1667-68 victory to the Dutch; and, finally, with having authorised various measures impeding the ordinary course of justice. This latter accusation referred to the chancellor's attempts against the independence of grand and petty juries. The Tudors had made a practice of imposing fines upon these bodies, in order to punish them for verdicts contrary to the views of government. The revolution had destroyed this abuse; Clarendon revived it. The minister met this impeachment with a long memorial, which the parliament denounced as libellous (December 29th), and he was then banished for life, unless he returned by the 1st of February, 1668. For, in the meantime, he had resigned his office, and retired to the continent (November 29th), at the King's express command. He resided at Montpelier, where he wrote his History of the Great Rebellion, and died at Rouen, in 1674. The profligate character of those who plotted the ruin of this great minister, has rendered his administration comparatively honourable. But his notorious concurrence in all the measures of severity towards the Nonconformists, and the political offences enumerated in his impeachment, have dimished the veneration in which he was held, and excluded him from the list of great and wise ministers. Though his impeachment, on the point of high treason, cannot be defended, the act of banishment, under the circumstances of his flight, was justifiable, because he simply fled from justice, and refused to appear within the given time. His prosecution established, for ever, the right of impeachment, which the discredit into which the Long Parliament had fallen, exposed to some hazard.* SECTION II.-THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE CABAL. 1667-1674. 24. First measures of the new ministry. By the exile of Clarendon, the Anglican ministry established at the Restoration was entirely dissolved. Southampton was dead; Albemarle was worn out; Nicholas had resigned, and Ormond resided in his government of Ireland. The new men that came into power were profligates and libertines, alike indifferent to all sects and parties, and five of them ere long became known as the Cabal; a word which signified what we now call a cabinet, and which was erroneously supposed to have been formed out of the initial letters of their names- -Sir Thomas Clifford, first commissioner of the treasury; the Earl of Arlington, the Cabal. secretary of state; the Duke of Buckingham; Lord Ashley, Chancellor of the Exchequer; and lastly the Duke of Lauderdale. Members of * Hallam, II., 59-72; Carrel, 82-83; Knight's Pop. Hist., IV., 300-302; Pepys's Diary, July and August. CHAP. XII. The great disgrace of these men in their ministerial capacity was, that they sold their country to France, for the purpose of restoring Popery and establishing arbitrary power-a design which roused all parties, corrupt as they were, against them. Nevertheless their first measures won popular approbation. Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the Lord Keeper, brought in the Comprehension Bill, for the purpose of securing to the Presbyterians certain concessions which would enable them to re-enter the bosom of the Established Church, and to the other Nonconformists the free exercise of their worship. But this conciliatory measure was rejected by the Commons, who declared that its real aim was to restore the supremacy of Popery. The Bill. Comprehension The Triple French power the dread of Europe. While, however, their toleration principles were suspected, their other great measure, the Triple Alliance, between Alliance. England, Holland, and Sweden, was loudly applauded; it soothed the national irritation which prevailed at the time of Clarendon's fall, and for prudence and magnanimity has no parallel in the history of the Stuarts. At that time, France was the greatest power in Europe. Her dominions were large, compact, fertile, well placed for attack and defence; and her people were brave, active, and ingenious. The government was a despotism; the royal revenue was larger than that of any other potentate; the army 120,000 strong, was excellently disciplined, and commanded by the greatest generals then living. The personal qualities of the King added to all this power. He knew well how to choose his servants, and he had the talent of appropriating to himself the credit of all their acts. In his dealings with foreign powers he was generous but not just; extending his protection with disinterestedness, but breaking through the most sacred ties of public faith without scruple or shame. As licentious as Charles, he was by no means frivolous or indolent; and he was ambitious to extend the spiritual power of Rome. Our ancestors naturally looked with serious alarm upon so formidable a state. The old national feeling against France revived, while the dread which Spain had so long inspired had given place to contemptuous compassion; for though the latter still held in Europe the Milanese and the Two Sicilies, Belgium and Franche Compté, and in America her dominions still spread from the Equator on both sides, beyond the limits of the torrid zone, she was utterly incapable of molesting other states, and even of repelling aggression. Between these two states, a very serious contest had for some years been going on; Louis being ambitious to make the Rhine the boundary of 1668 make the boundary of Alliance upon his his dominions. He was now in the full career of con- Louis XIV. quest; and the United States saw with anxiety the sought to progress of his arms, for rich as that republic was, she Rhine the was no match for the power of Louis, and could not alone France. turn the scale against France. From the German princes no help was to be expected, because many of them were in alliance with Louis, and the Emperor himself was embarrassed by the discontents of Hungary. England was separated from the States by the recollection of a cruel and bitter war. Still it was The Triple the interest of England to exclude France from the was a check possession of Flanders, and under this persuasion, Sir ambition. William Temple, the English resident at Brussels, was instructed to negotiate with the States. He proceeded to the Hague, and soon came to an understanding with John De Witt, then the chief minister of Holland; and, with him, concluded an alliance with Sweden (April 25th, 1668), the result of which was, that Louis was compelled to agree to a treaty of peace with Spain at Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (May 2nd), by which the Spanish Nether- Chapelle. lands were saved from absolute conquest. But the three Protestant powers were not on good terms with Spain, although they interfered in her behalf; hence she agreed that Louis should still retain Tournay, Douay, Charleroi, and other places, which brought the French frontier to the very neighbourhood of the Dutch, to their great annoyance.