The royal marriage had recently taken place, when that unhappy weathercock, Sir Harry Vane, was brought to trial for having compassed the death of Charles the Second, merely by accepting employment under the Republican Government. Relying on the indemnity, Vane had gone to live at Hampstead, when he found there was something in the wind which gave him an unfavourable turn; but it was too late for him to escape, and he was accordingly sent to the Tower.
After the fashion of the period, poor Vane was condemned in the opinion of his judges before he was tried, and he was not even allowed to make a last dying speech; for the sheriff snatched the document from which he was reading, drove away the reporters who were taking notes, and ordered the drums to strike up a rataplan, which overwhelmed the voice of the gallant soldier.
The exuberant loyalty of the people towards Charles received a severe check, when, looking round for something to sell, in order to support his extravagant habits, he determined to throw Dunkirk into the market. Spain, Holland, and France were all in the field as customers for the lot, which was eventually made over to the last-named power for a few thousands, payable within three years by bills, which were discounted at an alarming sacrifice.
Numerous Acts of oppression were passed by Charles, assisted by his most servile Parliament; and among them, the Conventicle Act, which forbade the Nonconformists from assembling anywhere but in the established churches, under the penalty of transportation or long imprisonment. Every loft, attic, or barn, where the Dissenters had got together for psalm-singing purposes, was searched, and the occupants were dragged away to the nearest prison.
The year 1665 was dreadfully signalised by the plague of London, from which the king and Court fled to Oxford, as if they were aware that, by themselves at all events, the awful visitation was thoroughly merited. While, however, the profligate king and his dissolute companions escaped the physical consequences of a plague, the abandoned crew carried with them wherever they went the malaria of a moral pestilence. During the early part of 1666, the fever in the metropolis subsided, and Charles with his courtiers came sneaking back to town, where they resumed their old habits as the "fast men" of the period.
On the 2nd of September, in the same year, about the middle of the night, some smoke issued from a baker's house near London Bridge; but the watchman on duty, being asleep, as a matter of course, took no notice of the incident. The fire continued its progress unchecked, for the people instead of trying to put it out, which they might have done at first, pumps as they were, began to speculate on the subject of its origin. For some time it was reported that Harry Marten, "the wit of the House of Commons," as he was, on the lucus a non lucendo principle, called, had set the Thames on fire by some brilliant flashes, and the ignition of the river had, it was alleged, communicated itself to London Bridge, and thence to the shop of the baker. Others declared the French had done the mischief, and instead of arresting the flames, the mob began arresting all the foreigners.
The usual casualties contributed to heighten the destructive effect of the fire, for the parish engine had, in the hurry of the moment, come out in the middle of the night without its hose, and the New River had been smoking its pipe or soldering it for the purposes of repair on the previous day, and neither of these aids to anti-combus-tion was available. Poor Clarendon, the Chancellor, who had got the reputation of being a great moral engine, was disturbed in his sleep by some mischievous boys, who, with a cry of "Fire! fire!" called upon the great moral engine to come and spout away upon the burning city.
The devouring element continued its tremendous supper without interruption, and there was, unfortunately, considerable difficulty in administering anything to drink to allay the burning heat which was rapidly consuming the whole metropolis. The most furious conflagration will wear itself out in time, and the fire of London, after giving the inhabitants several "Nichts wi' Burns," brought its own progress to a conclusion. It is gratifying to be enabled to state that, even in the seventeenth century, the English were remarkable for their charity, and the calamities that fell upon the metropolis—particularly the fire—stirred up the public benevolence to the fullest extent, and inspired all classes with a warmth of feeling that was quite appropriate.
Charles having got all he could out of the people, for the purposes of war, thought he might as well be paid on both sides, and began to think of selling peace to his enemies. He entered into negotiations with the Dutch, but before they had come to terms, he commenced cutting down the expenses by selling the furniture of his fleets to the dealers in marine stores, and dismissing his soldiers, in order to put their pay into his own pocket. He was properly served for his selfish parsimony by De Buyter, the Dutch admiral, who, hearing that Charles was doing everything upon a low and paltry scale, dashed at the Medway, surprised Sheerness, and sacked not only the place, but several cargoes of coal that were lying there. Upon the old English principle of guarding the stable door after the furtive removal of the horse, Charles prepared to collect a force to guard his country against the injury it had already experienced. Twelve thousand men were enrolled; but during the process of enrolment, the enemy had got safely off, and when the soldiers were assembled, it occurred suddenly to the king that he had no means of paying them. As the Parliament seemed quite unwilling to take this little responsibility off his hands, the twelve thousand men were disbanded, all of them grumbling furiously at having been made fools of by the bankrupt monarch. Peace was concluded with De Ruyter just as if nothing had happened; and though the English did not obtain all they asked, they got the colony of New York, which was destined to give them so much trouble at a far distant period.
The people were by no means satisfied with the terms of the treaty, and as national ill-humour must always have a victim of some kind, poor old Clarendon, the Chancellor, was pounced upon. The Nonconformists hated him because he was a high churchman; the high church party hated him because he wasn't; while the papists hated him, they didn't exactly know why; and the courtiers hated him because they had got a large balance of general animosity on hand, which they were determined to expend upon somebody. Clarendon, in fact, was the grand centre in which all the detestation of the country appeared to meet, or he might be more appropriately called the bull's-eye of the target towards which the shafts of public malignity were directed. Clarendon had been a faithful servant to Charles, but the monarch's stock of gratitude had always been very small, and what little he once possessed he had paid away long ago, to less worthy objects. He accordingly sent to the Chancellor for the Great Seal, but Clarendon, pleading gout for not immediately leaving home, promised that when he could get out he would call and leave the official emblem at the palace. Charles replied, that as to Clarendon's postponing his resignation till he could get out, he must get out at once, if he wished to avoid an ejection of a not very agreeable character. Urged by this formidable message, he took Whitehall in his way during a morning's walk, and having seen the king, made a desperate but useless struggle to retain the seal, which he was forced to surrender. His misfortunes did not end here, for the Commons impeached him; and Clarendon, as if owning the not very soft impeachment, absconded to France, where he ended his days in exile.
