for here

in the habit of resisting importunate | the first day of her existence, she had solicitation. His temper was not that been attached to monarchy. Zeal of the of a persecutor. He disliked the Puri- But, during the quarter of a Church tans indeed; but in him dislike was a century which followed the ditary molanguid feeling, very little resembling Restoration, her zeal for royal narchy. the energetic hatred which had burned authority and hereditary right passed in the heart of Laud. He was, more- all bounds. She had suffered with the over, partial to the Roman Catholic House of Stuart. She had been restored religion: and he knew that it would be with that House. She was connected impossible to grant liberty of worship to with it by common interests, friendthe professors of that religion without ships, and enmities. It seemed imextending the same indulgence to Pro- possible that a day could ever come testant dissenters. He therefore made a when the ties which bound her to the feeble attempt to restrain the intolerant children of her august martyr would be zeal of the House of Commons: but sundered, and when the loyalty in which that House was under the influence of she gloried would cease to be a pleasing far deeper convictions and far stronger and profitable duty. She accordingly passions than his own. After a faint magnified in fulsome phrase that prestruggle he yielded, and passed, with rogative which was constantly employed the show of alacrity, a series of odious to defend and to aggrandise her, and acts against the separatists. It was reprobated, much at her ease, the demade a crime to attend a dissenting pravity of those whom oppression, from place of worship. A single justice of which she was exempt, had goaded to the peace might convict without a jury, rebellion. Her favourite theme was and might, for the third offence, pass the doctrine of nonresistance. That sentence for transportation beyond sea doctrine she taught without any qualifor seven years. With refined cruelty fication, and followed out to all its it was provided that the offender should extreme consequences. Her disciples not be transported to New England, were never weary of repeating that in where he was likely to find sympathis- no conceivable case, not even if Enging friends. If he returned to his own land were cursed with a King resemcountry before the expiration of his bling Busiris or Phalaris, with a King term of exile, he was liable to capital who, in defiance of law, and without punishment. A new and most unrea- the pretence of justice, should daily sonable test was imposed on divines doom hundreds of innocent victims to who had been deprived of their bene- torture and death, would all the Estates fices for nonconformity; and all who of the realm united be justified in with. refused to take that test were prohibited standing his tyranny by physical force. from coming within five miles of any Happily the principles of human nature town which was governed by a corpo- afford abundant security that such ration, of any town which was repre- theories will never be more than theosented in Parliament, or of any town ries. The day of trial came; and the where they had themselves resided as very men who had most loudly and ministers. The magistrates, by whom most sincerely professed this extravathese rigorous statutes were to be en- gant loyalty were, in every county of forced, were in general men inflamed England, arrayed in arms against the by party spirit and by the remembrance throne. of wrongs suffered in the time of the Commonwealth. The gaols were therefore soon crowded with dissenters; and, among the sufferers, were some of whose genius and virtue any Christian society might well be proud.

The Church of England was not ungrateful for the protection which she received from the government. From

Property all over the kingdom was now again changing hands. The na tional sales, not having been confirmed by Act of Parliament, were regarded by the tribunals as nullities. The bishops, the deans, the chapters, the Royalist nobility and gentry, reentered on their confiscated estates, and ejected even purchasers who had given fair

