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for visiting with immoderate vengeance Council, and by his order communicated an insult offered to his father. And to his people. But the multitude, always soon the stain left by loose amours and fond of romantic adventures, drank in midnight brawls was effaced by honour- eagerly the tale of the secret espousals able exploits. When Charles and Lewis and the black box. Some chiefs of united their forces against Holland, the opposition acted on this occasion as Monmouth commanded the English they acted with respect to the more auxiliaries who were sent to the Con- odious fable of Oates, and countenanced tinent, and approved himself a gallant a story which they must have despised. soldier and a not unintelligent officer. The interest which the populace took On his return he found himself the most in him whom they regarded as the popular man in the kingdom. Nothing champion of the true religion, and the was withheld from him but the crown; rightful heir of the British throne, was nor did even the crown seem to be kept up by every artifice. When Monabsolutely beyond his reach. The dis- mouth arrived in London at midnight, tinction which had most injudiciously the watchmen were ordered by the mabeen made between him and the high-gistrates to proclaim the joyful event est nobles had produced evil conse- through the streets of the City: the quences. When a boy he had been people left their beds: bonfires were invited to put on his hat in the presence lighted: the windows were illuminated: chamber, while Howards and Seymours the churches were opened; and a merry stood uncovered round him. When peal rose from all the steeples. When foreign princes died, he had mourned for them in the long purple cloak, which no other subject, except the Duke of York and Prince Rupert, was permitted to wear. It was natural that these things should lead him to regard himself as a legitimate prince of the House of Stuart. Charles, even at a ripe age, was devoted to his pleasures and regardless of his dignity. It could hardly be thought incredible that he should at twenty have secretly gone through the form of espousing a lady whose beauty had fascinated him. While Monmouth was still a child, and while the Duke of York still passed for a Protestant, it was rumoured throughout the country, and even in circles which ought to have been well informed, that the King had made Lucy Walters his wife, and that, if every one had his right, her son would be Prince of Wales. Much was said of a certain black box which, according to the vulgar belief, contained the contract of marriage. When Monmouth had returned from the Low Countries with a high character for valour and conduct, and when the Duke of York was known It is a curious circumstance that, at to be a member of a church detested two of the greatest conjunctures in our by the great majority of the nation, this history, the chiefs of the Protestant idle story became important. For it party should have committed the same there was not the slightest evidence. error, and should by that error have Against it there was the solemn asse- greatly endangered their country and veration of the King, made before his their religion. At the death of

he travelled, he was everywhere re-
ceived with not less pomp, and with far
more enthusiasm, than had been dis-
played when Kings had made pro-
gresses through the realm.
He was
escorted from mansion to mansion by
long cavalcades of armed gentlemen
and yeomen. Cities poured forth their
whole population to receive him. Elec-
tors thronged round him, to assure him
that their votes were at his disposal.
To such a height were his pretensions
carried, that he not only exhibited on
his escutcheon the lions of England and
the lilies of France without the baton
sinister under which, according to the
law of heraldry, they should have been
debruised in token of his illegitimate
birth, but ventured to touch for the
king's evil. At the same time he ne-
glected no art of condescension by which
the love of the multitude could be con-
ciliated. He stood godfather to the
children of the peasantry, mingled in
every rustic sport, wrestled, played at
quarterstaff, and won footraces in his
boots against fleet runners in shoes.

In consequence of the resignations which took place at this conjuncture, the way to greatness was left clear to a new set of aspirants. Two statesmen, who subsequently rose to the highest eminence which a British subject can reach, soon began to attract a large share of the public attention. These were Lawrence Hyde and Sidney Godolphin.

Edward the Sixth they set up the Lady | the violence of his old associates, and Jane, without any show of birthright, Sunderland, who never quitted place in opposition, not only to their enemy while he could hold it, remained in the Mary, but also to Elizabeth, the true King's service. hope of England and of the Reformation. Thus the most respectable Protestants, with Elizabeth at their head, were forced to make common cause with the Papists. In the same manner, a hundred and thirty years later, a part of the opposition, by setting up Monmouth as a claimant of the crown, attacked the rights, not only of James, whom they justly regarded as an implacable foe of their faith and their liberties, but also of the Prince and Princess of Orange, who were eminently marked out, both by situation and by personal qualities, as the defenders of all free governments and of all reformed churches.

