Among his worst acts was his shutting up the Exchequer, where the bankers and merchants had been in the habit of depositing money on the security of the funds, receiving a large interest of from eight to ten per cent. By closing the Exchequer, the bankers, unable to draw out their money, stopped payment; and a universal panic was the consequence, during which many great failures happened. By this base violation of the public faith, Charles obtained one million three hundred thousand pounds. But it undermined his popularity more than any of his acts, since he touched the pockets of the people. The odium, however, fell chiefly on his ministers, especially those who received the name of the Cabal, from the fact that the initials of their names spelt that odious term of reproach, not unmerited in their case.

These five ministers were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, and they were the great instruments of his tyranny. None of them had the talents or audacity of Strafford, or the narrowness and bigotry of Laud; but their counsels were injurious to the nation.

Clifford and Arlington were tolerably respectable but indifferent to the glory and shame of their country; while Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were profligate, unprincipled, and dishonest to a great degree. They aided Charles to corrupt the parliament and deceive the nation. They removed all restraints on his will, and pandered to his depraved tastes. It was by their suggestion that the king shut up the Exchequer. They also favored restrictions on the press.

[Sidenote: Restrictions on the Press.]

These restrictions were another abomination in the reign of Charles, but one ever peculiar to a despotic government. No book could be printed out of London, York, or the Universities. But these were not made wholly with a view of shackling the mind, but to prevent those libels and lampoons which made the government ridiculous in the eyes of the people.

Nothing caused more popular indignation, during this reign, than the Forfeiture of the Corporation of the City of London. The power of the democracy resided, at this time, with the corporations, and as long as they were actuated by the spirit of liberty, there was no prospect of obtaining a parliament entirely subservient to the king. It was determined to take away their charters; and the infamous Judge Jeffreys was found a most subservient tool of royalty in undermining the liberties of the country. The corporation of London, however, received back its charter, after having yielded to the king the right of conferring the appointments of mayor, recorder, and sheriffs.

Among other infringements on the constitution was the fining of jurors when they refused to act according to the direction of the judges. Juries were constantly intimidated, and their privileges were abridged. A new parliament, moreover, was not convoked after three years had elapsed from the dissolution of the old one, which infringement was the more reprehensible, since the king had nothing to fear from the new House of Commons, the members of which vied with each other in a base compliancy with the royal will.

But their sycophancy was nothing compared with what the bishops and clergy of the Established Church generally evinced. Absolute non-resistance was inculcated from the pulpits, and the doctrine ridiculed that power emanated from the people. The divine rights of kings, and the divine ordination of absolute power were the themes of divines, while Oxford proclaimed doctrines worthy of Mariana and the Jesuits.

Thus various influences contributed to make Charles II. absolute in England—the Courts of Justice, the Parliaments, the Universities, and the Church of England. Had he been as ambitious as he was fond of pleasure, as capable of ruling as he was capable of telling stories at the dinner table, he would, like Louis XIV., have reared an absolute throne in England. But he was too easy, too careless, too fond of pleasure to concentrate his thoughts on devising means to enslave his subjects.

[Sidenote: Habeas Corpus Act.]

It must not, however, be supposed that all his subjects were indifferent to his encroachments, in spite of the great reaction which had succeeded to liberal sentiments. Before he died, the spirit of resistance was beginning to be seen, and some checks to royal power were imposed by parliament itself. The Habeas Corpus Act, the most important since the declaration of Magna Charta, was passed, and through the influence of one of his former ministers, Ashley, now become Earl of Shaftesbury, who took the popular side, after having served all sides, but always with a view of advancing his own interests, a man of great versatility of genius, of great sagacity, and of varied learning. Had Charles continued much longer on the throne, it cannot be doubted that the nation would have been finally aroused to resist his spirit of encroachment, for the principles of liberty had not been proclaimed in vain.

Charles II. was a tyrant, and one of the worst kings that ever sat on the English throne. His leading defect was want of earnestness of character, which made him indifferent to the welfare of his country. England, during his reign, was reduced to comparative insignificance in the eyes of foreigners, and was neither feared nor respected. Her king was neither a powerful friend nor an implacable enemy, and left the Continental Powers to pursue their own ends unmolested and unrebuked. Most of the administrations of the English kings are interlinked with the whole system of European politics. But the reign of Charles is chiefly interesting in relation to the domestic history of England. This history is chiefly the cabals of ministers, the intrigues of the court, the pleasures and follies of the king, the attacks he made on the constitution without any direct warfare with his parliament and the system of religious persecution, which was most intolerant.

The king was at heart a Catholic; and yet the persecution of the Catholics is one of the most signal events of the times. We can scarcely conceive, in this age, of the spirit of distrust and fear which pervaded the national mind in reference to the Catholics. Every calumny was believed. Every trifling offence was exaggerated, and by nearly all classes in the community, by the Episcopalians, as well as by the Presbyterians and the Independents.

[Sidenote: Titus Oates.]

The most memorable of all the delusions and slanders of the times was produced by the perjuries of an unprincipled wretch called Titus Oates, who took advantage of the general infatuation to advance his individual interests. Like an artful politician, he had only to appeal to a dominant passion or prejudice, and he was sure of making his fortune. Like a cunning, popular orator, he had only to inflame the passions of the people, and he would pass as a genius and a prophet. Few are so abstractedly and coldly intellectual as not to be mainly governed by their tastes or passions. Even men of strong intellect have frequently strong prejudices, and one has only to make himself master of these, in order to lead those who are infinitely their superiors. There is no proof that all who persecuted the Catholics in Charles's time were either weak or ignorant. But there is evidence of unbounded animosity, a traditional hatred, not much diminished since the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes. The whole nation was ready to believe any thing against the Catholics, and especially against their church, which was supposed to be persecuting and diabolical in all its principles and in all its practice. In this state of the popular mind, Oates made his hideous revelations.

[Sidenote: Oates's Revelations.]

He was a broken-down clergyman of the Established Church, and had lost caste for disgraceful irregularities. But he professed to hate the Catholics, and such a virtue secured him friends. Among these was the Rev. Dr. Tonge, a man very weak, very credulous, and full of fears respecting the intrigues of the Catholics but honest in his fears. Oates went to this clergyman, and a plan was concerted between them, by which Oates should get a knowledge of the supposed intrigues of the Church of Rome. He professed himself a Catholic, went to the Continent, and entered a Catholic seminary, but was soon discharged for his scandalous irregularities. But he had been a Catholic long enough for his purposes. He returned to London, and revealed his pretended discoveries, among which he declared that the Jesuits had undertaken to restore the Catholic religion in England by force; that they were resolved to take the king's life, and had actually offered a bribe of fifteen thousand pounds to the queen's physician; that they had planned to burn London, and to set fire to all the shipping in the Thames; that they were plotting to make a general massacre of the Protestants; that a French army was about to invade England; and that all the horrors of St. Bartholomew were to be again acted over! Ridiculous as were these assertions, they were believed, and without a particle of evidence; so great was the national infatuation. The king and the Duke of York both pronounced the whole matter a forgery, and laughed at the credulity of the people, but had not sufficient generosity to prevent the triumph of the libellers. But Oates's testimony was not enough to convict any one, the law requiring two witnesses. But, in such a corrupt age, false witnesses could easily be procured. An infamous wretch, by the name of Bedloe, was bribed, a man who had been imprisoned in Newgate for swindling. Others equally unscrupulous were soon added to the list of informers, and no calumnies, however gross and absurd, prevented the people from believing them.

It happened that a man, by the name of Coleman, was suspected of intrigues. His papers were searched, and some passages in them, unfortunately, seemed to confirm the statements of Oates. To impartial eyes, these papers simply indicated a desire and a hope that the Catholic religion would be reestablished, in view of the predilections of Charles and James, and the general posture of affairs, just as some enthusiastic Jesuit missionary in the valley of the Mississippi may be supposed to write to his superior that America is on the eve of conversion to Catholicism.

[Sidenote: Penal Laws against Catholics.]

But the general ferment was still more increased by the disappearance of an eminent justice of the peace, who had taken the depositions of Oates against Coleman. Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey was found dead, and with every mark of violence, in a field near London, and was probably murdered by some fanatical persons in the communion of the Church of Rome. But if so, the murder was a great blunder. It was worse than a crime. The whole community were mad with rage and fear. The old penal laws were strictly enforced against the Catholics. The jails were filled with victims. London wore the appearance of a besieged city. The houses of the Catholics were every where searched, and two thousand of them imprisoned. Posts were planted in the street, that chains might be thrown across them on the first alarm. The military, the train bands, and the volunteers were called out. Forty thousand men were kept under guard during the night. Numerous patrols paraded the streets. The gates of the Palace were closed, and the guards of the city were doubled. Oates was pronounced to be the savior of his country, lodged at Whitehall and pensioned with twelve hundred pounds a year.

