awoke to the fact that something must be done to make the administration more acceptable to the nation, and therefore called Sir William Temple to his assistance.

Before investigating Temple's scheme, let us pause to inquire what the Cabinet was at this, the first stage of its development. It had, of course, by no means the assured position and the all-controlling power that it has now. The choosing out of a small committee for special consultation did not deprive other privy councillors of their position as de jure advisers to the Crown

a position which they still hold. But for a time they remained also advisers de facto. In creating his Committee of Foreign Affairs, Clarendon did not intend to reduce the Privy Council to a nonentity. For greater expedition, and also for greater freedom of discussion, matters were to be brought before this committee first. But they were afterward brought either in whole or in part before the Council. Clarendon made the statement that "the Cabinet never transacted anything of importance (his Majesty always being present) without presenting the same first to the Council Board."1

Nor was this presentation merely formal. From the discussion which took place over the sale of Dunkirk, we see that the Council had by no means renounced its deliberative functions. Clarendon says that, in the first place, the sale was debated "in the committee to 1 "State Trials," Vol. VI. p. 376.

D

which the King intrusted his secret affairs."

Clarendon himself was ill. The committee met at his house. He knew nothing about the matter beforehand. After it had been fully discussed those present agreed to the sale, but the King decided not to come to a positive resolution until he had laid the proposition before the Council. This was done, and "after a long debate of the whole matter before the Council Board, where all was averred concerning the uselessness and worthlessness of the place by those who had said it at the committee," but one man the Earl of St. Albans

opposed to the sale.1

was

It is probable that for some time everything which it was deemed safe to discuss in the Council was discussed there, including some things which, like the sale of Dunkirk, it was deemed not safe not to discuss there; matters in which, from their importance, combined with the impossibility of keeping them secret, the King and his ministers hardly dared to act on their own authority. Yet the meetings of the Council for deliberative purposes must have grown less and less frequent. And, when in 1679 the King dismissed his privy councillors in order to make room for the operation of Sir William Temple's scheme, he said: "His Majesty thanks you for all the good advices which you have given him, which might have been more frequent if the great num1 Clarendon, "Autobiography," Vol. I. p. 456.

bers of the Council had not made it unfit for the secrecy and despatch of business. This forced him to use a smaller number of you in a foreign committee, and sometimes the advice of some few among them upon such occasions for many years past." It must be added that probably to make the calling together of the Council the more impracticable, Charles II. greatly increased its numbers.

More important than the relations of the ministers to the Council were their relations to Parliament. Here we find the essential difference between the embryonic cabinets of the seventeenth century and the full-grown Cabinet of the nineteenth century. For like their predecessors, Clarendon's Committee of Foreign Affairs, and its successors, were not regarded by Parliament as its leaders, but as its enemies. Indeed, the Parliaments of the seventeenth century were useful to the nation, not as they followed where the ministers led, but in proportion as they held a check upon them. Both in theory and in practice there was separation between the executive and the legislative. To say that the minister was in any sense responsible to Parliament, was an affront to the King. Thus Roger North tells us that in 1683 Secretary Jenkins was told that he would be accused by the House of Commons, and was advised to ask pardon upon his knees. He replied that " as 1 Temple, "Memoirs," Vol. III. p. 45.

he had the honor to be his Majesty's Secretary of State, the case was not his, but his master's, and, by the grace of the living God, he would kneel and ask pardon of no mortal on earth but the King whom he served, and to him only would he give an account of anything done with intent to serve him.”1

It was just on this question as to whom the minister was responsible that, as we have seen, the battle had been raging for centuries. After the Restoration it was renewed with quite the old vigor. It is true that Parliament no longer claimed the right to appoint the ministers, but the claim which it had reasserted under the early Stuarts, to get rid of ministers of which it disapproved by means of impeachment, it continued to maintain under Charles II. The case of Lord Clarendon is not perhaps a very marked illustration, for in the end the King seems to have been as anxious to do away with him as was Parliament, but whether he would have been able to do so without Parliamentary support is perhaps questionable. Undoubtedly the dissolution of the Cabal was due entirely to Parliamentary opposition. That ministry through which disgraceful negotiations had been carried on with France, through which the Exchequer had been closed, and a war with the Dutch had been brought about, in which, according to Temple "the nations had fought without being angry,"

1 "Lives of the Norths," p. 352. Bohn Library.

and which "had succeeded in making only four great citizens," and under which the Declaration of Indulgence had been promulgated, was odious to every one except the King. Parliament found means of getting rid of it. Clifford was driven out by the Test Act. Arlington was forced to change his policy. Lauderdale was obliged to confine himself to Scotch affairs. Buckingham was dismissed in answer to an address from the Commons, and Shaftesbury saw that his safest course was to place himself at the head of the popular party. Later Danby was removed by impeachment, and thus up to 1679 Parliament was instrumental in getting rid of every ministry of Charles II.

We have evidence, too, that the Commons were beginning not only to put a minister out of office of whom the King approved, but even to keep one in office contrary to his wishes. In one notable instance, at least, Lord Clarendon kept his place for a short time through the support of Parliament, although he had forfeited the favor of the King. He and the Lord Treasurer, Southampton, disapproved of the Declaration of Indulgence, and especially of the clause that was attached to it, granting the King the power to dispense with penalties in ecclesiastical matters. They opposed it therefore in Parliament, were successful, and retained their positions, notwithstanding the displeasure of the King.