A change of ministry ensued on the downfall of Clarendon, and a Government was formed which gave rise to almost the only constitutional pun which we find recorded in history. The cabinet received the name of the Cabal, from the five initial letters of the names of the quintette to whom public affairs were intrusted. This great national acrostic deserves better treatment than it has hitherto received at the hands of the historians; and taking down our rhyming dictionary from the cupboard in which it had been shelved, we proceed to invest the political jeu d'esprit with the dignity of poetry.
A was an Arlington, brilliant and brief;
B was a Buckingham—horrible scamp;
A was an Ashley, of similar stamp;
L was a Lauderdale, Buckingham's pal.
Now take their initials to form a Cabal.
These five individuals looked upon politics as a trade, and principles as the necessary capital, which must be tinned over and over again in order to realise extraordinary profits. They were all of them out-pensioners on the bounty of France, and they soon persuaded Charles that it was better to receive a fixed salary from abroad, than trust for his supplies to the caprice of a Parliament. The king, therefore, intrigued with several States at the same moment, and was taking money from two or three different Governments, on the strength of treaties with each, some of which he all the while intended to violate. He nevertheless did not disdain the money of his own people, and extracted a sum of £310,000 from the public pocket, in the shape of a supply from Parliament.
The domestic proceedings of the king were always of the most disreputable kind, and he had lately taken up with one Mary or Molly Davies, a jig dancer, who pretended to come of a very ancient family in Moldavia. This wretched little ballet-girl was introduced at Court by the king, who was positively ambitious of being thought rather "fast," an epithet which is generally bestowed on loose characters. He had also formed an intimacy with Eleanor, or Nell Gwynne, originally a vendor of "oranges, apples, nuts, and pears," but subsequently an actress; and it was said at the time—which is some excuse perhaps for our saying it again—that Eleanor sounded the knell of older favourites. Lady Castlemaine, who went by the name of "the lady," was cut by the king in favour of the fruit girl and the figurante.
Notwithstanding the rivalry to which "the lady" was exposed, her influence over the mind of Charles—if we may be allowed the allegory—was still very considerable; and in the year 1670, which was very soon after Miss M. Davies had danced herself into the good graces of the king, he conferred the title of Duchess of Cleveland on Lady Castlemaine. As many of our aristocratic families are fond of tracing their origin to its very remotest source, we shall perhaps be thanked for assisting some of them in the search to find the root of their nobility. We, however, decline the, to us, wholly uninteresting task, for we are quite content to take our peerage as it comes, and estimate its members for their personal worth, without reference to their ancestors. We certainly should not value the vinegar in our cruet any the more if we knew it comprised within it a dissolved pearl, nor should we treasure a lump of charcoal on account of its supposed relationship to some late lamented diamond.
With our accustomed fairness, we on the other hand have no wish to throw a degraded and abandoned ancestry into the faces of those who do not presume upon birth, but are decently thankful for its worldly advantages. It is only when we find rank turning up its nose at all inferior stations that we feel delight in seizing the offending snout, and driving home the iron ring, to show a connection between the proboscis of pride and the humbler materials of humanity.
CHAPTER THE SECOND. CHARLES THE SECOND (CONTINUED).
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CHARLES opened Parliament in person, on the 14th of February, 1670; and, in imitation of Louis the Fourteenth, introduced some soldiers into the procession, which had hitherto, in England, been limited to the boys, the beef-eaters, and the blackguards. The speech from the throne had one advantage over those of our own day, for it was perfectly intelligible, inasmuch as it told the Commons in very plain terms that Charles "must have cash"—a necessity he shared with the bankrupt linendrapers and the cheap crockery dealers of a much later era. Taxation was therefore the order of the day, and after putting a tax on everything in the shape of property or income, it was proposed to attempt the forcing of a sanguineous extract from stone, by putting a tax on actors' salaries. This, however, was so preposterous an idea that it was not followed up; for unless the poor players had been allowed to pay the impost in gallery checks leaden damps, and the other rubbish that forms the currency of the stage, the taxes received from the dramatic fraternity would have given the collectors a sinecure. Though enough money to pay off the National Debt is frequently distributed in a single scene by a stage philanthropist, or left by an old uncle in the course of "a tag" to a farce, there would be little prospect of the business of the country being carried on if the supplies were contingent on such resources as those which the actors dispose of with the most lavish generosity.
The early part of the session was signalised by a frightful example that was made of Sir John Coventry, who had ventured upon a joke—an undertaking at all times perilous, and frequently entailing upon the manufacturer the most alarming consequences. Sir John endeavoured to be witty on the subject of a tax, but the joke, which is happily lost in the mist of ages, was of so wretched a description that a conspiracy was actually formed for the purpose of bringing the perpetrator to punishment. The joke had reference to a private matter into which it was thought Coventry had no right to poke his nose, and this being the offending feature, was severely handled by his assailants, who took hold of it as a prominent point, and savagely maltreated it. This was a specimen of the practical joking adopted by the "fast men" of the time of Charles the Second, but the king was obliged to affect disapprobation of such an act, and a law against cutting and maiming was immediately passed, to protect all future noses from the fate that had placed Coventry's nose in the hands of those with whom he had fallen into bad odour.