Then flowed more innocent blood than had been shed for a long period. Catholics who were noble, and Catholics who were obscure, were alike judicially murdered; and the courts of justice, instead of being places of refuge, were disgraced by the foulest abominations. Every day new witnesses were produced of crimes which never happened, and new victims were offered up to appease the wrath of a prejudiced people. Among these victims of popular frenzy was the Earl of Stafford, a venerable and venerated nobleman of sixty-nine years of age, against whom sufficient evidence was not found to convict him; and whose only crime was in being at the head of the Catholic party. Yet he was found guilty by the House of Peers, fifty-five out of eighty-six having voted for his execution. He died on the scaffold, but with the greatest serenity, forgiving his persecutors, and compassionating their delusions. A future generation, during the reign of George IV., however, reversed his attainder, and did justice to his memory, and restored his descendants to their rank and fortune.

[Sidenote: Persecution of Dissenters.]

If no other illustrious victims suffered, persecution was nevertheless directed into other channels. Parliament passed an act that no person should sit in either House, unless he had previously taken the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribed to the declaration that the worship of the Church of Rome was idolatrous. Catholics were disabled from prosecuting a suit in any court of law, from receiving any legacy, and from acting as executors or administrators of estates. This horrid bill, which outlawed the whole Catholic population, had repeatedly miscarried, but, under influence of the panic which Oates and his confederates created, was now triumphantly passed. Charles himself gave his royal assent because he was afraid to stem the torrent of popular infatuation. And the English nation permitted one hundred and thirty years to elapse before the civil disabilities of the Catholics were removed, and then only by the most strenuous exertions of such a statesman as Sir Robert Peel.

It is some satisfaction to know that justice at last overtook the chief authors of this diabolical infatuation. During the reign of James II., Oates and others were punished as they deserved. Oates's credit gradually passed away. He was fined, imprisoned, and whipped at the pillory until life itself had nearly fled. He died unlamented and detested, leaving behind him, to all posterity an infamous notoriety.

But the sufferings of the Catholics, during this reign, were more than exceeded by the sufferings of Dissenters, who were cruelly persecuted. All the various sects of the Protestants were odious and ridiculous in the eyes of the king. They were regarded as hostile in their sympathies, and treasonable in their designs. They were fined, imprisoned, mutilated, and whipped. An Act of Uniformity was passed, which restored the old penal laws of Elizabeth, and which subjected all to their penalty who did not use the Book of Common Prayer, and adhere strictly to the ritual of the Church of England. The oligarchical power of the bishops was restored, and two thousand ministers were driven from their livings, and compelled to seek a precarious support. Many other acts of flagrant injustice were passed by a subservient parliament, and cruelly carried into execution by unfeeling judges. But the religious persecution of dissenters was not consummated until the reign of James under whose favor or direction the inhuman Jeffreys inflicted the most atrocious crimes which have ever been committed under the sanction of the law. But these will be more appropriately noticed under the reign of James II. Charles was not so cruel in his temper, or bigoted in his sentiments, as his brother James. He was rather a Gallio than a persecutor. He would permit any thing rather than suffer himself to be interrupted in his pleasures. He was governed by his favorites and his women. He had not sufficient moral elevation to be earnest in any thing, even to be a bigot in religion. He vacillated between the infidelity of Hobbes and the superstitions of Rome. He lived a scoffer, and died a Catholic. His temper was easy, but so easy as not to prevent the persecution and ruin of his best supporters, when they had become odious to the nation. If he was incapable of enmity, he was also incapable of friendship. If he hated no one with long-continued malignity, it was only because it was too much trouble to hate perseveringly. But he loved with no more constancy than he hated. He had no patriotism, and no appreciation of moral excellence. He would rather see half of the merchants of London ruined, and half of the Dissenters immured in gloomy prisons, than lose two hours of inglorious dalliance with one of his numerous concubines. A more contemptible prince never sat on the English throne, or one whose whole reign was disgraced by a more constant succession of political blunders and social crimes. And yet he never fully lost his popularity, nor was his reign felt to be as burdensome as was that of the protector, Cromwell, thus showing how little the moral excellence of rulers is ordinarily appreciated or valued by a wilful or blinded generation. We love not the rebukers of our sins, or the opposers of our pleasures. We love those who prophesy smooth things, and "cry peace, when there is no peace." Such is man in his weakness and his degeneracy; and only an omnipotent power can change this ordinary temper of the devotees to pleasure and inglorious gains.

[Sidenote: Execution of Russell and Sydney.]

Among the saddest events during the reign of Charles, were the executions of Lord Russell and Algernon Sydney. They were concerned, with a few other great men, in a conspiracy, which had for its object the restoration of greater liberty. They contemplated an insurrection, known by the name of the Rye House Plot; but it was discovered, and Russell and Sydney became martyrs. The former was the son of the Earl of Bedford, and the latter was the brother of the Earl of Leicester. Russell was a devoted Churchman, of pure morals, and greatly beloved by the people. Sydney was a strenuous republican, and was opposed to any particular form of church government. He thought that religion should be like a divine philosophy in the mind, and had great veneration for the doctrines of Plato. Nothing could save these illustrious men. The Duke of York and Jeffreys declared that, if they were not executed, there would be no safety for themselves. They both suffered with great intrepidity, and the friends of liberty have ever since cherished their memory with peculiar fondness.

[Sidenote: Manners and Customs of England.]

[Sidenote: Milton—Dryden.]

Mr. Macaulay, in his recent History, has presented the manners and customs of England during the disgraceful reign of Charles II. It is impossible, in this brief survey, to allude to all those customs; but we direct particularly the attention of readers to them, as described in his third chapter, from which it would appear, that a most manifest and most glorious progress has been made since that period in all the arts of civilization, both useful and ornamental. In those times, travelling was difficult and slow, from the badness of the roads and the imperfections of the carriages. Highwaymen were secreted along the thoroughfares, and, in mounted troops, defied the law, and distressed the whole travelling community. The transmission of letters by post was tardy and unfrequent, and the scandal of coffee-houses supplied the greatest want and the greatest luxury of modern times, the newspaper. There was great scarcity of books in the country places, and the only press in England north of the Trent seems to have been at York. Literature was but feebly cultivated by country squires or country parsons, and female education was disgracefully neglected. Few rich men had libraries as large or valuable as are now common to shopkeepers and mechanics; while the literary stores of a lady of the manor were confined chiefly to the prayer-book and the receipt-book. And those works which were produced or read were disgraced by licentious ribaldry, which had succeeded religious austerity. The drama was the only department of literature which compensated authors, and this was scandalous in the extreme. We cannot turn over the pages of one of the popular dramatists of the age without being shocked by the most culpable indecency. Even Dryden was no exception to the rule; and his poetry, some of which is the most beautiful in the language, can hardly be put into the hands of the young without danger of corrupting them. Poets and all literary men lived by the bounty of the rich and great, and prospered only as they pandered to depraved passions. Many, of great intellectual excellence, died from want and mortification; so that the poverty and distress of literary men became proverbial, and all worldly-wise people shunned contact with them as expensive and degrading. They were hunted from cocklofts to cellars by the minions of the law, and the foulest jails were often their only resting-place. The restoration of Charles proved unfortunate to one great and immortal genius, whom no temptations could assail, and no rewards could bribe. He "possessed his soul in patience," and "soared above the Aonian mount," amid general levity and profligacy. Had he written for a pure, classic, and learned age, he could not have written with greater moral beauty. But he lived when no moral excellence was appreciated, and his claims on the gratitude of the world are beyond all estimation, when we remember that he wrote with the full consciousness, like the great Bacon, that his works would only be valued or read by future generations. Milton was, indeed, unmolested; but he was sadly neglected in his blindness and in his greatness. But, like all the great teachers of the world, he was sustained by something higher than earthly applause, and labored, like an immortal artist, from the love which his labor excited,—labored to realize the work of art which his imagination had conceived, as well as to propagate ideas and sentiments which should tend to elevate mankind. Dryden was his contemporary, but obtained a greater homage, not because he was more worthy, but because he adapted his genius to the taste of a frivolous and corrupt people. He afterwards wrote more unexceptionably, composed lyrics instead of farces, and satires instead of plays. In his latter days, he could afford to write in a purer style; and, as he became independent, he reared the superstructure of his glorious fame. But Dryden spent the best parts of his life as a panderer to the vices of the town, and was an idol chiefly, in Wills's Coffee House, of lampooners, and idlers, and scandal-mongers. Nor were there many people, in the church or in the state, sufficiently influential and noble to stem the torrent. The city clergy were the most respectable, and the pulpits of London were occupied with twelve men who afterwards became bishops, and who are among the great ornaments of the sacred literature of their country. Sherlock, Tillotson, Wake, Collier, Burnet, Stillingfleet, Patrick, Fowler, Sharp, Tennison, and Beveridge made the Established Church respected in the town; but the country clergy, as a whole, were ignorant and depressed. Not one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring up a family comfortably or respectably. The clergyman was disdained even by the county attorney, was hardly tolerated at the table of his patron, and could scarcely marry beyond the rank of a cook or housekeeper. And his poverty and bondage continued so long that, in the times of Swift, the parson was a byword and a jest among the various servants in the households of the great. Still there were eminent clergymen amid the general depression of their order, both in and out of the Established Church. Besides the London preachers were many connected with the Universities and Cathedrals; and there were some distinguished Dissenters, among whom Baxter, Howe, and Alleine if there were no others, would alone have made the name of Puritan respectable.

