CHAPTER XVIII

THE PROBLEMS OF IRELAND

If the conditions of the new settlement in Scotland were a problem hard of solution to Hyde, the entanglement was even greater in the case of Ireland. He was ignorant of the real characteristics of Scotland, and alienated from the country by his antipathy to Presbyterianism. But Ireland was a hot-bed of faction, the intricacies of which baffled his discernment. There was no party there which was not honeycombed with treachery, and none to which there was not imputed, on fair grounds, actions of flagrant cruelty and injustice to one another, and of disloyalty to the Crown for whose favour they were now keen competitors. No wonder that the Chancellor, in his own words, "made it his humble suit to the King, that no part of it might ever be referred to him;" and that even the Duke of Ormonde, whose own interests were most deeply concerned of all in the future settlement there, "could not see any light in so much darkness that might lead him to any beginning." In the whole of Ireland it was difficult to find any one upon whose wholehearted loyalty the Crown could rely. The best were those who could allege some fancied injury from the late authority, which might atone for their own repeated acts of opposition to the Royalist interests. The Presidents of the two provinces of Munster and Connaught were Lord Broghill—who was created Earl of Orrery in 1660—and Sir Charles Coote. Both had been in close confederacy with Henry Cromwell, the son of the Protector, and both had "depended upon him and courted his protection by their not loving one another, and being of several complexions and constitutions, and both of a long aversion to the King by multiplications of guilt." Under the short administration of Ludlow, [Footnote: Ludlow, full of hope that true Republicanism was now in sight, after Cromwell's death, had been sent over to Ireland as Commander- in-Chief, in July, 1659, and remained there till October, during which time he had established a regime that satisfied him, but that quickly fell to pieces after his departure.

Edmund Ludlow's long life, from 1617 to 1692, saw many changes, in which he was himself no inconspicuous actor, and for some part of which his Memoirs add considerably to our knowledge. He belonged to a family of some importance, although its political sympathies alienated it from its own class. His father, Sir Henry Ludlow, was a member of the Long Parliament, and was referred to in one of the King's Declarations drawn by Hyde (May 26, 1642) as having said in Parliament that the King was not fit to reign; and he was one of those whose impeachment the King desired (Rebellion, Bk. v. 280, 441). By that father's persuasion, Edmund Ludlow joined the Parliamentary army when war broke out, and he proved himself a zealous and doughty fighter. But he was stubborn and quarrelsome, and fanatically attached to an abstract scheme of Republicanism which was the abiding object of all his life. To him the question involved was, "whether the King should govern as a god by his will, and the nation be governed by force like beasts; or whether the people should be governed by laws made by themselves, and under a government derived from their own consent." It could hardly be possible to express the dispute in terms more distant from the truth. But with all the fanaticism of a narrow and pedantic nature he pursued this will-o'-the- wisp to the end. He afterwards, in 1646, entered Parliament as member for the village of Hindon, from which Hyde took his first title, of Baron Hyde of Hindon (then returning two members), and attached himself to the party led by Henry Marten. He was bitterly opposed to all compromise, and was one of the most conspicuous of the regicides. He could not see how any view but one was possible to any man who did not desire to be a slave; and yet, in his fanciful scheme of liberty, he did not hesitate to apply coercive measures to Parliament. The nation was to be governed by its own consent; but its consent was to be interpreted by the will of his own little clique. When Cromwell assumed more than monarchical power, he fiercely opposed him, and hailed his death as offering new hopes for Republicanism. He had long been employed in Ireland, and on this account assumed its administration in 1659. When the Restoration took place, he fled to Switzerland: and so active had he been, that his machinations were dreaded for many years. In 1689 he returned for a time; but the memory of his misdeeds as a regicide made even the Parliament under William III. unwilling to receive him, and he was obliged again to withdraw.

He was a zealous, narrow, pedantic, but honest partisan, whose enthusiastic belief in his own abstract ideas seemed to him to justify the most ruthless cruelty in Ireland.] which followed the fall of Richard Cromwell and his brother Henry, who had been Lieutenant of Ireland, they had managed to hold their places and authority, and when Ludlow's power crumbled it was a race between them who might first proffer their obedience to the King, and enhance the value of that obedience by most effective promises. They watched assiduously the action of Monk. Each was anxious that his offers might be concealed from his rival. Each managed to secure some informal recognition of his offers of loyalty, and presumed himself authorized to make proposals to others on the King's behalf. They both professed a single-hearted endeavour to settle the King's authority, and each managed by underhand influence, and by lavish promises, to secure some powerful support. Lord Broghill was the abler of the two, and by his profuse devotion "quickly got himself believed." The Chancellor's scorn of such a man is best expressed in his own words. Lord Broghill, he says—

"Having free access to the King, by mingling apologies for what he had done with promises of what he would do, and utterly renouncing all those principles as to the Church or State (as he might with a good conscience do) which made men unfit for trust, made himself so acceptable to his Majesty that he heard him willingly, because he made all things easy to be done and compassed; and gave such assurances to the bedchamber men, to help them to good fortunes in Ireland, which they had reason to despair of in England, that he wanted not their testimony upon all occasions, nor their defence and vindication when anything was reflected upon to his disadvantage or reproach."

It was the familiar picture of which the Chancellor was already tired, of a King whose experience had taught him that Government was a thing of subterfuge, and of balancing between professed adherents whose loyalty was to be valued according to the estimate which trickery could place upon it. These new adherents vied with one another in promoting measures for restoring the bishops, and the laws of the Episcopalian Church, of which they had lately been bitter opponents. No wonder that the Chancellor has more respect for such a man as Sir John Clotworthy, who did not dissemble his dislike of bishops and their rule, even while he laboured honestly to restore the prerogatives of the Crown.

The central difficulty in this seething mass of jealousy, corruption, and self-seeking was the question of land settlement. A reckless system of forfeitures and new grants, carried out under the successive supremacies of different interests, had left an inheritance of hopeless confusion, destined to be the lasting curse of Ireland. Twenty years of the bitterness of civil war had ended in a rough and ready settlement under the rule of Cromwell, where the spoils had been ruthlessly handed over to the victors. The Irish had been evicted with a cruelty that had no thought of justice, and those who had not been sent abroad to seek death or a precarious livelihood in the ranks of foreign armies, had been driven into the barren tracts of Connaught, any of them found outside those limits being hunted down like wild beasts. To have shown any sympathy with the Royalist cause, or even to have resisted the fierce rule of the Cromwellian soldiery, was enough, when added to their adherence to a tabooed religion, to mark them as beyond the pale of humanity. It was counted even as a mercy that they were allowed to earn a scanty subsistence in the most barren corner of the island. Strongly as he disliked their deep-rooted attachment to the Roman Catholics' religion, the Chancellor never deemed it an excuse for ruthless cruelty, and, in spite of their religion, their occasional display of enthusiastic loyalty to the Crown won for them something of his sympathy. But he is compelled to admit the appearance of prosperity which was reared upon the military oppression—an oppression which was rendered the more heinous in his sight because it involved also the absolute forfeiture of their vast estates in the case of Ormonde and other loyalists, against whom no suspicion of Roman Catholic leanings could be alleged. Its very ruthlessness gave it an appearance of outward settlement and peace.