In the same year the notorious Colonel Blood provided matter for the penny-a-liner of his own day, and the historian of ours, by two or three crimes of a very audacious character. One of these was to waylay the Duke of Ormond as he was returning from a dinner-party in the city, and was, from that very circumstance, most unlikely to be in a fit state to defend himself. His grace was placed upon a horse, and carried towards Tyburn, but his coachman having undertaken to overtake Blood, soon came up, to the consternation of the latter, who could not understand what the former was driving at. Blood, finding the coachman had the whip hand of him, oozed quietly away, but being incapable of keeping out of mischief, he was soon detected in an attempt to steal the Crown jewels from the Tower. This act of crowning audacity, as the merry monarch lugubriously termed it, induced Charles to wish to "regale himself," as he said, "with the sight of a fellow who could be bold enough to attempt to steal the regalia." The monarch, who had a sort of sympathy with blackguardism of every description, was mightily taken with Blood, whose bluntness made him pass for a very sharp blade, and the ruffian was not only allowed to go at large, but received grants of land without the smallest ground for such a mark of royal favour.
Charles and his people did not go on together in a spirit of mutual confidence, for from a sort of instinctive appreciation of his own demerits, he was afraid to trust his subjects, while they reciprocated that distrust, from a due sense of the king's worthlessness. He had therefore entered into some foreign alliances, of which he was fearful they would disapprove, and he had accordingly prorogued the Parliament, in the cowardly spirit of a man who, having some bills he cannot meet, declines meeting his creditors. Supplies were, however, necessary, and these he secured by going down to the Exchequer, which he robbed of every farthing deposited there by the merchants, who had been in the habit of leaving their loose cash in the hands of the Government, at a handsome rate of interest. When remonstrated with on the subject of this disgraceful robbery, he defended himself on the aide-toi principle, declaring we were always told to help ourselves, and that he had accordingly helped himself to all he could lay his hands upon.
Being now in league with France, England waged war upon Holland, but the Dutch metal of that country soon displayed itself. The nation found in William, Prince of Orange, a leader who did not give exactly the quarter implied in his name, but was merciful as far as circumstances would permit to all his enemies. He expected sympathy from the English Parliament, which Charles was afraid to call until he found himself without a penny in his pocket, just like the acknowledged scamp of domestic life, as represented in the British Drama. The impossibility of proceeding without supplies urged the king to take the dreaded step, and the writs for summoning the Commons should have been couched in the old popular form, commencing, "Dilly, dilly, come and be killed," for the Commons were only called together to be victimised. It is a beautiful fact in natural history, that even the donkey will kick when his patience is too sorely tried; and the Commons, who had been wretchedly subservient during Charles the Second's reign, began at last to show symptoms of opposition under the insults they experienced. They were angry at the war with Holland, and threatened to impeach Buckingham; but Charles, comforting his favourite with the exclamation, "Don't be alarmed, my Buck!" took the utmost pains to screen him. A negotiation was commenced for a peace with Holland, but this was after all nothing better than a Holland blind, for Charles's predilection for a French alliance was still perceptible. This occasioned much dissatisfaction, and the people, being in the habit of frequenting coffee-houses, talked about the matter over their cups, and were very saucy over their saucers, which induced Charles to order the closing of all those places where temperate refreshment was obtainable. Thousands to whom coffee and bread and butter formed a daily, and in many cases an only meal, were horrified at this arrangement; while many who, not having a steak in the country, got a chop in town, were disgusted beyond measure at the order, which extended to taverns as well as to tea and coffee shops. A mandate which would have dashed the muffin from the mouth of moderation, and turned all the tea into another channel, was certain not to be obeyed, and the doors of the marts for Mocha in your own mugs—a term synonymous with mouths—continued open as usual.
Urged by the remonstrances and clamour of the people, Charles entered into an alliance with William, Prince of Orange, who married the Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of James, the young lady being used, like so much of the cement distinguished as "Poo-Loo's," for the purpose of mending the breakages that had occurred on both sides. William was as deep as Charles, and soon began to pooh! pooh! the idea of having cemented, à la Poo-Loo, a rupture of such long standing, and he positively refused to fall into Charles's projects.
The state of Scotland was not more satisfactory than that of England at this time, for the Covenanters were striving vigorously against the constituted authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical. Lauderdale, who represented the king, enrolled twenty thousand militiamen; but had he enrolled, or rolled up in old coats, as many scarecrows, they would have been quite as serviceable as the new soldiery.
Charles is informed of a plot against his precious life.
The recent regicide having caused a reaction in favour of royalty, it became a common trick with the king's party to get up a report of the intended assassination of Charles the Second, whenever the stock of popularity was running rather short, and the people seemed to be getting dissatisfied with the Government.
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In the absence of real objects of suspicion, there is never any difficulty among Englishmen in drawing upon their inventive resources for materials to make a panic, whether monetary, political, or otherwise; and about the year 1670 rumour was very busy in manufacturing all sorts of plots against the life of the sovereign. On the morning of the 13th of August, which happened to be one of the dog days, Charles was walking with his dogs in the park, when Kirby, the chemist—a highly respectable man, but an egregious blockhead—drew to the monarch's side, and whispered in the royal ear, "Keep within the company; your enemies have a design upon your life, and you may be shot in this very walk." Charles, who was a little flurried, desired to know the meaning of this warning, when Kirby the chemist offered to produce one Doctor Tongue, a weak-minded and credulous old parson, who said he had heard that two fellows, named Grove and Pickering, were making arrangements for smashing Charles on the very first opportunity. This tongue was so exceedingly slippery that he could not be believed; but to keep himself out of a pickle, he brought a pile of papers, containing a copious account of the alleged conspiracy. He alleged that he had found them pushed under his door; but we cannot very easily believe that any conspirators would have been so foolish as to go about, dropping promiscuously into letter-boxes, or thrusting under street doors, the proofs of their designs on the sovereign.
