as if the people of England were slaves both by act of parliament and by the Word of God. Their pastoral charges and their sermons rolled in louder thunder than that of Laud and Mainwaring upon the Divine right of kings, the duty of passive obedience, and the eternal damnation provided for those who resisted the Lord's anointed and the ministers of the only true church upon earth. Meanwhile the debauchery of the court continued on the increase, and Oxford became the scene of scandalous intrigues, drinking, gaming, duelling, and ruffianly quarrels. "The lady," though allowed to dictate to chancellors and secretaries of state, and to dispose of benefices and promotion in this loyal church, was obliged to share the king's affections with various other women; the Duke of York in these respects closely copied his elder brother; and at Oxford the duchess (Clarendon's daughter) began to retaliate in kind.'

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GENERAL VIEW OF LONDON BEFORE THE GREAT FIRE, taken from the Tower of St. Mary Overies, Southwark.

Carefully copied from Hollar's

engraving,

1649.

The great plague which A.D. 1666. had converted a large part of London into a wilderness disappeared altogether in the month of February, after a tremendous hurricane. The court ventured as far as Hampton Court, and at last, when all danger was over, the king returned to Whitehall. During his absence the seamen of the royal navy, upon whose bravery and conduct the honour and safety of the nation depended, had been left to lie starving and moaning in the streets for lack of money to pay their arrears. And now the war threatened to be more formidable; for the French king, by a sudden turn in his politics, made common cause with the Dutch. The English fleet, commanded by Monk and Prince Rupert, had been divided at sea. Early in the morning of the 1st of June Monk unexpectedly discovered De Ruyter and his fleet lying at anchor half-channel over. Seeing the great inferiority of their force, an English council of war urged that it would be rash to begin a fight; but his Grace of Albemarle, who had taken to drinking to excess, and who was probably then drunk, resolved to wait neither for better weather nor for Prince Rupert, and he gave the signal for attack. He had only sixty ships to oppose to eighty-four, and most of these ships were badly officered. The old officers who had served under the great Blake had been nearly all dismissed on account of their republicanism or their nonconformity; and the Duke of York had filled up their places with a set of lordlings, courtiers, and pages. In this day's "mad fight" the English suffered severely; a ship

1 Burnet; Pepys.

two other poor Frenchmen, and of having set fire to the first house. His confession plainly indicated the state of his intellect, and the chiefjustice told the king that all his discourse was so disjointed that he could not believe him guilty. No one appeared to prosecute or accuse Hubert; yet the jury found him guilty, and the king and the judges allowed the poor insane creature to be hanged.

and a frigate were taken, and all their ships that | accused himself of having been in a plot with came really into action were ruined in their masts and rigging by the chain-shot-a new invention attributed to the great De Witt. In the course of the night the Dutch received some reinforcements, yet, on the morrow Monk renewed the combat, and all that day, however ill commanded, the English mariners vindicated their old reputation. Night again separated the combatants; and again the dawn of day-the third day of carnage-saw the fight renewed. But now Monk fought retreating, and, after taking out the men, he burned several of his most disabled ships. Towards evening he saw the whole squadron under Prince Rupert making towards him. Nearly at the same moment the Prince Royal-esteemed the best man-of-war in the world-struck on a sandbank and was taken by the Dutch. Next day the battle was renewed, both sides fighting more desperately than ever, until a thick fog interrupted the slaughter. When the fog dispersed De Ruyter was seen in retreat, but Monk and Prince Rupert were in no condition to follow him. By the month of July the Dutch admiral was again at sea with a still stronger fleet; but now Monk and Rupert gave him a decided defeat, and drove him back in rage and despair to the Texel. They then detached Sir Robert Holmes with a considerable force, which scoured the Dutch coast, burning two ships of war, 150 unprotected merchantmen and shipping craft, and one or two defenceless villages.