"It cannot be imagined," says Clarendon, "in how easy a method, and with what peaceable formality this whole great kingdom was taken from the just lords and proprietors, and divided and given amongst those who had no other right to it, but that they had power to keep it; no man having so great shares as they who had been instruments to murder the King, and were not likely willingly to part with it to his successor." "Ireland," he tells us, "was the great capital, out of which all debts were paid, all services rewarded, and all acts of bounty performed. And, what is more wonder, all this was done and settled within little more than two years, to that degree of perfection that there were many buildings raised for beauty, as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees and fences and enclosures throughout the kingdom, as in a kingdom at peace within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the validity of titles. And yet in all this quiet there were very few persons pleased or contented."

It was the sort of settlement for which history has exacted, as it always exacts in such cases, a rigid and long-drawn-out retribution.

But however specious might be the appearance of prosperity under the recent settlement, it was beyond all question that it must be disturbed. A Royalist Restoration could not leave in possession those whose property was held as a reward for fighting against the Royalist cause. Certain claims were of necessity revived, and no prescription could prevail against them. The Church lands must be resumed, and the Episcopal domains must be wrested from those who had gained them as the avowed enemies of the Church. About these there could be no question. Crown lands also must revert to the Crown, and had this source of revenue been duly husbanded, it might have supplied a means of dealing with many claims that proved a source of endless and insoluble difficulty. There were certain outstanding Royalists, like Ormonde, whose loyalty was so indisputable, and whose claims were so easy of proof, that restitution in their case was simple, and any resistance to it would have amounted to a confession of rebellion. Lord Inchiquin [Footnote: Murrough O'Brien, Earl of Inchiquin, had been much concerned in the curbing of the Irish Rebellion, in which he acted as the ruthless enemy of the Roman Catholics, whose religion he detested, and upon whom he inflicted the most merciless vengeance. His ardent Protestantism brought him to an understanding with the Parliament, and he acted sometimes as their agent rather than that of the King. But, in 1654, he had become as ardent a Roman Catholic, and managed to recover favour at Court, and was restored to his property after the Restoration. He died in some obscurity in 1674.] was able to bring himself within the same category on somewhat more doubtful grounds. Fortunately large tracts of domain had been retained by Cromwell, nominally as the property of the State, and in reality to secure his own power; and out of these many of the most indubitable claims could be met. But the harder questions were those involving claims which were more doubtful, between claimants whose rivalry rested upon more assailable grounds. Were all genuine Royalists to have a right to claim what was once their property? If forfeitures were to be redressed, were those who were forced to sell at nominal prices, or under the pressure of innumerable fines, to have no redress? Which Royalist support was the more valuable, that which had been steadfast from the first, and had been crushed by Cromwell's soldiers, or that which had atoned for rebellion in the past by opportune and efficacious support during the last few months? Much of the land had been granted to the "Adventurers," as those were called who had advanced money on the faith of Parliamentary pledges to meet the expenses of crushing the Irish Rebellion. The Adventurers could allege the security of an Act of Parliament, to which the assent of the King had, however unwillingly, been given. But it was well known that the most of the money so raised had been employed, not to fight Irish rebels, but to crush English Royalists; and those Adventurers alone had been able to retain their claims who had been found ready to supplement their original contributions by payments avowedly made to the war chest of the Parliament, when civil war in England engaged all their attention. How were such grants to be dealt with, and how was a due balance to be kept between condoning rebellion and undermining the faith built upon an Act of Parliament? Others held their lands in lieu of military pay long in arrear; and the fact that they had not turned their arms against those who were contriving the Restoration, might seem to give them a claim to generous treatment. The Irish Catholics could adduce many instances of their own conspicuous loyalty in the past, and it was difficult to furnish convincing proof of what might fairly be suspected, that such loyalty was prompted more by bitter hatred of the Presbyterians and Roundheads than by fervent devotion to their King.

The Chancellor might well be repelled from participation in this embroiled struggle, where it was hard to find any satisfactory clue which might lead to settlement. To satisfy all was impossible; and it was almost as difficult to suggest any principle or set of principles which could be uniformly applied. Every case varied; every claim was supported or opposed by evidence, equally abundant, and equally suspect.

At first the Adventurers and the representatives of Cromwell's troopers were most successful in establishing their claims before the commissioners who were sent to inquire. One settlement after another was attempted. The Roman Catholic Irish were able, a little later, to win some sympathy from Charles, which the Chancellor seems to have partly shared. Another set of commissioners reopened the inquiry, and suggested another settlement, in which each faction was obliged to abate something of their claims. The Irish claim to loyalty was refuted by proof of their readiness, in their direst straits, to invite foreign aid, and to offer to repay it by the betrayal of the Royalist cause, and by breaking their allegiance to the King. One influence, and one influence alone, contributed to a solution, and that was the earnest desire of all, even at the cost of some diminution of their own claims, to escape from the palsying influence of uncertainty and doubt. The Chancellor accepted the different reports of the commissioners, and the successive projects of settlement, with a certain despair of any scheme of abstract justice, with little hope of even a peaceable solution, and with a not unnatural desire to rid himself of the whole unsavoury embroglio, and to detach himself from the angry and envenomed faction fight in Ireland. The Irish settlement was no part of Clarendon's work, and enters only indirectly into his life. Even more strongly than in the case of Scotland he abandoned any thought of an incorporating Union, and was glad to see the revival of an Irish Parliament. The task he had in hand was too hard to allow him willingly to add to it the baffling problem of restoring peace to Ireland.

But he could find little satisfaction in contemplating the work of those to whom the task was entrusted. The appointment of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland had been only one of many gratifications which had been bestowed upon Monk, when he was created Duke of Albemarle, in recognition of the substantial benefits to the King which had resulted, when the long-drawn disguises of his tortuous and self-interested policy had gradually unmasked themselves. As general over the Irish army under the Cromwellian administration, he had contrived to secure an estate in Ireland worth some four thousand a year, and it was of the first importance to him to retain a hold over any land-settlement in Ireland.