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Upon further inquiry being prosecuted, it turned out that a low fellow, named Titus Oates, was at the bottom of this plot, to raise the apprehensions of the public. Oates was a man of straw, the son of an anabaptist preacher; and our antiquarian recollections have reminded us, that from the extraordinary propensity of Oates to deceive by false representations, the application of the term "chaff" to stories at variance with fact, most likely owes its origin. Happy had it been for many in those days, if Oates had been so dealt with, that the chaff had been all thrashed out of him. The fellow is described by a writer of the period, as "a low man of an ill cut and very short neck," with a mouth in the middle of his face; "whereas," says the old biographer, "the nose should always form the scenter."
"If you had put a compass between his lips," continues the quaint chronicler we quote, "you might have swept his nose, forehead, and chin within the same diameter." This places the nasal organ in a high, but certainly not a very proud position, bringing it nearly flush with the eyes, and making it a sort of inverted comma on the summit of that index which the face is said to afford to the human character.
The stories got up by Oates were of the most elaborately absurd description, betraying an equal ignorance of grammar, geography, and every other branch of information, polite or otherwise. He contradicted himself over and over again, but this only rendered his story the more marvellous, and as the lower orders of English were always fond of the most extravagant fictions, the terrific tales of Oates were not too absurd to be swallowed. He became the most successful political novelist ever known, and received a pension of £1,200 a year, besides lodgings in Whitehall, by way of recognition for his services in contributing to the amusement of the people, by frightening them out of their propriety.
The success of Oates induced a number of imitators, each of whom contrived to discover a plot to murder the king, with a complete set of written documents, to prove the existence of the foul conspiracy. One of these speculators on royal and public credulity was a man named William Bedloe, a fellow who, having failed as a thief, and been detected as a cheat, attempted to repair his fortunes by turning patriot. With the usual injudicious energy of mere imitation, he went much further than even Oates himself in the audacity of his statements. These two miscreants between them sent many innocent people to the scaffold, for if Oates only hinted his suspicion of a plot, Bealoe was at hand to swear to the persons involved in it. As surely as Oates declared his knowledge of some intended assassination, Bedloe would come forward to indicate not only the assassins themselves, but to point to the very weapons they would have used, when, if it was replied they did not belong to the parties against whom the charge was made, he would not scruple to swear that the instruments would have been purchased on the next day for the deadly purpose. All the rules of evidence were outraged without the slightest remorse, and poor Starkie * would have gone stark, staring mad, could he have witnessed the flagrant violations of those principles which he has expounded with so much ability.
acknowledged authorities on the Law of Evidence.
The Parliament which sat during these proceedings, was in existence for seventeen years, and has gained, or rather has deserved, an undying reputation by the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act. This glorious statute prohibited the sending of anyone to prison beyond the sea, and allowed anyone in jail to insist on being carried before a judge to inquire the cause of his detention. A troublesome captive might therefore, by pretending never to be satisfied with the explanation of the court, keep running perpetually backwards and forwards to ascertain the reason of his captivity. The Oates conspiracy had not yet undergone the winnowing which the breath of public opinion—universally right, in the long run—was sure at one time or another to bestow, when a new affair, called the Meal-Tub Plot, burst on the attention of the community. A fellow of the name of Dangerfield affected to have discovered a new field of danger in an alleged design to set up a new form of government. This reprobate had been in the pillory, where it is believed the quantity of eggs that met his eye gave him the notion of hatching a plot, and he obtained the assistance of one Cellier, a midwife, to bring the project into existence. There was something very melodramatic in the mode of getting up accusations of treason in the days of Dangerfield, for it was only necessary to drop some seditious papers in a man's house, or stuff the prospectus of a revolution into his pocket, in order to make him responsible for all the consequences of a crime he had perhaps never dreamed about. Colonel Mansel was the intended victim in the Dangerfield affair; and some excise officers who had been sent to his lodgings under the pretence of being ordered to search for contraband goods, found the heads of a conspiracy cut and dried, crammed in among his bed-clothes. The colonel succeeded in showing that he had nothing to do with the transaction, and declared that, "as he had made his bed, so was he content to lie upon it." His words carried conviction home to the minds of all, and Dangerfield was obliged to admit the imposture he had practised; but he confessed another conspiracy, the particulars of which were found regularly written out and deposited in a meal-tub in the house of Cellier, the midwife.
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It is evident from numerous instances, that conspirators in those days were very apt to carry their designs no further than committing them to paper, and carefully depositing in some place or other the records of their crime, so that in case of detection the evidence against themselves would be complete and irresistible. Thus had the plotters with whom Dangerfield had been acting in concert, put away in a meal-tub the evidence of their intended proceedings, for no other purpose which we can perceive than the ultimate finding of the documents, and the furtherance of the ends of justice in the true poetical fashion. Lady Powis was implicated in this affair, and was sent to the Tower; but the Grand Jury ignored the bill against her, while Cellier, the midwife, who had aided in the miserable abortion, was tried and acquitted at the Old Bailey.
The rumour, or the reality of conspiracies against the royal family, did not prevent Charles from throwing himself into the pleasures, or rather the dissipations for which his Court was remarkable. Though political liberty was exceedingly scarce during this reign, he did not discourage the taking of liberties in private life, among those who formed the society by which he was surrounded. The palace was one continued scene of that degrading excitement which passes sometimes by the name of gaiety, and nearly every evening was devoted to that sort of entertainment which is sought by the snobs and shop-boys of our own day in the casinos and masked balls. The "fast" mania, which thrusts at this moment the penny cheroot between the lips of infancy, drags the clerk from the desk to the dancing rooms, and perhaps urges his felonious hand to his master's till, had in the time of Charles the Second corrupted the whole nation, from the highest to the lowest, so that even the best society—and bad indeed was the best—bore the impress of the example that was furnished by the king himself. The palace balls were accordingly conducted in a manner that would disgrace the humblest of modern hops, and in these days deprive of its licence any place of public entertainment where such behaviour would be permitted by the conductors of the establishment.