But a mightier conflagration was at hand. The summer had been the hottest and driest that had been known for many years; London, being then for the most part built of timber filled up with plaster, was as dry and combustible as fire-wood; and in the middle of the night between the 2d and 3d of September a fire broke out, "that raged for three days, as if it had a commission to devour everything that was in its way." It began at a baker's house near London bridge, on the spot where the obelisk called the Monument now stands, and it was not stopped until it had reduced nearly the whole of the city from the Tower to Temple Bar to a sightless heap of cinders and ashes. In the midst of this terrific conflagration a report was raised and spread that it was the effect of a conspiracy of the French and Dutch with the Papists. A stupified and desperate mob ran up and down seizing all the foreigners and English Catholics they could find; but, to the lasting honour of the London populace, desperate and bewildered as they were, they shed no blood, leaving such iniquities to be perpetrated by the fabricators of Popish plots, the parliament and the judges. A mad Frenchman, of the name of Hubert, who had been for many years looked upon as insane,

On the 21st of September, while the citizens were yet bivouacking on the ruins of London, the parliament re-assembled after nearly a year's recess, and voted £1,800,000 for prosecuting the ill-managed war. A regular opposition to the court was, however, now gaining some ground in both houses. Although it included some few honest and patriotic men, it was chiefly directed by the passions and interests of a selfish crew, that were not a whit more honest or virtuous than the court, and it was headed by the profligate Duke of Buckingham, who had " a mortal quarrel with the lady." These men courted the Presbyterians and Nonconformists, got up a fresh cry against Popery, and brought about the appointing a committee to examine and report on the alarming growth of that proscribed religion. Having thus disturbed the court in its faith, they proceeded to touch it in the purse; and they introduced a bill for appointing commissioners to examine the accounts of those who had received and issued the money for this war. Mistresses and ministers, and all men holding public employments, were thrown into consternation: they declared that this would be touching the royal prerogative in its most vital parts; and Clarendon opposed the proceedings with all his might, exhorting the king to prevent these "excesses in parliament"-not " suffer them to extend their jurisdiction to cases they had nothing to do with❞—and to "restrain them within their proper bounds and limits." In the lords an attempt was made to defeat the bill. The commons hotly resented this interference with their privileges, and threatened to impeach the chancellor and the Lady Castlemaine. Hereupon Charles, in spite of Clarendon's advice "to be firm in the resolution he had taken," ordered the lords to submit, and so the bill was allowed to pass. But the party who had won this victory knew not how to use it, or could not agree among themselves as to the division of the personal profit to be derived from it; and, in the end, it was turned into a mockery by the king's being allowed to appoint a commission of his own for auditing the accounts. Charles told the commons that they had dealt unkindly with him in manifesting a greater distrust than he merited, and parliament was prorogued with

to

evident ill-humour on both sides. The Duke of | plunder and prize-money, was well disposed to Buckingham was for a time deprived of all his places.

mouths of the Medway and the Thames, destroyed the fortifications at Sheerness, cut away the paltry defences of bombs and chains drawn across the rivers, and got to Chatham on the one side, and nearly to Gravesend on the other. In the Medway the Royal Charles, one of the best of our ships, was taken; the Royal James, the Oak, and London, were burned. Upnor Castle had been left without gunpowder; and there was scarcely any gunpowder or shot in any of the ships. There were many desperate English sail

