Chapter VIII: REIGN OF CHARLES II. (continued) (4)

On the reading of this letter the House was thrown into a violent agitation. The secret dealings of the king were partly brought to light. It was now seen that Charles's zeal for the war was only a pretence to extract money from the nation, and, this obtained, that he was ready to sell the honour of the country to France; and that the minister had consented to the infamous transaction. They immediately voted Danby's impeachment by a majority of sixty-three, and appointed a committee--of which Montagu was one--to draw up the articles. There was a danger that Danby would retort on Montagu by producing letters of his own, proving that he was mixed up with these transactions from the beginning, and had indeed been made the medium of their proposal; but Montagu trusted to the impossibility of detaching their evidence from such as would have angered the country against the king. He was right; yet two of his letters were sent by Danby to the House, one giving information that Ruvigny was sent to London to treat through Lord William Russell with the Opposition, and the other containing a proposal from Montagu of a grant of money to Charles on the conclusion of peace. These, at another time, would have produced a wonderful sensation, but they were now cast aside to pursue the higher game, and the next day--December 21st--the impeachment of Danby was sent up to the Lords.

On the 23rd Danby replied to the charges by pleading that he had written the letter from the dictation of the king, who had certified the fact by his own hand in the postscript; that it was well known that he was neither a Papist nor a friend to the French alliance, but that he had reason to believe that his accuser, a man who, from his perfidy and breach of the most sacred trust, all men must abhor, had been assisted by French counsel in getting up this impeachment. He denied any guilty practices, and demanded only a fair trial. There was a motion made to commit him to the Tower, but this was overruled, and a day was fixed on which the Lord Treasurer should make his defence. But to defeat this, Danby now advised the king to do that which he had repeatedly dissuaded him from--namely, to dissolve the Parliament. Accordingly, on the 30th of December, it was prorogued for four weeks, and before it could meet again, namely, on the 24th of January, 1679, he dissolved it by proclamation, summoning another to meet in forty days.

This Pension Parliament had now lasted nearly eighteen years. A wonderful change had come over the spirit of this Parliament since its first meeting. Soon after Charles's return no Parliament could be more slavishly submissive. It had restored to him almost everything that the Long Parliament had taken from his father--the power of the army, the customs, and excise; it had passed the most severe and arbitrary Acts for the supremacy of the Church, and the plunder and persecution of Catholics and Dissenters. The Act of Uniformity, the Corporation Act, the Test Act, the Conventicle Act, the Five-Mile Act, the Act which excluded Catholic peers from their House, by which the Church and Crown had been exalted, and the liberties of the people abridged, were all the work of this Parliament. But in time, a different temper displayed itself in this very pliant House. It stiffened and became uncompliant. But this was not at all by a growth of virtue in it. Various circumstances had produced this change. Buckingham, Shaftesbury, and others of the Cabal ministry and their adherents, had lost place and favour, and had organised a stout Opposition. Their chief objects were to mortify and thwart the king, to destroy the prospect of the Popish Duke of York's succession, and to overthrow their rival, Danby. In the prosecution of these selfish ends, they had, as usual, assumed the easy mask of patriotism, and had been joined by the Republican and Patriot party. They had got up the cry of Popery, and driven the nation frantic by alarm of Popish plots, and into much bloodshed, of which the end was not yet. Their present attack on Danby was to thrust down a much better man than themselves, though by no means a perfect one. But Danby had always detested the French alliance, and the use made of it to ruin the Protestant nations on the Continent and destroy the balance of power, in favour of France. He had consented, it is true, but most reluctantly, to write some of the king's begging letters to Louis, and now the Opposition, whose hands were filthy with handling Louis's bribe, had contrived to make him appear not the enemy, but actually the ally and tool of France. Montagu, the great broker of these corruptions, who had taken good care of himself, was become the chastiser of a man who was not a tenth part so guilty as himself. But the darkest part of this story is the share which the Patriotic party had in this receipt of French money, and amongst them Algernon Sidney and Hampden, the grandson of the great patriot. But in excuse for them it may be urged that they did not vote against their consciences.