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CHAPTER THE THIRD. CHARLES THE SECOND (CONTINUED).
THE Duke of York, the king's brother, being an acknowledged Papist, the people began to look out for a Protestant successor, and turned their eyes upon young Monmouth, a natural son of Charles, who was almost a natural in more respects than one, for his mental capacity was more—or less—than dubious. He was, indeed, a good-looking idiot, and nothing more; but, coming after such a king as Charles, the nation might have been satisfied with him; and, to oblige York, the fellow was formally declared illegitimate. The prosecution of the Catholics was carried on with unabated animosity; and several, among whom was the aged Lord Stafford, were put to death, under the pretence of advancing the cause of "peace and goodness."
The particulars of the sacrifice of Stafford afford such a faithful sample of the mode in which justice was administered in the reign of Charles the Second, that, converting ourselves into "our own reporter," we give a brief sketch of the trial. The defendant in the action, which was in the nature of an impeachment, was accused of high treason, and the three witnesses against him were Oates, Dug-dale, and Turberville, three scamps who made a regular business—and a very profitable one—of giving false evidence. Oates swore he had seen somebody deliver a document signed by somebody else, appointing Stafford paymaster to some army, which at some time or other was going to be got together somehow, somewhere, for the purpose of doing something against the Government, and in favour of the Catholics. Dugdale swore that the accused had engaged him, Dugdale, to murder the king at so much a week, with the offer of a saintdom in the next year's almanack. Turberville swore ditto to Dugdale, and though Stafford was able to disprove their evidence in many very important points, the trio of perjurers had gone so boldly to work that there was a large balance of accusation remaining over that could not be upset, in consequence of the unfortunate impossibility of proving a negative.
Stafford succeeded in damaging the credit of the witnesses, but as they came forward professedly in the character of hard swearers, who, so as they got the prisoners executed, were indifferent about being believed, the attack on their reputations affected them very little. The unhappy prisoner was so taken aback by the effrontery of his accusers, that he hardly gave himself a fair chance in his defence, which consisted chiefly of ejaculations expressive of wonder at the excessive impudence and audacity of the witnesses. Such exclamations as "Well, I'm sure! what next?" though natural enough under the circumstances, did not make up, when all put together, a very eloquent speech for the defence, and after a trial of six days' duration, the Peers, by a majority of twenty-four, found poor Stafford guilty.
Sentence of death was passed upon him, but the more ignominious portion of the punishment having been remitted by the king's order, the two sheriffs were seized with a most sanguinary fit of system, and objected to the omission of hanging and quartering, because, as they said, the leaving out of these barbarities would be altogether irregular. In order to satisfy the scruples of these very punctilious gentlemen, the Peers pronounced them "over nice," and the Commons passed a resolution of indemnity, by which the sheriffs were made aware that they would not be considered to have "scamped" their work, if they merely cut off Stafford's head without proceeding to the more artistical details of butchery.
Stafford died nobly, and the fickle populace, who had howled for his condemnation, began sighing and grieving at his fate; but as all this sympathy was almost in the nature of a post obit, it was of little or no value to the nobleman on whose behalf it was contributed. The executioner himself turned tender-hearted at the last moment, and twice raised the fatal axe, but a coarse brute near him on the scaffold—perhaps one of the thwarted sheriffs—desired the headsman not to make two bites at a cherry, and the blow was forthwith administered.
These excesses of the Parliament caused even the dissolute Charles to try, the effect of dissolution; but there was no going on for any length of time without a House of Commons to vote the supplies; and the king, thinking to withdraw the legislature from the influence of London mobs, appointed the next to be held at Oxford. This a arrangement gave great dissatisfaction to the opposition, and both parties came as if prepared for a battle, the speakers on each side being, no doubt, abundantly supplied with the leaden ammunition that is customarily used for debating purposes. It was during the party bickerings prevailing about this time, that the definitions, since so famous—and sometimes so infamous—of Whig and Tory, were first hit upon. The former was given to the popular party, merely because it had been given to some other popular party, in some other place, at some previous time, and the latter was given to the courtiers, because some Popish banditti in Ireland had been once called Tories; * but why they had been, or why, if they had been, the courtiers of Charles the Second's time need have been, are points that the reader's ingenuity must serve him to elucidate.
is derived from Torrco, to roost, because the Tories were
always clever at roasting their antagonists.
The king had usually been civil enough to his Parliaments, but on the occasion of the assembly at Oxford he determined to speak his mind, and his speech, being a reflection of his mind, was of course very rambling and irregular. He complained of the last Parliament having been refractory, and expressed a hope that the "present company" would know how to behave themselves. He disavowed all idea of acting in an arbitrary manner himself, but he was thoroughly determined not to be "put upon" by any one else; and so now they knew what he meant, and he trusted that no misunderstanding would arise to mar their efforts for the public benefit. The Commons listened to all this with a few mental "Oh, indeed's!" "Dear me's!" "No! 'Pon your honour's!" and "You don't say so's!" but they were not in the least over-awed, and they set to work exactly in the old way to choose the same Speaker and adopt the same measures as the last Parliament, of which many of them had been members.
The new Parliament was of course found by Charles to be no better than any of its predecessors, and when it was a week old he jumped into a sedan chair, had the crown put under the seat, and the sceptre slung across the back, when, in reply to the chairman's inquiry, "Where to, your honour?" the sovereign with a dignified voice, directed that he might be run down to the place where Parliament was sitting. This was the morning of the 28th of March, and Charles, bursting into the hall where the Lords had met, dissolved the fifth and the last of his Parliaments.
