CHAP. XII.

Spanish dominions generally, and to Flanders, Burgundy, and Charolois in particular. On the pretence that this contract had never been ratified, Louis determined to seize Flanders, and he declared war against England (January 16th, 1666). Denmark joined Holland at the same time; and Charles, on his side, concluded a treaty of neutrality with Sweden.

On the 1st of June, the Dutch fleet, of more than eighty menof-war, anchored off the North Foreland, to the extreme surprise of Monk, who, in the belief that the enemy would not be ready for sea for some weeks, had despatched Prince Rupert with twenty vessels to cruise along the Channel in search of the French fleet. Monk had only fifty-four vessels left; but he determined Foreland. to risk a battle, even under such circumstances, and sent word for Rupert to return. The King and the Duke of York, we are told, came down the Thames to Greenwich with their court, to listen to the roar of the conflict. The battle raged four days;

Action off the North

Rupert did not come up till the last day, for what reason is unknown, and the result was, that the English fleet was almost annihilated. De Witt cut down the English masts and rigging by his chain shot, of which he was the reputed inventor; and the noblest ship in the royal navy, the Prince Royal, ran on the Galloper Sand, and was lost. Monk speedily retaliated this defeat upon the Dutch. On the 25th of July he defeated De Ruyter, and chased him into port; he burnt the Dutch shipping all along the coasts, and reduced the town of Brandaris to ashes. De Witt, maddened with rage at the sight of this conflagration, swore by a solemn oath never to sheath the sword till he had obtained his revenge. He kept his oath.

20. The Great Fire. On Sunday the 2nd of September, about two in the morning, the Great Fire of London broke out. It Its origin. began in a bake-house in Pudding Lane, near Fish-street, and spread itself with such rapidity on all sides, owing to a strong east wind which prevailed at the time, and to the stores of pitch, tar, oil, and other combustibles in the neighbourhood, that no efforts could extinguish it till a considerable part of the city was laid in ashes. The flames advanced for three days and nights (September 2-5), and it was only by the blowing up of houses that they were at last extinguished. Charles and his brother did their utmost to stop the progress of the fire, but it bade defiance to all their exertions, and 13,200 houses were consumed; 89 churches, including St. Paul's; 400 streets; and, in the fields about Islington and Highgate, 200,000 people were congregated in a state of utter destitution. As the papists were the chief

Extent.

1666

unjustly

objects of public hatred, they were accused by the general rumours of having originated the fire, "in order," as the old inscription on the Monument erected to commemorate the event stated, "to the effecting their horrid plot for the extirpating the Protestant The papists religion and English liberties, and to introduce popery accused. and heresy." At the end of a century and three-quarters, when men's religious sentiments were more charitable, this lying inscription was obliterated. A committee of parliament made the strictest inquiry into the matter, and no proof, or even presumption, appeared for such an accusation.* The fire proved beneficial, both to the city and the kingdom; as wider and more regular streets were made; London became much healthier; and the plague has scarcely ever appeared in the city since.

21. Disputes between Charles and the Parliament, regarding supplies. The flames of London were still smouldering, when the parliament met at Westminster, on the 21st of September, in no very pleasant mood. They directed their first attention to increase the rigours of the penal laws against the Roman Catholics, in revenge for the fire; after which they inquired into the expenditure of the supplies. It was reported that Charles had diverted these to the use of his mistresses, and as the Commons were not now so subservient to the crown as when they first assembled, a clause was inserted in the new subsidy bill, which provided that the present grant of £1,250,000 should be applied only to the purposes of the war. This ancient and

66

fundamental principle of appropriating the supplies was established as early as the reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV., and had been enforced so late as the reigns of James and Charles. Clarendon inveighed with fury against it as an innovation;" but the King, learning that the bankers would advance money more readily on this better security for speedy payment, insisted' that it should not be thrown out, and it was carried by a majority of 70. From this, therefore, it became an undisputed Right of principle, that supplies granted by parliament are only established. to be expended for particular objects specified by itself. The necessity of laying estimates before the house followed as a matter of course; and thus parliament came, not only to have control over, but to have a share in the national expenditure. It also resulted from this right of appropriation, that the House of Commons should be able to satisfy itself as to the expenditure of

appropriation

* A poor French working silversmith confessed that he was the incendiary, and he was hanged. Yet, says Clarendon, the judges and others at the trial did not consider him guilty, but that he was insane, and weary of his life, and chose to part with it in this way. + Hallam, II., 55-36.

imprudent

CHAP. XII.

its grants. For this also there were precedents as early as the reign of Henry IV., and a bill was therefore carried, appointing commissioners to audit the public accounts. But the King, who had too much disgraceful expenditure to conceal, strongly resisted; and Clarendon declared that the bill was an encroachment and Clarendon's usurpation, and he advised the King never to consent to opposition. it. He opposed the bill in the House of Lords with intemperate warmth, and with a contempt of the lower house, which was not only imprudent in respect to his own interests, but unbecoming and unconstitutional. Charles prorogued the parliament while the measure was depending (February 8th, 1667), promising to appoint a royal commission for the examination of the public accounts; but the bill was resumed after Clarendon's fall, and passed into a law (1668).*

Charles's

treaty with

It was at this juncture, when Charles's expenditure was the subject of so much jealousy, and his exchequer was empty, first secret that he made his first secret treaty with Louis XIV., by Louis. which he agreed not to interfere with that monarch's designs against Spain, and Louis consented to restore the West Indian islands which had lately been taken from England (April, 1667).