When the new Parliament met it was found to be more violently anti-Roman than the old one. The duke's known, the king's suspected, Popery created a feeling in the nation that nothing could remove, and which the recent excitements about a Popish plot had roused into a universal flame. This flame the popular party took every means to fan; and though the Government exerted all its power, its candidates were everywhere received with execrations, and assertions of the bloody machinations of the Papists. The new Parliament, therefore, came up with vehement zeal against the plotters, and with unabated determination to punish Danby. But the warning which the progress of the election gave was not lost on Danby. He considered that it would be one of the most powerful means of abating the public jealousy of Popery, if the king could be induced to send the duke out of the kingdom. Charles recoiled at so harsh a measure, and tried the vain expedient of inducing James to pretend at least conversion, by sending the Primate and other bishops to persuade him to return to the Established Church. It was of course useless, and then Charles was obliged to advise James to withdraw for awhile, and reside at Brussels. James complied on two conditions--that the king should give him a formal order to leave the kingdom, so that he might not seem to steal away out of fear; and that he should pledge himself publicly that he would never acknowledge the legitimacy of Monmouth, who had given out that he had four witnesses, in case of Charles's death, to prove his marriage with his mother. This was done in presence of the Council, the members adding their signatures, and Charles ordered the instrument to be enrolled in Chancery. James quitted London with the duchess on the 4th of March, leaving his daughter Anne with her uncle, that the people might not suppose that he sought to convert her to Popery at Brussels.

On the 6th of March Parliament met, and the Commons were immediately engaged in a dispute with the Crown regarding the election of a Speaker. They elected their old one, Mr. Seymour; the Lord Treasurer appointed Sir Thomas Mears, one of his most active opponents in the last Parliament. But during the interval since the dissolution, Danby had been hard at work to convert, by some means or other, some of his most formidable enemies. After some altercation the Commons gave way, and Mears was appointed.

But this exercise of royal prerogative only embittered the House to punish Danby and screen Montagu. The Lords passed a resolution that the dissolution of Parliament did not affect an impeachment--a doctrine which has become constitutional. Montagu had absconded, but reappeared when his election to Parliament gave him personal protection. Everything, therefore, portending the conviction of Danby, Charles ordered him to resign his staff, and then announced this fact to Parliament, at the same time informing them that as he had ordered him to write the letters in question, he had granted him a pardon, and that he would renew the pardon a dozen times if there were a continued attempt to prosecute him for an act simply of obedience to his sovereign.

But this attempt to take their victim out of their hands was resented by the Commons as a direct breach of their privileges, and having looked for a copy of this pardon in Chancery, and not finding it, they learned from the Lord Chancellor that the pardon had been brought ready drawn by Danby to the king, who signed it; and that the Seal had not been affixed by himself, but by the person who carried the bag, at Charles's own order. This irregularity the more inflamed the Parliament. Powle, one of the French pensioners, with that air of injured virtue which politicians so easily assume, inveighed indignantly against Danby, who, he said, had brought the country to the brink of ruin by pandering to the mercenary policy of Louis--the very thing he had opposed,--and had raised a standing army and paid it with French money. Moreover, he had concealed the Popish plot, and spoken of Oates with contempt. The Commons forthwith passed a Bill of Attainder, and the Lords sent to take Danby into custody; but he had absconded. On the 10th of April, however, he surrendered himself to the Lords, and was sent to the Tower. Lord Essex was appointed Lord Treasurer in his stead, and Lord Sunderland, Secretary of State, took the station of Prime Minister. Essex was popular, solid, and grave in his temperament, but not of brilliant talent. Sunderland was a very different man. He was clever, intriguing, insinuating in his manners, but as thoroughly corrupt and unprincipled as the worst part of the generation in which he lived. He had long been ambassador at the Court of France, and the very fact of his holding that post between two such monarchs as Louis and Charles, was proof enough that he was supple, and not restrained by any nice sense of morals or honesty. He was perfidious to all parties--a Cavalier by profession, but at the same time that he was serving arbitrary monarchs most slavishly, he was Republican in heart. He was especially attentive to the mother of Monmouth and the Duchess of Portland, because he knew that they had great influence with his master.