This proceeding, which, in the days of a monarchy's decline, would have been exclaimed against as highly unconstitutional, was hailed as a piece of vigour at a time when royalty, having been recently maltreated, united in its favour the general sympathies. Charles, finding that courage was likely to tell, became very liberal of its exercise, and began to abuse the opponents of his policy with more than common energy. "There is nothing like taking the bull by the horns," Charles would say to his intimate friends, "and John Bull especially should be taken by the horns, to prevent his making unpleasant use of them."
Shortly after the dissolution, Charles brought out for general perusal a justification of the course he had thought proper to pursue; for, like many other people in the world, he first took a step, and then began to look for the reasons of his having taken it. The opposition brought out a reply, written by Messrs. Somers, Sydney, and Jones, but it did not sell, and as these gentlemen could not afford to give it away, it had very little influence. Charles managed to get a number of addresses presented to him, congratulating him on his deliverance from the republicans, but the Lord Mayor and Common Council having come down to Windsor with an address of a different kind, were told that the king was not at home, but they had better go to Hampton Court. On their arriving at the latter address there was a great deal of whispering among the royal servants, who would give no other information than the words "Yes, yes; it's all right!" At length, upon a signal from above, a domestic exclaimed, "Now, then, gentlemen, you may walk up;" and on going into a room on the first floor, they found the Lord Chancellor sitting there, looking as black as thunder. His lordship, putting on a voice to match his countenance, began asking them how they dared to come with anything like a remonstrance to their sovereign; and the Lord Mayor, with the Common Council, slinking timidly out of the room, made the best of their way back to the point they had started from.
A few more plots of an insignificant character were got up against the Government, but met with no success; and the Bye-House conspiracy, so called perhaps from the wry faces the parties put on when they were found out, stands out from among the rest, which have been long ago buried under their own insignificance. Some have suggested that the Bye-House plot was a name invented as a kind of sequel to the notion of Oates, and the conspiracy of the Meal-Tub; but the hypothesis is far too trifling for us to dwell upon. As it has taken a position of some importance in history, we must furnish a few particulars of this Bye-House plot, which in the old nursery song, * taking for its theme the domestic arrangements of royalty, seems to have had a slight foreshadowing.
A pocket full of rye."
On the 12th of June, 1683, one Josiah Keyling, who had formerly been a red-hot Whig, and was by trade a salter, was seized with the infamous idea of applying his skill in business to the affairs of his country, which he resolved to put, if he could, into a precious pickle. He went to Lord Dartmouth, for the purpose of revealing a conspiracy that had been formed to take away the king's life; and he declared one Burton, a decayed cheesemonger, Thompson, a carver, who had been trying to carve his own fortunes in vain, and Barber, an instrument-maker, as his accomplices in the intended act of regicide. They were all to have gone down to the house of one Bumbold, a maltster, at a place called the Bye, where they were to have taken a chop, and cut off the king and his brother on their return from Newmarket. They were to have purchased blunderbusses, but, perhaps by some blunder, missing the 'bus, the London conspirators never left town, and did not arrive at the "little place" of Bumbold the maltster. The disclosures made by Keyling included, at first, a few names only; but, as a brother historian * has well and playfully suggested, "he subsequently went into a regular crescendo movement," and indulged in an ad libitum, introducing several new accompaniments to the strain he had originally adopted, besides adding new circumstances and dragging in new persons into his accusation, without the slightest regard to harmony of detail. He at length went off into a largo of such wide and unmeasured scope, that he included William Lord Russell in the charges made, and his lordship was committed to the Tower.
142.
Lord Grey, who was also accused, was rather more fortunate; for, having been taken in the first instance to the home of the jailor, he had the satisfaction of finding that official reeling about in a state of helpless drunkenness. Lord Grey, perceiving that the functionary who had charge of him was not in a situation to appreciate any consideration that might be shown to him, quietly walked out at the door-way of the serjeant's house, and jumping into a boat on the Thames, hailed a ship for Holland. Lord Howard of Escrick, another of the alleged conspirators, was pulled neck and heels down a chimney, into which he had climbed for concealment, in his house at Knights-bridge. His character has been blackened almost as much as his dress, by this ignoble act, for it is recorded of him that when pulled out from the grate, he looked fearfully little. He trembled, sobbed, and wept, or in other words, had a regular good cry, and the tears forming channels through the soot, rendered his aspect exceedingly ludicrous. He at once confessed that he did not come out of the affair with clean hands, but he was guilty of the very dirty trick of implicating many of his own friends and kindred by his pusillanimous confession.
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Besides other less illustrious victims, Lord Russell was sacrificed; and his kinsman Howard, whom we have just had the pleasure of dragging before the world from the chimney into which he had slunk, was one of the witnesses against the nobleman we have mentioned. Russell behaved with great dignity throughout his trial and during its fatal result; but the execution was scarcely over, when the town rang with his last speech, of whioh some enterprising Catnach of the period had obtained the manuscript. It was actually in print before the fated event took place; but there is every reason to believe that it was genuine, for speculation had not in those days learned to anticipate reports, notwithstanding the occurrence of the events described in them having been by some accident prevented.
Individuals of lesser note than Russell were condemned to share his fate, and among them was one Rouse, who was executed at Tyburn for having endeavoured to house the populace. A declaration, containing a narrative of the Rye-House plot, was published by the king, who was exceedingly fond of performing the office of his own historian. It enabled him to "touch up" the events in which he himself was concerned, and give them a colouring favourable to himself; but happily for the cause of truth, notes were being taken on its behalf, and materials were thus collected for such truthful chronicles as those the reader's eye now rests upon.