peace. Negotiations between the three powers of France, Holland, and England were opened During the session an insurrection, provoked at Breda. But hostilities were not suspended; by the tyranny of Lauderdale and Archbishop and De Witt, being well aware of the condition Sharp, broke out in the west of Scotland, the of the English fleet, resolved to avenge his counstronghold of the Covenanters. The people, after try for the injury it had sustained at the hands being ridden over by the dragoons of Turner, of Sir Robert Holmes. To save the money were excited by Sempil, Maxwell, Welsh, Guth- which parliament had voted, and to apply it rie, and other ministers. On the 13th of Novem- to his own pleasures, Charles had neglected to ber, they rose in a mass, seized Turner, and ap- pay the seamen and to fit out the fleet. The pointed a solemn fast-day to be held at Lanark. streets of London were again full of starving Lauderdale was at court, and so Sharp managed sailors; and only a few second and third rate this bishops' war with two troops of horse and a ships were in commission. In the beginning of regiment of foot-guards. Dalziel, a military man June, De Ruyter dashed into the Downs with of some reputation, commanded under the arch-eighty sail and many fire-ships, blocked up the bishop in the field. The insurgents, who now began to be called Whigamores or Whigs, had few gentlemen with them, for all the suspected had been "clapped up" long before. On the 28th of November, they were attacked by Dalziel on the Pentland Hills, and after a brave resistance, forty were killed on the spot, and 130 were taken prisoners. Even in their first fury they had been merciful—they had respected the life of their prisoner the lawless Turner; but no mercy was shown to them in return; ten were hanged upon one gibbet at Edinburgh, and thirty-ors serving on board the Dutch ships; and they five more were sent back to the west, and there hanged up before their own doors. Archbishop Sharp made a keen search for all who had been in any way concerned in the rising; and, to extort confession, he employed a new instrument of torture, for ever infamous under the name of "the boots." Though for the most part poor and obscure men, the victims bore their sufferings with heroic constancy, preferring death to the betraying of their friends. M'Kail, a young preacher, was atrociously tortured and then executed under an unproved suspicion. Dalziel, a wild drunkard, hanged a man because he would not tell where his father was concealed, and killed many others without any form of trial. When he heard of any that would not go to church, he quartered soldiers upon them to eat them up.

Louis XIV., who had now other projects in hand, wished to creep out of the war; and Charles, being sorely disappointed in his expectations of

1 Pepys, Diary.

shouted to one another, and to the people on shore, that they were now fighting for dollars instead of fighting for navy-tickets that were never paid. If De Ruyter had made for London at once, he might have burned all the shipping in the Thames; but, while he was in the Medway, Prince Rupert threw up some strong batteries at Woolwich, and sank a number of vessels to block up the passage. After doing a vast deal of mischief, and inflicting still more disgrace, the Dutch, towards the end of June, sailed from the Downs, scoured our coast, and then returned in triumph to the Texel. In the month of August a treaty of peace was concluded at Breda.

Charles had no great anxiety to redeem the honour of his arms; but he had entered into a secret treaty with Louis XIV. for the conquest of Spanish Flanders, which was to be followed, at some not distant time, by the subversion of

2

followed his example and his principles of government at home 2 To this they were tempted by the rapid decline of Spain. and abroad. At home, there was much form, but no good order, Lord Bolingbroke, in his Letters on the Study of History, gives a no economy, nor wisdom of policy in the state. The church striking summary of that decline down to 1660. "As to Spain, continued to devour the state; and that monster, the Inquisition, the Spanish branch (of the house of Austria) was fallen as low to dispeople the country, even more than perpetual war, and twelve years afterwards, that is, in the year 1660. Philip II. all the numerous colonies that Spain had sent to the West left his successors a ruined monarchy. He left them something Indies: for your lordship will find that Philip III. drove more worse; he left them his example and principles of government, than 900,000 Moriscoes out of his dominions by one edict, with founded in ambition, in pride, in ignorance, in bigotry, and all such circumstances of inhumanity in the execution of it as the pedantry of state. I have read somewhere or other, that Spaniards alone could exercise, and that tribunal who had prothe war of the Low Countries alone cost him, by his own con- voked this unhappy race to revolt, could alone approve. Abroad, fession, five hundred and sixty-four millions, a prodigious sum, the conduct of these princes was directed by the same wild in what specie soever he reckoned. Philip III. and Philip IV. | spirit of ambition; rash in undertaking though slow to execute,

"with great gaiety." After four days Charles sent Secretary Morrice with a warrant, under the sign manual, to require and receive the great seal. Clarendon, unable to help himself, delivered the symbol, which was presently transferred to Bridgman, who had proved his loyalty in the trials of the regicides. Clarendon believed that the storm was now blown over; but he had offended too many parties, besides the king and "the lady," to be allowed to escape so easily.

