, and a general expectation began to pervade the minds of men that the monarchy was to be restored. The Parliament rescinded the votes which had been most decisive against the house of Stuart and monarchical rule. The most prominent Republicans were dismissed from office under various pretexts, and men known to be loyal were appointed in their place. Finally, the Parliament itself was dissolved, and writs were issued for the election of a new one, more in accordance with the ancient forms.
When at length this new Parliament assembled, the public mind was in a great fever of excitement, there being a vague expectation every where that the monarchy was to be restored, while yet the Restoration was openly spoken of by no one. The first votes which were taken in the House of Commons indicated a very favorable state of feeling toward monarchy; and at length, a few days after the opening of the session, it was announced that there was a messenger at the door with a communication from the king. The announcement was received with the wildest acclamations of joy. The messenger was immediately ordered to enter. The communication was read, the vast assembly listening with breathless attention.
It contained, in the first place, a letter, in which the king stated that, having heard that the people of England had restored the Parliament according to the ancient forms, he hoped that now the Parliament would go on and complete the good work which had been begun, and heal the distractions of the kingdom by reinstating him as sovereign in the ancient rights and prerogatives of the crown.
The second part of the king's communication, and by far the most important part, was what was called his Declaration, a document in which he announced formally what his intentions were in case he were restored to the throne. One of these assurances was, that he was ready to forgive and forget the past, so far as he might himself be supposed to have cause of complaint against any of his subjects for the part they had taken in the late transactions. He professed his readiness to grant a free pardon to all, excepting those who should be expressly excluded from such pardon by the Parliament itself. The Declaration also set forth that, inasmuch as there was prevailing throughout the country a great diversity of religious opinion, the king, if restored to his throne, whatever his own religious views or those of his government might be, would agree that his subjects should be allowed full liberty of conscience in all respects, and that nobody should be molested in any way on account of his religious faith or usages of worship.
And, finally, the Declaration contained a covenant on the part of the king, that whereas there had been great changes of property, arising from fines and confiscations for political offenses during the period of the Revolution, he would not himself disturb the existing titles to property, but would leave them to be settled on such principles and in such a way as Parliament should direct.
The letter from the king, and especially the Declaration, gave the utmost satisfaction. The latter disarmed those who would otherwise have opposed the return of the king, by quieting their fears of being disturbed in respect to their liberty or their property. Immediately after these papers were read, they were ordered to be published, and were sent every where throughout the kingdom, awakening, wherever they went the greatest demonstrations of joy. The Parliament passed a vote that the ancient Constitution of the kingdom, of government by king, Lords, and Commons, ought to be restored, and they went forth in a body into the public places of the city to proclaim Charles II. king.
Parliament voted immediately a grant of fifty thousand pounds, a sum equal to more than two hundred thousand dollars, for the king's immediate use, with large sums besides for the other members of the family, and sent a committee of noblemen to Holland to carry the money and to invite the king back to his dominions. As soon as tidings of these events reached the Continent, every body hastened to pay their court to his majesty. From being neglected, destitute, and wretched, he suddenly found himself elevated to the highest pinnacle of prosperity and fame. Every body offered him their aid; his court was thronged, and all were ready to do him honor. The princely mother of one of the young ladies who had rejected the offer of his hand in the day of his adversity, sent him an intimation that the offer would be accepted if he would renew it now.
A fleet crossed the Channel to receive the king and convey him to London. His brother James, the Duke, of York, was placed in command of it as Lord High Admiral of England. The fleet sailed for Dover. General Monk went to Dover to receive the king at his landing. He escorted him to London, where the monarch, returning from his long exile, arrived on the twenty-ninth of May, the very day when he became thirty years of age.
General Monk, whose talent, skill, and consummate management had been the means of effecting this great change without violence or bloodshed, was rewarded by being made Duke of Albermarle. This was a very great reward. In fact, no American imagination can conceive of the images of glory and grandeur which are connected in the mind of an Englishman with the idea of being made a duke. A duke lives in a palace; he is surrounded by a court; he expends princely revenues; he reigns, in fact, often, so far as the pomp and pleasure of reigning are concerned, over quite a little kingdom, and is looked up to by the millions beneath his grade with a reverence as great, at least, as that with which the ancients looked up to their gods. He is deprived of nothing which pertains to power but the mere toil, and care, and responsibility of ruling, so that he has all the sweetness and fragrance of sovereignty without its thorns. In a word, the seat of an English duke, so far as earthly greatness and glory are concerned, is undoubtedly the finest which ambition, wealth, and power combined have ever succeeded in carving out for man. It is infinitely better than a throne.
Some historians maintain that Monk acted on a secret understanding with Charles from the commencement; that the general was to restore the king, and was then to receive a dukedom for his reward. Others say that he acted from a simple sense of duty in all that he did, and that the lofty elevation to which he was raised was a very natural and suitable testimonial of the royal gratitude. The reader will embrace the one or the other of the two theories, according to the degree of readiness or of reluctance with which he believes in the existence of conscientious principles of patriotism and loyalty among the great men who rule the world.
CHAPTER X.
THE MARRIAGE.
During the period of King Charles's days of adversity he made many fruitless attempts to obtain a wife. He was rejected by all the young ladies to whom he made proposals. Marriages in that grade of society are almost always mere transactions of business, being governed altogether by political and prudential considerations. In all Charles's proposals he was aiming simply at strengthening his own position by means of the wealth or family influence of the bride, supposing as he did that the honor of being even nominally a queen would be a sufficient equivalent to the lady. The ladies themselves, however, to whom he addressed himself, or their friends, thought that the prospect of his being really restored to his throne was very remote and uncertain, and, in the mean time, the empty name of queen was not worth as much as a rich and powerful heiress, by becoming his bride, would have to pay for it.
After his restoration, however, all this was changed. There was no longer any difficulty. He had now only to choose. In fact, one or two who had refused him when he was a fugitive and an exile thought differently of the case now that he was a king, and one of them, as has already been said, gave him intimations, through her friends, that if he were inclined to renew his suit, he would be more successful. Charles rejected these overtures with indignant disdain.
The lady whom he ultimately married was a Portuguese princess. Her father was King of Portugal, but before his accession to the throne his title had been the Duke of Braganza. The name of his daughter was Catharine. She is thus known generally in history by the name of Catharine of Braganza.
It is said that the plan of this marriage originated with Queen Henrietta Maria, and that a prominent motive with her in promoting the measure was her desire to secure for Charles a Catholic wife. Catharine of Braganza was a Catholic. Henrietta Maria was deeply interested, and no doubt conscientiously so, in bringing back her own family and their descendants, and the realm of England, if possible, to the ancient faith: and this question of the marriage of her son she justly considered would have a very important bearing on the result.