[Sidenote: Condition of the People.]

The saddest fact, in connection with the internal history of England, at this time, was the condition of the people. They had small wages, and many privations. They had no social rank, and were disgraced by many vices. They were ignorant and brutal. The wages of laborers only averaged four shillings a week, while those of mechanics were not equal to what some ordinarily earn, in this country and in these times, in a single day. Both peasants, and artisans were not only ill paid, but ill used, and they died, miserably and prematurely, from famine and disease. Nor did sympathy exist for the misfortunes of the poor. There were no institutions of public philanthropy. Jails were unvisited by the ministers of mercy, and the abodes of poverty were left by a careless generation to be dens of infamy and crime. Such was England two hundred years ago; and there is no delusion more unwarranted by sober facts than that which supposes that those former times were better than our own, in any thing which abridges the labors or alleviates the miseries of mankind. "It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman; when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns; and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guinea. But we too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and, in our turn, envied. There is constant improvement, as there also is constant discontent; and future generations may talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as a time when England was truly merry England, when all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy the splendor of the rich."

* * * * *

REFERENCES.—Of all the works which have yet appeared, respecting this interesting epoch, the new History of Macaulay is the most brilliant and instructive. Indeed, the student scarcely needs any other history, in spite of Macaulay's Whig doctrines. He may sacrifice something to effect; and he may give us pictures, instead of philosophy; but, nevertheless, his book has transcendent merit, and will be read, by all classes, so long as English history is prized. Mackintosh's fragment, on the same period, is more philosophical, and possesses very great merits. Lingard's History is very valuable on this reign, and should be consulted. Hume, also, will never cease to please. Burnet is a prejudiced historian, but his work is an authority. The lives of Milton, Dryden, and Clarendon should also be read in this connection. Hallam has but treated the constitutional history of these times. See also Temple's Works; the Life of William Lord Russell; Rapin's History. Pepys, Dalrymple, Rymeri Foedera, the Commons' Journal, and the Howell State Trials are not easily accessible, and not necessary, except to the historian.



CHAPTER XV.

REIGN OF JAMES II.

[Sidenote: Accession of James II.]

Charles II. died on the 6th of February, 1685, and his brother, the Duke of York, ascended his throne, without opposition, under the title of James II. As is usual with princes, on their accession, he made many promises of ruling by the laws, and of defending the liberties of the nation. And he commenced his administration under good auspices. The country was at peace, he was not unpopular, and all classes and parties readily acquiesced in his government.

He retained all the great officers who had served under his brother that he could trust; and Rochester became prime minister, Sunderland kept possession of the Seals, and Godolphin was made lord chamberlain. He did not dismiss Halifax, Ormond, or Guildford, although he disliked and distrusted them, but abridged their powers, and mortified them by neglect.

The Commons voted him one million two hundred thousand pounds, and the Scottish parliament added twenty-five thousand pounds more, and the Customs for life. But this sum he did not deem sufficient for his wants, and therefore, like his brother, applied for aid to Louis XIV., and consented to become his pensioner and vassal, and for the paltry sum of two hundred thousand pounds. James received the money with tears of gratitude, hoping by this infamous pension to rule the nation without a parliament. It was not, of course, known to the nation, or even to his ministers, generally.

He was scarcely crowned before England was invaded by the Duke of Monmouth, natural son of Charles II., and Scotland by the Duke of Argyle, with a view of ejecting James from the throne.

Both these noblemen were exiles in Holland, and both were justly obnoxious to the government for their treasonable intentions and acts. Argyle was loath to engage in an enterprise so desperate as the conquest of England; but he was an enthusiast, was at the head of the most powerful of the Scottish clans, the Campbells, and he hoped for a general rising throughout Scotland, to put down what was regarded as idolatry, and to strike a blow for liberty and the Kirk.

Having concerted his measures with Monmouth, he set sail from Holland, the 2d of May, 1685, in spite of all the efforts of the English minister, and landed at Kirkwall, one of the Orkney Islands. But his objects were well known, and the whole militia of the land were put under arms to resist him. He, however, collected a force of two thousand five hundred Highlanders, and marched towards Glasgow; but he was miserably betrayed and deserted. His forces were dispersed, and he himself was seized while attempting to escape in disguise, brought to Edinburgh, and beheaded. His followers were treated with great harshness, but the rebellion was completely suppressed.

[Sidenote: Monmouth Lands in England.]

Monmouth had agreed to sail in six days from the departure of Argyle; but he lingered at Brussels, loath to part from a beautiful mistress, the Lady Henrietta Wentworth. It was a month before he set sail from the Texel, with about eighty officers and one hundred and fifty followers—a small force to overturn the throne. But he relied on his popularity with the people, and on a false and exaggerated account of the unpopularity of James. He landed at Lyme, in Dorsetshire, about the middle of June, and forthwith issued a flaming proclamation, inviting all to join his standard, as a deliverer from the cruel despotism of a Catholic prince, whom he accused of every crime—of the burning of London, of the Popish Plot, of the condemnation of Russell and Sydney, of poisoning the late king, and of infringements on the constitution. In this declaration, falsehood was mingled with truth, but well adapted to inflame the passions of the people. He was supported by many who firmly believed that his mother, Lucy Walters, was the lawful wife of Charles II. He, of course, claimed the English throne, but professed to waive his rights until they should be settled by a parliament. The adventurer grossly misunderstood the temper of the people, and the extent to which his claims were recognized. He was unprovided with money, with generals, and with troops. He collected a few regiments from the common people, and advanced to Somersetshire. At Taunton his reception was flattering. All classes welcomed him as a deliverer from Heaven, and the poor rent the air with acclamations and shouts. His path was strewed with flowers, and the windows were crowded with ladies, who waved their handkerchiefs, and even waited upon him with a large deputation. Twenty-six lovely maidens presented the handsome son of Charles II. with standards and a Bible, which he kissed, and promised to defend.

[Sidenote: Battle of Sedgemoor.]

[Sidenote: Death of Monmouth.]

But all this enthusiasm was soon to end. The Duke of Albemarle—the son of General Monk, who restored Charles II.—advanced against him with the militia of the country, and Monmouth was supported only by the vulgar, the weak, and the credulous. Not a single nobleman joined his standard, and but few of the gentry. He made innumerable blunders. He lost time by vain attempts to drill the peasants and farmers who followed his fortunes. He slowly advanced to the west of England, where he hoped to be joined by the body of the people. But all men of station and influence stood aloof. Discouraged and dismayed, he reached Wells, and pushed forward to capture Bristol, then the second city in the kingdom. He was again disappointed. He was forced, from unexpected calamities, to abandon the enterprise. He then turned his eye to Wilts; but when he arrived at the borders of the county, he found that none of the bodies on which he had calculated had made their appearance. At Phillips Norton was a slight skirmish, which ended favorably to Monmouth, in which the young Duke of Grafton, natural son of Charles II., distinguished himself against his half brother; but Monmouth was discouraged, and fell back to Bridgewater. Meanwhile the royal army approached, and encamped at Sedgemoor. Here was fought a decisive battle, which was fatal to the rebels, "the last deserving the name of battle, that has been fought on English ground." Monmouth, when all was lost, fled from the field, and hastened to the British Channel, hoping to gain the Continent. He was found near the New Forest, hidden in a ditch, exhausted by hunger and fatigue. He was sent, under a strong guard, to Ringwood; and all that was left him was, to prepare to meet the death of a rebel. But he clung to life, so justly forfeited, with singular tenacity. He abjectly and meanly sued for pardon from that inexorable tyrant who never forgot or forgave the slightest resistance from a friend, when even that resistance was lawful, much less rebellion from a man he both hated and despised. He was transferred to London, lodged in the Tower, and executed in a bungling manner by "Jack Ketch"—the name given for several centuries to the public executioner. He was buried under St. Peter's Chapel, in the Tower, where reposed the headless bodies of so many noted saints and political martyrs—the great Somerset, and the still greater Northumberland, the two Earls of Essex, and the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and other great men who figured in the reigns of the Plantagenets and the Tudors.