But Albemarle looked upon his post as Lord-Lieutenant only as an enhancement of his own importance in the State, and as a means of assuring that his own material interests in Ireland should be safeguarded. He had no thought of taking upon himself the burden of Irish administration in person, or of absenting himself from the English Court. It was necessary, therefore, to find some one also who, as deputy, would undertake the arduous task. "There were some few," says Hyde, "fit for the employment who were not willing to undertake it; and many who were willing to undertake it who were not fit." The powers of a deputy were liable to be eclipsed, if Albemarle ever thought fit to go to Ireland; and such a post was one which those of the highest rank scarcely cared to fill. Under these circumstances the choice fell upon Lord Robartes, who had rendered some good service in Cornwall, and who had the reputation of more than respectable abilities, of careful and plodding industry, and of an integrity which was at least above the moderate average standard of Charles's Court. But he had defects of character which were apparent to a judge so acute as the Chancellor, and these soon made themselves plain. Clarendon gives expression to them with all the verve and dexterity of analysis of which he was a past master. "Robartes," he tells us, "was a sullen, morose man, intolerably proud, and had some humours as inconvenient as small vices, which made him hard to live with." That he was esteemed to have Presbyterian leanings did not make him the more acceptable to the King, or to the Chancellor himself; but such suspicions he was able to allay. But a long habit of associating with men inferior to himself had crippled his intelligence, and made him suspicious and jealous of his position. When he found himself deputy to Monk, he recalled, with a grudge, the fact that, coming from the same south-western corner of England, he was of superior birth, and he forgot the services which in Monk's case more than squared the balance. In his dealings with those who were to be associated with him in Irish administration, he showed the jealousy of a small-minded man, and ensconced himself behind the bulwark of reticence and inaccessibility. There could hardly have been a more unfit instrument for that dexterous manipulation which the tangled knot of Irish politics required than this narrow, pedantic, tactless peer. The Chancellor soon saw that endless petty bickering would be the result of continuing him in the post. His petty pride was offended by having to serve as deputy to Albemarle. He was ingenious in detecting legal difficulties, and wearied the patience of the Attorney-General by pointless criticisms even on the wording of his patent of appointment. He treated those Irishmen who were obliged to deal with him with a haughty superciliousness which exasperated them to fury. The King soon found that a morose gravity and a punctilious pride were the worst ingredients for an Irish governor. The only question was how to get rid of one who was too respectable to be contumeliously cast aside, but too much of a pedant to be entrusted with a delicate administrative operation. "They who conversed with him knew him to have many humours which were very intolerable; they who were but little acquainted with him took him to be a man of much knowledge, and called his morosity gravity." The Chancellor and Lord Southampton were commissioned by the King to confer about his transfer to another office, where his peculiarities might be less inconvenient. They were to arrange that he should be Privy Seal, and the precedence which that post would give him was to be a solace to his susceptible pride. The transaction had to be managed dexterously. They found him in a suspicious mood, but fortunately were able to persuade him that the new appointment would enhance his dignity. He accepted the new post, and although his touchiness and pedantry as to trifles were still a source of trouble, they could lead to no such difficulty in the comparative obscurity of Privy Seal, as they would have involved in Ireland. The transfer was carried out with satisfaction to all concerned; and the fact is no small testimonial to the tact of the Chancellor and Lord Southampton.

One source of friction was gone in getting rid of Lord Robartes. But the tangled knot still remained, and after the restoration of the Crown and Church domains, and the reinstatement of such notable Royalists as Ormonde and Inchiquin, the greatest part of the problem still remained unsettled. The fiercest fight was that between claimants of different race and of different religion, all of whom inherited a tradition of bitter and irreconcilable hatred. On the one hand there were the native Irish, recommended to the King by that community, at least, in religious feeling, which his residence abroad had instilled into Charles, although there is no real evidence of the oft-repeated story of his having already become a Roman Catholic. Linked to the Royalist cause by a common detestation of Presbyterianism, the Roundheads, and the Cromwellian soldiery, and attracting not unnatural sympathy both from Charles and from Hyde by the oppressive cruelties which they had suffered, and by glaring instances of injustice perpetrated upon them, they could fairly assert their early loyalty, and could allege in excuse for subsequent defections the supreme law of self-preservation. On the other hand, there were the soldiers and Adventurers, fortified by the strong claim of possession; able to cover their former rebellion by the indubitable benefit which they conferred in abstaining from armed resistance to rebellion against Parliamentary rule, and behind whose new-found loyalty there always lurked a veiled threat of a fresh resort to arms which might prove dangerous. The commissioners sent to compose matters found themselves suspected by all whose titles were insecure, and actively opposed by those whom they dispossessed. They were swayed by opposite factions, now to accept doubtful claims, and now to confirm existing settlements upon insufficient evidence of right. The examination of all claims was transferred to England; and Charles for a time seems to have interested himself deeply, and with edifying industry, in attempting to find a solution, and to have shown praiseworthy care in hearing and investigating all complaints. During these hearings the Chancellor must certainly have been an active and interested member of the council, and could not divest himself, much as he may have desired to do so, of participation in the decisions. Necessity drove the King and the Chancellor himself into a course which was often repugnant to them. In grave and well-considered words Hyde lays before us the paramount considerations of supreme expediency which forced the hands both of his master and of himself, and compelled them to accept a settlement which did nothing to redress Irish wrongs, and left, as the baneful alternative to a renewal of civil war, a legacy of bitter racial antagonism.

"It cannot be denied," he writes, "that if the King could have thought it safe and seasonable to have reviewed all that had been done, and taken those advantages upon former miscarriages and misapplications, as according to the strictness of that very law, he might have done, the whole foundation, upon which all the hopes rested of preserving that kingdom within the obedience to the Crown of England must have been shaken and even dissolved, with no small influence and impression upon the peace and quiet of England, itself. For the memory of the beginning of the rebellion in Ireland (how many other rebellions soever had followed as bad, or worse, in respect of the consequences that attended them) was as fresh and as odious to the whole people of England, as it had been in the first year. And though no man durst avow so unchristian a wish as an extirpation of them (which they would have been very well contented with) yet no man dissembled his opinion that it was the only security the English could have in that kingdom, that the Irish should be kept so low, that they should have no power to hurt them." [Footnote: Life, ii. 44.]

These words expressing the deliberate opinion of Hyde, upon a fateful crisis in history, are pregnant with tragedy. The memory of a great wrong never can be obliterated; but dire necessity may leave no alternative but to shape political action on the basis of that legacy from civil strife. England and Scotland had redeemed their rebellion.