On the 10th of October the session was opened; and the commons soon voted an address of thanks to the king for all his acts of grace, and particu

the Dutch republic, and a partition of territory | together at him out of the lady's open window, between France and England. While smarting under disgrace and loss, the people of London had clamoured for a new parliament. The king, who had raised an army of 10,000 men without their consent, called his old parliament together on the 25th of July; but without allowing them to proceed to any business, he dismissed them till the month of October. In the interval Clarendon was ruined by a cabal whose proceedings were so illegal, and whose motives were so base, as almost to conceal the real transgressions of that despotic minister. The Duke of Buckingham, who had made his peace with Lady Castlemaine, and recovered the king's favour, united with Shaftesbury, Clifford, Lauderdale, Monk, Sir William Coven-larly for his removal of Clarendon. The lords try, and others, in a concentrated attack upon the chancellor. The king himself had no affection for his old servant, and Lady Castlemaine, the other mistresses, and the queen, were all his declared enemies. Even his own son-in-law, the Duke of York, was inimical to his interests, or lukewarm in regard to them; and he undertook the task of intimating to him that the king thought it best and safest for himself that he should resign the great seal. Clarendon declared that there was a conspiracy against him, and that he would speak with the king before he returned any answer. The king promised to go to him at his own house on the morrow, as the chancellor was sick of the gout; but several days passed, and he went not. The Duchess of York pleaded for her father, but Charles told her that what he intended was for the chancellor's good, and the only way to preserve him from the vengeance of parliament. Monk went with a delusive message from the king to the chancellor. Clarendon then went to Whitehall, and made a desperate struggle for the preservation of his posts. Charles told him that he was assured that the parliament would impeach him as soon as they came together, and that if he did not resign and withdraw himself he would perish on the block like Strafford. The chancellor pleaded his long and faithful services to his father and himself; the king replied that he was not strong enough to protect him, that the power of parliament was great, and that he was in no condition to resist it. As the chancellor returned from Whitehall, "the lady," the Lord Arlington, and Mr. May, looked

and obstinate in pursuing though unable to succeed, they opened a new sluice to let out the little life and vigour that remained in their monarchy. Philip II. is said to have been piqued against his uncle Ferdinand, for refusing to yield the empire to him on the abdication of Charles V. Certain it is that as much as he loved to disturb the peace of mankind, and to meddle in every quarrel that had the appearance of supporting the Roman, and oppressing every other church, he meddled little in the affairs of Germany. . . . What completed their ruin was, they knew not how to lose, nor when to yield. They acknowledged the independency of the Dutch commonwealth, and became the

joined with the commons, and Charles assured them both that he had removed the late chancellor from his service and from his counsels for ever. If this royal declaration were intended to cover Clarendon from further attack, it was a failure. The commons proceeded to impeach him of treason. They inserted, without evidence, some charges that were false, and some that had nothing treasonable in them; but Clarendon, however faithful to the king, had, in many instances, been unfaithful to his country, and the whole tenor and spirit of his political life were adverse to liberty. He had long maintained a secret correspondence with the French court; and although the fact was not so well known then as now, he had been guilty of the capital misdemeanour of clandestinely soliciting pecuniary aid for his own sovereign from the King of France. Clarendon, indeed, first taught a lavish prince to seek the wages of dependence from a foreign power, and to elude the control of parliament by the help of French money.2 It should seem, too, that Clarendon's pride and austerity had alienated nearly all his friends; and that his grasping, money-getting propensity was sufficiently notorious among all classes of men. Evelyn, who was personally a friend to Clarendon, assured Pepys that my lord-chancellor was very open to corruption, or that he never did nor ever would do anything but for money.3 And, as Clarendon was ostentatious, he built such a house, and collected such pictures and furniture, as excited the surprise of all who knew the poverty in which he had returned to his own

allies of their ancient subjects, at the treaty of Munster; but they would not forego their usurped claim on Portugal, and they persisted in carrying on singly the war against France. Thus they were reduced to such a lowness of power as can hardly be paralleled in any other case; and Philip IV. was obliged at last to conclude a peace on terms repugnant to his inclination, to that of his people, to the interest of Spain, and to that of ail Europe, in the Pyrenean treaty."

country only a few years before. It suited not his prosecutors to charge him home with his constant approbation of despotic principles, his fierce intolerance, and his persecution of the Non-ment. Only Hollis and a few others of no name conformists.