Change
in the
morals of

prices. The losses which the Cavaliers virtue. The praise of politeness and had sustained during the ascendency of vivacity could now scarcely be obtained their opponents were thus in part re- except by some violation of decorum. paired; but in part only. All actions Talents great and various assisted to for mesne profits were effectually barred spread the contagion. Ethical philoby the general amnesty; and the numer-sophy had recently taken a form well ous Royalists, who, in order to dis- suited to please a generation equally charge fines imposed by the Long Par-devoted to monarchy and to vice. liament, or in order to purchase the Thomas Hobbes had, in language more favour of powerful Roundheads, had precise and luminous than has ever sold lands for much less than the real been employed by any other metaphyvalue, were not relieved from the legal sical writer, maintained that the will consequences of their own acts. of the prince was the standard of right While these changes were in pro- and wrong, and that every subject gress, a change still more ought to be ready to profess Popery, important took place in the Mahometanism, or Paganism, at the the com- morals and manners of the royal command. Thousands who were munity. community. Those passions incompetent to appreciate what was and tastes which, under the rule of the really valuable in his speculations, Puritans, had been sternly repressed, eagerly welcomed a theory which, while and, if gratified at all, had been grati- it exalted the kingly office, relaxed the fied by stealth, broke forth with un- obligations of morality, and degraded governable violence as soon as the religion into a mere affair of state. check was withdrawn. Men flew to Hobbism soon became an almost essenfrivolous amusements and to criminal tial part of the character of the fine pleasures with the greediness which gentleman. All the lighter kinds of long and enforced abstinence naturally literature were deeply tainted by the preproduces. Little restraint was imposed railing licentiousness. Poetry stooped by public opinion. For the nation, to be the pandar of every low desire. nauseated with cant, suspicious of all Ridicule, instead of putting guilt and pretensions to sanctity, and still smart-error to the blush, turned her formiding from the recent tyranny of rulers, austere in life and powerful in prayer, looked for a time with complacency on the softer and gayer vices. Still less restraint was imposed by the government. Indeed there was no excess which was not encouraged by the ostentatious profligacy of the King and of his favourite courtiers. A few counsellors of Charles the First, who were now no longer young, retained the decorous gravity which had been thirty years before in fashion at Whitehall. Such were Clarendon himself, and his friends, Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James Butler, Duke of Ormond, who, having through many vicissitudes struggled gallantly for the royal cause in Ireland, now governed that kingdom as Lord Lieutenant. But neither the memory of the services of these men, nor their great power in the state, could protect them from the sarcasms which modish vice loves to dart at obsolete

able shafts against innocence and truth. The restored Church contended indeed against the prevailing immorality, but contended feebly, and with half a heart. It was necessary to the decorum of her character that she should admonish her erring children: but her admonitions were given in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Her attention was elsewhere engaged. Her whole soul was in the work of crushing the Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Cæsar the things which were Cæsar's. She had been pillaged and oppressed by the party which preached an austere morality. She had been restored to opulence and honour by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they were yet ready to fight knee deep in blood for her cathedrals and palaces, for every line of her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If the debauched Cavalier haunted brothels and gambling

Profligacy

houses, he at least avoided conventicles. | scattered. They had seen great masses If he never spoke without uttering of property violently transferred from ribaldry and blasphemy, he made some Cavaliers to Roundheads, and from amends by his eagerness to send Bax-Roundheads back to Cavaliers. During ter and Howe to gaol for preaching these events no man could be a stirring and praying. Thus the clergy, for a and thriving politician who was not time, made war on schism with so much prepared to change with every change vigour that they had little leisure to of fortune. It was only in retirement make war on vice. The ribaldry of that any person could long keep the Etherege and Wycherley was, in the character either of a steady Royalist or presence and under the special sanc- of a steady Republican. One who, in tion of the head of the Church, publicly such an age, is determined to attain recited by female lips in female ears, civil greatness must renounce all thought while the author of the Pilgrim's Pro- of consistency. Instead of affecting gress languished in a dungeon for the immutability in the midst of endless crime of proclaiming the gospel to the mutation, he must be always on the poor. It is an unquestionable and a watch for the indications of a coming most instructive fact that the years reaction. He must seize the exact during which the political power of the moment for deserting a falling cause. Anglican hierarchy was in the zenith Having gone all lengths with a faction were precisely the years during which while it was uppermost, he must sudnational virtue was at the lowest denly extricate himself from it when point. its difficulties begin, must assail it, must persecute it, must enter on a new career of power and prosperity in company with new associates. His situation naturally developes in him to the highest degree a peculiar class of abilities and a peculiar class of vices. He becomes quick of observation and fertile of resource. He catches without effort the tone of any sect or party with which he chances to mingle. He discerns the signs of the times with a sagacity which to the multitude appears miraculous, with a sagacity resembling that with which a veteran police officer pursues the faintest indications of crime, or with which a Mohawk warrior follows a track through the woods. But we shall seldom find, in a statesman so trained, integrity, constancy, any of the virtues of the noble family of Truth. He has no faith in any doctrine, no zeal for any cause. has seen so many old institutions swept away, that he has no reverence for prescription. He has seen so many new institutions, from which much had been expected, produce mere disappointment, that he has no hope of improvement. He sneers alike at those who are anxious to preserve and at those who are eager to reform. There is nothing. in the state which he could not, without a scruple or a blush, join

Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the preof politi vailing immorality; but those cians. persons who made politics their business were perhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt society. For they were exposed, not only to the same noxious influences which affected the nation generally, but also to a taint of a peculiar and of a most malignant kind. Their character had been formed amidst frequent and violent revolutions and counterrevolutions. In the course of a few years they had seen the ecclesiastical and civil polity of their country repeatedly changed. They had seen an Episcopal Church persecuting Puritans, a Puritan Church persecuting Episcopalians, and an Episcopal Church persecuting Puritans again. They had seen hereditary monarchy abolished and restored. They had seen the Long Parliament thrice supreme in the state, and thrice dissolved amidst the curses and laughter of millions. They had seen a new dynasty rapidly rising to the height of power and glory, and then on a sudden hurled down from the chair of state without a struggle. They had seen a new representative system devised, tried, and abandoned. They had seen a new House of Lords created and

He

in defending or in destroying. Fidelity out any danger of his father's fate. to opinions and to friends seems to him Charles the First had tried to force his mere dulness and wrongheadedness. own religion by his regal power on Politics he regards, not as a science of the Scots at a moment when both his which the object is the happiness of religion and his regal power were mankind, but as an exciting game of unpopular in England; and he had not mixed chance and skill, at which a only failed, but had raised troubles dexterous and lucky player may win an which had ultimately cost him his estate, a coronet, perhaps a crown, and crown and his head. Times had now at which one rash move may lead to changed: England was zealous for the loss of fortune and of life. Am- monarchy and prelacy; and therefore bition, which, in good times, and in the scheme which had formerly been good minds, is half a virtue, now, dis- in the highest degree imprudent might joined from every elevated and philan- be resumed with little risk to the thropic sentiment, becomes a selfish throne. The government resolved to cupidity scarcely less ignoble than set up a prelatical church in Scotland. avarice. Among those politicians who, The design was disapproved by every from the Restoration to the accession Scotchman whose judgment was entiof the House of Hanover, were at the tled to respect. Some Scottish stateshead of the great parties in the state, men who were zealous for the King's very few can be named whose reputa- prerogative had been bred Presbytion is not stained by what, in our age, terians. Though little troubled with would be called gross perfidy and scruples, they retained a preference for corruption. It is scarcely an exaggera- the religion of their childhood; and tion to say that the most unprincipled they well knew how strong a hold that public men who have taken part in religion had on the hearts of their affairs within our memory would, if countrymen. They remonstrated strongtried by the standard which was in ly: but, when they found that they fashion during the latter part of the remonstrated in vain, they had not seventeenth century, deserve to be re- virtue enough to persist in an opposigarded as scrupulous and disinterested. tion which would have given offence to While these political, religious, and their master; and several of them moral changes were taking stooped to the wickedness and baseness Scotland. place in England, the royal of persecuting what in their consciences authority had been without difficulty they believed to be the purest form of reestablished in every other part of the Christianity. The Scottish Parliament British islands. In Scotland the res- was so constituted that it had scarcely toration of the Stuarts had been hailed ever offered any serious opposition even with delight; for it was regarded as to Kings much weaker than Charles the restoration of national indepen- then was. Episcopacy, therefore, was dence. And true it was that the yoke established by law. As to the form of which Cromwell had imposed was, worship, a large discretion was left to in appearance, taken away, that the the clergy. Scottish Estates again met in their old hall at Edinburgh, and that the Senators of the College of Justice again administered the Scottish law according to the old forms. Yet was the independence of the little kingdom necessarily rather nominal than real: for, as long as the King had England on his side, he had nothing to apprehend from disaffection in his other dominions. He was now in such a situation that he could renew the attempt which had proved destructive to his father with