"But," thus writes Hyde, "the miserable Irish alone had no part in contributing to his Majesty's happiness; nor had God suffered them to be the least instruments in bringing his good pleasure to pass, or to give any testimony of their repentance for the wickedness they had wrought or of their resolution to be better subjects for the future; so that they seemed as a people left out by Providence, and exempted from any benefit from that blessed conjunction in his Majesty's restitution. And this disadvantage was improved towards them by their frequent manifestation of an inveterate animosity against the English nation and the English Government, which again was returned to them in an irreconcilable jealousy of all the English towards them." [Footnote: Life, ii. 47.]

Some settlement must be reached—that it should be good or bad was of less importance than that it should be fixed. Commissioners were set to work. But either they were too closely interested themselves in the decisions to be reached, or, having no personal interest, they were slack in their attendance. Those on the spot were too apt to be partial; others were sent from England, and their methods were rough and ready. The available land was squandered in lavish grants to courtiers, and amongst others Lady Castlemaine managed to secure an ample share. It was in vain that the Chancellor declined to pass such grants; the recipients found means to get them passed by the Courts in Ireland.

The best that could be made of a bad business was to hurry on some decision, before the means of even partially satisfying the most urgent claims were dissipated by the King's reckless prodigality.

Meanwhile the administration of Ireland, after the transference of Lord Robartes, was entrusted to three Lords Justices—Sir Maurice Eustace, the Irish Chancellor; Lord Broghill (created Lord Orrery); and Sir Charles Coote, created Earl of Montrath. The first was a worn-out old man. The second was a dexterous manager, who knew how to captivate friends and how to outwit enemies; the third was "proud, dull, and very avaricious." Both Orrery and Montrath had their own ends to serve, and were bitter enemies; and when Montrath died, as Hyde expresses it, "they who took the most dispassioned survey of all that had been done, and of what remained to be done, did conclude that nothing could reasonably produce a settlement, but the deputing one single person to exercise that government." The Duke of Albemarle had now reaped all the advantage that he could hope for from his post of titular Lord-Lieutenant. His own estate had been secured, and as an Irish landlord he desired a firm administration. He was not prepared to undertake the task himself, and made his suit to the King that the Duke of Ormonde should be sent in his place. To the mind of the King, this seemed to offer the best prospect of a settlement, and he and Albemarle together persuaded Ormonde to accept the charge before the Chancellor was consulted. To Hyde it seemed a plan fraught with dangers and difficulties on every side. In such a case, he was, as he was himself aware, too much inclined to express his views with somewhat uncourtly directness. When the King asked for his opinion of Ormonde's appointment, he could find no more diplomatic answer than that "the King would do very ill in sending him, and the Duke would do much worse if he desired to go." Charles took the easiest course for one who wishes to push aside unpalatable advice: "the matter was decided, and there was nothing for it but to prepare instructions." Hyde was not to be turned aside; Ormonde, he urged, was needful to the King in London, and would be useless in Ireland. Hyde did not even take the trouble to make his objections palatable to Ormonde. The Duke, he said, had since his return from exile led a life of ease and indulgence, and was now unfit for the laborious task of Irish administration. With still less of courtier-like complaisance, Hyde urged that, however good the appointment might have been "when the Duke was full of reputation, and the King was more feared and reverenced than presumed upon," it was otherwise now when the Duke had withdrawn from business and "let himself fall to familiarities with all degrees of men," and when the King had been exposed to all manner of importunities, had received all men's addresses and made promises without deliberation, had become so desirous to satisfy all men that he was irresolute in all things. He must first fix his own resolutions, and then only could the Lord Lieutenant do him service, or save him from scorn and affronts. [Footnote: Life, ii. 55.]

However sound the advice, Hyde's fashion of expressing it could scarcely be called conciliatory; and even the easy humour of the King must have found it hard to brook such plain speaking from his Minister. It was fortunate, however, that Charles's sense of humour was sufficient to save his vanity from suffering under contradiction, except when his own personal ease was at stake. He might resent reflections on his behaviour to a mistress, but his pride was not wounded by being told that his statecraft was folly; it took at least a long course of such plain- speaking from his trusted Minister before his patience was exhausted. Ormonde, too, received from Hyde advice that was quite as candid.

"He would repent his rash resolution; he would not influence Irish affairs in Dublin as much as he could have done in London; his absence would give his enemies the opportunity of slander that they desired; he and the King suffered from the same infirmity in equal degree—'an unwillingness to deny any man what they could not but see was impossible to grant, and a desire to please everybody, which whosoever affected should please nobody.'"

Hyde's friends, as well as his master, had need to practise an almost stoical imperturbability of temper.

It gives us a key to Hyde's attitude towards Irish affairs that he breaks the chronological order of his narrative to tell the story to the end. It was a subject that vexed and wearied him, and in regard to which he was conscious only of work incompletely done; of business from which he vainly strove to hold aloof, and of a huddled settlement from which his soul revolted. He hurries on to the end of the whole transaction, which at last deprived him of his most trusted ally and his most cherished friend. Ireland stole away from him Ormonde, whose support had done so much to uphold him in the dangerous currents of the Restoration. It was four years and a half after the Restoration that, in the autumn of 1664, Ormonde crossed to Ireland. The clouds were already gathering about the Chancellor's course, and the loss of his closest friend increased the gloom, and brought the threatening dangers nearer.

It was after Ormonde's entry upon the Lieutenancy that the third and final settlement of the Land Commissioners was arrived at. The latest Commissioners had allowed themselves to be swayed powerfully by the Irish interest, and had raised, in the same proportion, the antipathy of the English. Very weariness forced the combatants at length to a compromise. The soldiers and Adventurers consented to abate one-fourth of their claims; with this the most urgent of the Irish claims were appeased, and the baneful unrest was at last ended.

Clarendon closes the sorry story of the Irish settlement by a disclaimer of any share in Irish affairs, further than that which fell to him as a member of the inner Council. Perhaps his influence was greater than he is ready to admit; but Ireland certainly received no larger share of his attention than necessity forced upon him. He is careful to give us a succinct account of the one incident which involved him, almost against his will, in some sort of personal interest in Irish property.

