

CHARLES II. OF ENGLAND 



117 



>h roxaliM warships, lit- made an expedition 

 tn tin- Thami".. lli> hit her beheaded Charles did 

 hi* iitmo-t tn sa\e him, even snuling a carte blnm-lu- 

 ti> tin- F.nglish parliament and his hopes disap- 

 |Niintcd from Ireland .-iinl Mont rose, in 1650 he 

 accepted the terms of the Scottish commissioners, 

 an. I landed on 23d June at the mouth of the Spry. 

 'I'll. it \\as a dreary time of prayers, fasting*, and 

 i\ sermons a day) for the gay young 

 pi mcr. Less a king than state-prisoner, lie must 

 .mil re-sign the two Covenants, must put away 

 his old friends, must acknowledge the sins of his 

 house, his father's blood-guiltiness and mother's 

 idolatry. But the defeat at Dunbar and his 'start' 

 for the Highlands gained Charles somewhat more 

 lilicrty ; ami. ha\ ing on 1st January 1651 been 

 crowned at Scone, in the following August he 

 suddenly marched, with 10,000 men, into England, 

 joined the Scots, and, catching them up at 

 \Ynicestrr, Cromwell utterly routed them on 3d 

 mlier. For six weeks Charles wandered a 

 fugitive, a thousand pounds set on his head, through 

 the western and southern counties, now hiding m 

 the oak ;it lioscobel, now riding disguised as a 

 M T\ in.u r -man, anon lurking at Stonehenge. More 

 than forty persons were privy to his secret, yet on 

 15th October he embarked at Shoreham for Nor- 

 mandy. Then followed nearly three years of exile 

 in France, nearly two at Cologne, then three in the 

 Low Countries, needy everywhere, everywhere pro- 

 fligate; but at last,' on 26th May 1660, Charles 

 landed at Dover, recalled to the throne by the 

 fall of the Protectorate, and the nation's dread of 

 military despotism. 'It must be my own fault,' 

 he jested, 'that I did not come sooner back, for I 

 find no one but tells me he has always longed for 

 my In iine-coming.' 



Of the four parliaments that succeeded the Con- 

 vention, the first or ' Cavalier ' parliament lasted 

 through nearly two-thirds of the entire reign, from 

 May 1661 to January 1679; from March 1681 

 Charles ruled without one. The first seven years 

 (1660-67) were the period of Clarendon's ascend- 

 ency, of constitutional loyalty to church and state, 

 as anti-Catholic as it was anti-Puritan. Next 

 came the Catholic-Presbyterian Cabal, broken up 

 by the Test Act of 1673 ; and then the fierce struggle 

 between the Court and Country factions, in which 

 Shaftesbury played the chief part, and from which, 

 in the end, Charles issued victorious. 



As early as 1661 he accepted a secret subsidy 

 from France, and no act of his reign was more un- 

 popular than the sale next year of Dunkirk. In 

 1665 a naval Dutch war, due to commercial jealousy, 

 wa- forced on by Clarendon's enemies, who saw in 

 it a chance of ousting him. In spite of two English 

 victories, with an indecisive engagement between 

 ( Lowestoft, Downs, and North Foreland ), in June 

 1667 De Ruyter sailed up the Thames, and burned 

 several war-ships lying at Chatham that night 

 Chiirles was very merry in his harem. The peace 

 of Hieda (21st July), which in August was followed 

 tiy Clarendon's downfall, left both nations ex- 

 hausted, and France the sole gainer. Temple's 

 Triple Alliance (23d January 1668), between Eng- 

 laud, Holland, and Sweden, was on Charles's part 

 a mere bid for popularity, a means too of raising 

 his price with Louis XIV. ; and by the secret Treaty 

 of I (over (20th May 1670) he entered on an offensive 

 alliance with France, became its pensioner, and 

 undertook to effect the conversion or England. A 

 <ea light with the Dutch in Southwold Bay (1672) 

 u as bloody but indecisive ; and the strong anti- 

 French feeling forced Charles to conclude a peace 

 ( Io74), and to consent to the marriage of his niece 

 Mary with his nephew William of Orange ( 1677 ). 