Monmouth's rebellion was completely suppressed, and a most signal vengeance was inflicted on all who were concerned in it. No mercy was shown, on the part of government, to any party or person.

Of the agents of James in punishing all concerned in the rebellion, there were two, preeminently, whose names are consigned to an infamous immortality. The records of English history contain no two names so loathsome and hateful as Colonel Kirke and Judge Jeffreys.

The former was left, by Feversham, in command of the royal forces at Bridgewater, after the battle of Sedgemoor. He had already gained an unenviable notoriety, as governor of Tangier, where he displayed the worst vices of a tyrant and a sensualist; and his regiment had imitated him in his disgraceful brutality. But this leader and these troops were now let loose on the people of Somersetshire. One hundred captives were put to death during the week which succeeded the battle. His irregular butcheries, however, were not according to the taste of the king. A more systematic slaughter, under the sanctions of the law, was devised, and Jeffreys was sent into the Western Circuit, to try the numerous persons who were immured in the jails of the western counties.

Sir George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench, was not deficient in talent, but was constitutionally the victim of violent passions. He first attracted notice as an insolent barrister at the Old Bailey Court, who had a rare tact in cross-examining criminals and browbeating witnesses. According to Macaulay, "impudence and ferocity sat upon his brow, while all tenderness for the feelings of others, all self-respect, all sense of the becoming, were obliterated from his mind. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of his maledictions could hardly be rivalled in the Fish Market or Bear Garden. His yell of fury sounded, as one who often heard it said, like the thunder of the judgment day. He early became common serjeant, and then recorder of London. As soon as he obtained all the city could give, he made haste to sell his forehead of brass and his tongue of venom to the court." He was just the man whom Charles II. wanted as a tool. He was made chief justice of the highest court of criminal law in the realm, and discharged its duties entirely to the satisfaction of a king resolved on the subjection of the English nation. His violence, at all times, was frightful; but when he was drunk, it was terrific: and he was generally intoxicated. His first exploit was the judicial murder of Algernon Sydney. On the death of Charles, he obtained from James a peerage, and a seat in the Cabinet, a signal mark of royal approbation. In prospect of yet greater honors, he was ready to do whatever James required. James wished the most summary vengeance inflicted on the rebels, and Jeffreys, with his tiger ferocity, was ready to execute his will.

[Sidenote: Brutality of Jeffreys.]

Nothing is more memorable than those "bloody assizes" which he held in those counties through which Monmouth had passed. Nothing is remembered with more execration. Nothing ever equalled the brutal cruelty of the judge. His fury seemed to be directed with peculiar violence upon the Dissenters. "Show me," said he, "a Presbyterian, and I will show thee a lying knave. Presbyterianism has all manner of villany in it. There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians, but, one way or another, has had a hand in the rebellion." He sentenced nearly all who were accused, to be hanged or burned; and the excess of his barbarities called forth pity and indignation even from devoted loyalists. He boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. On a single circuit, he hanged three hundred and fifty; some of these were people of great worth, and many of them were innocent; while many whom he spared from an ignominious death, were sentenced to the most cruel punishments—to the lash of the pillory, to imprisonment in the foulest jails, to mutilation, to banishment, and to heavy fines.

King James watched the conduct of the inhuman Jeffreys with delight, and rewarded him with the Great Seal. The Old Bailey lawyer had now climbed to the greatest height to which a subject could aspire. He was Lord Chancellor of England—the confidential friend and agent of the king, and his unscrupulous instrument in imposing the yoke of bondage on an insulted nation.

[Sidenote: Persecution of the Dissenters.]

At this period, the condition of the Puritans was deplorable. At no previous time was persecution more inveterate, not even under the administration of Laud and Strafford. The persecution commenced soon after the restoration of Charles II., and increased in malignity until the elevation of Jeffreys to the chancellorship. The sufferings of no class of sectaries bore any proportion to theirs. They found it difficult to meet together for prayer or exhortation even in the smallest assemblies. Their ministers were introduced in disguise. Their houses were searched. They were fined, imprisoned, and banished. Among the ministers who were deprived of their livings, were Gilpin, Bates, Howe, Owen, Baxter, Calamy, Poole, Charnock, and Flavel, who still, after a lapse of one hundred and fifty years, enjoy a wide-spread reputation as standard writers on theological subjects. These great lights of the seventeenth century were doomed to privation and poverty, with thousands of their brethren, most of whom had been educated at the Universities, and were among the best men in the kingdom. All the Stuart kings hated the Dissenters, but none hated them more than Charles II. and James II. Under their sanction, complying parliaments passed repeated acts of injustice and cruelty. The laws which were enacted during Queen Elizabeth's reign were reenacted and enforced. The Act of Uniformity, in one day, ejected two thousand ministers from their parishes, because they refused to conform to the standard of the Established Church. The Conventicle Act ordained that if any person, above sixteen years of age, should be present at any religious meeting, in any other manner than allowed by the Church of England, he should suffer three months' imprisonment, or pay a fine of five pounds, that six months imprisonment and ten pounds fine should be inflicted as a penalty for the second offence, and banishment for the third. Married women taken at "conventicles," were sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. It is calculated that twenty-five thousand Dissenters were immured in gloomy prisons, and that four thousand of the sect of the Quakers died during their imprisonment in consequence of the filth and malaria of the jails, added to cruel treatment.

Among the illustrious men who suffered most unjustly, was Richard Baxter, the glory of the Presbyterian party. He was minister at Kidderminster, where he was content to labor in an humble sphere, having refused a bishopric. He had written one hundred and forty-five distinct treatises, in two hundred volumes, which were characterized for learning and talent. But neither his age, nor piety, nor commanding virtues could screen him from the cruelties of Jeffreys; and, in fifteen years, he was five times imprisoned. His sufferings drew tears from Sir Matthew Hale, with whose friendship he had been honored. "But he who had enjoyed the confidence of the best of judges, was cruelly insulted by the worst." When he wished to plead his cause, the drunken chief justice replied, "O Richard, Richard, thou art an old fellow and an old knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, every one of which is as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. I know that thou hast a mighty party, and I see a great many of the brotherhood in corners, and a doctor of divinity at your elbow; but, by the grace of God, I will crush you all."

Entirely a different man was John Bunyan, not so influential or learned, but equally worthy. He belonged to the sect of the Baptists, and stands at the head of all unlettered men of genius—the most successful writer of allegory that any age has seen. The Pilgrim's Progress is the most popular religious work ever published, full of genius and beauty, and a complete exhibition of the Calvinistic theology, and the experiences of the Christian life. This book shows the triumph of genius over learning, and the people's appreciation of exalted merit. Its author, an illiterate tinker, a travelling preacher, who spent the best part of his life between the houses of the poor and the county jails, the object of reproach and ignominy, now, however, takes a proud place, in the world's estimation, with the master minds of all nations—with Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. He has arisen above the prejudices of the great and fashionable; and the learned and aristocratic Southey has sought to be the biographer of his sorrows and the expounder of his visions. The proud bishops who disdained him, the haughty judges who condemned him, are now chiefly known as his persecutors, while he continues to be more honored and extolled with every succeeding generation.

[Sidenote: George Fox.]

[Sidenote: Persecution of the Quakers.]

Another illustrious victim of religious persecution in that age, illustrious in our eyes, but ignoble in the eyes of his contemporaries, was George Fox, the founder of the sect of the Quakers. He, like Bunyan, was of humble birth and imperfect education. Like him, he derived his knowledge from communion with his own soul—from inward experiences—from religious contemplations. He was a man of vigorous intellect, and capable of intense intellectual action. His first studies were the mysteries of theology—the great questions respecting duty and destiny; and these agitated his earnest mind almost to despair. In his anxiety, he sought consolation from the clergy, but they did not remove the burdens of his soul. Like an old Syriac monk, he sought the fields and unfrequented solitudes, where he gave loose to his imagination, and where celestial beings came to comfort him. He despised alike the reasonings of philosophers, the dogmas of divines, and the disputes of wrangling sectarians. He rose above all their prejudices, and sought light and truth from original sources. His peace was based on the conviction that God's Holy Spirit spoke directly to his soul; and this was above reason, above authority, a surer guide than any outward or written revelation. While this divine voice was above the Scriptures, it never conflicted with them, for they were revealed also to inspired men. Hence the Scriptures were not to be disdained, but were to be a guide, and literally to be obeyed. He would not swear, or fight, to save his life, nor to save a world, because he was directly commanded to abstain from swearing and fighting. He abhorred all principles of expediency, and would do right, or what the inspired voice within him assured him to be right, regardless of all consequences and all tribulations. He believed in the power of justice to protect itself, and reposed on the moral dignity of virtue. Love, to his mind, was an omnipotent weapon. He disdained force to accomplish important ends, and sought no control over government, except by intelligence. He believed that ideas and truth alone were at the basis of all great and permanent revolutions; these he was ever ready to declare; these were sure to produce, in the end, all needed reforms; these would be revealed to the earnest inquirer. He disliked all forms and pompous ceremonials in the worship of God, for they seemed useless and idolatrous. God was a Spirit, and to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. And set singing was to be dispensed with, like set forms of prayer, and only edifying as prompted by the Spirit. He even objected to splendid places for the worship of God, and dispensed with steeples, and bells, and organs. The sacraments, too, were needless, being mere symbols, or shadows of better things, not obligatory, but to be put on the same footing as those Jewish ceremonies which the Savior abrogated. The mind of Fox discarded all aids to devotion, all titles of honor, all distinctions which arose in pride and egotism. Hypocrisy he abhorred with his whole soul. It was the vice of the Pharisees, on whom Christ denounced the severest judgments. He, too, would denounce it with the most unsparing severity, whenever he fancied he detected it in rulers, or in venerated dignitaries of the church, or in the customs of conventional life. He sought simplicity and sincerity in all their forms. Truth alone should be his polar star, and this would be revealed by the "inner light," the peculiar genius of his whole system, which, if it led to many new views of duty and holiness, yet was the cause of many delusions, and the parent of conceit and spiritual pride—the grand peculiarity of fanaticism in all ages and countries. What so fruitful a source of error as the notion of special divine illumination?