Lawrence Hyde was the second son of the Chancellor Clarendon, Lawrence and was brother of the first Hyde. Duchess of York. He had excellent parts, which had been improved by parliamentary and diplomatic experience; but the infirmities of his The folly of this course speedily temper detracted much from the effecbecame manifest. At present the tive strength of his abilities. Negopopularity of Monmouth constituted a tiator and courtier as he was, he never great part of the strength of the opposi- learnt the art of governing or of concealtion. The elections went against the ing his emotions. When prosperous, he court: the day fixed for the meeting of was insolent and boastful: when he the Houses drew near; and it was sustained a check, his undisguised necessary that the King should deter- mortification doubled the triumph of mine on some line of conduct. Those his enemies: very slight provocations who advised him discerned the first sufficed to kindle his anger; and when faint signs of a change of public he was angry he said bitter things feeling, and hoped that, by merely which he forgot as soon as he was pacipostponing the conflict, he would be fied, but which others remembered many able to secure the victory. He there- years. His quickness and penetration fore, without even asking the opinion would have made him a consummate man of the Council of Thirty, resolved of business but for his self-sufficiency and to prorogue the new Parliament be- impatience. His writings prove that fore it entered on business. At the he had many of the qualities of an same time the Duke of York, who had orator: but his irritability prevented returned from Brussels, was ordered to him from doing himself justice in retire to Scotland, and was placed at debate: for nothing was easier than to the head of the administration of that goad him into a passion; and, from kingdom. the moment when he went into a passion, he was at the mercy of opponents far inferior to him in capacity.

Temple's plan of government was now avowedly abandoned and very soon forgotten. The Privy Council Unlike most of the leading politiagain became what it had been. cians of that generation, he was a Shaftesbury and those who were con- consistent, dogged, and rancorous party nected with him in politics resigned man, a Cavalier of the old school, a their seats. Temple himself, as was zealous champion of the Crown and of his wont in unquiet times, retired to the Church, and a hater of Republicans his garden and his library. Essex and Nonconformists. He had consequitted the Board of Treasury, and quently a great body of personal cast in his lot with the opposition. adherents. The clergy especially But Halifax, disgusted and alarmed by looked on him as their own man, and

extended to his foibles an indulgence | of which, to say the truth, he stood in some need: for he drank deep; and when he was in a rage, and he very often was in a rage, he swore like a porter.

He now succeeded Essex at the Treasury. It is to be observed that the place of First Lord of the Treasury had not then the importance and dignity which now belong to it. When there was a Lord Treasurer, that great officer was generally prime minister; but, when the white staff was in commission, the chief commissioner hardly ranked so high as a Secretary of State. It was not till the time of Walpole that the First Lord of the Treasury became, under a humbler name, all that the Lord High Treasurer had been.

Godolphin had been bred a page at Sidney Whitehall, and had early Godolphin. acquired all the flexibility and the selfpossession of a veteran courtier. He was laborious, clearheaded, and profoundly versed in the details of finance. Every government, therefore, found him an useful servant; and there was nothing in his opinions or in his character which could prevent him from serving any government. "Sidney Godolphin," said Charles, "is never in the way, and never out of the way." This pointed remark goes far to explain Godolphin's extraordinary success in life.

He acted at different times with both the great political parties: but he never shared in the passions of either. Like most men of cautious tempers and prosperous fortunes, he had a strong disposition to support whatever existed. He disliked revolutions; and, for the same reason for which he disliked revolutions, he disliked counterrevolutions. His deportment was remarkably grave and reserved; but his personal tastes were low and frivolous; and most of the time which he could save from public business was spent in racing, cardplaying, and cockfighting. He now sate below Rochester at the Board of Treasury, and distinguished himself there by assiduity and intelligence.