 Still,_ by two other secret treaties ( 1676-78), and by 

 also intriguing with the opposition, Louis secured 



his end, to cut England off from continental 

 politics. 



At home, the abortive Savoy Conference wa 

 followed by the ejection of nearly 2000 Noncon- 

 formist ministers (24th August 1662); the Great 

 IMague (May to December 1665) carried off nearly 

 seventy thousand Londoners ; and the Great Fire 

 (-2d to 6th September 1666) consumed 13,200 

 houses, St Paul's, and 86 churches. Sir John 

 Coventry, for plain speaking, got his nose slit by 

 Charles's bullies (1670); the 'stop of the Ex- 

 chequer' (1672) plunged the chief city bankers in 

 bankruptcy ; and Charles's two Declarations of 

 Indulgence (1662-72) were met by the Conventicle 

 and lest Acts, the Dissenters themselves declining 

 to share toleration with the Catholics, for whom such 

 toleration was designed. Clarendon's foes had 

 cause to dread Clarendon's son-in-law, the king's 

 brother, James, Duke of York ; and his open pro- 

 fession of Catholicism (1672) gave a pretext for 

 Shaftesbury's Exclusion Bill, and colour to Gates 's 

 trumped-up ' Popish Plot' (August 1678 to Decem- 

 ber 1680), which Shaftesbury fostered, and which 

 cost the lives of fifteen Catholic victims. Himself, 

 if anything, at heart a Catholic, Charles sacrificed 

 them basely to his fears ; still, honour, brotherly 

 affection, or French gold, would not let him 

 acknowledge Monmouth for his heir. But the tide 

 had already turned. Men's shame at that shame- 

 ful panic, and disgust at the thought of a bastard 

 on the throne, caused a Tory reaction ; and the 

 Tory reaction drove the Whigs on to open resist- 

 ancethe Rye-house Plot (1683). Shaftesbury 

 died beyond seas, Lord Essex by his own hand 

 in the Tower, and Russell and Sidney by the 

 headsman's axe. 



What English king so absolute as Charles, that 

 Sunday evening, when Evelyn saw him ' toying 

 \vith his concubines in the glorious gallery ' or 

 Whitehall ? But on the morrow he was strucK with 

 apoplexy, and for three days lay in a stupor. When 

 he came to himself on the Thursday, he would not 

 receive the communion from Bishop Ken ; but, 

 thanks to the Duchess of Portsmouth, a priest who 

 had aided him in his escape from Worcester was 

 brought to his bed-side, and by him he was recon- 

 ciled to the Catholic Church. Then he blessed his 

 children ; blessed, too, the Protestant bishops ; and 

 at last passed away on Friday the 6th of February 

 1685. On the night of the 14th he was buried in 

 Westminster Abbey. 



So ended the worst reign in English history, 

 whose sole great measure was the Habeas Corpus 

 Act (1679), and whose tortuous politics are gener- 

 ally referable to one or other of the following 

 motives : Charles's fear of again being sent on his 

 travels, the nation's fear of a second great civil war, 

 its hatred of Popery and hatred of the French, the 

 littleness of men's aims and greatness of their greed, 

 and 'backstairs' influence, omnipresent, omnipotent. 

 Such as the reign was, such was Charles himself. 

 With a taste for the arts and for science, he was 

 able, shrewd, affable, easy-going, active of habit . 

 physically brave. His talents serve but to enhance 

 his vices of utter selfishness and abject sensual- 

 ism. And yet with his subjects he was alwavs 

 popular ; the nicknames ' Old Rowley ' and ' The 

 Mem' Monarch' attest even now the liking that 

 they oore him. 



On 22d May 1662 Charles had married poor 

 plain Catharine of Braganza (1638-1705). The 

 marriage was childless, and her influence on 

 English politics was slight as compared with that 

 of his numberless mistresses. Of these, before the 

 Restoration, two only call for notice ' brown, 

 beautiful, bold, but insipid ' Lucy Walter ( 1630- 

 58), the mother of James, Duke of Monmouth 

 and Buccleuch ( 1649-85 ) ; and Catherine Peg, the 