In the early days of the Restoration, when the question as to the disputed settlements was only at its first stage, overtures had been made to Hyde, which it was fancied might earn from him some mercenary favour for those who might be the intermediaries, It was proposed that a special grant of land might be made to him, or that a sale might be effected in his favour on nominal terms, which would make it almost equal to a free gift. It was consistent with all his action in such matters that these overtures met with a peremptory refusal from Hyde. If he was to be of use in effecting a settlement, he must have no title of his own to bias his inclinations. Rather later, but when negotiations were still in their earlier stages, certain sums raised upon Irish land were assigned for the King's use, "to be disposed of to those who had served him faithfully, and suffered in so doing." The grants were passed as a matter of official routine, without the knowledge of the Chancellor. About two years later, Orrery, who was an adept in the art of posing as the chosen instrument of convenient favours, wrote to the Chancellor informing him that certain sums were standing at his credit, and inquiring to whom they should be paid. Hyde had no doubt that a mistake had been committed, and asked Ormonde, as Lord Lieutenant, to inform him what the announcement meant. Orrery wrote again more explicitly, stating that 12,600 had been paid in to his use, and that another sum of the same amount would be received in the course of six months. "To whom," he asked again, "was the money to be paid?"

It was only after this second letter that the Lord Lieutenant's explanation arrived. The notification had its source, so it appeared, from Lord Orrery himself, who had urged upon Ormonde that a portion of the royal grant should be assigned to Hyde. The suggestion commended itself both to Ormonde and the King, and by the special instruction of the King, who knew Hyde's scruples and was resolved to overcome them, the royal signature was given through Hyde's good friend, Secretary Nicholas, and all knowledge of the matter was carefully kept from the intended recipient. Nicholas had now to account for it to Hyde, and he could only plead the strong injunction of secrecy that had been laid upon him by the King. The plot was an instance, it may be, of mistaken and ill-judged kindness; but not the strictest political purist of the day could have arraigned the grant, and it would have been churlish for an old and impoverished servant to have refused so gracious a favour from the King, few of whose lavish grants had so much justification as this. It was granted with delicacy, and was accepted with gratitude, as cementing that bond of loyal affection which long years of faithful service had created.

At this juncture, as it happened, Bulstrode Whitelocke and Lord Lovelace [Footnote: John, Lord Lovelace (1616-1670) was an ardent Royalist, and one of those Peers who signed the Declaration at Oxford on behalf of the King in 1642. Clarendon (Hist. of Rebellion, vii. 174) speaks of him as one "of whose good affections to his service the King had always assurance."] were involved in a dispute about some land in Wiltshire which Whitelocke had bought when his own former party was in the ascendant, and when Lovelace was hard pressed for money. The balance had now shifted, and Lovelace, as the price of giving confirmation to Whitelocke's title, was pressing for a sum more adequate to the value than that paid in Whitelocke's day of triumph, when the dominant purchaser could coerce the unwilling seller. It was expedient to end a dispute between two men who were now both in the interest of the King, and Hyde thought that the most convenient way of doing so was that he should become the purchaser of the land, which adjoined his own property in Wiltshire. Relying on the Irish windfall, he consented to do so, and thus became bound for a sum largely in excess of anything he received. Instead of a double payment of 12,600, he never received more than 6000 of the first instalment. Orrery's promises were more lavish than his performances; and the only result of Charles's kindly thought was to involve Hyde in a heavy debt and to give food for baseless suspicions of his venality. Personally, therefore, he had good ground to fear the gifts that came from Ireland. That country remained an unhappy battle-ground of racial and religious feud; its settlement had galled him by its many features of injustice; he saw its resources crippled by lavish grants to a host of unworthy recipients which he was powerless to prevent, and it had robbed him of that support which he might have had from his most faithful friend, the Duke of Ormonde. It is no wonder that he turns in disgust from the review of Irish affairs which had in it so little that could satisfy his conscience or his sense of political wisdom.



CHAPTER XIX

MARRIAGE TREATY AND RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENT

The two preceding chapters have anticipated the strict order of time in regard to Scotland and Ireland, where Clarendon's action was only incidental to his position as English Minister. We have now to turn back to the months that intervened between December, 1660, when the Convention Parliament was dissolved, and May, 1661, when the more legally constituted Parliament met for the first time. In the interval some events had occurred which stimulated the flow of the Royalist tide in the nation, and helped to imbue the general loyalty with something of arrogant intolerance; but other incidents had weakened the position by giving new stimulus to Court intrigues, and by quickening the animosity of rival factions. Clarendon found the tide occasionally too strong to control, and his difficulties encouraged those who were jealous of his power.

In January, London had been startled by the outbreak of a fanatical insurrection, which gives sufficient proof of the strangely hysterical state into which the nation had been driven by a series of bewilderingly rapid transformations, political and religious. It was the natural result of the sudden suppression of the strange freaks of religious fancy which were symptomatic of the age, and alike in its origin and in its consequences, it showed how prone public opinion was to perturbation. Its leader, one Venner, a vintner of good credit in the City, evidently believed himself inspired by Divine revelation. His motto was "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and he called on all "to take arms to assist the Lord Jesus Christ." The outbreak was nothing but a frenzied burst of religious mania; but its effect showed how dangerous was the state of the nation of which this was a symptom. All London was thrown into wild alarm. Only those of strong nerves could make a stand against what was, with ludicrous exaggeration, represented to be a popular movement on a vast scale. The Lord Mayor won mighty renown for having the courage to summon a great body of adherents, and advance personally against the rioters, who were said to be murdering all whom they met. Wild rumours flew from the City to Whitehall; the guards were called out; Whitehall was put in a state of defence; and poor Pepys, whose combats were generally confined to the chastisement of page-boys and kitchen-wenches, found himself—"with no courage at all, but that I might not seem to be afraid"—obliged to carry with him sword and pistol, and make his way to the Exchange, to learn the extent of the rising, which was scarcely so terrible as had been reported. Pepys returned safely to his home, and that no worse result arose from his unwonted and warlike venturesomeness was no doubt due to the fact that he had been wise enough to put no powder in his pistols.

After all the alarm, the Lord Mayor found only thirty men to oppose the loyal bands whom he had summoned to his aid. But these thirty fought valiantly and desperately enough, and every man of them was either slain, or captured and reserved for speedy punishment. The little knot of fiery zealots did their best to make up in their fanatical enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers, and that the rising shook the confidence of the Government and quickened the pulse of timid loyalty throughout the country, only showed how sensitive were the nerves of the sorely galled nation. None knew better than Hyde that there was much amiss in the temper of the people, and that quiet and settlement were essential to soothe this epidemic hysteria. Meantime—so intense had been the alarm—the disbanding of the King's Guards was countermanded, and Monk's regiment of Coldstreams was retained. It is curious to reflect that the occasion for the formation of the nucleus of the British standing army was the brief outbreak of a handful of frenzied men, stirred to momentary madness by a religious fanatic, and ready to go to death for the avenging of the saints. Already the seeming unanimity of loyalty was gone; those who were Royalists at heart found that they had still enemies to meet; and it was proved that the new Government could in no wise relax the vigilance of their defence of order, or presume upon the support of an undivided nation.