22. The Dutch in the Medway. At the commencement of this secret negotiation, Charles had sent commissioners to Breda to conclude a peace with the Dutch (December, 1666). But the pensionary De Witt was in no haste to come to an agreement, for he had not forgotten the oath he swore at the burning of Brandaris. During the negotiations he despatched De Ruyter, with a fleet of 70 sail, which moored off the buoy at the Nore, and blockaded London (June 8th). The government was not taken by surprise, but little preparations were made; for the commissioners of the navy already owed nearly a million, and their credit was gone; the sailors mutinied and refused to serve, because their pay was considerably in arrears, although parliament had made liberal grants; for the same reason the labourers would not work at the forts and batteries which ought to have been erected; and the merchants would not sell, except for cash English payments. Many of the sailors, in fact, were on board against the Dutch vessels, where, they humorously but very significantly said, they fought for dollars and not for tickets; the sailors' wives went about the streets loudly complaining of the oppression which bound them down in poverty and distress;

sailors fight

their

country.

* Hallam, II., 58.

1667

and mobs attacked Clarendon's house, and set up a gibbet before his gate.

In the meantime De Ruyter, dividing his fleet into two divisions, ordered one to sail up the Thames as far as Gravesend, and the other to destroy the shipping in the Medway. The fort at Sheerness opposed but a feeble resistance; a boom which Monk had thrown across the Medway was broken by one of the Dutch fireships, and the guardships which he had stationed for its defence were burnt: and the Royal Charles, a first-rate, and the proud ship which had borne the King to England, became the prize of the conquerors. Monk now fortified Upnor Castle, but the Dutch "made no more of Upnor Castle's shooting than of a fly," and with wind and tide in their favour, gallantly sailed up the river, and burnt three first-rates. They then returned to the other division at the Nore, and enforced a real blockade of London for many weeks.

Peace alone could terminate this multiplication of dangers and disasters, and it was accordingly concluded at Breda, on the 29th of July, upon conditions altogether humiliating to England.

Three treaties were signed by the commissioners: one with Holland, stipulating that both parties should forget past injuries and remain in their present The treaty condition, the States retaining possession of the disputed island of Pulorone, of Breda. and the English of their conquests of Albany and New York; another with France, by which Louis obtained the restoration of Nova Scotia, and Charles that of Antigua, Montserrat, and part of St. Kitts; and a third with Denmark, renewing the former peace with that country.

to popular

23. The fall of Clarendon. The general dissatisfaction with this treaty, and with the troubles which England had suffered, was now so great, that it became necessary for the court Clarendon to sacrifice at least one victim. Clarendon was chosen, sacrificed because against him the spleen of all parties was directed. discontent. He was hated by the Queen-mother; he was diametrically opposed to the levities and vices of the court; he discountenanced the Dutch war when all England desired it; and the people, therefore, attributed its disasters to his secret ill-will against it. He had endeavoured, of late, to keep the balance between the court party and the national party, and while he did not go far enough in extending the prerogative, he lost the confidence of parliament by manifesting a too great complaisance towards the court. In the difficult crisis of the Restoration he was indispensable to Charles, but now he was in the way of the King's designs. Charles was indifferent to the church, Clarendon its strenuous supporter. Charles was for such a toleration of

* Hallam, II., 62.

He was no longer necessary to the King.

CHAP. XII.

Protestant dissenters as would include Roman Catholics; Clarendon equally persecuted Puritans and Papists. Charles was desirous to have such a fixed annual revenue as would render him almost independent of parliament; Clarendon, who would have had parliament always submissive, was opposed to this. Charles would have kept up a standing army, Clarendon prevented him. Thus, in politics, in religion, and in his private relations, the King found his minister constantly thwarting him; which is quite sufficient to account for Clarendon's fall. But his entire ruin was accomplished by a strange coalition of his enemies; of the Cavaliers, who hated him on account of the Act of Indemnity; the Presbyterians, for that of Uniformity; the Commons, for his pride and haughtiness; and the Lords, whom he had taunted with allowing the Commons to usurp the lead in public business, and encroach upon their privileges. Unfortunately for his reputation, he had returned from exile in the deepest poverty, and in seven years had acquired an immense fortune, which excited the envy of the nobility, and, in the popular mind, at once summed up, and clearly confirmed every possible imputation.

As early as 1663, the Earl of Bristol, a Catholic peer, had impeached the lord chancellor of high treason; but the judges had declared that, by the laws of the realm, no articles of high treason could be originally exhibited in the House of Peers, by any one peer against another, and that the matters alleged in the charge did not amount to treason. But when it was pretty well known that the King was alienated from his grave adviser, and that Buckingham, Arlington, Coventry, and Castlemaine "the lady," had conspired against him, charges of a most serious nature were got up, and the Commons impeached him in seventeen articles. Many of these, however, applied more directly to the King than the Earl, and each of the articles was a kind of protest from one or other of the classes whom the Restoration had already rendered discontented.*

The chancellor was charged with having counselled the King to levy an army, for the purpose of ruling in an absolute manner; with having said that the King was a papist; with having caused the transportation of several persons—one of whom was Colonel Hutchinson-to remote islands and garrisons, thereby to prevent them from obtaining the benefit of the law; with having counselled the brought King to sell Dunkirk, and with having corruptly received a portion of against him. the purchase money; with having deprived most of the corporations of their charters; with having betrayed the King in the negotiations connected with the late war; with having counselled the division of the fleet, which had given the

The charges

* Carrel's Counter Revolution, 82.