14 INTRODUCTORY* 



taking advantage of the popular cry, drove him into exile, 

 though he had been, after Monk, a principal agent in the 

 Restoration, had secured the clergy their revenge, and the 

 landowners their ascendency. In banishment Clarendon 

 completed his historical works, which are so true and 

 yet so false, the type of historical special pleading, and an 

 example which was sure to be imitated. But his history was 

 not published till after the accession of Anne, and was 

 certainly then of supreme usefulness to the Tories of the 

 time. Even the disingenuousness of Clarendon was too 

 candid for his first clerical editors, who garbled his text, and 

 vowed that they had given it as he wrote it. 



The country party did not delay their victory. In the days 

 of King James, an attempt had been made to commute the 

 dues of the Crown, as overlord in lands held by military tenure, 

 into a fixed rent-charge. But the scheme broke down, owing 

 it seems to the inclusion in it of a plan for emancipating 

 copyholds, the dues of which should be paid out of the 

 exchequer. It appears too that the mesne lords distrusted, 

 and I think with reason, the integrity of that institution, 

 especially when they remembered the theories as to the right 

 of kings to their subjects' money which were current and 

 acceptable at the court of the first Stewart king. Now during 

 the Commonwealth, the feudal rights of the Court of Wards 

 and Liveries had been allowed to drop. At the Restoration 

 they revived, for the Crown lawyers, always during the Stewart 

 period the determined and corrupt enemies of all private 

 right and justice, had held that all legislation during the 

 ' Usurpation ' was void. 



This transaction has been often commented on. But it was 

 not the only act of the reactionary party. In the year after 

 the Restoration, England suffered from grievous famine, and 

 the country party thought they had an opportunity for 

 permanently enforcing high prices on the people. Hence the 

 corn laws of 1661 and 1664 permitted the free importation of 

 foreign food only when famine prices were reached, prices 