Queen Henrietta is said to have laid her arrangements in train for opening the negotiation with the Portuguese princess, at a visit which she made to England in 1660, very soon after her son's restoration. The Restoration took place in May. The queen's visit to her son was in October. Of course, after all the long years of danger, privation, and suffering which this family had endured, the widowed mother felt an intense emotion of joy at finding her children once more restored to what she considered their just hereditary rights. Charles was on the English throne. James, the Duke of York, was Lord High Admiral of England, that is, the commander-in-chief of the naval forces of the realm; and her other children, those who were still living, were in peace and safety. Of course, her heart was full of maternal pride and joy.
Her son James, the Lord High Admiral, went across the Channel to Dover, with a fleet of the finest ships that he could select from the whole British navy, to escort his mother to England. The queen was to embark at Calais. [Footnote: For a view of the famous Calais pier, see History of Mary Queen of Scots, page 105.] The queen came down to the port from Paris, attended by many friends, who sympathized with her in the return of her prosperity, and were attracted, besides, by the grand spectacle which they thought would be presented by the appearance and maneuvers of the English ships, and the ceremony of the embarkation.
The waters of the English Channel are disturbed by almost perpetual agitations, which bleak winds and rapid tides, struggling continually together, combine to raise; and many a traveler, who passes in comfort across the Atlantic, is made miserable by the incessant restlessness of this narrow sea. At the time, however, when Henrietta Maria crossed it, the waters for once were calm. The people who assembled upon the pier to witness the embarkation looked over the expanse before them, and saw it lying smooth, every where, as glass, and reflecting the great English ships which lay at a little distance from the shore as if it were a mirror. It was a bright and beautiful October morning. The air seemed perfectly motionless. The English ships were adorned with countless flags in honor of the occasion, but they all hung down perfectly lifeless upon the masts and rigging. Scarcely a ripple rolled upon the beach; and so silent and still was the morning air, that the voices and echoes came from vast distances along the shore, and the dip of the oars of the boats gliding about in the offing sent its sound for miles around over the smooth surface of the sea; and when the grand salute was fired at the embarkation of the queen, the reverberation of the guns was heard distinctly, it was said, at Dover, a distance of thirty miles.
Even in such a calm as this, however, uncommon as it is, the atmosphere is not perfectly still. When the royal party were on board the vessels and the sails were set, the fleet did begin to glide, almost imperceptibly, it is true, away from the shore. In the course of the day they had receded several miles from the land, and when the dinner hour arrived they found that the lord admiral had provided a most sumptuous banquet on board. Just before the time, however, for setting down to the table, the duke found that it was a Catholic fast day, and that neither his mother nor any of her attendants, being, as they were, all Catholics, could eat any thing but fish; and, unfortunately, as all James's men were Protestants, they had not thought of the fast, and they had no fish on board. They, however, contrived to produce a sturgeon for the queen, and they sat down to the table, the queen to the dish provided for her, and the others to bread and vegetables, and such other food as the Catholic ritual allowed, while the duke himself and his brother officers disposed, as well as they could, of the more luxurious dainties which they had intended for their guests.
With a fair wind, three hours is sufficient for the run from Calais to Dover. It took the Duke of York two days to get his fleet across in this calm. At length, however, they arrived. The king was on the pier to receive his mother. Rejoiced as her majesty must have been to be welcomed by her son under such circumstances, she must have thought mournfully of her departed husband at the time of her landing, for it was here that he had taken leave of her some years before, when the troubles of her family were beginning. Charles conducted his mother to the castle. All the inhabitants of Dover, and of the country around, had assembled to witness the arrival, and they welcomed the mother back to the land of her husband and her sons with long and loud acclamations.
There was a great banquet at Dover Castle. Here all the members of the royal family were present, having been assembled for the occasion. Of course, it was an occasion of great family rejoicing, mingled undoubtedly, on the part of the queen, with many mournful thoughts and bitter recollections. The fast was past, and there was, consequently, no difficulty now about partaking of the food that had been provided; but another difficulty arose, having the same origin, viz., the question whether the divine blessing should be implored upon the food by a Catholic priest or an Episcopal chaplain. Neither party could conscientiously acquiesce in the performance of the service by the other. They settled the important question, or rather it settled itself at last, in the following manner: When the guests were ready to take their places at table, the king, instead of asking his mother's spiritual guide to officiate, as both Christian and filial courtesy required him to have done, called upon his own chaplain. The chaplain said grace. Immediately afterward, the Catholic priest, thinking that fidelity to his own religious faith required him to act decidedly, repeated the service in the Catholic form, ending with making the sign of the cross in a very conspicuous manner over the table. The gentry of Dover, who had been admitted as spectators of this banquet, were greatly scandalized at this deed. They regarded the gesture as an act of very wicked and vary dangerous idolatry.
From Dover the queen proceeded with her children to London. Her sons did every thing in their power to honor their mother's visit; they received her with great parade and pomp, assigned her a sumptuous residence, and studied every means of amusing her, and of making her visit a source of pleasure. But they did not succeed. The queen was very unhappy. Every place that she visited recalled to her mind the memory of her husband, and awakened afresh all her sorrows. She was distressed, too, by some domestic troubles, which we have not here time to describe. Then the religious differences between herself and her children, and the questions which were arising out of them continually, gave her a great deal of pain; she could not but perceive, moreover, that she was regarded with suspicion and dislike by the people of England on account of her Catholic faith. Then, besides, notwithstanding her English husband and her English children, she was herself a French woman still in character, thought, feeling, and language, and she could not feel really at home north of the Channel. After remaining, therefore, a few months in London, and arranging some family and business affairs which required her attention, she determined to return. The king accompanied her to Portsmouth, where she set sail, taking the little princess Henrietta with her, and went back to France. Among the family affairs, however, which she arranged, it is said that the marriage of her son, the king, was a special object of her attention, and that she secretly laid the train which resulted in his espousing Catharine of Braganza.
According to the accounts given in the chronicles of the times, the negotiations were opened in the following manner: One day the Portuguese ambassador at London came to a certain high officer of the king's household, and introduced the subject of his majesty's marriage, saying, in the course of the conversation, that he thought the Princess Catharine of Portugal would be a very eligible match, and adding moreover, that he was authorized to say that, with the lady, very advantageous terms could be offered. Charles said he would think of it. This gave the ambassador sufficient encouragement to induce him to take another step. He obtained an audience of Charles the next day, and proposed the subject directly for his consideration. The ambassador knew very well that the question would turn, in Charles's mind, on the pecuniary and political advantages of the match; so he stated at once what they would be. He was authorized to offer, he said, the sum of five hundred thousand pounds [Footnote: Equal to two or three millions of dollars.] as the princess's portion, and to surrender to the English crown various foreign possessions, which had, till then, belonged to the Portuguese. One of the principal of these was the island of Bombay in the East Indies. Another was Tangier, a port in Africa. The English did not, at that time, hold any East Indian territories. He likewise offered to convey to the English nation the right of trading with the great South American country of Brazil, which then pertained to the Portuguese crown.