No wonder that Fox and his followers were persecuted, for they set at nought the wisdom of the world and the customs and laws of ages. They shocked all conservative minds; all rulers and dignitaries; all men attached to systems; all syllogistic reasoners and dialectical theologians; all fashionable and worldly people; all sects and parties attached to creeds and forms. Neither their inoffensive lives, nor their doctrine of non-resistance, nor their elevated spiritualism could screen them from the wrath of judges, bishops, and legislators. They were imprisoned, fined, whipped, and lacerated without mercy. But they endured their afflictions with patience, and never lost their faith in truth, or their trust in God. Generally, they belonged to the humbler classes, although some men illustrious for birth and wealth joined their persecuted ranks, the most influential of whom was William Penn, who lived to be their intercessor and protector, and the glorious founder and legislator of one of the most flourishing and virtuous colonies that, in those days of tribulation, settled in the wilderness of North America; a colony of men who were true to their enlightened principles, and who were saved from the murderous tomahawk of the Indian, when all other settlements were scenes of cruelty and vengeance.

James had now suppressed rebellion; he had filled the Dissenters with fear; and he met with no resistance from his parliaments. The judges and the bishops were ready to cooeperate with his ministers in imposing a despotic yoke. All officers of the crown were dismissed the moment they dissented from his policy, or protested against his acts. Even judges were removed to make way for the most unscrupulous of tools.

[Sidenote: Despotic Power of James.]

His power, to all appearance, was consolidated; and he now began, without disguise, to advance the two great objects which were dearest to his heart—the restoration of the Catholic religion, and the imposition of a despotic yoke. He wished to be, like Louis XIV., a despotic and absolute prince; and, to secure this end, he was ready to violate the constitution of his country. The three inglorious years of his reign were a succession of encroachments and usurpations.

Indeed, among his first acts was the collection of the revenue without an act of parliament. To cover this stretch of arbitrary power, the court procured addresses from public bodies, in which the king was thanked for the royal care he extended to the customs and excise.

In order to protect the Catholics, who had been persecuted under the last reign, he was obliged to show regard to other persecuted bodies. So he issued a warrant, releasing from confinement all who were imprisoned for conscience' sake. Had he simply desired universal toleration, this act would merit our highest praises; but it was soon evident that he wished to elevate the Catholics at the expense of all the rest. James was a sincere but bigoted devotee to the Church of Rome, and all things were deemed lawful, if he could but advance the interests of a party, to which nearly the whole nation was bitterly opposed. Roman Catholics were proscribed by the laws. The Test Act excluded from civil and military office all who dissented from the Established Church. The laws were unjust, but still they were the laws which James had sworn to obey. Had he scrupulously observed them, and kept his faith, there can be no doubt that they would, in good time have been modified.

[Sidenote: Favor Extended to Catholics.]

But James would not wait for constitutional measures. He resolved to elevate Catholics to the highest offices of both the state and the church, and this in defiance of the laws and of the wishes of a great majority of the nation. He accordingly gave commissions to Catholics to serve as officers in the army; he made Catholics his confidential advisers; he introduced Jesuits into London; he received a Papal nuncio, and he offered the livings of the Church of England to needy Catholic adventurers. He sought, by threats and artifices, to secure the repeal of the Test Act, by which Catholics were excluded from office. Halifax, the ablest of his ministers, remonstrated, and he was turned out of his employments. But he formed the soul and the centre of an opposition, which finally drove the king from his throne. He united with Devonshire and other Whig nobles, and their influence was sufficient to defeat many cherished objects of the king. When opposition appeared, however, in parliament, it was prorogued or dissolved, and the old courses of the Stuart kings were resorted to.

[Sidenote: High Commission Court.]

Among his various acts of infringement, which gave great scandal, even in those degenerate times, was the abuse of the dispensing power—a prerogative he had inherited, but which had never been strictly defined. By means of this, he intended to admit Catholics to all offices in the realm. He began by granting to the whole Roman Catholic body a dispensation from all the statutes which imposed penalties and tests. A general indulgence was proclaimed, and the courts of law were compelled to acknowledge that the right of dispensing had not been infringed. Four of the judges refused to accede to what was plainly illegal. They were dismissed; for, at that time, even judges held office during the pleasure of the king, and not, as in these times, for life. They had not the independence which has ever been so requisite for the bench. Nor would all his counsellors and ministers accede to his design, and those who were refractory were turned out. As soon as a servile bench of judges recognized this outrage on the constitution, four Catholic noblemen were admitted as privy counsellors, and some clergymen, converted to Romanism, were permitted to hold their livings. James even bestowed the deanery of Christ Church, one of the highest dignities in the University of Oxford, on a notorious Catholic, and threatened to do at Cambridge what had been done at Oxford. The bishopric of Oxford was bestowed upon Parker, who was more Catholic than Protestant, and that of Chester was given to a sycophant of no character. James made no secret of his intentions to restore the Catholic religion, and systematically labored to destroy the Established Church. In order to effect this, he created a tribunal, which not materially differed from the celebrated High Commission Court of Elizabeth, and to break up which was one great object of the revolutionists who brought Charles I. to the block—the most odious court ever established by royal despotism in England. The members of this High Commission Court, which James instituted to try all ecclesiastical cases, were, with one or two exceptions, notoriously the most venal and tyrannical of all his agents—Jeffreys, the Chancellor; Crewe, Bishop of Durham; Sprat, Bishop of Rochester; the Earl of Rochester, Lord Treasurer; Sunderland, the Lord President; and Herbert, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. This court summoned Compton, the Bishop of London, to its tribunal, because he had not suspended Dr. Sharp, one of the clergy of London, when requested to do so by the king—a man who had committed no crime, but simply discharged his duty with fidelity. The bishop was suspended from his spiritual functions, and the charge of his diocese was committed to two of his judges. But this court, not content with depriving numerous clergymen of their spiritual functions, because they would not betray their own church, went so far as to sit in judgment on the two greatest corporations in the land,—the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge,—institutions which had ever befriended the Stuart kings in their crimes and misfortunes. James was infatuated enough to quarrel with these great bodies, because they would not approve of his measures to overturn the church with which they were connected, and which it was their duty and interest to uphold. The king had commanded Cambridge to bestow the degree of master of arts on a Benedictine monk, which was against the laws of the University and of parliament. The University refused to act against the law, and, in consequence, the vice-chancellor and the senate, which consisted of doctors and masters, were summoned to the Court of High Commission. The vice-chancellor, Pechell, was deprived of his office and emoluments, which were of the nature of freehold property. But this was not the worst act of the infatuated monarch. He insisted on imposing a Roman Catholic in the presidential chair of Magdalen College, one of the richest and most venerable of the University of Oxford, against even the friendly remonstrances of his best friends, even of his Catholic counsellors, and not only against the advice of his friends, but against all the laws of the land and of the rights of the University; for the proposed president, Farmer, was a Catholic, and was not a fellow of the college, and therefore especially disqualified. He was also a man of depraved morals. The fellows refused to elect Farmer, and chose John Hough instead. They were accordingly cited to the infamous court of which Jeffreys was the presiding and controlling genius. Their election was set aside, but Farmer was not confirmed, being too vile even for Jeffreys to sustain.

[Sidenote: Quarrel with the Universities.]

The king was exceedingly enraged at the opposition he received from the University. He resolved to visit it. On his arrival, he summoned the fellows of Magdalen College, and commanded them to obey him in the matter of a president. They still held out in opposition, and the king, mortified and enraged, quitted Oxford to resort to bolder measures. A special commission was instituted. Hough was forcibly ejected, and the Bishop of Oxford installed, against the voice of all the fellows but two. But the blinded king was not yet content. The fellows were expelled from the University by a royal edict, and the high commissioner pronounced the ejected fellows incapable of ever holding any church preferment.