At this crisis Sir William Temple proposed to Charles a measure which he thought most likely to abate the virulence of Parliament, and at the same time prevent ministers from pursuing any clandestine purposes to excite the suspicion of the Parliament and nation. Temple had always shown himself above and apart from the mere interested ambitious and selfish objects of the king's ministers. Whenever he was wanted, he was called from his philosophic retreat of Moor Park, in Surrey, to do some work of essential benefit to the nation, which it required a man of character and ability to accomplish. He had effected the Triple Alliance and the marriage of the Princess Mary with William of Orange; he had refused to have any concern with the intrigues of the Cabal; and now, when Parliament was fast hastening to press on the prerogative, he proposed that the Privy Council should be increased to thirty members, half consisting of officers of State, and half of leading and independent members of the Lords and Commons. All these were to be entrusted with every secret movement and proposition of government; and the king was to pledge himself to be guided by their advice. Temple augured that nothing pernicious could be broached by unscrupulous ministers in a body where half were independent members of Parliament, holding no office from the Crown; and that, on the other hand, Parliament could not so vehemently suspect the tendency of measures which had first the approbation of their own popular leaders. The House of Commons had now driven three successive ministries from office--Clarendon, the Cabal, and Danby--and was still bent on a career violently opposed to the Crown. If Temple had calculated that the effect would be to neutralise or convert the democratic members, he would have been right; but that such a Council could ever work any other way was impossible. The king would never long submit measures, intended to maintain his prerogative, to a Council which was not likely to carry his views at once to both Houses; but he might, and undoubtedly would, in many cases, succeed in bringing over the Opposition orators to his interest. This was the immediate effect on most of them. Shaftesbury, Lord Russell, Saville, Viscount Halifax, Powle, and Seymour, the late Speaker, were included in the Council. But Temple soon found that men of such contrary views would not pull well together, and was compelled to break his chief condition, and compose a sort of inner council, of himself, Capel, Halifax, Essex, and Sunderland, who prepared and really managed everything. Halifax was a man of the most brilliant talents, ambitious, yet not thinking himself so, but so little swayed by mere party, that he was called a trimmer, and gloried in the title. For the rest--Capel, Cavendish, and Powle lost the confidence of the Commons, which looked on the new institution with distrust; Russell and Shaftesbury alone spoke out as boldly as ever, and retained more influence in the two Houses than they gained in the Council. In fact, the Opposition members soon found that they might propose, but the king would not be outvoted in his own Council. The very first measure suggested, was that all persons of Popish tendencies should be weeded out of office, out of the posts of lord-lieutenants, the magistracy, and the courts of law; but Charles, perceiving that the object was to remove the staunchest supporters of the Crown, quickly put an end to it. He called for the rolls, and wherever he saw a name marked for removal, gave such ludicrous and absurd reason for its retention, that there was no gravely answering him. One objected to, he said, was a "good cocker," another an "expert huntsman," "kept good foxhounds," or a "good house," "had always excellent chines of beef," and the like. Arguments were thrown away on the king, and the matter came to nothing.