Charles was very much pleased with these proposals. He immediately consulted his principal minister of state, Lord Clarendon, the celebrated historian, and soon afterward called a meeting of his privy council and laid the case before them. Clarendon asked him if he had given up all thoughts of a Protestant connection. Charles said that he did not know where to look for a Protestant wife. It was true, in fact, that nearly all the royal families of Europe were Catholics, and royal bridegrooms must always have royal brides. There were, however, Protestant princesses in Germany; this was suggested to his majesty, but he replied, with an expression of contempt, that they were all dull and foggy, and he could not possibly have one of them for a wife.
The counselors then began to look at the pecuniary and political advantages of the proposed bargain. They got out their maps, and showed Charles where Bombay, and Tangier, and the other places offered with the lady as her dowry lay. The statesmen were quite pleased with the prospect of these acquisitions, and Charles was particularly gratified with the money item. It was twice as much, they said, as any English king had ever before received as the marriage portion of a bride. In a word, the proposition was unanimously considered as in every respect entirely satisfactory, and Charles authorized his ministers to open the negotiations for the marriage immediately. All this time Charles had never seen the lady, and perhaps had never heard of her before. Her own individual qualifications, whether of mind or of person, seem to have been considered a subject not worth inquiring about at all.
Nor ought we to be at all surprised at this. It was not Charles's object, in seeking a wife, to find some one whom he was to cherish and love, and who was to promote his happiness by making him the object of her affection in return. His love, so far as such a soul is capable of love, was to be gratified by other means. He had always some female favorite, chosen from among the ladies of his court, high in rank, though not high enough to be the wedded wife of the king. These attachments were not private in any sense, nor was any attempt made to conceal them, the king being in the habit of bestowing upon the objects of them all the public attentions, as well as the private intimacy which pertain to wedded life. The king's favorite at the present time was Lady Castlemaine. She was originally a Mrs. Palmer, but the king had made her husband Lord Castlemaine for the purpose of giving a title to the wife. Some years afterward he made her a duchess. She was a prominent lady in the court, being every where received and honored as the temporary wife of the king. He did not intend, in marrying the Princess Catharine, to disturb this state of things at all. She was to be in name his wife, but he was to place his affections where he pleased. She was to have her own palace, her own household, and her own pleasures, and he, on the other hand, was to continue to have his.
Notwithstanding this, however, Charles seemed to have had some consideration for the personal appearance of his proposed bride, after all. The Spanish government, as soon as Charles's plan of espousing Catharine became known, attempted to prevent the match, as it would greatly increase the strength and influence of Portugal by giving to that country so powerful an ally. Spain had plenty of money, but no princess in the royal family; and the government therefore proposed to Charles, that if he would be content to take some Protestant lady for a wife, they would endow her, and with a portion as great as that which had been offered with Catharine. They, moreover, represented to Charles that Catharine was out of health, and very plain and repulsive in her personal appearance, and that, besides, it would be a great deal better for him, for obvious political reasons, to marry a Protestant princess. The other party replied that Catharine was not ugly by any means, and they showed Charles her portrait, which, after looking at it a few minutes, he said was not unhandsome. They reminded him, also, that Catharine was only the third in succession from the crown of Portugal, so that the chance of her actually inheriting that realm was not at all to be disregarded. Charles thought this a very important consideration, and, on the whole, decided that the affair should go on; and commissioners were sent to make a formal proposal of marriage at the Portuguese court. Charles wrote letters to the mother of the young lady, and to the young lady herself, expressing the personal interest he felt in obtaining the princess's hand.
The negotiations thus commenced went on for many months, with no other obstruction than the complication and intricacy which attend all matrimonial arrangements where the interests of kingdoms, as well as the personal happiness of the wedded pair, are involved in the issue. Ambassadors were sent, and contracts and treaties were drawn up, discussed, modified, and finally signed. A formal announcement of the proposed marriage was made to the English Parliament, and addresses congratulatory were voted and presented in reply. Arrangements were made for transferring the foreign possessions promised to the British crown; and, lastly, the money intended for the dower was collected, tied up in bags, sealed, and deposited safely in the strong room of the Castle at Lisbon. In fact, every thing went on prosperously to the end, and when all was thus finally settled, Charles wrote the following letter to his expected bride.
"London, 2d of July, 1661. MY LADY AND WIFE,"
"Already the ambassador has set off for Lisbon; for me the signing of the marriage has been great happiness; and there is about to be dispatched at this time, after him, one of my servants, charged with what would appear necessary, whereby may be declared on my part the inexpressible joy of this felicitous conclusion, which, when received, will hasten the coming of your majesty."
"I am going to make a short progress into some of my provinces. In the mean time, while I am going further from my most sovereign good, yet I do not complain as to whither I go; seeking in vain tranquility in my restlessness, looking to see the beloved person of your majesty in these realms already your own; and that with the same anxiety with which, after my long banishment, I desired to see myself within them, and my subjects desiring also to behold me among them. The presence of your serenity is only wanting to unite us, under the protection of God, in the health and content I desire.
"The very faithful husband of her majesty, whose hand he kisses.
CHARLES REX."
The letter was addressed
"To the QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN, my wife and lady, whom God preserve."
Whoever reads this letter attentively will see in it that infallible criterion of hypocrisy and pretense in professions of regard, viz., extravagant ideas feebly and incoherently expressed. When the heart dictates what is said, the thoughts are natural, and the language plain; but in composition like the above, we see a continual striving to say something for effect, which the writer invents by his ingenuity as he goes on, without any honest impulses from the heart to guide him. He soars one minute and breaks down the next, in absurd alternations of the sublime and the ridiculous. How honest Charles was in such professions, and what was the kind of connubial happiness which he was preparing for his bride, is shown by the fact that he was even now spending all his time with Lady Castlemaine; and, to reconcile her to his marriage with Catharine, he had promised her that he would make her one of the ladies of the queen's bed chamber as soon as she arrived in London, which would give him constant opportunities of being in her society.
We have made very little allusion to Catharine herself, thus far, in the account of these transactions, because she has had, thus far, nothing to do with them. Every thing has been arranged for her by her mother, who was an ambitious and masculine woman, and at this time the queen regent of Portugal. Catharine had been kept shut up, all her days, in the most strict seclusion, and in the most rigorous subjection to her mother's will. It is said that she had hardly been ten times out of the palace in her life, since her return to it from the convent where she had been educated. The innocent and simple hearted maiden looked forward to her marriage as to a release from a tedious and intolerable bondage. They had shown her King Charles's picture, and had given her an account of his perilous adventures and romantic escapes, and of the courage and energy which he had sometimes displayed. And that was all she knew. She had her childlike ideas of love and of conjugal fidelity and happiness, and believed that she was going to realize them. As she looked forward, therefore, to the period of her departure for England, she longed impatiently for the time to come, her heart bounding at every thought of the happy hour with eager anticipations of delight.
An English nobleman—the Earl of Sandwich—was sent with a squadron to bring the bride to England. He was received, when he entered the Tagus, with great ceremony. A Portuguese minister went down the river to meet him in a magnificent barge. The nobleman descended to the lowest step of the ladder which led down the side of the ship, to receive the minister. They ascended the ladder together, while the ship fired a salute of twenty or thirty guns. They went into the cabin, and took seats there, with great ceremony. The minister then rose and made an address of welcome to the English commander. Lord Sandwich replied, and there was then another thundering salute of cannon.