But these severities were blunders, and produced a different effect from what was anticipated. The nation was indignant; the Universities lost all reverence; the clergy, in a body, were alienated; and the whole aristocracy were filled with defiance.

[Sidenote: Magdalen College.]

But the king, nevertheless, for a time, prevailed against all opposition; and, now that the fellows of Magdalen College were expelled, he turned it into a Popish seminary, admitted in one day twelve Roman Catholics as fellows, and appointed a Roman Catholic bishop to preside over them. This last insult was felt to the extremities of the kingdom; and bitter resentment took the place of former loyalty. James was now regarded, by his old friends even, as a tyrant, and as a man destined to destruction. And, indeed, he seemed like one completely infatuated, bent on the ruin of that church which even James I. and the other Stuart kings regarded as the surest and firmest pillar of the throne.

The bishops of the English Church had in times past, as well as the Universities, inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience; and oppression must be very grievous indeed which would induce them to oppose the royal will. But James had completely alienated them, and they, reluctantly, at last, threw themselves into the ranks of opposition. Had they remained true to him, he might still have held his sceptre; but it was impossible that any body of men could longer bear his injustice and tyranny.

[Sidenote: Prosecution of the Seven Bishops.]

From motives as impossible to fathom, as it is difficult to account for the actions of a madman, he ordered that the Declaration of Indulgence, an unconstitutional act, should be read publicly from all the pulpits in the kingdom. The London clergy, the most respectable and influential in the realm, made up their minds to disregard the order, and the bishops sustained them in their refusal. The archbishop and six bishops accordingly signed a petition to the king, which embodied the views of the London clergy. It was presented to the tyrant, by the prelates in a body, at his palace. He chose to consider it as a treasonable and libellous act—as nothing short of rebellion. The conduct of the prelates was generally and enthusiastically approved by the nation, and especially by the Dissenters, who now united with the members of the Established Church. James had recently courted the Dissenters, not wishing to oppose too many enemies at a time. He had conferred on them many indulgences, and had elevated some of them to high positions, with the hope that they would unite with him in breaking down the Establishment. But while some of the more fanatical were gained over, the great body were not so easily deceived. They knew well enough that, after crushing the Church of England, he would crush them. And they hated Catholicism and tyranny more than they did Episcopacy, in spite of their many persecutions. Some of the more eminent of the Dissenters took a noble stand, and their conduct was fully appreciated by the Established clergy. For the first time, since the accession of Elizabeth, the Dissenters and the Episcopalians treated each other with that courtesy and forbearance which enlightened charity demands. The fear of a common enemy united them. But time, also, had, at length, removed many of their mutual asperities.

Nothing could exceed the vexation of James when he found that not only the clergy had disobeyed his orders, but that the Seven Bishops were sustained by the nation. When this was discovered, he should have yielded, as Elizabeth would have done. But he was a Stuart. He was a bigoted, and self-willed, and infatuated monarch, marked out most clearly by Providence for destruction. He resolved to prosecute the bishops for a libel, and their trial and acquittal are among the most interesting events of an inglorious reign. They were tried at the Court of the King's Bench. The most eminent lawyers in the realm were employed as their counsel, and all the arts of tyranny were resorted to by the servile judges who tried them. But the jury rendered a verdict of acquittal, and never, within man's memory, were such shouts and tears of joy manifested by the people. Even the soldiers, whom the king had ordered to Hounslow Heath to overawe London, partook of the enthusiasm and triumph of the people. All classes were united in expressions of joy that the tyrant for once was baffled. The king was indeed signally defeated; but his defeat did not teach him wisdom. It only made him the more resolved to crush the liberties of the Church, and the liberties of the nation. But it also arrayed against him all classes and all parties of Protestants, who now began to form alliances, and devise measures to hurl him from his throne. Even the very courts which James had instituted to crush liberty proved refractory. Sprat, the servile Bishop of Rochester, sent him his resignation as one of the Lord Commissioners. The very meanness of his spirit and laxity of his principles made his defection peculiarly alarming, and the unblushing Jeffreys now began to tremble. The Court of High Commission shrunk from a conflict with the Established Church, especially when its odious character was loudly denounced by all classes in the kingdom—even by some of the agents of tyranny itself. The most unscrupulous slaves of power showed signs of uneasiness.

[Sidenote: Tyranny and Infatuation of James.]

But James resolved to persevere. The sanction of a parliament was necessary to his system, but the sanction of a free parliament it was impossible to obtain. He resolved to bring together, by corruption and intimidation, by violent exertions of prerogative, by fraudulent distortions of law, an assembly which might call itself a parliament, and might be willing to register any edict he proposed. And, accordingly, every placeman, from the highest to the lowest, was made to understand that he must support the throne or lose his office. He set himself vigorously to pack a parliament. A committee of seven privy counsellors sat at Whitehall for the purpose of regulating the municipal corporations. Father Petre was made a privy councillor. Committees, after the model of the one at Whitehall, were established in all parts of the realm. The lord lieutenants received written orders to go down to their respective counties, and superintend the work of corruption and fraud. But half of them refused to perform the ignominious work, and were immediately dismissed from their posts, which were posts of great honor and consideration. Among these were the great Earls of Oxford, Shrewsbury, Dorset, Pembroke, Rutland, Bridgewater, Thanet, Northampton, Abingdon, and Gainsborough, whose families were of high antiquity, wealth, and political influence. Nor could those nobles, who consented to conform to the wishes and orders of the king, make any progress in their counties, on account of the general opposition of the gentry. The county squires, as a body, stood out in fierce resistance. They refused to send up any men to parliament who would vote away the liberties and interests of the nation. The justices and deputy lieutenants declared that they would sustain, at all hazard, the Protestant religion. And these persons were not odious republicans, but zealous royalists, now firmly united and resolved to oppose unlawful acts, though commanded by the king.

James and his ministers next resolved to take away the power of the municipal corporations. The boroughs were required to surrender their charters. But a great majority firmly refused to part with their privileges. They were prosecuted and intimidated, but still they held out. Oxford, by a vote of eighty to two, voted to defend its franchises. Other towns did the same. Meanwhile, all the public departments were subjected to a strict inquisition, and all, who would not support the policy of the king, were turned out of office, and among them were some who had been heretofore the zealous servants of the crown.

[Sidenote: Organized Opposition.]

It was now full time for the organization of a powerful confederacy against the king. It was obvious, to men of all parties, and all ranks, that he meditated the complete subversion of English liberties. The fundamental laws of the kingdom had been systematically violated. The power of dispensing with acts of parliament had been strained, so that the king had usurped nearly all legislative authority. The courts of justice had been filled with unscrupulous judges, who were ready to obey all the king's injunctions, whether legal or illegal. Roman Catholics had been elevated to places of dignity in the Established Church. An infamous and tyrannical Court of High Commission had been created; persons, who could not legally set foot in England, had been placed at the head of colleges, and had taken their seat at the royal council-board. Lord lieutenants of counties, and other servants of the crown, had been dismissed for refusing to obey illegal commands; the franchises of almost every borough had been invaded; the courts of justice were venal and corrupt; an army of Irish Catholics, whom the nation abhorred, had been brought over to England; even the sacred right of petition was disregarded, and respectful petitioners were treated as criminals; and a free parliament was prevented from assembling.

Under such circumstances, and in view of these unquestioned facts, a great conspiracy was set on foot to dethrone the king and overturn the hateful dynasty.

Among the conspirators were some of the English nobles, the chief of whom was the Earl of Devonshire, and one of the leaders of the Whig party. Shrewsbury and Danby also joined them, the latter nobleman having been one of the most zealous advocates of the doctrine of passive obedience which many of the High Churchmen and Tories had defended in the reign of Charles II. It was under his administration, as prime minister, that a law had been proposed to parliament to exclude all persons from office who refused to take an oath, declaring that they thought resistance in all cases unlawful. Compton, the Bishop of London, who had been insolently treated by the court, joined the conspirators, whose designs were communicated to the Prince of Orange by Edward Russell and Henry Sydney, brothers of those two great political martyrs who had been executed in the last reign. The Prince of Orange, who had married a daughter of James II., agreed to invade England with a well-appointed army.

[Sidenote: William, Prince of Orange.]