On the other hand, Shaftesbury, who had been made President of the Council by Charles himself, undiverted by this from his great object, pursued his Popery alarms out of doors, where the king could not checkmate him. A fire broke out in a printing-house in Fetter Lane, and the servant was induced to confess that one Stubbs had promised her five pounds to do it, who in turn said Gifford, his confessor, had set him on, urging it was no sin; and he added that London was to be set on fire again by French Papists. The absurd story soon grew into a rumour that the Duke of York was coming with a French army to claim the throne and re-establish Popery with all its horrors. Shaftesbury declared in the Lords that Popery must be rooted out if there was to be any liberty left; that Popery and slavery, like two sisters, went ever hand-in-hand; that one might now go first, now the other; but wherever one was seen, the other was certainly not far off. The Commons eagerly seizing on the temper of the nation, voted unanimously a Bill of Exclusion against the Duke of York, and that a Protestant successor should be appointed, as though the duke were actually dead. Sir William Temple attempted to weaken this movement by attributing it to Monmouth and Shaftesbury, between whom, it was asserted, there was a secret understanding that if Monmouth's scheme of proving his legitimacy succeeded, Shaftesbury should be his Prime Minister. Probably by the advice of Temple, Charles proposed a plan for a compromise--that in case a Popish prince succeeded, every power of altering the law should be taken out of his hands; that no judges, justices, lord-lieutenants, privy councillors, or officers of the navy should be appointed without consent of Parliament; and that no livings or dignities in the Church should be at the option of the king, but of a board of the most pious and Protestant divines. Shaftesbury, however, ridiculed all these precautions, as attempting to bind Samson with green withes, which he could snap with the greatest ease. The Commons were of that mind, and on the 21st of May, 1679, passed their Exclusion Bill by a majority of two hundred and seven against one hundred and twenty-eight. The Commons followed this up by proceeding in a body to the House of Lords, and demanding judgment against Danby. They also required that the Prelates should not vote on Danby's case, fearing that their numbers might give the Crown a majority; but to this the Lords were opposed, and though the bishops offered to concede the point, the king forbade them, as the matter involved his prerogative. The Commons persisting in their demand, now instituted a strict inquiry into the cases of bribery of members of Parliament by the late minister, and ordered one of his agents, Fox, the Treasurer of the Navy, to proceed to Whitehall in company of three members, and bring his books and papers for examination. The king resented the searching of his house as a gross insult, and the books and papers were refused; but Fox was compelled to state how many members he had paid money to, and he named twenty-seven individuals. This was on the 24th of May, and Charles, to cut the inquiry short, suddenly sent for the Commons, and prorogued Parliament for ten weeks. Shaftesbury was so enraged at this unexpected obstruction to his plans, that he vowed in the House of Lords that it should cost the king's advisers of this measure their heads.

This prorogation was, on other accounts, one of the most remarkable eras in our Parliamentary annals, for before pronouncing the Parliament prorogued, the king gave his consent to the Habeas Corpus Act, and allowed the Act establishing the censorship of the press to expire. The carrying of the Habeas Corpus Act was owing mainly to the influence of Shaftesbury, and was a benefit of such magnitude, that it might cover a multitude of the sins of that extraordinary man, who, with all his faults, had a genuine substratum of patriotism in him. The press had hitherto never been free. Elizabeth cut off the hands of Puritans who offended her, and her successors dragged them into their Star Chamber. Even the Long Parliament, when they abolished the Star Chamber, declined to liberate the press, notwithstanding Milton's eloquent appeal for the liberty of unlicensed printing. The press was at length free, but only for a time, being too dangerous an engine to the corrupt government which so long succeeded.

Whilst the blood of unfortunate victims of imaginary plots was flowing in England, in Scotland the same ruthless persecution had continued against the Covenanters. Lauderdale had married the Countess of Dysart, a most extravagant and rapacious woman, who acquired complete influence over him; and to find resources for her expense, he levied fines on the Nonconformists with such rigour and avidity, that it was believed that he really sought to drive the people to rebellion, in order to have a plea for plundering them. Such was the woful condition of Scotland, delivered over by the lewd and reckless king to a man who combined the demon characters of cruelty, insult, and avarice, in no ordinary degree. Complaints from the most distinguished and most loyal inhabitants were only answered by requiring them to enter into bonds that neither they, nor their families, nor tenants should withdraw from the Established Church, under the same penalties as real delinquents. The gentry refused to enter into such bonds. Lauderdale, therefore, determined to treat the whole West of Scotland as in an actual state of revolt, and not only sent troops with artillery to march into the devoted districts, but let loose upon them bands of wild Highlanders, and commanded even the nobility, as well as others, to give up their arms. The outraged population--left exposed to the spoliation of the Highlanders, who, though they spared the lives, freely robbed the inhabitants--sent a deputation of some of their most eminent men to lay their sufferings before the king himself. They were, however, dismissed with a reprimand, Charles replying, "I perceive that Lauderdale has been guilty of many bad things against the people of Scotland, but I cannot find that he has acted in anything contrary to my interest."