All this parade and ceremony was, in this case, as it often is, not an expression of real cordiality, good will, and good faith, but a substitute for them. The English commander, who had been specially instructed to bring over the money as well as the bride, found, to his great astonishment and perplexity, that the queen regent had spent a considerable portion of the money which had been put away so safely in the bags, and she wished to pay now a part of the dowry in merchandise, at such prices as she thought reasonable, and to have a year's credit for the remainder. There was thus thrown upon Lord Sandwich the very heavy responsibility of deciding whether to give up the object of his expedition, and go back to England without the bride, or to take her without the money. After very anxious hesitation and suspense, he decided to proceed with his enterprise, and the preparations were made for the princess's embarkation.
When the day arrived, the queen descended the grand staircase of the palace, and at the foot of it took leave of her mother. Neither mother nor daughter shed a tear. The princess was conducted through the streets, accompanied by a long cavalcade and a procession of splendid carriages, through long lines of soldiers, and under triumphal arches, and over paths strewed with flowers, while bands of music, and groups of dancers, at various distances along the way, expressed the general congratulation and joy. When they reached the pier there was a splendid brigantine or barge ready to receive the bride and her attendants. The Earl of Sandwich, and other English officers of high rank belonging to the squadron, entered the barge too. The water was covered with boats, and the shipping in the river was crowded with spectators. The barge moved on to the ship which was to convey the bridal party, who ascended to the deck by means of a spacious and beautiful stair constructed upon its side. Salutes were fired by the English ships, and were echoed by the Portuguese forts on the shore. The princess's brother and the ladies who had accompanied her on board, to take leave of her there, now bade her farewell, and returned by the barge to the shore, while the ships weighed anchor and prepared to put to sea.
The wind was, however, contrary, and they were compelled to remain that night in the river; and as soon as the darkness came on, the whole shore became resplendent with illuminations at the windows in the city, and with rockets, and fire balls, and fireworks of every kind, rising from boats upon the water, and from the banks, and heights, and castle battlements all around upon the land. This gay and splendid spectacle beguiled the night, but the wind continued unfavorable all the next day, and confined the squadron still to the river. Catharine's mother sent out a messenger during the day to inquire after her daughter's health and welfare. The etiquette of royalty did not allow of her coming to see her child.
The fleet, which consisted of fourteen men-of-war, put to sea on the second day. After a long and stormy passage, the squadron arrived off the Isle of Wight; the Duke of York came out to meet it there, with five other ships, and they all entered the harbor of Portsmouth together. As soon as Catharine landed, she wrote immediately to Charles to notify him of her arrival. The news produced universal excitement in London. The bells were rung, bonfires were made in the streets, and houses were illuminated. Every body seemed full of joy and pleasure except the king himself. He seemed to care little about it. He was supping that night with Lady Castlemaine. It was five days before he set out to meet his bride, and he supped with Lady Castlemaine the night before he commenced his journey.
Some of Charles's best friends were very much grieved at his pursuing such a course; others were very indignant; but the majority of the people around him at court were like himself in character and manners, and were only led to more open irregularity and vice themselves by this public example of their sovereign. In the mean time, the king moved on to Portsmouth, escorted by a body of his Life Guards. He found that his intended bride was confined to her bed with a sort of slow fever. It was the result, they said, of the roughness and discomforts of the voyage, though we may certainly imagine another cause. Charles went immediately to the house where she was residing, and was admitted to visit her in her chamber, the many attendants who were present at the interview watching with great interest every word and look on either side by which they might judge of the nature of the first impression made by the bride and bridegroom upon each other. Catharine was not considered beautiful, and it was natural that a degree of curiosity should be manifested to learn how Charles would regard her.
There are two apparently contradictory accounts of the impression made upon Charles by this his first sight of his intended bride. Charles wrote a letter to Lord Clarendon, in which he expressed himself very well satisfied with her. He admitted that she was no beauty, but her countenance was agreeable, he said, and "her conversation," he added, "as far as I can perceive, is very good; for she has wit enough, and a very agreeable voice. You would be surprised to see how well we are acquainted already. In a word, I think myself very happy, and I am confident that we shall agree very well together. I have not time to say any more. My lord lieutenant will tell you the rest." At the same time, while writing this in his official communication to his minister, he said privately to one of his companions on leaving the presence of his bride, that, "upon his word, they had sent him a bat instead of a woman."
The royal couple were married the next day, first very privately in the Catholic form, and afterward more openly, in a great hall, and before a large assembly, according to the ritual of the Church of England. The bride was attired in the English style, her dress being of rose color, trimmed with knots of blue ribbon. These knots were, after the ceremony, detached from the dress, and distributed among the company as wedding favors, every lady eagerly pressing forward to get a share. Magnificent presents were made to the groomsmen and bridesmaids, and the company dispersed. The queen, still indisposed, went back to her bed and her supper was served to her there, the king and other members of the household partaking it with her, seated at the bedside.
A day or two afterward the royal party proceeded to London, in a long train composed of Life Guards, carriages, horsemen, baggage wagons, and attendants of every grade. The queen's heart was full of anticipations of happiness. The others, who knew what state of things she was to find on her arrival there, looked forward to scenes of trouble and woe.
CHAPTER XI.
CHARACTER AND REIGN
Some of the traits of character for which King Charles II. has been most noted among mankind are well illustrated by his management of the affair of Lady Castlemaine, when the queen arrived at her new home in Hampton Court. Hampton Court is a very spacious and beautiful palace on the banks of the Thames, some miles above London, splendidly built, and very pleasantly situated at a graceful bend of the river. It was magnificently fitted up and furnished for Catharine's reception. Her suite of apartments were supplied and adorned in the most sumptuous manner. Her bed, which was a present to Charles, at the time of his restoration, from the States of Holland, was said to have cost, with all the appurtenances, a sum equal to between thirty and forty thousand dollars. The hangings were an embroidery of silver on crimson velvet. The other articles of furniture in the apartment, the mirrors, the richly inlaid cabinets, the toilet service of massive gold, the canopies, the carved chairs, the curtains, the tapestries, and the paintings, corresponded in magnificence with the bed, so that Catharine, when she was introduced to the scene, felt that she had attained to the very summit of human grandeur.
For a few weeks Catharine neither saw nor heard any thing of Lady Castlemaine. She was confined to her house at the time by the care of an infant, born a few days after the arrival of the queen. Her husband had the child baptized soon after its birth as his son and heir; but the mother soon afterward had it baptized again as the son of the king, Charles himself standing sponsor on the occasion. A violent quarrel followed between Lady Castlemaine and her husband. She left the house, taking with her all her servants and attendants, and all the plate and other valuables which she could carry away. The husband, overwhelmed with wretchedness and shame, abandoned every thing, and went to France, in voluntary exile. His wife then came and took up her residence at Richmond, which is not far from Hampton Court, so as to be near the king. In all these proceedings the king himself gave her his continued countenance, encouragement, and aid.