State of

In some churches the English Liturgy was used. In others, the ministers selected from that Liturgy such prayers and thanksgivings as were likely to be least offensive to the people. But in general the doxology was sung at the close of public worship; and the Apostles' Creed was recited when baptism was administered. By the great body of the Scottish nation the new Church was detested both as superstitious and as foreign; as tainted with the corruptions of Rome, and as a mark of the predominance of England.

could not but dread the audacity of their despair.

State of

There was, however, no general insurrection. The country was not what it had been twenty-two years before. Such was, during the reign of Charles Disastrous war and alien domination the Second, the state of Scothad tamed the spirit of the people. land. Ireland was not less dis- Ireland. The aristocracy, which was held in tracted. In that island existed feuds, great honour by the middle class and compared with which the hottest aniby the populace, had put itself at the mosities of English politicians were head of the movement against Charles lukewarm. The enmity between the the First, but proved obsequious to Irish Cavaliers and the Irish RoundCharles the Second. From the English heads was almost forgotten in the fiercer Puritans no aid was now to be expected. enmity which raged between the EngThey were a feeble party, proscribed lish and the Celtic races. The interval both by law and by public opinion. between the Episcopalian and the The bulk of the Scottish nation, Presbyterian seemed to vanish, when therefore, sullenly submitted, and, with compared with the interval which semany misgivings of conscience, at-parated both from the Papist. During tended the ministrations of the Epis- the late civil troubles the greater part copal clergy, or of Presbyterian divines of the Irish soil had been transferred who had consented to accept from the from the vanquished nation to the government a half toleration, known victors. To the favour of the Crown by the name of the Indulgence. But few either of the old or of the new there were, particularly in the western occupants had any pretensions. The lowlands, many fierce and resolute men, despoilers and the despoiled had, for who held that the obligation to observe the most part, been rebels alike. The the Covenant was paramount to the government was soon perplexed and obligation to obey the magistrate. wearied by the conflicting claims and These people, in defiance of the law, mutual accusations of the two incensed persisted in meeting to worship God factions. Those colonists among whom after their own fashion. The Indul- Cromwell had portioned out the congence they regarded, not as a partial quered territory, and whose descendreparation of the wrongs inflicted by ants are still called Cromwellians, the State on the Church, but as a new asserted that the aboriginal inhabitants wrong, the more odious because it was were deadly enemies of the English disguised under the appearance of a nation under every dynasty, and of the benefit. Persecution, they said, could Protestant religion in every form. They only kill the body; but the black described and exaggerated the atrociIndulgence was deadly to the soul. ties which had disgraced the insurrecDriven from the towns, they assembled tion of Ulster: they urged the King to on heaths and mountains. Attacked follow up with resolution the policy of by the civil power, they without scruple the Protector; and they were not repelled force by force. At every con- ashamed to hint that there would never venticle they mustered in arms. They be peace in Ireland till the old Irish repeatedly broke out into open rebel-race should be extirpated. The Roman lion. They were easily defeated, and Catholics extenuated their offence as mercilessly punished: but neither defeat nor punishment could subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandoned at another time to the mercy of troops of marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the boldest and mightiest oppressor

they best might, and expatiated in piteous language on the severity of their punishment, which, in truth, had not been lenient. They implored Charles not to confound the innocent with the guilty, and reminded him that many of the guilty had atoned for their fault by returning to their allegiance, and by defending his rights against the murderers of his father. The court, sick of the importunities of two parties,