him over a new French mistress, Louise de Keroualle. Charles soon created her Duchess of Portsmouth, and she fulfilled her duty to her own king by betraying to him all the secrets of her lover.

9. The Cabal. 1670.-After Clarendon's fall Charles had been his own chief minister. The ministers whom he consulted from time to time were known as his Cabal, a word then applied to any body of secret advisers, without carrying with it the opprobrious meaning which it now has. At last the wits discovered that the initials of five ministers who were principally consulted about the time of the Treaty of Dover, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, spelt the word cabal, and writers have since talked about them as forming what has been called the Cabal Ministry, though no such ministry, in the modern sense of the word, ever existed. Not only did they not form a council meeting for purposes of government, but, though they agreed together in favouring toleration, they disagreed on other points. Nor were they usually consulted by Charles in a body. Sometimes he took the advice of persons not of their number; sometimes he took the advice of some of them only, whilst he kept the others entirely in the dark. Thus Clifford, who was a brave and honest Catholic, and Arlington, who would support any measure as long as it was his interest to do so, knew all about the Treaty of Dover, whilst Buckingham, Lauderdale, and Ashley were in complete ignorance of it. Of Buckingham and Arlington enough has been already said (see p. 599). Lauderdale, who had little to do with English affairs, kept himself almost entirely to the task of building up the king's authority in Scotland, where he had already got together an army completely at Charles's disposal. The character of Ashley deserves a longer consideration.

10. Ashley's Policy.-Anthony Ashley Cooper,' who had been created Lord Ashley since the Restoration, had changed sides again and again during the late troubles. He was a born partyleader, and had signalised himself as a youth at Exeter College, Oxford, by leading a successful revolt of the freshmen against the older undergraduates, who, according to custom, tried to skin the chins of the freshmen and to force them to drink a nauseous compound prepared for the occasion. Though in party conflict he was quite unscrupulous and despised no means which would enable him to gain his ends, he had the statesmanlike qualities of common sense and moderation. He had deserted Charles I. when he leant upon the Catholics (see p. 541), had supported Cromwell in his struggle 1 Two Christian names were exceedingly rare in the seventeenth century.

1671-1672

ASHLEY AND BUCKINGHAM

603

with the zealots of the Barebone's Parliament (see p. 566), and had left him when he rejected the constitutional scheme of the first Parliament of the Protectorate (see p. 570). In disgust at the humours of the Rump and the army, he had done everything in his power to hasten the Restoration, and had soon shown hostility to Clarendon and to the persecuting laws of the Cavalier Parliament. In fact, there were two principles to which he was never entirely false, a love of Parliamentary government and a love of toleration, which last was based, not as was that of Oliver, upon sympathy with religious zeal of every kind, but upon dislike of clerical interference. At present he attached himself to Charles, because he knew of Charles's alleged wish to establish toleration, and knew nothing of the conspiracy against Parliament on which Charles had embarked, or of Charles's secret design to favour the Roman Church under cover of a general scheme of toleration.

II. Buckingham's Sham Treaty. 1671. To deceive those who were in ignorance of the secret treaty of the previous year, Buckingham was sent to Paris to negotiate a sham treaty in which all mention of Charles's conversion was omitted, and the whole of the money offered by Louis represented as given solely for the war. Charles particularly enjoyed making a fool of Buckingham, who imagined himself to be exceedingly clever, and he had also the temporary satisfaction of gaining the hearty support of Ashley as well as Buckingham, because Ashley was quite ready to accept Louis' help in a joint enterprise for crushing the commerce of the Dutch, and had no scruples about abandoning the Triple Alliance. Charles was the more ready to begin the war because he had lately succeeded in obtaining from Parliament another 800,000l. on the false plea that he wanted the money to enable him to hold head at sea against the French as well as the Dutch. As soon as the money was obtained he prorogued Parliament.

12. The Stop of the Exchequer. 1672.-Charles prudently delayed the declaration of his conversion to a more convenient season, but the opening of the war was fixed for the spring of 1672. In spite of the large sums which he drew from Louis and from Parliament, his finances were in hopeless confusion, because of the enormous amount of money which he squandered on his numerous mistresses and his illegitimate children. It is said that the yearly income of the Duchess of Portsmouth was 40,000l., and that in one year she received no less than 136,000l. A caricature published in Holland aptly represented him as standing between two women, with empty pockets hanging out. At this time he had in his

exchequer 1,400,000l., lent to him by the goldsmiths who, in those days, acted as bankers. On January 2, 1672, probably at Clifford's suggestion, he refused to repay the principal, and arbitrarily diminished the interest from 12 to 6 per cent. In consequence of this stop of the exchequer, as it was called, many of the goldsmiths became bankrupt, but Clifford became a peer and Lord High Treasurer.