Before the new Parliament met in May, the Coronation of the King took place, on April 23rd, with all the splendour that copious expense could achieve in an age saturated with a love of florid display, and with what was doubtless a careful and politic anxiety to revive in their most authentic form all the ancient observances and ceremonies which had in the past attended the rite. Already the most prominent adherents of the King had been advanced in the peerage, and on the day before the Coronation ceremonies six Earls—amongst whom Clarendon was one—were invested with their new dignity with the ancient and stately ceremonial so long in abeyance. But even amid the rejoicings of the Coronation new seeds of dissension were laid in a soil only too fertile for their propagation. The Duke of York was deemed, by those who held to older fashions, to have assumed too much of that precedence which was accorded to Monsieur the brother of the King in the Court of France, but which had no warrant in the usages of England; and the fact that he was allowed to appropriate a place in the procession for his own "Master of the Horse," and that the holder of the honoured place was a youthful member of the upstart family of the Jermyns, was enough to stir up much heartburning amongst the older Royalist nobility, and to engage the attention and compel the anxiety even of Clarendon himself. The Chancellor had to steer his course amidst a very hotbed of popular excitement, and of Court factions and intrigues, but thinly covered by a veneer of seemingly whole-hearted loyalty.

Before Parliament met, another project had been fully discussed and practically settled. This was the marriage of the King with the Portuguese Princess, Catherine of Braganza. It was an alliance which involved many dangers, and what were, at the best, but doubtful advantages. Clarendon had, at a later date, to bear the blame of an arrangement which brought no satisfaction either to the King or to the nation, and which eventually did much to check the tide of loyalty. But he is careful to tell us that the inception of the scheme did not come from him; that the first suggestion was not even made to him, and that he interfered in it no further than his relations to the King imperatively demanded. But he adds that had it been otherwise, he would have felt no reason to disavow, or be ashamed of, his action in promoting the marriage of the King to any suitable consort.

Such a project had, indeed, much to commend it, had Fate been kinder, and had not the position of European affairs been so tangled. Clarendon had long urged the propriety of the King's marriage. It was all the more his duty to do so now, when any delay in the matter might seem to promise the eventual succession to the Crown of the children of his own daughter, the Duchess of York. Clarendon had no ambition for such elevation, and he knew well how any suspicion of such a scheme would expose him to the accusations of his enemies. He would best have liked that the King should choose a Protestant consort, but the only one who could be suggested was the daughter of the Dowager Princess of Orange, and to that match Charles was invincibly opposed. The Portuguese alliance offered certain advantages. It promised a counterpoise to the power of Spain (and, as such, it would unquestionably secure the friendliness of France), and thus seemed to offer help in maintaining a safe position in foreign relations, and preventing the probability of foreign war. For the stable settlement of affairs at home, no condition was more absolutely essential than the maintenance of peace abroad; and for this, if for no other reason, Clarendon was passionately determined to avoid any foreign complications. If an alliance with a Catholic Princess were necessary, none could apparently involve less danger than one which brought about a Portuguese rather than a Spanish connection.

Clarendon had no mind to cultivate an alliance with Spain, which must be purchased by such concessions as would have inflicted grave injury on England. The Spanish Ambassador, Batteville, had, at his very first audience, pressed for the surrender of Jamaica, which had been taken from Spain by the King's rebellious subjects. He claimed also that Dunkirk and Mardyke, which had been handed over to Cromwell in virtue of his treaty with France, should be restored to their rightful sovereign. These demands he made, seemingly as matters of form. They were points which need not be pressed, if England were prepared to make a treaty which would be advantageous to Spain, and if Portugal received no encouragement from England. If Clarendon disliked the Spanish alliance he disliked quite as much the methods of Court intrigue by which it was pressed. Batteville was astute enough to take a correct measure of English courtiers. He conformed himself to the slipshod methods and the rollicking humour of Charles and his circle. He insinuated himself into the intimacy of the King's boon companions: availed himself of the easy access to the King, which Charles's nonchalance permitted, and knew how to suggest what might be useful to him as a diplomat, in the careless intercourse of the table, and amidst the jests of a carouse at Court. Bristol did his best to aid the Spanish diplomat. Charles's facile temper made him forget Bristol's double-dealing, and Bristol, having regained some of his favour, "had an excellent talent in spreading that gold-leaf very thin, that it might look much more than it was." [Footnote: Life, i. 505.] A whisper in the King's ear might do much to foster Spanish designs, and with them Bristol's influence. Clarendon knew well the dangers that success in that direction might involve.

Nor were solid attractions wanting in the Portuguese alliance. For national prosperity, there was no greater essential than an encouragement to commerce, in an age when commerce throughout Western Europe was making immense advances, in which England had already earned, and must secure, her share. If this country were to balance the growing naval power of the Dutch, and their increasing mercantile marine, she must strengthen her hold upon the ever extending trade in the Eastern and Western seas. Holland must always be more of a rival than an ally; and Spain was a power with which no permanent or favourable alliance was probable or desirable, except in so far as it might be a balance against the power of France. Portugal commanded a wider range of colonial trade, both in the East Indies and in Brazil, and it presently appeared, when definite proposals were laid before the King and his Ministers by the Portuguese Ambassador, that she was prepared to pay highly for the privilege of an English alliance. A dowry of 500,000 was promised with the Portuguese Princess— no ineffective bait for one whose coffers were so ill-supplied as those of Charles. The port of Tangier, which could easily be made into an effective harbour and seemed likely to offer a command of the Mediterranean trade, was to be placed in the hands of England. Bombay was to be granted to her in the East Indies; and perhaps most important of all—the privilege of free trade to the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and the East Indies was to be accorded to her. An abundant return was thus to be reaped both by the Crown and by the nation, at once in an enhancement of naval supremacy and in an extension of commercial opportunities. It was only necessary to guard against the danger lest a Portuguese alliance might involve England in a war with Spain,

Charles was attracted by the offers, and all the more so when he received from Montague—now Earl of Sandwich—a favourable account of the value of Tangier. Portugal had given more generous aid to the Royalist cause in its extremity than either Prance or Spain, and it had incurred the vengeance of Cromwell by giving shelter in the Tagus to Prince Rupert's fleet when it was hard pressed by Cromwell's ships. Such an alliance seemed not unlikely to be well received by the nation.