William of Orange was doubtless the greatest statesman and warrior of his age, and one of the ablest men who ever wore a crown. He was at the head of the great Protestant party in Europe, and was the inveterate foe of Louis XIV. When a youth, his country had been invaded by Louis, and desolated and abandoned to pillage and cruelty. It was amid unexampled calamities, when the population were every where flying before triumphant armies, and the dikes of Holland had been opened for the ravages of the sea in order to avoid the more cruel ravages of war, that William was called to be at the head of affairs. He had scarcely emerged from boyhood; but his boyhood was passed in scenes of danger and trial, and his extraordinary talents were most precociously developed. His tastes were warlike; but he was a warrior who fought, not for the love of fighting, not for military glory, but to rescue his country from a degrading yoke, and to secure the liberties of Europe from the encroachments of a most ambitious monarch. Zeal for those liberties was the animating principle of his existence; and this led him to oppose so perseveringly the policy and enterprises of the French king, even to the disadvantage of his native country and the country which adopted him.

William was ambitious, and did not disdain the overtures which the discontented nobles of England made to him. Besides, his wife, the Princess Mary, was presumptive heir to the crown before the birth of the Prince of Wales. The eyes of the English nation had long been fixed upon him as their deliverer from the tyranny of James. He was a sincere Protestant, a bold and enterprising genius, and a consummate statesman. But he delayed taking any decisive measures until affairs were ripe for his projects—until the misgovernment and encroachments of James drove the nation to the borders of frenzy. He then obtained the consent of the States General for the meditated invasion of England, and made immense preparations, which, however, were carefully concealed from the spies and agents of James. They did not escape, however, the scrutinizing and jealous eye of Louis XIV., who remonstrated with James on his blindness and self-confidence, and offered to lend him assistance. But the infatuated monarch would not believe his danger, and rejected the proffered aid of Louis with a spirit which ill accorded with his former servility and dependence. Nor was he aroused to a sense of his danger until the Declaration of William appeared, setting forth the tyrannical acts of James, and supposed to be written by Bishop Burnet, the intimate friend of the Prince of Orange. Then he made haste to fit out a fleet; and thirty ships of the line were put under the command of Lord Dartmouth. An army of forty thousand men—the largest that any king of England had ever commanded—was also sent to the seaboard; a force more than sufficient to repel a Dutch invasion.

[Sidenote: Critical Condition of James.]

At the same time, the king made great concessions. He abolished the Court of High Commission. He restored the charter of the city of London. He permitted the Bishop of Winchester, as visitor of Magdalen College, to make any reforms he pleased. He would not, however, part with an iota of his dispensing power, and still hoped to rout William, and change the religion of his country. But all his concessions were too late. Whigs and Tories, Dissenters and Churchmen, were ready to welcome their Dutch deliverer. Nor had James any friends on whom he could rely. His prime minister, Sunderland, was in treaty with the conspirators, and waiting to betray him. Churchill, who held one of the highest commissions in the army, and who was under great obligations to the king, was ready to join the standard of William. Jeffreys, the lord chancellor, was indeed true in his allegiance, but his crimes were past all forgiveness by the nation; and even had he rebelled,—and he was base enough to do so,—his services would have been spurned by William and all his adherents.

[Sidenote: Invasion of England by William.]

On the 29th of October, 1688, the armament of William put to sea; but the ships had scarcely gained half the distance to England when they were dispersed and driven back to Holland by a violent tempest. The hopes of James revived; but they were soon dissipated. The fleet of William, on the 1st of November, again put to sea. It was composed of more than six hundred vessels, five hundred of which were men of war, and they were favored by auspicious gales. The same winds which favored the Dutch ships retarded the fleet of Dartmouth. On the 5th of November, the troops of William disembarked at Brixham, near Torbay in Devonshire, without opposition. On the 6th, he advanced to Newton Abbot, and, on the 9th, reached Exeter. He was cordially received, and magnificently entertained. He and his lieutenant-general, Marshal Schomberg, one of the greatest commanders in Europe, entered Exeter together in the grand military procession, which was like a Roman triumph. Near him also was Bentinck, his intimate friend and counsellor, the founder of a great ducal family. The procession marched to the splendid Cathedral, the Te Deum was sung, and Burnet preached a sermon.

Thus far all things had been favorable, and William was fairly established on English ground. Still his affairs were precarious, and James's condition not utterly hopeless or desperate. In spite of the unpopularity of the king, his numerous encroachments, and his disaffected army, the enterprise of William was hazardous. He was an invader, and the slightest repulse would have been dangerous to his interests. James was yet a king, and had the control of the army, the navy, and the treasury. He was a legitimate king, whose claims were undisputed. And he was the father of a son, and that son, notwithstanding the efforts of the Protestants to represent him as a false heir, was indeed the Prince of Wales. William had no claim to the throne so long as that prince was living. Nor had the nobles and gentry flocked to his standard as he had anticipated. It was nearly a week before a single person of rank or consequence joined him. Devonshire was in Derbyshire, and Churchill had still the confidence of his sovereign. The forces of the king were greatly superior to his own. And James had it in his power to make concessions which would have satisfied a great part of the nation.

But William had not miscalculated. He had profoundly studied the character of James, and the temper of the English. He knew that a fatal blindness and obstinacy had been sent upon him, and that he never would relinquish his darling scheme of changing the religion of the nation; and he knew that the nation would never acquiesce in that change; that Popery was hateful in their sight. He also trusted to his own good sword, and to fortunate circumstances.

[Sidenote: Flight of the King.]

And he was not long doomed to suspense, which is generally so difficult to bear. In a few days, Lord Cornbury, colonel of a regiment, and son of the Earl of Clarendon, and therefore a relative of James himself, deserted. Soon several disaffected nobles joined him in Exeter. Churchill soon followed, the first general officer that ever in England abandoned his colors. The Earl of Bath, who commanded at Plymouth, placed himself, in a few days, at the prince's disposal, with the fortress which he was intrusted to guard. His army swelled in numbers and importance. Devonshire raised the standard of rebellion at Chatsworth. London was in a ferment. James was with his army at Salisbury, but gave the order to retreat, not daring to face the greatest captain in Europe. Soon after, he sent away the queen and the Prince of Wales to France, and made preparations for his own ignominious flight—the very thing his enemies desired, for his life was in no danger, and his affairs even then might have been compromised, in spite of the rapid defection of his friends, and the advance of William, with daily augmenting forces, upon London. On the 11th of December, the king fled from London, with the intention of embarking at Sheerness, and was detained by the fishermen of the coast; but, by an order from the Lords, was set at liberty, and returned to the capital. William, nearly at the same time, reached London, and took up his quarters at St. James's Palace. It is needless to add, that the population of the city were friendly to his cause, and that he was now virtually the king of England. It is a satisfaction also to add, that the most infamous instrument of royal tyranny was seized in the act of flight, at Wapping, in the mean disguise of a sailor. He was discovered by the horrible fierceness of his countenance. Jeffreys was committed to the Tower; and the Tower screened him from a worse calamity, for the mob would have torn him in pieces. Catholic priests were also arrested, and their chapels and houses destroyed.

Meanwhile parliament assembled and deliberated on the state of affairs. Many propositions were made and rejected. The king fled a second time, and the throne was declared vacant. But the crown was not immediately offered to the Prince of Orange, although addresses were made to him as a national benefactor. Many were in favor of a regency. Another party was for placing the Princess Mary on the throne, and giving to William, during her life, the title of king, and such a share of the administration as she chose to give him.

But William had risked every thing for a throne, and nothing less than the crown of England would now content him. He gave the convention to understand that, much as he esteemed his wife, he would never accept a subordinate and precarious place in her government; "that he would not submit to be tied to the apron-strings of the best of wives;" that, unless he were offered the crown for life, he should return to Holland.

It was accordingly settled by parliament that he should hold the regal dignity conjointly with his wife, but that the whole power of the government should be placed in his hands. And the Princess Mary willingly acceded, being devoted to her husband, and unambitious for herself.

[Sidenote: Consummation of the Revolution.]

[Sidenote: Declaration of Rights.]

Thus was consummated the English Revolution of 1688, bloodless, but glorious. A tyrant was ejected from an absolute throne, and a noble and magnanimous prince reigned in his stead, after having taken an oath to observe the laws of the realm—an oath which he never violated. Of all revolutions, this proved the most beneficent. It closed the long struggle of one hundred and fifty years. Royal prerogative bowed before the will of the people, and true religious and civil liberty commenced its reign. The Prince of Orange was called to the throne by the voice of the nation, as set forth in an instrument known as the Declaration of Rights. This celebrated act of settlement recapitulated the crimes and errors of James, and merely asserted the ancient rights and liberties of England—that the dispensing power had no legal existence; that no money could be raised without grant of parliament; and that no army could be kept up in time of peace without its consent; and it also asserted the right of petition, the right of electors to choose their representatives freely, the right of parliament to freedom of debate, and the right of the nation to a pure and merciful administration of justice. No new rights were put forth, but simply the old ones were reestablished. William accepted the crown on the conditions proposed, and swore to rule by the laws. "Not a single flower of the crown," says Macaulay, "was touched. Not a single new right was given to the people. The Declaration of Rights, although it made nothing law which was not law before, contained the germ of the law which gave religious freedom to the Dissenters; of the law which secured the independence of judges; of the law which limited the duration of parliaments; of the law which placed the liberty of the press under the protection of juries; of the law which abolished the sacramental test; of the law which relieved the Roman Catholics from civil disabilities; of the law which reformed the representative system; of every good law which has been passed during one hundred and sixty years; of every good law which may hereafter, in the course of ages, be found necessary to promote the public weal, and satisfy the demands of public opinion."

