XXXIII. A TIME OF OPPRESSION. A.D. 1666-1688. Thee, I account still happy, and the chief But, once enslaved, farewell! I could endure You may perhaps suppose, that the people of England at this time were in general thoughtful and serious people, and that the many trials. and calamities they had suffered had made them more attentive to religion than formerly. But this was far from being the case. There never probably had been a period in which the inhabitants of this country were so fond of vain amusements, or so careless about sacred things, as during the reign of Charles II. Now I do not mean to infer, that religion necessarily makes people dull and grave, or that it forbids them to be joyous, and cheerful, and happy. Nor do I mean to say, on the other hand, that all those who are melancholy and austere, must necessarily be religious; for this is very far from being the case. On the contrary, it is only truly religious people who are, or can be, really happy; and if, at any time, they appear to be otherwise, the cause is not to be traced to religion, but to some other circumstance. Had the mirth and gaiety of Charles's time been such as is consistent with the word of God, connected with thankfulness for mercies bestowed, and with a sincere desire to serve Him, and to be active and useful in the world, then we might well rejoice to hear of the gladness of heart which England once more enjoyed after her long years of sorrow and trial. But those who formed the court, and the chief favourites of Charles II, were, most of them, not only gay and mirthful, but irreligious persons, who had not God in all their thoughts, and some of them were even infidels, who disbelieved God and the Bible altogether. And the people, in general, were but too ready to follow the example of the king and the court. They became thoughtless and extravagant; devoted to follies and amusements; and as to religion, which had been at all events outwardly respected in the days of Cromwell, it was now either entirely set aside, or used only for a mockery and a jest. Some good men indeed there still were, who bitterly lamented the sad state of things in their be loved country;-but what I have just described. was the prevailing characteristic of the age. We cannot wonder that the Plague and the Fire had been sent upon such a nation as this; but we may well wonder that those visitations had produced so little effect upon the minds of the people at large. In the early part of his reign, Charles had an excellent minister to assist him in the government, Lord Clarendon,-one who had at heart the real good and benefit of his country. But after a time, he lost the king's favour, and was dismissed; and the ministry who succeeded him were of a very different character. There were five individuals who were usually known by the appellation of the Cabal, because the first letters of their respective names, when united, formed that word; and it was a word well suited to express the designing nature of their government. These were Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale. The whole affairs of the country were entrusted to their management; for the king preferred pleasure and amusement to the business of the state, and gladly gave that up into the hands of his unworthy advisers. You will not be surprised to hear of several plots and conspiracies appearing in the country under such a government as this. One was formed by the Roman Catholics, with the design, as it was supposed, of taking the life of the king, and establishing Popery once more in England; but as the affair was always involved in mystery, and cannot now be very satisfactorily explained, we will not enter into the particulars of the plot. Another conspiracy, of a different kind, and commenced by persons of opposite sentiments, was discovered some time after, and of this I will now give you an account. James, Duke of York, the king's brother, and the next heir to the crown, had declared himself a papist. This gave great alarm to the Protestant party, and to all those in the country who wished well to the cause of true religion. And besides this, there were other causes of discontent. Charles, like his father, was fond of power; and there seemed to be a danger of the government becoming, under him and his ministers, as arbitrary and as unconstitutional as it had been in the times preceding the civil wars. The dread of this led to a conspiracy being formed by several persons who all professed themselves to be lovers of liberty, but who differed one from another a good deal in their ideas of what is meant by liberty, and what would be the best means of promoting it. The chief of these persons were the Duke of Monmouth, a near connection of the king, Lord Russell, and Algernon Sidney. Monmouth's great desire was to obtain the crown for himself. Sidney was a zealous republican. He was a man of warm and generous temperament, but of mistaken views and feelings. He would gladly have had no king at all; but universal equality, which was what he erroneously considered to be liberty and freedom. Russell only wished to remedy the evil of the present government, in order that the country might be ruled constitutionally, and according to law. Besides these great men, there were several others, less distinguished for rank or influence, who formed another conspiracy independently, and of a more violent nature. They were accustomed to hold their meetings at a farm, not many miles from London, called the Rye House, and from this circumstance, the conspiracy is usually called in history the Rye House Plot. Their place for assembling was on the road to Newmarket, where the king went every year to amuse himself at the races. On one of these occasions, the conspirators planned to stop his carriage as he returned, by oversetting a cart, and then to take the opportunity of firing at him from behind a hedge. Happily for Charles, the house in which he resided during his stay at Newmarket, accidentally took fire; and this circumstance obliged him to return to London some days |