on the

the Ex

Before the new Parliament was suffered to meet for the despatch of business a whole year elapsed, an eventful year, which has left lasting traces in our manners and language. Never before had political controversy been carried on with so much freedom. Never before had political clubs existed with so elaborate an organisation or so formidable an influence. The one question of the Exclusion occupied the public mind. All the presses and pulpits of the realm took part in the conflict. On one side it was maintained that the constitution and religion of the state could never be secure under a Popish King; on the other, that the right of James to wear the crown in his turn was derived from God, and could not be annulled, even by the consent of all the branches of the legislature. Every county, every town, every family, was in agitation. The civilities and Violence hospitalities of neighbourhood of factions were interrupted. The dearest subject of ties of friendship and of blood clusion were sundered. Even school- Bill. boys were divided into angry parties; and the Duke of York and the Earl of Shaftesbury had zealous adherents on all the forms of Westminster and Eton. The theatres shook with the roar of the contending factions. Pope Joan was brought on the stage by the zealous Protestants. Pensioned poets filled their prologues and epilogues with eulogies on the King and the Duke. The malecontents besieged the throne with petitions, demanding that Parliament might be forthwith convened. The loyalists sent up addresses, expressing the utmost abhorrence of all who presumed to dictate to the sovereign. The citi zens of London assembled by tens of thousands to burn the Pope in effigy. The government posted cavalry at Temple Bar, and placed ordnance round Whitehall. In that year our tongue was enriched with two words, Mob and Sham, remarkable memorials of a season of tumult and imposture.* Opponents of the court were called Birminghams, Petitioners, and Exclusionists. Those who took the King's side were Antibir

* North's Examen, 231. 574.

Names of

Tory.

minghams, Abhorrers, and Tantivies. These appellations soon became obsolete: but at this time were first heard two nicknames which, though Whig and originally given in insult, were soon assumed with pride, which are still in daily use, which have spread as widely as the English race, and which will last as long as the English literature. It is a curious circumstance that one of these nicknames was of Scotch, and the other of Irish, origin. Both in Scotland and in Ireland, misgovernment had called into existence bands of desperate men whose ferocity was heightened by religious enthusiasm. In Scotland, some of the persecuted Covenanters, driven mad by oppression, had lately murdered the Primate, had taken arms against the government, had obtained some advantages against the King's forces, and had not been put down till Monmouth, at the head of some troops from England, had routed them at Bothwell Bridge. These zealots were most numerous among the rustics of the western lowlands, who were vulgarly called Whigs. Thus the appellation of Whig was fastened on the Presbyterian zealots of Scotland, and was transferred to those English politicians who showed a disposition to oppose the court, and to treat Protestant Nonconformists with indulgence. The bogs of Ireland, at the same time, afforded a refuge to Popish outlaws, much resembling those who were afterwards known as Whiteboys. These men were then called Tories. The name of Tory was therefore given to Englishmen who refused to concur in excluding a Roman Catholic prince from the throne.

The persecution of the Roman Catholics went on; but convictions were no longer matters of course. A new brood of false witnesses, among whom a villain named Dangerfield was the most conspicuous, infested the courts: but the stories of these men, though better constructed than that of Oates, found less credit. Juries were no longer so easy of belief as during the panic which had followed the murder of Godfrey; and Judges, who, while the popular frenzy was at the height, had been its most obsequious instruments, now ventured to express some part of what they had from the first thought.

Meeting of

ment; the

passes the

mons.

At length, in October 1680, the Parliament met. The Whigs had so great a majority in the Com- Parlia mons that the Exclusion Bill Exclu went through all its stages there sion Bill without difficulty. The King Com scarcely knew on what members of his own cabinet he could reckon. Hyde had been true to his Tory opinions, and had steadily supported the cause of hereditary monarchy. But Godolphin, anxious for quiet, and believing that quiet could be restored only by concession, wished the bill to pass. Sunderland, ever false, and ever shortsighted, unable to discern the signs of approaching reaction, and anxious to conciliate the party which he believed to be irresistible, determined to vote against the court. The Duchess of Portsmouth implored her royal lover not to rush headlong to destruction. If there were any point on which he had a scruple of conscience or of honour, it was the question of the succession; but during some days it seemed that he The rage of the hostile factions would would submit. He wavered, asked what have been sufficiently violent, if it had sum the Commons would give him if he been left to itself. But it was studi-yielded, and suffered a negotiation to ously exasperated by the common enemy be opened with the leading Whigs. of both. Lewis still continued to bribe But a deep mutual distrust which had and flatter both the court and the opposition. He exhorted Charles to be firm: he exhorted James to raise a civil war in Scotland: he exhorted the Whigs not to flinch, and to rely with confidence on the protection of France.