At length Lauderdale's confederate, Archbishop Sharp, was murdered by a band of Covenanting enthusiasts in Fife. There the cruelties of the archbishop were pre-eminently intolerable. There David Hackston of Rathillet, his brother-in-law, John Balfour of Kinloch, or Balfour of Burley, as he is immortalised by Sir Walter Scott in "Old Mortality," James Russell of Kettle, and six others determined to take vengeance on a notorious creature of Sharp's, one Carmichael, who had pursued his levy of fines with such brutality, as to have beaten and burnt with lighted matches women and children, to compel them to betray their masters, husbands, brothers, or fathers. On the 3rd of May, 1679, Carmichael had been out hunting, but hearing of Rathillet and his band being on the watch for him, he left the field and got home. The conspirators were returning disappointed, when a greater prey fell into their hands. The wife of a farmer at Baldinny sent a lad to tell them that the archbishop's coach was on the road, going from Ceres towards St. Andrews. The delighted men gave chase, and, compelling the old man to leave his coach, barbarously murdered him. The assassins only crossed to the other side of Magus Muir, where the bloody deed had been perpetrated, and in a cottage they spent the remainder of the day in prayer and praising God for the accomplishment of what they deemed this noble work. They then rode into the West, where they joined Donald Cargill, one of the most noted of the Cameronian preachers, with Spreul, and Robert Hamilton, a young man of good family, and a former pupil of Bishop Burnet's, who had been excited by the persecutions of the people to come out and attempt their relief.

The murder of the archbishop only roused the Government to more determined rigour, and the persecuted people, grown desperate, threw off in great numbers all remaining show of obedience and resolved to resist to the death. The more moderate Presbyterians lamented and condemned the murder of the Primate, but the more enthusiastic looked upon it as a judgment of God. They resolved to face the soldiery, and they had soon an opportunity, for Graham of Claverhouse, a man who acquired a terrible fame in these persecutions, being stationed at Glasgow, drew out a troop of dragoons and other cavalry, and went in pursuit of them. He encountered them at a place near Loudon Hill, in a boggy ground called Drumclog, where the Covenanters, under Hamilton, Balfour, and Cleland, defeated his forces, and put them to flight, killing about thirty of them, including a relative of Claverhouse's (June 11, 1679). The insurgents under Hamilton, elated with their victory, marched after Claverhouse into Glasgow itself, but were repulsed. They went on, however, increasing so fast, that Claverhouse evacuated Glasgow, and marched eastward, leaving all the west of Scotland in their hands.

On the news reaching London, Charles despatched the Duke of Monmouth, with a large body of the royal guards, to quell the rebellion. On the 21st of June, as the Covenanters lay near the town of Hamilton, they received the intelligence that Monmouth, with his forces joined to those of Claverhouse, was approaching. The insurgents had soon taken to quarrelling amongst themselves, and the more moderate section were now for submitting on favourable terms. Rathillet and the more determined would not hear of any surrender, but marched off and left the waverers, who sent a memorial to Monmouth, declaring that they were ready to leave all their complaints to a free Parliament, and free Assembly of the Church. The duke, who showed much mildness throughout this campaign, replied that he felt greatly for their sufferings, but that they must lay down their arms, and then he would intercede for them with the king. On the receipt of this answer the greatest confusion prevailed; the moderate durst not risk a surrender on such terms, remembering the little mercy they had hitherto received from the Government; the more violent, with a fatal want of prudence, now insisted on cashiering their officers, who had shown what they called a leaning towards Erastianism, or, in other words, a disposition to submit to the civil power.