Clarendon encouraged, rather than checked, the proposal, and this is all that can be said of his attitude. But after the preliminary steps had been taken, and engagements had already proceeded far with Portugal, he found that the whole project was threatened by a secret intrigue. Again that restless and versatile contriver, Bristol, had set himself to overturn the scheme. It is hard to decide what were his motives. In spite of his adoption of Roman Catholicism, Bristol's religious convictions were hardly of a kind to dominate his policy; but he had linked his lot with that of the Catholics—he may perhaps have already suspected Charles's inclination to their faith—and he may well have thought that a Spanish alliance would confirm the influence which he hoped thus to acquire. It may be that he was angry only because he had not been taken into confidence at an earlier stage in the affair; such a motive is not to be set aside in the case of one in whose character personal vanity predominated so largely, and who could so little estimate the general tendency of national feeling. Be that as it may, Clarendon found that Bristol's influence was countermining the scheme, and that the King had been so far gained over as to contemplate the breach of an engagement to which his honour was already pledged, and which would have inflicted a galling wound on the pride of his expected allies. Already, it appeared, tempting offers had been conveyed to Charles of marriage with one or other of two Italian Princesses, whose dowry would be provided by the Spanish Court, and the choice of one of whom would have had its value enhanced by a close alliance with Spain. Even with one of more controlled temperament than Charles possessed, the element of personal qualifications might not unreasonably tell for a good deal in the selection of a wife. Bristol was commissioned to visit and report upon the ladies proposed for Charles's hand, and made no secret of the reason of his voyage to Italy. The Spanish ambassador spoke openly in disparagement of the person and the attractions of Catherine, and boasted that he had effectually stopped the presumption of the upstart Court of Braganza in attempting to bolster up its rebellion against the Spanish Crown by an English alliance.

Clarendon took his usual method in dealing with such a mixture of intrigue and arrogance. To the somewhat nauseous personal details which were furnished in disparagement of the Portuguese Princess, he perhaps, as politician, gave but scant attention. He permitted Bristol to depart on his extraordinary mission, and addressed himself to the King with his customary plainness of speech. He exposed to him the braggart boasts of Bristol, whose vanity had not permitted him to keep even a secret of his own contriving. He desired him to remember the extent of his own engagement to Portugal, and how far his honour was involved. If arguments were to be found for withdrawing from the project, it would be well to consult on these with his Council. The choice of a consort was perhaps a matter somewhat too delicate for discussion at a Council Board. But Clarendon might, at least, suggest that the King of England could hardly with dignity submit his marriage to the judgment of the Court of Spain.

The Chancellor knew his master well. It was by appeals to his vanity and to his love of ease that Charles could best be moved. The plain reproaches of his Minister were irksome, and in the long run became unbearable to him, but they impressed his pliable spirit. He minimized the extent of the charge given to Bristol, and then consented to his recall. He found, or fancied that he found, that the portrait of Catherine belied the unflattering accounts he had deceived. His temper was irritated by the impudent threats of the Spanish ambassador, who was imperiously commanded to quit the Kingdom, Above all, the Ministers of France took steps to prevent that triumph to Spain which would have accrued from a breach of the alliance. La Bastide was sent with full credentials to deal personally with the Chancellor. The French King, he told him, was friendly to Portugal, although for the present his alliance with Spain prevented any overt assistance to the Braganza family. But he was ready to help the King of England with financial aid, if Charles should himself, by private understanding, undertake such assistance. Meanwhile he thought that the King "could not bestow himself better in marriage than with the Infanta of Portugal." Further, hints were given that an understanding might be reached between the Crowns as to their relations to the States of Holland, and as to the steps to be taken against the dangers which the Dutch naval power threatened to both.

The matter proceeded no further than an interchange of friendly proposals; but there was one incident connected with it, of which Clarendon has given us a full account. Before the negotiations closed, La Bastide took the opportunity of a confidential interview with the Chancellor to broach to him a proposal which, to one of Hyde's character, was nothing but an insult. He was commissioned, La Bastide said, by Fouquet, the Finance Minister of France, to express his deep respect for Clarendon, and his sense of the trust and power he now enjoyed. But he understood how easily the Chancellor might, under present circumstances, be hard put to it to maintain his high position from scantiness of means, and he had therefore sent him a present, small indeed, but only as an earnest of as much, or more, to be paid him every year. He would have need of it to secure, by becoming generosity, the means of meeting the secret machinations of his enemies at Court. La Bastide concluded by showing him bills for 10,000, payable at sight.

However much such a proposal was in accordance with the political morality of the day, Clarendon did not hesitate to show his indignation, and his disgust that it should have been made to him. "If this correspondence must lead him to such a reproach," he said, "he would unwillingly enter upon it." La Bastide must let Monsieur Fouquet know "that the Chancellor of England could receive wages only from his own master. "Such an excess of scrupulosity could only appear, to one trained in the school to which La Bastide was accustomed, as merely assumed. He still pressed the absolute secrecy of the gift, until Clarendon broke off the interview in stern anger.

The sequel was what we might expect. The King and the Duke of York came to Clarendon before the angry fit was gone, and heard the story told with Hyde's usual plainness of indignant speech. "They both laughed at him, saying 'that the French did all their business that way;' and the King told him 'he was a fool,' implying 'that he should take his money.'" The Chancellor vainly sought to impress upon the King something of his own feeling of pride, and besought him "not to appear to his servants so unconcerned in things of that nature." Either the French King would believe that he took the money without his master's knowledge, and so look on him as a treacherous knave; or "that he received it with his Majesty's approbation, which must needs lessen his esteem of him, that he should permit his servants of the nearest trust to grow rich at the charge of another prince, who might the next day become his enemy." [Footnote: Life, i. 523.] The King could only smilingly reply "that few men were so scrupulous." There is something almost comical in the effort on the part of Clarendon to press upon the King that self-respect, which he had long since cast aside, and the place of which was supplied by a mask of cynicism. It was quite true that scruples such as those of Hyde were rare in his day, and formed no part of the usages of the Court of France. But Clarendon did not know that it would soon be unnecessary to go to France for an example of shameless venality. The time was not far distant when Charles, having got rid of his irksome Mentor, was himself to fill his own coffers by accepting a bribe more infamous than that which he vainly tried to persuade his prouder servant not to reject with scorn and contempt.

For good or ill, the project of the Portuguese alliance weathered the storm of intrigue directed against it at home and abroad. Without being its proposer, or the chief guide in the negotiations, Hyde did not refuse a joint responsibility for its arrangement. We shall afterwards see how little it realized his hopes; in what sordid wrangles it involved him; how unpopular it became; and how much it contributed to deepen the degradation of Charles's Court. But for the time the prospect seemed promising enough.