Although Catharine, in the confiding simplicity of her character, had fully believed, in coming to London, that Charles would be to her a true and faithful husband, still she had heard the name of Lady Castlemaine before she left Lisbon. Her mother had once briefly alluded to the subject, and gave her a warning, charging her to remember the name, and to be on her guard against the lady herself, and never to tolerate her in her presence on any pretext. Things were in this state, when, one day, after Catharine had been about six weeks in her new home, Charles brought in a list of ladies whom he proposed that she should make the ladies of her household. Catharine took the list, and there, to her surprise and indignation, she saw the dreaded name of Lady Castlemaine at the head of it.
Very much agitated, she began to prick out the name, and to declare that she could not listen to any such proposition. Charles was angry, and remonstrated. She persisted, and said that he must either yield to her in that point, or send her back to Lisbon. Charles was determined to have his way, and Catharine was overwhelmed with anguish and grief. This lasted two days, when Charles made his peace with his wife by solemnly promising to give up Lady Castlemaine, and to have from that time forward nothing more to do with her.
King Charles II. has always been famed for his good nature. This was a specimen of it. He never liked to quarrel with any body, and was always ready to give up his point, in appearance and form at least, for the sake of peace and good humor. Accordingly, when he found how immovably averse his wife was to having Lady Castlemaine for an inmate of her family, instead of declaring that she must and should submit to his will, he gave up himself, and said that he would think no more about it, without, however, having the remotest idea of keeping his word. He was only intending, since he found the resistance so decided on this side of the citadel, to try to find some other approach.
Accordingly, a short time after this, one evening when the queen was holding a sort of levee in a brilliant saloon, surrounded by her Portuguese ladies, and receiving English ladies, as they were one after another presented to her by the king, the company were astonished at seeing Lady Castlemaine appear with the rest, and, as she advanced, the king presented her to the queen. To the surprise of every one, Catharine received her as graciously as the rest, and gave her her hand. The fact was, that Catharine, not being familiar with the sound and pronunciation of English words, had not understood the name. One of the Portuguese ladies who stood near her whispered to inquire if she knew that that was Lady Castlemaine. Catharine was stunned and staggered by the words as by a blow. The blood gushed from her nose, she fell over into the arms of her attendants in a fainting fit, and was borne out of the room.
There followed, after this scene, a long and dreadful quarrel. Charles accused his wife of unreasonable and foolish jealousy, and of putting a public insult upon one of the ladies of his court, whom she was bound to treat with civility and respect, since he chose to have it so. She, on the other hand, declared that he was cruel and tyrannical in making such demands upon her, and that she would go back to Portugal rather than submit to such an intolerable indignity. She criminated Charles, and Charles recriminated and threatened her, and for one night the palace was filled with the noise and uproar of the quarrel. The ladies and gentlemen of the household were very glad, they said, that they were not in London, where there would have been so many more witnesses of the scene.
Some of Charles's counselors and ministers of state were disposed at first to remonstrate with him for laying commands on his wife, with which, as they expressed it, flesh and blood could not comply. He, however, peremptorily silenced all their expostulations, and required them, as they valued his favor, to aid him in effecting his purposes. Good natured as he was, his determination was fully aroused, and he was now resolved to compel the queen to submit. He wrote a letter to Lord Clarendon, in which he declared his absolute and unalterable determination to make Lady Castlemaine "of the queen's bed chamber," and hoped he might be miserable in this world and in the world to come if he failed in the least degree in what he had undertaken; and if any one of his friends attempted to thwart or impede him in it in any way, he would make him repent of it as long as he lived. The king concluded his letter with asking Clarendon to show it to some others concerned, that they might all understand distinctly what they were to expect.
Of course, every body, after this, took sides against the queen, and all who had access to her urged her to comply with the wishes of the king. She begged and prayed to be spared such an indignity. She remonstrated, sometimes with impetuous passion, and sometimes with silent grief and bitter tears. She wanted to go back again to Portugal; but this, of course, could not be. The end of it was, that she was worn out at last. Lady Castlemaine was admitted, and remained an inmate of her family as long as she retained her place in the king's regard.
Lady Castlemaine was a proud and imperious beauty, who abused the power which she soon found that she possessed over the king, in a manner to make her an object of hatred to every one else. She interfered with every thing, and had a vast influence even over the affairs of state. The king was sometimes out of patience, and attempted resistance, but she soon reduced him to submission. There was once some question about sending a certain nobleman, who was charged with some political offenses, to the Tower. She declared that he should not be sent there. The king rebuked her interference, and they got into a high dispute on the subject, the king telling her, in the end, that she was an impertinent jade, that meddled with things she had nothing to do with. To which she replied that he was a great fool, that let fools have the management of his affairs, and sent his faithful servants to prison. In the end, the lady gained the victory, and the nobleman went free. Violent quarrels of this kind were very frequent between these high life lovers, and they always ended in the triumph of Lady Castlemaine. She used to threaten, as a last resort, that if the king came to an open rupture with her, she would print the letters that he had written to her, and this always brought him to terms.
These incidents indicate a very extraordinary freedom and familiarity of manners on the part of Charles, and he probably appears, in all these transactions, to much greater disadvantage in some respects than he otherwise would have done, on account of the extreme openness and frankness of his character. He lived, in fact, on the most free and familiar terms with all around him, jesting continually with every body, and taking jests, with perfect good nature, from others in return. In fact, his jests, gibes, and frolics kept the whole court continually in a condition of frivolous gayety and fun, which would have excited the astonishment of all the serious portion of mankind, if the extreme and universal dissipation and vice which prevailed had not awakened a far deeper emotion.
In fact, there seemed to be no serious element whatever in the monarch's character. He was, for instance, very fond of dogs, and cultivated a particular breed, since called King Charles's spaniels, which he kept at one time in great numbers, and in all stages of age and condition, in his palace, and in his very bed chamber, making all the apartments around very disagreeable by the effluvia. Rewards were constantly offered for certain of the king's dogs which had escaped. They were always escaping. He was attended by these dogs wherever he went, and at his meetings with his council, while the gravest and most momentous national interests were under discussion, he would amuse himself by playing with them under the table. He read his speeches at Parliament, that is, the brief messages with which the sovereign usually opens the session, in a ridiculous manner, and at church, instead of attending to the service, he would play at peep with Lady Castlemaine between the curtains which separated his box from that of the ladies of the household. And yet he pretended to be a firm believer in Christianity; and while he had no objection to any extreme of vice, he discountenanced infidelity. On one occasion, when a philosophical skeptic had been enlarging for some time on his objections to the Christian faith, Charles replied by saying, "My lord, I am a great deal older than your grace, and have heard more arguments in favor of atheism than you, but I have lived long enough to see that there is nothing in them, and I hope your grace will."
