CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



from the succession; declared the king's Guards 

 and standing army illegal ; and passed the Habeas 

 Corpus Act, which, limiting the time between the 

 apprehension of a supposed criminal and his trial, 

 rendered it impossible for this or any future 

 sovereign to keep individuals in prison at his 

 pleasure, as had formerly been done. The last 

 measure is still justly looked upon as the great 

 bulwark of personal liberty in Britain. Though 

 the bill for excluding the Duke of York was thrown 

 out by the Upper House, that prince found it 

 necessary to evade the popular odium, first bv 

 retiring to Brussels, and afterwards to Scotland. 

 At the same time, the Duke of Monmouth, eldest 

 natural son of the king, and believed by many 

 to be legitimate, began to be regarded by the 

 Whig party in general as a preferable heir to the 

 crown. 



PERSECUTION IN SCOTLAND. 



The persecution in Scotland for field-meetings 

 was so severe, that before the year 1678 it was 

 supposed that 17,000 persons had suffered by it 

 in fine, imprisonment, and death. As was natural, 

 this persecution inspired a strong feeling of resent- 

 ment against the government and the prelates. 

 On the 2d of May 1679, as Archbishop Sharp, 

 the most obnoxious of these, was going in his 

 coach to St Andrews, he was beset by a body of 

 desperate men, among whom were Balfour of 

 Burleigh and Hackston of Rathillet, who cruelly 

 slew him. An insurrection of the west-country 

 conventiclers immediately followed ; and a party 

 of dragoons sent against them, under Captain 

 Graham of Claverhouse, was gallantly repulsed 

 at Loudon Hill. The insurrection proving formid- 

 able, the Duke of Monmouth was sent down to 

 head the troops for its suppression. He found 

 the insurgents posted advantageously at Bothwell 

 Bridge (June 22) ; but divisions on certain religious 

 and political points unfitted them for making a 

 good resistance. After defending the bridge for a 

 while, they turned in a panic, and fled ; 300 were 

 killed in the pursuit, and 1200 taken prisoners. 



Notwithstanding this overthrow, the more en- 

 thusiastic Presbyterians refused to be at rest, 

 and many publicly renounced their allegiance to 

 the king. 



REACTION IN FAVOUR OF THE KING. 



In the meantime, an extraordinary revolution 

 took place in England. About the time that 

 popular feeling was recovering from the mania 

 respecting the Popish Plot, the House of Com- 

 mons had shewn an ardent determination to seek 

 the exclusion of the Duke of York from the throne. 

 The time was unfortunate, for men were beginning 

 to suspect that they had been deceived in many 

 of their surmises about danger from the Catholics. 



The king called a new parliament to meet at 

 Oxford, resolved, in the event of its not proving 

 more tractable, to take advantage of the popular 

 feeling, dissolve the assembly, and never call an- 

 other. It met on the 2ist of March 1681, and 

 the Whigs soon shewed that the Exclusion Bill 

 was still uppermost in their minds. Charles, after 

 various attempts at compromise had been made, 

 dissolved the parliament as utterly intractable, 

 and, as he expected, he was generally applauded 

 for the act Popular feeling had now taken a turn 



152 



in favour of royalty, and Charles henceforth ruled 

 entirely without control. 



THE RYE-HOUSE PLOT DEATH OF CHARLES II. 



Taking advantage of the popular feeling in his 

 favour, Charles caused all the corporations in the 

 kingdom to give up their old charters, and accept 

 of new ones, by which he became all-powerful over 

 the elections of magistrates, and, consequently, 

 over those of parliamentary representatives, should 

 ever another election of that kind take place. The 

 leaders of the late majority in parliament, compris- 

 ing the Duke of Monmouth, Lord William Russell 

 (son of the Earl of Bedford), the Earl of Essex, Lord 

 Howard, the ardent Republican Algernon Sydney, 

 and John Hampden, grandson of the patriot who 

 first resisted Charles I. being reduced to absolute 

 despair, formed a project for raising an insurrec- 

 tion in London, to be supported by one in the 

 west of England, and another under the Earl of 

 Argyll in Scotland, and the object of which 

 should be confined to a melioration of the govern- 

 ment. They were betrayed by an associate 

 named Rumsay, and implicated, by certain un- 

 fortunate circumstances, in a plot of some of the 

 more desperate opponents of the king, for assassi- 

 nating the king (styled the Rye-house Plot), of 

 which they were perfectly innocent. By the 

 execution of Russell and Sydney, and some other 

 severities, the triumph of the king might be con- 

 sidered as completed. Monmouth fled to the 

 continent, and the Duke of York was allowed to 

 resume his former important office of Lord High 

 Admiral. After having been an absolute sovereign 

 for nearly four years, Charles died of apoplexy 

 (February 6, 1685), professing himself at the last 

 to be a Catholic, and was succeeded by the Duke 

 of York. 



During the reign of Charles II. the nation 

 advanced considerably in the arts of navigation 

 and commerce. The post-office, set up during 

 the Commonwealth as a means of raising money, 

 was advanced in this reign. Roads were greatly 

 improved, and stage-coach travelling was com- 

 menced, though not carried to any great extent. 

 During this reign, tea, coffee, and chocolate 

 were first introduced. In 1660, the Royal Society 

 was established in London, for the cultivation 

 of natural science, mathematics, and all useful 

 knowledge. The science of astronomy was greatly 

 advanced by the investigations of Flamsteed 

 and Halley. But the greatest contribution to 

 science was made by Sir Isaac Newton, whose 

 Principles of Natural Philosophy were published 

 in 1687 : in this work, the true theory of planetary 

 motions was first explained, in reference to the 

 principle of gravitation. Amongst the literary 

 men of the period, the first place is to be assigned 

 to John Milton, author of the Paradise Lost and 

 other poems : Samuel Butler, author of Hudibras, 

 shines as a humorous and satirical poet, and 

 Edmund Waller as a lyrist. Amongst divines, 

 the highest names connected with the church are 

 those of Jeremy Taylor and Isaac Barrow ; while 

 the highest among the Nonconformists are those 

 of Richard Baxter and John Bunyan. The theatre, 

 which had been suppressed during the Common- 

 wealth, was revived in this reign ; but the drama 

 exhibited less talent and more licentiousness than 

 it did in the previous reigns. 