The trial and death of Algernon Sidney, the last of the Commonwealth men, took place soon after Russell's execution. Though it is to be hoped that few people in these days can be ignorant of the character of this remarkable man, yet there may be a section of the British public from whom will have burst the cry of "Sidney! Who is Sidney?" directly we mentioned him. Sidney then—we state the fact for the benefit of the benighted classes—was son of the Earl of Leicester, and had always been a republican, and had been named one of the judges on the trial of the king; but he was either too lazy or too loyal to take his seat amongst-them. He opposed Cromwell's elevation, from which it might have been inferred that he would have had no objection to the Restoration; but he opposed that, and having nothing else to excite his resistance, he opposed himself by refusing to take advantage of a general bill of indemnity. He had been obliged to remain out of England, but finding that he was seriously opposing his own interest by his absence from home, he applied for the king's pardon, which was sent him by an early post, and he arrived in England with his protection in his pocket. Party spirit was running very high when Sidney returned, and he was not the man to do anything with a view to moderation, so that he was soon at his old trick of opposing the Government. He began talking largely about liberty, and he was really going on in a very improper way, for he fell into the common error of patriots, namely, that of spouting commonplace claptraps instead of attempting every legal means to bring about a reform of the evils that may be in need of remedy.
Sidney now became a marked man, whom the royalists were determined to crush, and a pretext was speedily found for bringing him to trial. Several witnesses were brought forward to prove the existence of a plot; but what plot and what Sidney had to do with it, or whether he was concerned in it at all, did not form any part of the subject of the evidence. Having established a plot, the next thing to be done was to show that Sidney was at the head of it, and the abject Howard—no relation to the philanthropist—made his sixth or seventh appearance as a royalist witness for the purpose specified. According to law, it was necessary to have the testimony of a second person; but there were not two Howards in the world, and a supplementary scoundrel to swear away Sidney's life was nowhere to be met with.
Some papers found in the house of the accused were examined in lieu of a second witness; and though this was a flagrant evasion of the law, the proceeding was pronounced by the infamous Jeffreys to be perfectly regular. He asserted that written documents were better than living witnesses, for the former could not give an evasive reply; but the judicial villain forgot that the papers, unless the writing happened to be crossed, would not admit of the test of cross-examination like other witnesses. Sidney pleaded that his hand-writing had not been proved; and that even supposing him to be the author of the documents, he might have been "only in fun;" but this was a frivolous excuse, for it is dear that if "only in fun" were a good plea, there would be great difficulty in getting over it. A verdict of "Guilty" was returned by a jury so discreditably packed, that the box in which they sat should have been called a packing-case.
Judge Jeffreys "came out" exceedingly on the occasion of Sidney's sentence being passed, and insisted on proceeding to the last extremity, notwithstanding a mass of irregularities having been pointed out to him. Jeffreys would listen to nothing in the prisoner's favour; and upon one Mr. Bampfield, a barrister, venturing an opinion as amicus curia, that unhappy junior was smashed, snubbed, and silenced by the judge, who recommended the learned gentleman to confine himself to those points of practice upon which his opinion was required. The scene between Sidney and Judge Jeffreys degenerated into a mere personal squabble before the unhappy affair was concluded, and it ended in Jeffreys telling Sidney to keep cool, while the judge himself was boiling over with rage, and the prisoner tauntingly requested his "lordship" to feel his—the prisoner's—pulse, which the latter declared was more than usually temperate. Sidney followed the practice, prevalent at the time, of placing a paper in the hands of the sheriff by way of legacy on the scaffold; but we have been unable to account for the strange partiality felt by persons at the point of death for the individual principally concerned in their execution.
Hampden was selected as the next victim to the political persecution so much in vogue during Charles's reign, but it was thought more profitable to fine this gentleman than to execute him, and he was adjudged to pay a penalty of £40,000, which added a large sum to the royal treasury, besides saving the executioner's fee and the cost of a scaffold. Judge Jeffreyss though balked in this instance of an opportunity for gratifying his sanguinary propensities, took his revenge upon some inferior prisoners, for it was his practice when one eluded the gallows by any chance, to hang two, as a poor compensation for the disappointment he had suffered. Professor Holloway, who had been concerned in the Rye-House plot, was accordingly condemned to death, with Sir Thomas Armstrong, who had had a small and very unprofitable share in the plot.
Judge Jeffreys, who figured in these sanguinary transactions, was one of the most extraordinary specimens of ruffianism that the world ever produced; and if history—like Madame Tussaud—were to get up a Chamber of Horrors, Judge Jeffreys would certainly take his place in it by the side of Danton, Sawney Bean, Marat, Mrs. Brownrigg, and Robespierre. Before he went on circuit he used to say he was going to give the provinces "a lick with the rough side of his tongue"—a vulgar threat which he carried out to its fullest extent, for he not only used his tongue, but his teeth, in the lickings he administered to the unfortunate prisoners brought before him for trial. He was not much interested in dry points of law, and indeed he endeavoured to moisten them as much as he could by drinking copiously before he went into court, and he sometimes reeled about so unsteadily as he took his place on the bench, that a facetious usher of the period declared Jeffreys should be called the Master of the Rolls, for he was always rolling about from side to side when he approached the seat of judgment.
The king endeavoured, by courting personal popularity, to avert from himself some of the odium that attached to nis creatures and his Government. Knowing that the suspicion of his entertaining Popish predilections was very much about, he married his niece, the Lady Anne, to Prince George of Denmark, a Protestant. No consideration would induce him, however, to call another Parliament, and though he was bothered for money on all sides, without the power of raising a supply, he preferred, as he said, "rubbing on," to the chance of getting some much harder rubs from the legislative body, in the event of one having been summoned. He greatly preferred doing just as he pleased with other people's money, to the annoyance of getting any of his own upon the conditions that a Parliament would certainly have attached to the grant of it. His credit being almost unlimited, he never wanted for anything that cash could procure; and he led a much more independent life by setting Parliament at defiance, and having nothing to thank it for, than he could have done had he called it together, and taken an annual supply, the amount of which would have been in some measure contingent on his good behaviour.