Whilst they were in this divided state, Monmouth's army appeared in sight on the 22nd of June. The Covenanters, therefore, compelled to fight or fly, seized on the bridge of Bothwell, which crossed the Clyde between the village of Bothwell and the town of Hamilton. It was narrow, and in the centre there stood a gateway. Here Rathillet, Balfour, and others posted themselves with about three hundred men to defend this pass. But the army of Monmouth, on the slope of the hill descending from Bothwell to the Clyde, commanded the opposite hill, on which the Covenanters were posted, with his artillery, and under its fire a strong body of troops advanced to force the bridge. Balfour and Rathillet defended their post bravely, but the gate was at length carried, and they were pushed back at the point of the bayonet. They found themselves unsupported by the main body, which, on the artillery playing murderously upon them, had retreated to Hamilton Heath, about a quarter of a mile distant. There they rallied, and repulsed one or two charges, and broke a body of Highlanders; but undisciplined, disunited, and without artillery to cope with that of Monmouth, they were only exposed to slaughter. They turned and fled.

Monmouth commanded a halt, to spare the fugitives. But Claverhouse pursued and cut them down to the number of four hundred men, besides taking twelve hundred prisoners. Some of the ministers and leaders were executed, the more obstinate were sent as slaves to the Plantations, many of them being lost at sea, and the rest were liberated on giving bonds for conformity. The efforts of Monmouth procured an indemnity and indulgence, which might, after this severe chastisement, have produced the most salutary effect; but this was speedily superseded by the old, faithless, and cruel _régime_ of Lauderdale, and the still more brutal rule of the Duke of York.

During this time the Popish plot, with fresh actors and ramifications, was agitated by the anti-Papal party with unabated zeal. On the 24th of April, 1679, a Protestant barrister, Nathaniel Reading, was tried for tampering with the evidence against Catholic noblemen in prison, in order to reduce the charge from treason to felony. It appeared that Bedloe had engaged him to do it, and then informed against him. There appeared on the trial many damning circumstances against the character and veracity of Bedloe, yet Reading was condemned to pay a fine of one thousand pounds, and to suffer a year's imprisonment.

Bedloe, Oates, and Prance were again, however, brought forward in June against Whitbread and Fenwick, who had been illegally remanded to prison on their former trial, and three other Jesuits--Harcourt, Gavan, and Turner--were now also examined, and a new witness, one Dugdale, a discarded steward of Lord Aston's, was introduced. Oates had little to add to his former story, but Bedloe and Prance were prolific in new charges. It was in vain that the prisoners pointed out their gross prevarications and palpable falsehoods. They were all condemned, as well as Langhorne, a celebrated Catholic barrister. The infamous Jeffreys, now Recorder of London, sentenced them, amid the loud acclamations of the spectators, and they were all executed, after being offered a pardon on condition of confessing the plot, and disclosing what they knew. Langhorne was promised his life if he would reveal the property of the Jesuits, and on its proving only of the value of twenty thousand or thirty thousand pounds, he was told it was too insignificant to save his life. A second time his life was offered him if he would reveal the plot, but he replied he knew of no plot, and all were executed with the usual horrors. Next came up for trial Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, and Corker, Rumby, and Marshall, Benedictine monks; but the diabolical perjury of Oates this time received such an exposure, that the prisoners were all acquitted. Philip Lloyd, the clerk of the Council, deposed that when Oates had been questioned by the Lord Chancellor whether he knew anything personally of Sir George Wakeman, he had solemnly sworn that he did not, yet this morning he had charged him with different acts of treason committed in his own presence.

Notwithstanding this rebuff to the despicable informer, the three monks were recommitted on a fresh charge, and in every quarter of the kingdom similar persecutions were carried on, numbers were thrown into prison, and eight other Catholics were executed in different places.