Charles spent most of his time, at some periods of his reign, in idle amusements, lounging about his palace, playing at tennis in the tennis court like a boy, and then weighing himself afterward to see how much he was gaining. In the afternoons and evenings he would loiter in the rooms of his favorites while they were finishing their dressing, gamble at cards, and often would get very much intoxicated at wild midnight carousals. He would ramble in the mall and in the parks, and feed the aquatic birds upon the ponds there, day after day, with all the interest and pleasure of a truant schoolboy. He roamed about thus in the most free and careless manner, and accosted people far beneath him in rank in what was considered a undignified way for a king.
His brother James, the Duke of York, sometimes remonstrated with him on this subject. James was, of course, so long as the queen, Charles's lawful wife, had no children, the next heir to the crown. He spent most of his life in the court of his brother, and they were generally very warm friends to each other. On one of Charles's frolicking excursions, when he was away far from his palace, without any suitable attendants or guards, James told him that he really thought his life was not safe in such exposures. Charles replied by telling James not to give himself any uneasiness. "You may depend upon it," said he, "that nobody will ever think of killing me to make you king."
The king was not unwilling, too, to take, himself, such jests as he gave. One day, in conversation with a dissolute member of the court, after they had been joking each other for some time, he said, "Ah! Shaftesbury, I verily believe you are the wickedest dog in my dominions."
"Yes," replied Shaftesbury, "for a subject, I think I am."
There was a mischievous and unmanageable goat in one of the palace courtyards, whose name was Old Rowley, and the courtiers considered the beast as affording so just an emblem of the character of the king, that they gave the king his name. Charles, instead of resenting it, entered into the jest; and one day, as he was going into the apartment of some of the ladies, be heard them singing a song, in which he figured ridiculously as the goat. He knocked at the door. They asked who was there. "Only Old Rowley," said the king.
The king's repartees were some of them really good, and he obtained in his day the reputation of being quite a wit, while yet all his actions, and the whole of his management of his affairs, were so utterly unwise and so wholly unworthy of his station, that every one was struck with the contrast. One of the wits of his court one day wrote an epitaph for him, over his door, as follows:
"Here lies our sovereign lord the king,
Whose word no man relies on,
Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one."
When the king came and saw this inscription, he stopped to read it, and said, "Yes, that is very true; and the reason is, my doings are those of my ministers, while my sayings are my own."
Charles had, in fact, very little to do with the public affairs of his kingdom. He liked to build palaces and ships, and he expended vast sums, not very judiciously, on these plans. Sir Christopher Wren, the famous architect, planned one of these palaces, and Charles, when he went to see it, complained that the rooms were too small. Sir Christopher walked about with a self-important air, looking up at the ceiling, and said that he thought they were high enough. Sir Christopher was very small in stature. Charles accordingly squatted down as well as he could, to get his head in as low a position as the architect's, and walked about the room in that ridiculous attitude, looking up in mimicry of Sir Christopher's manner, and then said, "Oh, yes, now I think they are high enough."
These building plans, and other similar undertakings, together with the vast amounts which the king lavished upon his numerous female favorites, exhausted his resources, and kept him in continual straits for money. He was always urging Parliament to make new grants, and to lay more taxes, until, as he said himself, he was ashamed to look his Parliament in the face, he was so continually begging them for supplies. The people caricatured him by the representation of a poverty stricken man, with his pockets turned inside out, and begging money. At another time the caricature took the form of a man led along against his will by two women, and threatened by a third, wearing all the time a countenance expressive of helplessness and distress.
The king bore all these things with the utmost good nature, satisfied, apparently, if he could only enjoy the pleasures of dissipation and vice, and continue, in his palaces, a perpetual round of reckless merriment and fun. Some of the stories which are gravely told by the historians of the day are scarcely credible. For instance, it is said that a thief one day found his way, in the guise of a gentleman, into one of the royal drawing rooms, and contrived to get a gold snuff box out of the pocket of one of the noblemen there. Just as he had successfully accomplished his object, unobserved, as he supposed, he looked up, and saw the king's eyes fastened upon him. Knowing his majesty's character, the thief had the presence of mind to give him a wink, with a sly gesture enjoining secrecy. The king nodded assent, and the thief went away with his prize. When the nobleman missed his snuff box, the king amused himself some time with his perplexity and surprise, and then told him that it was of no use for him to search for his snuff box, for a thief had gone off with it half an hour ago. "I saw him," said the king, with a countenance full of fun, "but I could not do any thing. The rascal made me his confidant, and, of course, you know, I could not betray him."
Under the government of such a sovereign, it could not be expected that the public affairs of the realm would have gone on very prosperously. Still, however, they might have been conducted with ordinary success by his ministers, and perhaps they were, in fact, managed as well as was usual with the governments of Europe in those days. It happened, however, that three great public calamities occurred, all of a most marked and signal character, which were, perhaps, not owing at all to causes for which Charles was responsible, but which have nevertheless connected such associations in men's minds with this unfortunate reign, as that Englishmen have since looked back upon it with very little pleasure. These three calamities were the plague, the fire, and the Dutch invasion.
There have been a great many seasons of plague in London, all inconceivably dreadful; but as King Charles's fire was first among conflagrations, so his plague was the greatest pestilence that ever ravaged the city. London was, in those days, in a condition which exactly adapted it to be the easy prey of pestilence, famine, and fire. The people were crowded together in vast masses, with no comforts, no cleanliness, no proper organization. The enormous vegetable and animal accumulations of such a multitude, living more like brutes than men, produced a continual miasma, which prepared the constitutions of thousands for any infection which might chance to light among them. Pestilence is, in fact, the rude and dreadful remedy which nature provides for the human misery which man himself can not or will not cure. When the dictates of reason and conscience are neglected or disobeyed, and the ills which they might have averted sink the social state into a condition of degradation and wretchedness so great that the denser accumulations of the people become vast and corrupted swarms of vermin instead of organized communities of men, then plague and fever come in as the last resort—half remedy, half retribution—devised by that mysterious principle which struggles perpetually for the preservation of the human race, to thin off the excessive accumulation by destroying a portion of the surplus in so frightful a way as to drive away the rest in terror.
The great plague of London took place in 1665, one year before the fire. The awful scenes which the whole city presented, no pen can describe. A hundred thousand persons are said to have died. The houses where cases of the plague existed were marked with a red cross and shut up, the inmates being all fastened in, to live or die, at the mercy of the infection. Every day carts rolled through the otherwise silent and desolate streets, men accompanying them to gather up with pitchforks the dead bodies which had been dragged out from the dwellings, and crying "Bring out your dead" as they went along. [Footnote: Sometimes the living were pitched into the cart by mistake instead of the dead. There is a piece of sculpture in the Tottenham Court road in London intended to commemorate the following case. A Scotch piper, who had been wandering in homeless misery about the streets, with nothing but his bagpipes and his dog, got intoxicated at last, as such men always do, if they can, in times of such extreme and awful danger, and laid down upon the steps of a public building and went to sleep. The cart came along in the night, by torchlight, and one of the men who attended it, inserting the point of his fork under the poor vagabond's belt, tossed him into the cart, bagpipes and all. The dog did all he could to defend his master, but in vain. The cart went thundering on, the men walking along by its side, examining the ways for new additions to their load. The piper, half awakened by the shock of his precipitation into the cart, and aroused still more by the joltings of the road, sat up, attempted in vain to rally his bewildered faculties, looked about him, wondering where he was, and then instinctively began to play. The men, astonished and terrified at such sounds from a cart loaded with the dead, fled in all directions, leaving the cart in the middle of the street alone.
