CAMEO V.

Seizure of
Strasburg.

1661.

the 30th of September, 1681, they opened their gates to the Baron de Montelar, and soon after Louis made his entry in great state. The Cathedral was restored to Catholic worship, and the Bishop and Chapter reinstated, while the fortifications were strengthened so as to render it one of the strongest places in Europe. Germany was greatly aggrieved, but for nearly two hundred years was forced to endure the usurpation, a simple exertion of the right of the strongest.

THERE is no period in all our history more humiliating and disap-|
pointing than the reign of Charles II. So many hopes, so much thank-
fulness had greeted his return, the cause of the Church and of the Crown
had been so heroically patient in adversity, and the hand of Providence
had been so visible in the Restoration, that it would have seemed
as if a general renovation of the country must have taken place; and
it is most bitter to find the whole character of the Court and of public
men sunk to a far lower point than perhaps had ever been the case
before.

Something was due to the reaction from Puritanism and from the hypocrisy into which forced strictness drives lower natures, and something to the corrupt example of the French Court, where society was utterly indifferent to the grossest scandals. Moreover the personal pleasantness and insouciance of the King, and his powers of drollery, lessened disgust to vice in those who came in contact with him; and there was probably never a time when there was so little moral indignation against immorality, dishonour, untruth, and treachery. Even those who kept themselves pure, innocent, and devout, condoned evil in others so as to do little or nothing for the purification of the world around them.

On the one hand, there was nothing more dreaded than an overthrow of peace by another civil war, and therefore Nonconformity was to be as much as possible stamped out, being regarded as the handmaid of rebellion; on the other, the ancient dread of Popery was as strong as ever, and the perversion of the heir to the Crown was a terrible blow.

The remnant of the men of the Commonwealth might indeed have

CAMEO VI.

Reign of Charles II.

CAMEO VI.

Exclusion Bill. 1679-80.

been discontented with the supremacy of Cromwell, but they looked back with regret to the moral and religious tone of his surroundings, to the honourable relations of England with foreign countries, and to what they began to believe had been the greater liberty of the subject achieved by Parliament. Hatred of the corruption that reigned around Charles II., dread of the gradual establishment of such a stifling autocracy as they beheld in France, and fear of the popery of the Duke of York, impelled them to actions entirely unworthy of their characters and principles, and actually in the hope of preventing the accession of James, to allow themselves to be subsidised by the enemy of their country and of liberty, when his whole object was to prevent England from assisting Holland and interfering with his ambitious schemes.

Shaftesbury

The Parliament of 1679 was vehemently Protestant. was its guiding spirit, and profiting by a fire in Fetter Lane, which was of course ascribed to the Papists, and by a report that the Duke of York was coming home with a foreign fleet and army to recover his rights, caused a Bill of Exclusion to be brought in, passing over the Duke, apparently with a view to his daughter Mary, but really in the hope of bringing in the Duke of Monmouth. The King, who was determined not to give up his brother's rights, offered, by way of compromise, that the powers of a Roman Catholic sovereign should be limited by restrictions, and also to disband the standing army; but his offers were hardly heeded, and the Bill of Exclusion passed the Commons, two hundred and one voting for it, one hundred and twentyone against it.

Upon this Charles prorogued the Parliament, and then dissolved it, by the advice of Lord Sunderland and Sir William Temple, and to the extreme wrath of Shaftesbury, who declared that he would have the heads of the counsellors of the measure. Just before the prorogation, however the King amongst other bills, in May, 1679, had given his sanction to one of the most important measures ever passed, namely, the act called Habeas Corpus, which compels the production of a prisoner at the first competent Court of Justice after his arrest, thus preventing all arbitrary imprisonments without trial, such as were too common in France. There, not only political prisoners were immured for any length of time, but a private person sometimes obtained a lettre de cachet for the imprisonment of a person obnoxious to him. A son, likely to contract a marriage disapproved by his father, would sometimes thus be sent to the Bastille, and kept there as long as was convenient to the family. Thus had Richelieu imprisoned St. Cyran, and moreover inconvenient inventors; thus did Lauzun spend ten years at Pignerol; and thus was immured for life the mysterious person known as "Le Masque de Fer," because throughout his life as a captive at Pignerol, lasting from youth till death, he wore a barred mask, securely padlocked, and never was seen without it, nor was his name ever known. Conjectures have varied whether he were a twin

brother of Louis XIV., or an obscure Italian intriguer, who vanished CAMEO VI. at about the time of the commencement of his captivity. Shaftesbury

Contemporary examples such as these might well make England rejoice in the security thus gained, and in spite of all his faults, feel grateful to Shaftesbury for carrying through the measure.