13. The Declaration of Indulgence. 1672.-On March 15, Charles, though still hesitating to proclaim himself a Catholic, issued a Declaration of Indulgence. Claiming a dispensing power,' he

1 In the time of James I. the usual interest was 10 per cent. The Long Parliament paid 8.

2 The right of pardon allows the king to remit the consequences to a particular person of a sentence passed on him. The right of dispensation allows him to remit beforehand the consequences of a breach of a law either to such persons as are named, or to all persons generally who may commit such a breach.

1672

THE DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE

605

suspended all penal laws in matters ecclesiastical, affecting either recusants or non-conformists, thus giving complete religious liberty to Roman Catholics as well as to Dissenters. To this measure, wise and statesmanlike in itself, but marred by the motives of its author and by its defiance of the law and of public opinion, Ashley gave his hearty support. He was rewarded with the Earldom of Shaftesbury. He had shortly before been made Lord Chancellor : being the last who held that post without being a lawyer. At that time the decisions of the Court of Chancery were still given in accordance with the view taken by the Chancellor of what seemed fair and equitable, and did not therefore require any elaborate legal knowledge. Even Shaftesbury's bitterest enemies acknowledged that he was scrupulously just.

14. The Second Dutch War of the Restoration. 1672.-Both Charles and Louis had resolved to take the Dutch by surprise. On March 13, Admiral Holmes, obeying orders, attacked a rich Dutch merchant fleet sailing up the Channel, before war was declared, but only succeeded in taking two vessels. In the war now begun the discipline of the English navy was worse, and that of the Dutch navy better, than it had been in the former war (see p. 591). On June 7 there was a fierce sea-fight in Southwold Bay, in which the Dutch had slightly the advantage. Louis, on his part, crossed the Rhine, and fell upon the Dutch territory. As a land attack had not been expected, the military preparations were incomplete, and the fortresses out of repair. One place after another capitulated to the French. The young William III., Prince of Orange, Charles's nephew, had been named Captain-General, but his army was too small to encourage him to risk a battle. Then De Witt took a heroic resolution. On June 18 he cut the dykes which protected the low-lying land from the sea which stood at a higher level. In rushed the waters, Louis found his progress stopped. De Witt had the blame of the failure to prevent the invasion; William, coming after him, had the credit of the resistance. The Republic needed a strong hand to preserve it, and the office of Stadholder was revived and given to William. Shortly afterwards De Witt, together with his brother, was brutally murdered at the Hague. William, who detested De Witt for having so long deprived him of the power which he considered his due, not only took no steps to hinder the assassination, but actually protected the murderers. Disgraceful as his conduct was, he had a temper as heroic as De Witt's. Buckingham came to urge him to submit to Louis' terms. "Do you not see," said the Englishman, “that the

Republic is lost?" "I know one sure means of never seeing it," was William's firm reply-" to die on the last dyke." His confidence was justified. Louis could not pierce the girdle of waters which surrounded the Dutch towns, and, returning to Paris, brought the campaign to an end.

15. 'Delenda est Carthago.' 1673.-On February 4, 1673. Charles, having once more spent all his money, again met his Parliament. Shaftesbury urged the voting of supply for the war with the Dutch, whom he styled the eternal enemies of England, quoting the saying of Cato-Delenda est Carthago-as though they were to be destroyed as being to England what Carthage had been to Rome. So far as the war was concerned, the House of Commons answered his appeal by offering 1,260,000l., though they kept back the Bill till they had brought him to

terms.

16. Withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence. 1673.— It was at the withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence that the House was aiming. In vain Charles simulated firmness, declaring himself to be resolved to stick to his declaration. The Commons bitterly resented his interference with the law. Forty statutes, it was said, had been violated by the Declaration, and the house passed a resolution that 'penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended but by act of Parliament.' Both sides were anxious to limit the question to ecclesiastical statutes: Charles, because the powers over the Church conferred on the Tudor sovereigns were vague, and therefore more defensible than those exercised by them in political matters; the Commons, because they had precedents of Parliamentary resistance to dispensations granted to recusants, whereas former kings had usually been allowed without contradiction to suspend the law in commercial matters. Charles tried to evade the summons of the Commons, but the Lords having come on March 7 to the same conclusion as the other House, he gave way on the 8th and recalled his Declaration. As no new statute was passed on the subject, the legal question remained just where it was before.

17. The Test Act. 1673.-Charles had entered on a struggle with Parliament and had been defeated. The Royalist Parliament of 1661 was still Royalist so far as the maintenance of the throne was concerned, but it had entered on a course of opposition which had brought it into open collision with the king. From first to last the chief characteristic of this Parliament was its resolution to maintain the supremacy of the Church, and it was now obvious