What a mysterious and inconsistent principle is fear. Here are men braving, unconcerned and at their ease, the most absolutely appalling of all possible human dangers, and yet terrified out of their senses at an unexpected sound.]Thousands went mad with their uncontrollable terror, and roamed about the streets in raving delirium, killing themselves, and mothers killing their children, in an insane and frenzied idea of escaping by that means, somehow or other, from the dreadful destroyer.
Every body whose reason remained to them avoided all possible contact or communication with others. Even in the country, in the exchange of commodities, a thousand contrivances were resorted to, to avoid all personal connection. In one place there was a stone, where those who had any thing to sell placed their goods and then retreated, while he who wished to buy came up, and, depositing his money on the stone in the place of the merchandise, took what he had thus bought away.
The great fire took place in 1666, about a year after the plague, and burned a very large part of London. It commenced accidentally in a baker's shop, where a great store of fagots had been collected, and spread so rapidly among the buildings which surrounded the spot that it was soon entirely beyond control. The city of London was then composed of an immense mass of mean buildings, crowded densely together, with very narrow streets intervening, and the wind carried the flames, with inconceivable rapidity, far and wide. The people seemed struck universally with a sense of terror and despair, and nothing was to be heard but shrieks, outcries, and wild lamentations. The sky was one vast lurid canopy, like molten brass, day and night, for four days, while the whole city presented a scene of indescribable and awful din; the cracking and thundering of the flames, the frenzied screams of the women and children, the terrific falling of spires, towers, walls, and lofty battlements, the frightful explosions of the houses, blown up by gunpowder in the vain hope of stopping the progress of the flames, all formed a scene of grandeur so terrific and dreadful, that they who witnessed the spectacle were haunted by the recollection of it long afterward, as by a frightful dream. A tall monument was built upon the spot where the baker's shop stood, to commemorate the calamity. The fire held, in fact, in the estimation of mankind, the rank of the greatest and most terrible of all conflagrations, until the burning of Moscow, in the time of Napoleon, in some degree eclipsed its fame.
The Dutch invasion was the third great calamity which signalized King Charles's unfortunate reign. The ships of the enemy came up the Thames and the Medway, which is a branch of the Thames; they took possession of a fort at Sheerness, near the mouth of the river, and, after seizing all the military stores, which had been collected there to an enormous amount, they set fire to the powder magazine, and blew up the whole fortress with a terrific explosion. The way was now open to them to London, unless the English could contrive some way to arrest their progress. They attempted to do this by sinking some ships in the river, and drawing a strong chain across from one sunken vessel to the other, and fastening the ends to the shores. The Dutch, however, broke through this obstruction. They seized an opportunity when the tide was setting strongly up the river, and a fresh wind was blowing; their ships, impelled thus by a double force, broke through the chains, passed safely between the sunken ships, and came on in triumph up the river, throwing the city of London into universal consternation. There were several English ships of war, and several Dutch ships, which had been captured and brought up the Thames as prizes, lying in the river; these vessels were all seized by the Dutch, and burned; one of the English ships which they thus destroyed was called the Royal Oak.
Of course, there was now a universal scene of confusion and terror in London. Every body laid the blame of the calamity upon the king; the money which he had received for building ships, and other national defenses, he had squandered, they said, upon his guilty pleasures; then the war, which had resulted in this invasion, was caused by the political mismanagement of his reign. While the people, however, thus loudly condemned the conduct of their monarch, they went energetically at work to arrest the progress of their invaders; they sunk other ships in greater numbers, and built platforms, on which they raised batteries of cannon. At length the further progress of the enemy was stopped, and the ships were finally compelled to retire.
Among the other events which occurred during the reign of King Charles the Second, and which tended to connect unfavorable associations with the recollection of it in the minds of men, was a very extraordinary affair, which is known in history by the name of Titus Oates's Popish Plot. It was the story of a plot, said to have been formed by the Catholics, to put King Charles to death, and place his brother James, who, it will be recollected, was a Catholic, upon the throne in his stead. The story of this plot was told by a man named Titus Oates, and as it was at first generally believed, it occasioned infinite trouble and difficulty. In after times, however, the whole story came to be regarded as the fabrication of Oates, without there being any foundation for it whatever; hence the name of Titus Oates's Popish Plot, by which the affair has always since been designated in history. The circumstances were these:
Among his other various accomplishments, King Charles was quite a chemist and philosopher. He had a laboratory where he amused himself with experiments, having, of course, several persons associated with him, and attendant upon him in these researches. Among these was a man named Kirby. Mr. Kirby was an intelligent man, of agreeable manners, and of considerable scientific attainments. Charles devoted, at some periods of his life, a considerable portion of his time to these researches in experimental philosophy, and he took, likewise, an interest in facilitating the progress of others in the same pursuits. There was a small society of philosophers that was accustomed to meet sometimes in Oxford and sometimes in London. The object of this society was to provide apparatus and other facilities for making experiments, and to communicate to each other at their meetings the result of their investigations. The king took this society under his patronage, and made it, as it were, his own. He gave it the name of THE ROYAL SOCIETY, and granted it a charter, by which it was incorporated as a permanent organization, with the most ample powers. This association has since become one of the most celebrated learned societies in the world, and its establishment is one of the very few transactions of King Charles's reign which have been since remembered with pleasure.
But to return to Mr. Kirby. One day, when the king was walking in the park with a party of companions and attendants, who were separated more or less from him, as was usual on such occasions, Mr. Kirby came up to him, and, with a mysterious and earnest air, begged the king not to allow himself to be separated from the company, for his life, he said, was in danger. "Keep with your company, sir," said he, "your enemies have a design upon your life. You may be suddenly shot on this very walk." Charles was not easily frightened, and he received this announcement with great composure. He asked an explanation, however, and Mr. Kirby informed him that a plot had been formed by the Catholics to destroy him; that two men had been engaged to shoot him; and, to make the result doubly sure, another arrangement had been made to poison him. The queen's physician was the person, he said, who was charged with this latter design. Mr. Kirby said, moreover, that there was a clergyman, Dr. Tong, who was fully acquainted with all the particulars of the plot, and that, if the king would grant him an interview that evening, he would make them all known.