* Aix-la secret ne with Louis the Triple 25. The Treaty of Dover. While Temple was negotiating the Triple Alliance, his master was making clandestine overtures to Louis, offering to declare himself a Roman Catholic, to Charles's dissolve the Triple Alliance, and join France against gotiations Holland, if Louis would lend him such military and to set aside pecuniary aid as might make him independent of parlia- Alliance. ment. The negotiations were chiefly carried on by the Duchess of Orleans, Charles's sister. Louis, though he received the propositions coldly, was not averse to them; for it was his object to separate England from that coalition which he knew would be formed against him, when he should lay claim, in right of his wife, to the vast empire of Spain. He knew that the English parliament and nation were strongly attached to the policy which had dictated the Triple Alliance, and he was, therefore, gratified to learn that the Stuarts were willing to sell themselves, and become subservient to his designs. For the next twenty years, England thus became the most degraded and the most insignificant member of the European States *Macaulay, I., 205-211: Lingard, XI., 325-28. Louis pensions the court and the CHAP. XII. system, and Louis kept her political parties in a perpetual state of conflict; he pensioned at once the ministers of parliament. the crown and the chiefs of the opposition; he encouraged the court to withstand the encroachments of the parliament, and conveyed to the parliament intimations of the arbitrary designs of the court. His chief agent in this was Louisa de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, and one of the royal mistresses. The At length all the conditions of this clandestine alliance between the two monarchs were digested into a secret treaty, which was signed at Dover (May 29th, 1670), and the terms of which were not clearly known before the close of the eighteenth century. They stipulated that Charles should openly declare himself a Roman Catholic, that he should join Louis in a war against Holland, which they should partition between them; England, however, only to receive a part of Zealand; that Treaty of he should support Louis, with all his power, in obtaining possession of Dover. Spain, when the Spanish monarch (a sickly child) should die, and should obtain not only Ostend and Minorca, but such parts of Spanish America as he should choose to conquer. Louis engaged to pay his ally £200,000 annually, and furnish him with 6,000 troops, to enable him to suppress any insurrection which might arise upon the public profession of his faith. Clifford, Arlington, and the Duke of York were entrusted with the secret of this alliance; but another treaty, in which the King's change of religion was omitted, but the other terms included, was known to Shaftesbury, Buckingham, and Lauderdale.* Death of Duchess of Both these compacts were made under gloomy auspices. The Duchess of Orleans died suddenly; and about the same time, Anne Hyde, the Duchess of York, the daughter of the Anne Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, died also. The latter had been a York. concealed Roman Catholic for some years; but her two daughters, Anne and Mary, were educated in the Protestant religion, by the positive command of the King, who was afraid of endangering their inheritance to the throne, by allowing their father to bring them up in his own faith.† Rumours of 26. Persecutions under the second Conventicle Act. Although the parliament was ignorant of the precise nature of these memorable negotiations, they yet had proofs, sufficient for moral conviction, that the King and his brother had conspired with France against the religion and liberty of the country. the Treaty Hence that violent and factious opposition which espeThe Popish cially showed itself in the proceedings connected with plot and the the Popish Plot and the Bill of Exclusion, and which Bill. urged the parliament to persecute the Nonconformists, whom the court sought to relieve, in order that the Papists might be encouraged. On the other hand, the court sometimes excited of Dover produced Exclusion * Hallam, II., 80-81; Lingard, XI., 346; Appendix, Note E. 1670 this persecuting spirit, in the hope of bribing the Dissenters with that toleration which a Catholic would grant, but the Episcopalian rigorously refused. Thus, when the first Conventicle Act expired, in 1670, the court caused it to be renewed, and to be reinforced by the addition of an extraordinary proviso, enacting, that all the clauses should be construed most largely and beneficially for the suppression of conventicles, and that no proceedings made upon the authority of the act, should be in any way impeached or made void, by reason of any default in form. (22 Charles II.) of Penn and The terrors of this act fell chiefly upon obscure persons, and more than all upon the Quakers, who fearlessly adhered to their principles. They proceeded openly to their meeting-houses, and when they were carried before the magistrates, they refused to pay the fines, and were imprisoned. On their release they renewed their worship; and, if they found their chapel doors closed, they worshipped in the streets. William Penn, the son of the famous admiral, was one of the most distinguished of these early champions for dissent. He had already suffered for his principles in Ireland; yet he now attended the meeting-house in Gracechurch-street, and, when he found the place closed, he addressed the friends outside. On this he was indicted Prosecution at the Old Bailey, in company with William Mead, who Mead. had similarly offended, on a charge of riot (September, 1670). The prisoners behaved with the customary boldness of their sect; the lord mayor and the recorder, who was no other than the infamous George Jeffreys, treated them with great insolence; and, when they were acquitted, committed them for contempt, because they refused to uncover their heads. A fine of forty marks was also imposed on each of the jurors; but Bushell, one of their Juries number, being committed for non-payment of this fine, fined for sued for his writ of Habeas Corpus from the Court of verdicts, Common Pleas; and the return being made, that he had been committed for finding a verdict against full and manifest evidence, and against the directions of the court, Chief Justice Vaughan held the ground to be insufficient, and discharged him. Since this decision, no jury has been fined in England on account of its verdict.* cease to be their 27. The Coventry Act. The opponents of the court in parliament had now formed themselves into a strong body, under the name of the Country Party, which included Puritans, The Republicans, and others who, although attached to the Party. church and hereditary monarchy, were driven into opposition by the * Hallam, II., 173-174; Lingard, XI., 340-341, Note; Dixon's "Wm, Penn; a Hist. Biog." Country |