* * * * *

REFERENCES.—Macaulay's, Hume's, Hallam's, and Lingard's Histories of England. Mackintosh's Causes of the Revolution of 1688. Fox's History of the Reign of James—a beautiful fragment. Burnet's History of his Own Times. Neal's History of the Puritans. Life and Times of Richard Baxter. Southey's Life of Bunyan. Memoir of George Fox, by Marsh. Life of William Penn. Chapters on religion, science, and the condition of the people, in the Pictorial History of England. Russell's Modern Europe. Woolrych's Life of Judge Jeffreys.



CHAPTER XVI.

LOUIS XIV.

[Sidenote: Louis XIV.]

We turn now from English affairs to contemplate the reign of Louis XIV.—a man who filled a very large space in the history of Europe during the seventeenth century. Indeed, his reign forms an epoch of itself, not so much from any impulse he gave to liberty or civilization, but because, for more than half a century, he was the central mover of European politics. His reign commemorates the triumph in France, of despotic principles, the complete suppression of popular interests, and almost the absorption of national interests in his own personal aggrandizement. It commemorates the ascendency of fashion, and the great refinement of material life. The camp and the court of Louis XIV. ingulphed all that is interesting in the history of France during the greater part of the seventeenth century. He reigned seventy-two years, and, in his various wars, a million of men are supposed to have fallen victims to his vain-glorious ambition. His palaces consumed the treasures which his wars spared. He was viewed as a sun of glory and power, in the light of which all other lights were dim. Philosophers, poets, prelates, generals, and statesmen, during his reign, were regarded only as his satellites. He was the central orb around which every other light revolved, and to contribute to his glory all were supposed to be born. He was, most emphatically, the state. He was France. A man, therefore, who, in the eye of contemporaries, was so grand, so rich, so powerful, and so absolute, claims a special notice. It is the province of history to record great influences, whether they come from the people, from great popular ideas, from literature and science, or from a single man. The lives of individuals are comparatively insignificant in the history of the United States; but the lives of such men as Caesar, Cromwell, and Napoleon, furnish very great subjects for the pen of the philosophical historian, since great controlling influences emanated from them, rather than from the people whom they ruled.

[Sidenote: His Power and Resources.]

Louis XIV. was not a great general, like Henry IV., nor a great statesman, like William III., nor a philosopher, like Frederic the Great, nor a universal genius, like Napoleon; but his reign filled the eyes of contemporaries, and circumstances combined to make him the absolute master of a great empire. Moreover, he had sufficient talent and ambition to make use of fortunate opportunities, and of the resources of his kingdom, for his own aggrandizement. But France, nevertheless, was sacrificed. The French Revolution was as much the effect of his vanity and egotism, as his own power was the fruit of the policy of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. By their labors in the cause of absolutism, he came in possession of armies and treasures. But armies and treasures were expended in objects of vain ambition, for the gratification of selfish pleasures, for expensive pageants, and for gorgeous palaces. These finally embarrassed the nation, and ground it down to the earth by the load of taxation, and maddened it by the prospect of ruin, by the poverty and degradation of the people, and, at the same time, by the extravagance and insolence of an overbearing aristocracy. The aristocracy formed the glory and pride of the throne and both nobles and the throne fell, and great was the fall thereof.

Our notice of Louis XIV. begins, not with his birth, but at the time when he resolved to be his own prime minister, on the death of Cardinal Mazarin, (1661.)

Louis XIV. was then twenty-three years of age—frank, beautiful, imperious, and ambitious. His education had been neglected, but his pride and selfishness had been stimulated. During his minority, he had been straitened for money by the avaricious cardinal; but avaricious for his youthful master, since, at his death, besides his private fortune, which amounted to two hundred millions of livres, he left fifteen millions of livres, not specified in his will, which, of course, the king seized, and thus became the richest monarch of Europe. He was married, shortly before the death of Mazarin, to the Infanta Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV., King of Spain. But, long before his marriage, he had become attached to Mary de Mancini, niece of Mazarin, who returned his love with passionate ardor. She afterwards married Prince Colonna, a Roman noble, and lived a most abandoned life.

The enormous wealth left by Cardinal Mazarin was, doubtless, one motive which induced Louis XIV., though only a young man of twenty-three, to be his own prime minister. Henceforth, to his death, all his ministers made their regular reports to him, and none were permitted to go beyond the limits which he prescribed to them.

He accepted, at first, the ministers whom the dying cardinal had recommended. The most prominent of these were Le Tellier, De Lionne, and Fouquet. The last was intrusted with the public chest, who found the means to supply the dissipated young monarch with all the money he desired for the indulgence of his expensive tastes and ruinous pleasures.

[Sidenote: Habits and Pleasures of Louis.]

The thoughts and time of the king, from the death of Mazarin, for six or seven years, were chiefly occupied with his pleasures. It was then that the court of France was so debauched, splendid, and far-famed. It was during this time that the king was ruled by La Valliere, one of the most noted of all his favorites, a woman of considerable beauty and taste, and not so unprincipled as royal favorites generally have been. She was created a duchess, and her children were legitimatized, and also became dukes and princes. Of these the king was very fond, and his love for them survived the love for their unfortunate mother, who, though beautiful and affectionate, was not sufficiently intellectual to retain the affections with which she inspired the most selfish monarch of his age. She was supplanted in the king's affections by Madame de Montespan, an imperious beauty, whose extravagances and follies shocked and astonished even the most licentious court in Europe; and La Valliere, broken-hearted, disconsolate, and mortified, sought the shelter of a Carmelite convent, in which she dragged out thirty-six melancholy and dreary years, amid the most rigorous severities of self-inflicted penance, in the anxious hope of that heavenly mansion where her sins would be no longer remembered, and where the weary would be at rest.

It was during these years of extravagance and pleasure that Versailles attracted the admiring gaze of Christendom, the most gorgeous palace which the world has seen since the fall of Babylon. Amid its gardens and groves, its parks and marble halls, did the modern Nebuchadnezzar revel in a pomp and grandeur unparalleled in the history of Europe, surrounded by eminent prelates, poets, philosophers, and statesmen, and all that rank and beauty had ennobled throughout his vast dominions. Intoxicated by their united flatteries, by all the incense which sycophancy, carried to a science, could burn before him, he almost fancied himself a deity, and gave no bounds to his self-indulgence, his vanity, and his pride. Every thing was subordinate to his pleasure and his egotism—an egotism alike regardless of the tears of discarded favorites, and the groans of his overburdened subjects.

[Sidenote: His Military Ambition.]

But Louis, at last, palled with pleasure, was aroused from the festivities of Versailles by dreams of military ambition. He knew nothing of war, of its dangers, its reverses, or of its ruinous expenses; but he fancied it would be a beautiful sport for a wealthy and absolute monarch to engage in the costly game. He cast his eyes on Holland, a state extremely weak in land forces, and resolved to add it to the great kingdom over which he ruled.

The only power capable of rendering effectual assistance to Holland, when menaced by Louis XIV., was England; but England was ruled by Charles II., and all he cared for were his pleasures and independence from parliamentary control. The French king easily induced him to break his alliance with the Dutch by a timely bribe, while, at the same time, he insured the neutrality of Spain, by inflaming the hereditary prejudices of the Spanish court against the Low Countries.

War, therefore, without even a decent pretence, and without provocation, was declared against Holland, with a view of annexing the Low Countries to France.

Before the Dutch were able to prepare for resistance, Louis XIV. appeared on the banks of the Rhine with an army of one hundred and twenty thousand, marshalled by such able generals as Luxembourg, Conde, and Turenne. The king commanded in person, and with all the pomp of an ancient Persian monarch, surrounded with women and nobles. Without any adequate force to resist him, his march could not but be triumphant. He crossed the Rhine,—an exploit much celebrated, by his flatterers, though nothing at all extraordinary,—and, in the course of a few weeks, nearly all the United Provinces had surrendered to the royal victor. The reduction of Holland and Zealand alone was necessary to crown his enterprise with complete success. But he wasted time in vain parade at Utrecht, where he held his court, and where his splendid army revelled in pleasure and pomp. Amsterdam alone, amid the general despondency and consternation which the French inundation produced, was true to herself, and to the liberties of Holland; and this was chiefly by means of the gallant efforts of the Prince of Orange.