The Duke of York was every day becoming more uneasy in his residence at Brussels. Knowing the intrigues of Shaftesbury and his party to advance the claims of Monmouth, he repeatedly solicited the king to let him return, and Charles falling ill in August, at Windsor, consented, and James made his appearance at Court, much to the consternation of Monmouth and his supporters. The king recovering, to put an end to the intrigues and feuds between the two dukes, Charles sent Monmouth to Brussels, instead of James, and ordered James to retire to Scotland. Being, as usual, pressed for money, Charles again importuned Louis for one million livres for three years; but Louis replied that he did not see at this period what services England could render him for that expense: and James advised him to manage without the money, by adopting a system of rigid economy. In August he prorogued Parliament for a year, and endeavoured to carry on without the French king's pension. On seeing this, Louis, through Barillon, renewed his offers, but Charles felt too proud to accept them, and then the French king once more turned to the Patriots, so-called, to instigate fresh annoyances. Barillon paid to Buckingham one thousand guineas, two thousand five hundred guineas were distributed amongst Baber, Littleton, Harbord, and Poole; and Montague received fifty thousand livres in part payment of his reward for overthrowing Danby. The consequences were now seen. On the 17th of November, the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth, an anti-Popish procession was organised by Shaftesbury and that party, though carried on under the auspices of the Green Ribbon Club. The bellman went first, ringing his bell, and exclaiming at intervals, "Remember Mr. Justice Godfrey!" Then came a man in the habit of a Jesuit, supporting before him on horseback an effigy of the murdered magistrate, followed by a long train of men and women, habited as monks, nuns, priests, and Catholic bishops in capes and mitres, and Protestant bishops in lawn sleeves, six cardinals with their caps, and, lastly, the Pope on a litter, with his arch-prompter, the Devil, by his side. This procession, commencing in Moorgate, traversed the streets at night with flambeaux, amid a hundred thousand spectators, who were frantic with cries of vengeance against Papists and Popery. At Temple Bar, in front of the club-house, they burnt the whole array of Popish effigies, amid fireworks and rending shouts.

This exhibition of fury against the Catholics was reported all over Europe with astonishment and awe; but, on the other hand, it roused Charles to dismiss Shaftesbury from the presidency of the Council, and to order James to assume his proper place at Court. Russell, Capel, Cavendish, and Powle, seeing their party reduced to impotence in the Council, resigned, and Essex threw up the Treasury, and was succeeded by Hyde, the second son of Clarendon. Sir William Temple also retired again to his rural retreat, and Sydney Godolphin became a leading man in the Council. Both Hyde and Godolphin were men of much talent, but decided Tories. The character of Lawrence Hyde has been vigorously sketched by Macaulay. He was a Cavalier of the old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church, and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists. He had, consequently, a great body of personal adherents. The clergy, especially, looked on him as their own man, and extended to his foibles an indulgence of which, to say the truth, he stood in some need, for he drank deep, and when he was in a rage--and he was very often in a rage--he swore like a trooper. "Godolphin," says the same authority, "had low and frivolous personal tastes, and was much addicted to racing, card-playing, and cock-fighting."

Between these new ministers and the Opposition the contest grew more vehement. Shaftesbury persuaded Monmouth to return in 1680, and much rejoicing was got up for him in public. The king was extremely angry, and ordered him to retire, but Monmouth paid no attention to the paternal command; and there was great talk of a certain black box, in which the proofs of the marriage of Monmouth's mother, Lucy Walters or Barlow, were contained. Charles summoned all the persons alleged to know of this box and its contents, and questioned them, when there clearly appeared to be no such box or such evidence; and these facts were published in the _Gazette_. Still, the duke was extremely popular with the people, and occupied a prominent place in the public eye. He was Duke of Monmouth in England, of Buccleuch in Scotland, Master of the Horse, Commander of the First Troop of Life Guards, Chief Justice in Eyre south of Trent, a Knight of the Garter, and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge; and the Opposition did all they could to enhance his importance. The war of Whig and Tory, now the established terms, was fierce.

Of course the Popish plot continued to play its part, its puppets being moved, and its victims selected by the great political Oppositionists. There was also another plot, called from the hiding-place of the incriminating documents, the Meal-Tub plot, in which the Presbyterians were charged with conspiring to raise an army and establish a Republic. The chief object of all these got-up plots was to drive James from the succession, and two parties were at work for this purpose, who agreed so far as excluding James, but were divided as to the successor to be set up. Monmouth was the idol of Shaftesbury and his party; William of Orange the selected favourite of Temple, Hyde, Godolphin, and their party--a far more intellectual and able one. Against James this common object of his exclusion told fearfully; for the rest, the deep and cautious character of the Dutchman, and the light and frivolous one of Monmouth, made William's chance far the best. Shaftesbury, Buckingham, and their adherents contrived to win over the Duchess of Portsmouth to part of their views by concealing the rest. They represented to her that if the king were brought to nominate his successor, as Cromwell had done, and as an Act of Parliament would enable him to do, her eldest son might be chosen. The bait took, especially when it was coupled with the terrors of an impeachment in default of compliance, which threatened her ruin and that of her children. She flattered herself that the illegitimacy of her son might be got over, and went zealously into the affair. On the other hand, Shaftesbury made himself sure that if this plan were accomplished, Monmouth would be the successor-elect. She pledged herself to use all her influence with Charles, and she was empowered to assure him of a large supply of money from Parliament, and the same power of naming his successor as had been given to Henry VIII.