The King had a very serious illness in August at Windsor, and James hurried over from Brussels, incognito, with as few attendants as possible, among them however John Churchill. When he reached Windsor, he found his brother much better, and delighted to see him, declaring that nothing should part them again, and sending Monmouth out of England for a time. In a couple of months James was summoned back in order to be sent to Scotland to give assistance in quelling the Covenanters. The King had wished the journey to be made by sea, but the Duchess suffered so much from sea-sickness, that they were forced to travel by land, when they received an ominously cold welcome first from the Earl of Salisbury at Hatfield, and then from the City of York. They were recalled however in the winter.

Charles, having prorogued the new Parliament for a twelvemonth, and called Temple and Sunderland to his councils, began to venture more, especially as Louis gave him half a million of livres to enable him tɔ dispense with supplies!

sition.

Shaftesbury was removed from office, and threw himself into oppoIt was now that the two great party names of Whig and Tory came into use; Whig, apparently taken from Whigamore, originally meaning sour whey, but the Scotch nickname for West countrymen, commonly applied to the Covenanters, and thence given to the supporters of Protestantism at all costs and hazards; and therewith of extension of the power of the people, and restriction of that of the Crown ; and Tory the Irish term for an outlaw. Probably the Cromwellian settlers caused it to be applied to the successors of the Royalists, as supporters of Crown and Church.

Cavalier and Roundhead, Court and Country, had become Tory and Whig, as these in process of time were to change into Conservative and Liberal. Shaftesbury set himself to keep up the excitement of the Popish Plot. Not content with a grand Guy Fawkes procession on the 5th of November, he followed it up on the 17th with a torchlight procession in honour of the accession of Queen Elizabeth.

First marched a bell-man, shouting in sepulchral tones, "Remember Godfrey," then came an effigy of that gentleman's corpse borne by one in the habit of a Jesuit, afterwards figures of nuns, monks, priests, Roman Bishops in capes and mitres, Protestant Bishops in lawn sleeves, six Cardinals in red hats, and the Pope in a litter, attended by his ArchChancellor the devil. At Temple Bar there was a great bonfire, and here the Pope and all his followers were thrown into the flames, with shouts of ecstasy from the populace, who were so delighted that the pageant was repeated on the two next anniversaries !

Also Monmouth made his appearance in London, not having had a

TAMEO VI.

Monmouth.

very warm welcome in Holland, where he was viewed as a dangerous rival. The King ordered him back again, but he declared that as a dutiful son he was bound to remain to protect his father against the plots that were rife, and obstinately refused to depart; while it was alleged that the return of the Duke of York rendered his presence only fair play. Moreover half the country believed that the proofs of Lucy Waters's marriage were in a black box, under the care of Sir Gilbert Gerard, son-in-law to the Bishop of Durham; and it made no difference in the general opinion that nobody could be found who had ever seen or heard of the Black Box, an imitation of which always figured in the Protestant processions.

In fact, the country was greatly and justly alarmed at the non-assembly of Parliament, forgetting that it was the consequence of the injustice of excluding the legitimate heir of the throne, and petitions poured in upon the King to re-assemble Parliament, and secure the Protestant succession, while counter petitions were presented by the Tories, who were for a time called Abhorrers, as hating disloyalty.

The King had dismissed Temple as his Minister, and had around him Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, second son of Clarendon, a strong Tory, but dissipated; also Sidney Godolphin, an able man, of whom Charles said, "he was never in the way and never out of the way," unscrupulous and pleasure-loving, yet with good enough about him to have attached the affections of that saintly Maid of Honour, Margaret Blagg, to whom he was secretly married. John Evelyn has written of her perfect happiness with him for a year, at the end of which she died, leaving an infant son, and he always was constant to her memory.

It must always be borne in mind that Ministers were still little more than private secretaries to the Sovereign, and that he could change them at will, without reference to the nation, the Government depending far more on the monarch than on them; and Charles, for all his pleasureloving indolence, spent many hours daily upon affairs of State.

Morever, his ability was very great, and he was absolutely determined not to endure Shaftesbury's dictation, nor to allow his brother to be excluded from the throne. He had a large amount of the old Cavalier spirit of the country on his side, though the Londoners, who beheld his vicious habits, were against him, and he profited by his popularity, and by the secret supplies which he obtained from France, to avoid being coerced by Parliament, and to turn the tables upon the enemies of his brother, so as to verify the warning he had given Danby and Shaftesbury when they were bent on fostering the Popish plot, that it would prove their destruction. It did, in fact, turn out a cockatrice egg to all promoters. It had been too profitable a speculation for the example of Titus Oates not to be followed, and one Dangerfield, a young man of education, but of infamous character, who had been whipped, branded, pilloried for different offences, concocted an accusation against the Presbyterians. Prisoners in Newgate were left to such frightful destitu. tion, that one of the charitable acts of good ladies was to send them