Charles had become as absolute as the last case of a Latin noun, but he was not happy, and his gaiety beginning to forsake him, the picture of the sad dog was gloomily realised. He fell into a succession of fits of the blues, and on Monday, the 2nd of February, 1685, he put his hand to his head, turned very pale, and seemed to be in a very shaky condition. Dr. King, an eminent physician, with a taste for experimental philosophy, was sent for; but his experiments either failed, or were put off too long, for Charles fell on the floor as if dead when the doctor arrived to prescribe for him. Dr. King resolved on bleeding the royal patient, who came to as fast as he had gone off, and in a fit of generosity the Council ordered the surgeon £1000, which, in a fit of oblivion, was forgotten, and he was never paid anything. Perhaps payment may have been disputed, on the ground that the doctor's treatment had not been permanently effective, for a bulletin had scarcely been issued declaring the king out of danger, when it was found necessary to issue another bulletin declaring him in again. The physicians handed him over to the ministers of the church, but Charles would not have about him any Protestant divine, and the Duchess of Portsmouth then told it as a great secret to the French ambassador, that the king, at the bottom of his heart, was a Catholic. This information revealed two facts about which there might have been considerable doubt, namely, that the king possessed some religion, though it was the one which he had been during the whole of his reign persecuting and executing others for following; and secondly, that he had a heart sufficiently capacious for any moral or virtuous principle to lie at the bottom of.
The moment the true character of Charles's faith was known to the French ambassador, he used his utmost ingenuity to smuggle a confessor to the death-bed of the sovereign. The English bishops, however, stuck to the expiring monarch so pertinaciously that no Romish priest could approach, until one Huddleston was hunted up, who had formerly been a Popish clergyman, but had so terribly neglected his business, that the office of confessor was quite strange to him. A wig and gown were put upon him to disguise him, and he was taken to a Portuguese monk to be "crammed" for the task he had to perform; and having been brought up the back staircase to the royal chamber, he got through the duty very respectably. Such was the disreputable imposture that was resorted to for supplying Charles the Second with the only religious assistance or consolation that he received before his dissolution. The Protestant bishops, who had been all hurried into the next room, did not know exactly what to make of it; but there were various whispers and shrewd suspicions current among the churchmen and the courtiers.
Soon after his interview with Huddleston, who was huddled up in a cloak to get him out of the palace without being discovered, Charles got a little better, and sent for his illegitimate children to give them his blessing. A catalogue of these young ladies and gentlemen would occupy more space perhaps than they are worth, but it is sufficient perhaps to say, that Master Peg and Miss Peg, the king's son and daughter by Mrs. Catherine Peg, were absent from the family circle in consequence of their having died in their infancy. Master James Walters, the eldest of the group of naturals, who had been created Duke of Monmouth, was not mentioned by his father in his last illness; but little Charlie Lennox, the young Duke of Richmond, and his mother, the Duchess of Portsmouth—Mademoiselle Querouaille—were especially recommended to the Duke of York's attention. The dying reprobate had the good feeling to put in a word for Mrs. Eleanor Gwynne, the actress, ancestress of the noble house of St. Alban's; but as he only said, "Do not let poor Nelly starve," it does not seem that his views with regard to her were very munificent. The bishops, however, were scandalised selon les règles at even this brief allusion to the "poor player," who had invariably refused all titles of honour; but it is said that their holinesses were not nearly so much shocked at the mention of the Duchesses of Portland and Cleveland, who were morally not a bit better than Nell Gwynne, though they had electrotyped their infamy with rank, which formed in those days, as we are happy to say it does not in these, the only real substitute for virtue.
At six in the morning of the 6th of February, 1685, Charles asked what o'clock it was, and requested those about him to open the curtains, that he might once more see daylight. Where he was to see it at that time of the morning in the darkest period of the year is, like the daylight itself, under such circumstances, not very visible. His senses, which must have been already wandering, were by ten o'clock quite gone, and at half-past eleven he expired without a struggle. He was in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of his actual reign, though, according to legal documents, he was king for thirty-six years, inasmuch as while he was flying about from place to place, and perching upon trees to elude discovery, he was supposed, by a loyal fiction, to be still sitting on the throne of England.
A report got abroad that Charles had been poisoned, but although this deadly operation had been performed on his mind by the evil and corrupt councillors into whose hands he fell after the death of Clarendon, there is no reason for believing that physical poisoning was the fate of this disreputable sovereign.
The characters of the kings and queens it is our duty to pass in review give many a pang to our loyal bosom, and we regret to say that our heart has been perforated, nay, riddled to an alarming extent, by the melancholy riddle which the character of Charles presents to us. We will begin with him as a companion—not that we should be very anxious for his company; but because it was in the capacity of a companion that he presented the most amiable aspect. His manners were engaging; but as his engagements were scarcely ever kept, the quality in question was only calculated to lead to disappointment among those who had anything to do with him. His wit, raillery, and satire are said to have been first-rate, but we find none of his bon-mots recorded which would have been worth more than two pence a dozen to any regular dealer in jokes, though for private distribution they might have been a little more-valuable, on account of their royal authorship. For his private life he has found apologists in preceding historians * one of whom appears to imagine that the disgusting selfishness familiarly termed "jolly-dogism" is the highest social virtue of which human nature is capable. Charles was, we are told, a good father, but it was to those of whom he ought never to have been the father at all; a generous lover to those whom he could not make the objects of generosity without the grossest injustice to others; and a pleasing companion to those with whom he ought to have avoided all companionship. We do not concur in that sort of laxity which looks at the domestic ties as so many slip-knots that may hang about the wearer as loosely as he may find convenient.