Charles appeared to fall into the scheme, but demanded no less than eight hundred thousand pounds. For this he probably would have sold his brother's birthright. The question of James's exclusion was discussed in the Council, and Charles ordered James to return again to Scotland. But what probably saved James was want of faith between the leaders of the two exclusion factions and Charles, and between each other. Each faction knew that the other had its own successor in view, and both doubted Charles too much to trust him with the money before the Exclusion Act was passed. Barillon, the French ambassador, whose object was to maintain James, also came in as a third party, with French money, to embarrass and divide them. To cut the main difficulty, Shaftesbury determined to damage James irrevocably before the country; he, therefore, on the 26th of October, 1680, brought forward a wretch called Dangerfield to accuse the duke, before the Commons, of having been at the bottom of the late plot against the Presbyterians; of having given him the instructions to forge and distribute the lists and commissions; of having presented him with twenty guineas; given him a promise of much greater reward; and ridiculed his hesitation to shed the king's blood.

The audacity of an Opposition that could bring forward so horrible a charge against the heir-apparent, on the evidence of a scoundrel branded by sixteen convictions for base crimes, is something incredible. But no sooner had Dangerfield made the statement, than the House was thrown into a wonderful agitation, and Lord William Russell rose and moved that effectual measures be taken to suppress Popery and prevent a Popish succession. From that day to the 2nd of November a succession of other witnesses and depositions were brought before the House to strengthen the charge. The deposition of Bedloe, on his deathbed, affirming all his statements, was read; one Francisco de Faria, a converted Jew, asserted that an offer had been made to him by the late Portuguese ambassador, to whom he was interpreter, to assassinate Oates, Bedloe, and Shaftesbury; Dugdale related all his proofs against the lords in the Tower; Prance repeated the story of the murder of Godfrey, with fresh embellishments; and Mr. Treby read the report of the Committee of inquiry into the plot. The House, almost beside itself, passed a Bill to disable the Duke of York, as a Papist, from succeeding, and stipulating that any violence offered to the king should be revenged on the whole body of the Papists. But on the 15th of November the Lords rejected it by sixty-three against thirty. Shaftesbury then proposed, as the last means of safety, that the king should divorce the queen, marry again, and have a chance of legitimate issue; but on this the king put an effectual damper. Disappointed in both these objects, the Opposition resorted to the cowardly measure of shedding more innocent blood, in order to have a fresh opportunity of exciting the alarm and rage of the people against Popery. They selected, from the five Popish lords in the Tower, the Lord Stafford for their victim. He was nearly seventy years of age, and in infirm health, and they flattered themselves he would not be able to make much defence. He was arraigned in Westminster Hall before a Court of Managers, as in the case of Lord Strafford. The trial lasted seven days, and Oates, Dugdale, Prance, Tuberville, and Denis, all men of the most infamous and perjured character, charged him with having held consultations with emissaries of the Pope, and having endeavoured to engage Dugdale to assassinate the king, and so forth. The old earl made an admirable defence, in which he dissected most effectually the characters of his traducers; but he was condemned by a majority of fifty-five to thirty-one, and was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 29th of December, 1680. The sheriffs of London objected to the order for his beheading, contending that he ought to suffer all the horrors of the law against traitors; but the king commanded them to obey his order. On the scaffold the earl, whose mild and pious demeanour made a deep impression on the Popery-frightened people, declared his entire innocence, and the people, standing with bare heads, replied, "We believe you, my lord. God bless you, my lord!"