The king agreed to this, and in the evening Dr. Tong was introduced. He had a budget of papers which he began to open and read, but Charles had not patience to hear them; his mind was full of a plan which he was contemplating of going to Windsor the next day, to look at some new decorations which he had ordered for several of the apartments of the palace. He did not believe in the existence of any plot. It is true that plots and conspiracies were very common in those days, but false rumors and unfounded tales of plots were more common still. There was so much excitement in the minds of the community on the subject of the Catholic and Protestant faith, and such vastly extended interests depended on whether the sovereign belonged to one side or the other on this question, that every thing relating to the subject was invested with a mysterious awe, and the most wonderful stories were readily circulated and believed. The public mind was always particularly sensitive and excitable in such a case as that of Charles and his brother James at the time of which we are writing, where the reigning monarch, Charles, was of one religious faith, and his brother James, the next heir, was of the other. The death of Charles, which might at any time take place, would naturally lead to a religious revolution, and this kept the whole community in an exceedingly excitable and feverish state. There was a great temptation to form plots on the one hand, and a great eagerness to discover them on the other; and any man who could tell a story of treasonable schemes, whether his tale was true or fabricated, became immediately a personage of great importance.
Charles was well aware of these things, and was accordingly disposed to pay very little attention to Dr. Tong's papers. He said he had no time to look into them, and so he referred the whole case to the Lord Treasurer Danby, an officer of his court, whom he requested to examine into the affair. Dr. Tong, therefore, laid his papers before Danby, while the king went off the next day to Windsor to examine the new fresco paintings and the other decorations of the palace.
Danby was disposed to regard the story in a very different light from that in which it had appeared to the king. It is said that there were some charges about to be brought forward against himself for certain malpractices in his office, and that he was very much pleased, accordingly, at the prospect of having something come up to attract public attention, and turn it away from his own misdemeanors. He listened, therefore, with great interest to Dr. Tong's account of the plot, and made many minute and careful inquiries. Dr. Tong informed him that he had himself no personal knowledge of the conspiracy; that the papers, which contained all the information that he was possessed of, had been thrown into the hall of his house from the front door, and that he did not certainly know by whom, though he suspected, he said, one Titus Oates, who had formerly been a Catholic priest, and was still so far connected with the Catholics as to have very favorable opportunities to become acquainted with their designs.
Soon after this Dr. Tong had another interview with the lord treasurer, and informed him that his surmise had proved true; that it was Titus Oates who had drawn up the papers, and that he was informed in regard to all the particulars of the plot, but that he did not dare to do any thing openly in revealing them, for fear that the conspirators would kill him. The lord treasurer communicated the result of his inquiries to the king, and urged the affair upon his attention as one of the utmost possible importance. The king himself, however, was very skeptical on the subject. He laughed at the lord treasurer's earnestness and anxiety. The lord treasurer wished to have a meeting of the council called, that the case might be laid before them, but Charles refused. Nobody should know any thing about it, he said, not even his brother. It would only create excitement and alarm, and perhaps put it into somebody's head to murder him, though nobody at present had any such design.
But, notwithstanding the king's determination not to give publicity to the story of the plot, rumors of it gradually transpired, and began to excite attention. The fact that such stories were in circulation soon came to the knowledge of the Duke of York, and, of course, immediately arrested his earnest attention. As he was himself a Catholic, and the heir to the crown, any suspicion of a Catholic plot formed to dethrone his brother necessarily implicated him. He demanded an examination into the case. In a short time, vague but exaggerated rumors on the subject began to circulate through the community at large, which awakened, of course, a very general anxiety and alarm. So great was the virulence of both political and religious animosities in those days, that no one knew to what scenes of persecution or of massacre such secret conspiracies might tend Oates, whose only object was to bring himself into notice, and to obtain rewards for making known the plot which he had pretended to discover, now found, to his great satisfaction, that the fire which he had kindled was beginning to burn. The meeting of the council was called, and he was summoned to attend it. Before the time arrived, however, he went to a justice of the peace, and laid the evidence before him of the existence of the conspiracy, and of all the details respecting it which he pretended to have discovered. The name of this justice was Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey. A remarkable circumstance afterward occurred in respect to him, as will presently be related, which greatly increased and extended the popular excitement in relation to the pretended plot.
The plot, as Oates invented and detailed it, was on the most magnificent scale imaginable. The pope himself was at the head of it. The pope, he said, had laid the subject before a society of learned theologians at Rome, and they had decided that in such a case as that of England, where the sovereign and a majority of the people had renounced the true religion, and given themselves up to avowed and open heresy, the monarch lost all title to his crown, and the realms thus fallen from the faith lapsed to the pope, and were to be reclaimed by him by any mode which it seemed to him expedient to adopt. Under these circumstances, the pope had assumed the sovereignty over England, and had commissioned the society of the Jesuits—a very powerful religious society, extending over most of the countries of Europe—to take possession of the realm; that, in the prosecution of this plan, the king was to be assassinated, and that a very large sum of money had been raised and set apart, to be paid to any person who would kill the king; that an offer of ten thousand pounds had been made to the queen's physician if he would poison him. The physician had insisted upon fifteen thousand for so great a service, and this demand had finally been acceded to; and five thousand had actually been paid him in advance. Besides the murder of the king, a general assassination of the Protestants was to take place. There were twenty thousand Catholics in London, for instance, who, according to Oates's account of the plan, were to rise on a preconcerted night, and each one was to kill five Protestants, which it was thought they could easily do, as the Protestants would be taken wholly by surprise, and would be unarmed. The revolution being thus effected, the crown was to be offered to Charles's brother, the Duke of York, as a gift from the pope, and, if he should refuse to accept it on such conditions as the pope might see fit to impose, he was himself to be immediately assassinated, and some other disposal to be made of the kingdom.
Oates was examined before the council very closely, and he contradicted himself so much, and made so many misstatements about absent persons, and the places where he pretended that certain transactions had taken place, as to prove the falseness of his whole story. The public, however, knew little or thought little of these proofs. They hated the Catholics, and were eager to believe and to circulate any thing which tended to excite the public mind against them. The most extravagant stories were accordingly circulated, and most excessive and universal fears prevailed, increasing continually by the influence of mutual action and reaction, and of sympathy, until the whole country was in a state of terror. A circumstance now occurred which added tenfold to the excitement, and produced, in fact, a general consternation.
This circumstance was the sudden and mysterious death of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, the justice who had taken the depositions of Oates in respect to the conspiracy. He had been missing for several days, and at length his body was found in a trench, by the side of a field, in a solitary place not far from London. His own sword had been run into his body, and was remaining in the wound. His watch and his money were safe in his pocket, showing that he had not been killed by robbers. This event added greatly to the excitement that prevailed. The story was circulated that he had been killed by the Catholics for having aided in publishing the discovery of their plot. They who wished to believe Oates's story found in the justice's death most ample confirmation of it. The body was brought forward and exhibited to the public gaze in a grand procession, which moved through the streets of London; and at the funeral guards were stationed, one on each side of the preacher, while he was delivering the funeral discourse, to impress the people with a sense of the desperate recklessness of Catholic hate, by the implication that even a minister of the Gospel, in the exercise of the most solemn of his functions, was not safe without an effectual guard.