been many years growing, and which had been carefully nursed by the arts of France, made a treaty impossible. Neither side would place confidence in the other. The whole nation now looked with breathless anxiety to the House Through all this agitation a discern-of Lords. The assemblage of peers was ing eye might have perceived that the large. The King himself was present. public opinion was gradually changing. The debate was long, earnest, and occa

Bill re

jected by

believe you, my Lord." A judicious observer might easily have predicted that the blood then shed would shortly have blood.

sionally furious. Some hands were laid | treason, and suffered death. But the on the pommels of swords, in a manner circumstances of his trial and execution which revived the recollection of the ought to have given an useful warning stormy Parliaments of Henry the Third to the Whig leaders. A large and and Richard the Second. Shaftesbury respectable minority of the House of and Essex were joined by the treacher- Lords pronounced the prisoner not Exclusion Ous Sunderland. But the guilty. The multitude, which a few genius of Halifax bore down all months before had received the dying the Lords. opposition. Deserted by his declarations of Oates's victims with most important colleagues, and opposed mockery and execrations, now loudly to a crowd of able antagonists, he de- expressed a belief that Stafford was a fended the cause of the Duke of York, murdered man. When he with his last in a succession of speeches which, many breath protested his innocence, the cry years later, were remembered as mas-was, "God bless you, my Lord! We terpieces of reasoning, of wit, and of eloquence. It is seldom that oratory changes votes. Yet the attestation of contemporaries leaves no doubt that, on this occasion, votes were changed by the oratory of Halifax. The Bishops, true to their doctrines, supported the principle of hereditary right, and the bill was rejected by a great majority.* The party which preponderated in the House of Commons, bitterly mortified by this defeat, found some consolation in shedding the blood of Roman Catholics. William Howard, Viscount Stafford, one of the unhappy men who had been accused of a share in the plot, was impeached; and on the testimony of Oates and of two other false witnesses, Dugdale and Turberville, was found guilty of high

Execution of Staf ford.

A peer who was present has described the effect of Halifax's oratory in words which I will quote, because, though they have been long in print, they are probably known to few even of the most curious and diligent readers

of history.

"Of powerful eloquence and great parts were the Duke's enemies who did assert the Bill; but a noble Lord appeared against it who, that day, in all the force of speech, in reason, in arguments of what could concern the public or the private interests of men, in honour, in conscience, in estate, did outdo himself and every other man; and in fine his conduct and his parts were both victorious, and by him all the wit and malice of that party was overthrown."

This passage is taken from a memoir of Henry Earl of Peterborough, in a volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by Robert Halstead," fol. 1685. The name of Halstead is fictitious. The real authors were the Earl of Peterborough himself and his chaplain. The

book is extremely rare. Only twenty-four copies were printed, two of which are now in the British Museum. Of these two one belonged to George the Fourth, and the other to Mr. Grenville.

The King determined to try once more the experiment of a dis- General solution. A new Parliament election of was summoned to meet at Ox- 1681. ford, in March 1681. Since the days of the Plantagenets the Houses had constantly sate at Westminster, except when the plague was raging in the capital: but so extraordinary a conjuncture seemed to require extraordinary precautions. If the Parliament were held in its usual place of assembling, the House of Commons might declare itself permanent, and might call for aid on the magistrates and citizens of London. The trainbands might rise to defend Shaftesbury as they had risen forty years before to defend Pym and Hampden. The Guards might be overpowered, the palace forced, the King a prisoner in the hands of his mutinous subjects.

At Oxford there was no such danger. The University was devoted to the crown; and the gentry of the neighbourhood were generally Tories. Here, therefore, the opposition had more reason than the King to apprehend violence.

The elections were sharply contested. The Whigs still composed a majority of the House of Commons: but it was plain that the Tory spirit was fast rising throughout the country. It should seem that the sagacious and versatile Shaftesbury ought to have foreseen the coming change, and to have consented to the compromise which the court offered: but he ap

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