The fact of the Princess's religion was, no doubt, a stumbling-block which might well have caused greater anxiety to Clarendon, and which might have fretted the prejudices of the English people. But here, as on many other occasions, he seems to have forced himself, against what to a later day must seem fairly strong evidence, to discredit any idea that action on the part of Charles might be prompted by an inclination to the Church of Rome. To that Church Clarendon was as invincibly opposed as was his first master, Charles the First. He knew the earnestness of the injunctions laid on his son, by that master whose memory he so deeply revered. It is impossible to believe that doubts and anxieties were not repeatedly roused in Clarendon's mind with regard to the relations of the present King to that Church. But he seems sternly to have fought against and repressed any such suspicions. Apparently, the realization of these suspicions would have ruined his faith in the honesty and good feeling of his master, and with almost exaggerated energy he repudiates any such belief. If he suspected any danger of the kind from the Portuguese alliance, he put it firmly aside. And it is certain that whatever ill accrued from that marriage, it was not from that cause. Catherine of Braganza remained throughout a negligible quantity in English politics. Neither at Court, nor with any section of society, did she exercise any appreciable influence, either in promoting or retarding the acceptance in her adopted country of the tenets of her Church. Whatever the closeness of the King's relations to that Church, and whatever his determination to strain his prerogative in its favour, neither was influenced in the smallest degree by the religion of his wife. It is true that at a later day, the religion of the Queen, and the presence at Court of her Catholic attendants, enhanced the fury of an unthinking storm of anti-Catholic feeling. But it was only a small aggravation of an irrational outburst of religious prejudice.

The marriage treaty was arranged in time to be notified to Parliament when it met in May, 1661, and from that time the negotiations proceeded with all the customary diplomatic deliberation. The announcement was received with the same loyal acceptance as the other proposals of the Government, in an assembly much more markedly Royalist in feeling than even the Convention Parliament, which had carried out the first steps in the Restoration settlement. Its zeal might even have been deemed embarrassing, and Clarendon was chiefly urgent that a permanent settlement should be provided for, by confirming the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, before the Royalists devised new means of reaping fresh spoils of conquest. Another Act which he pressed forward was that bringing back the bishops to the House of Lords. It was, to his mind, a guarantee for the restoration of the Church, which it had been the central aim of his late master, as it was his own, to accomplish. Whatever compromise might be made as to ceremonies and articles, Clarendon could not admit that his debt to the Church had been paid until she had been re-established in her rightful position in the State. The memory of those bitter days, when what he recognized as the good work of the Long Parliament had been rudely marred by the subsequent excesses of the zealots, and when the constitution had been overturned by violence which posed as legislation, was too vividly impressed upon his mind to suffer him to rest until the prelates of the Church were placed on their former level with the temporal peers.

Here, again, he met with fractious opposition from Bristol. It is difficult to find a consistent clue to all the windings of policy devised by that mercurial brain, and to guess at the objects which inspired him. The Bill was easily passed by the House of Commons, where some opposition might have been expected. In the House of Lords its passage was less easy. Those peers, who had in the old days assented to the exclusion, were only too ready to have their former vote forgotten, and raised no voice against the Bill. It was Bristol who, to secure the support of the Catholics, put himself forward as its opponent, and contrived to impress the King with the conviction that the restoration of the bishops to the House of Lords would render impossible any Bill for modifying the penal laws against the Roman Catholics. The progress of the Bill was slow, and it was only on inquiring into the cause of this, that Clarendon found that Bristol had succeeded in conveying the idea that the King did not wish it to pass. With his usual blunt directness Clarendon asked the King for an explanation, and then heard of Bristol's machinations. His reply was prompt. He regretted that the King had been prevailed upon to obstruct a Bill on which he knew his Majesty's heart was so much set. If the reason for such obstruction were known, it would be fatal to all Roman Catholic hopes, "to which his Majesty knew that Hyde was no enemy." These last words were an intimation, as plain as could be given, that Hyde might easily be converted into an enemy to their hopes, Charles took his lesson submissively, and orders were given that the Bill should pass. Bristol attempted to bluster, and threatened "that if the Bill were passed that day he would speak against it," "To which," adds Hyde, "the Chancellor gave him an answer that did not please him; and the Bill was passed that day." Clarendon's methods could compel the consent of the King, and could silence the arrogance or the persistency of fractious opponents. They were scarcely fitted to conciliate either.



Parliament had been compliant, and had passed at least two Acts which Clarendon deemed imperatively urgent. It was prorogued, after a short session, on July 30th, to meet again on November 20th. There remained still to be dealt with what were perhaps the most difficult problems of all, the questions of compromise as to the ceremonies and the doctrines of the Church, of the relation between the Nonconformists and the orthodox Churchmen, and of the degree of toleration that might be allowed to divergent forms of belief. These were three absolutely distinct branches of the religious controversy, and to confuse them leads only to prejudice and error. Clarendon had seen enough of the temper of the Parliament to perceive that time was necessary to ripen these questions for a settlement, and that the process would go on more smoothly during a recess than in the heated atmosphere of Parliamentary discussion. The discussions at the Savoy, the negotiations between the leading Nonconformists and the bishops, and the formulating of proposals on either side, had represented one phase of the discussions, and had led to little result. The matter was now one in which the Crown and its advisers must initiate a policy, and do their best to smooth its passage during the next session of Parliament. It could not be indefinitely delayed. Laxity, if too long tolerated, from however good a motive, quickly passes into anarchy.

In this matter it was inevitable that the leading part in framing a policy should fall to Clarendon. Of the old friends who would have been his chief advisers and guides in this work, many had passed away. But amongst the bishops three especially remained who were associated with old memories, and linked to him by mutual sympathy and respect. These were Brian Duppa, the former tutor of Charles II., lately Bishop of Salisbury, and now of Winchester; George Morley, now Bishop of Worcester, and soon after, successor of Duppa at Winchester; and Gilbert Sheldon, at first Bishop of London, and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury on the death of Juxon, in 1663. Juxon's claims to the Primacy were pre-eminent; he had appeared with the Martyr-King in that memorable scene on the scaffold at Whitehall, and none other than he could fill the Archiepiscopal chair, which had been vacant since Laud had preceded his master in his death upon Tower Hill. But Juxon's tenure of the office was little more than nominal, and, even during his lifetime, Sheldon was the foremost representative of the Church.

Duppa, the Bishop of Winchester, had been the man closest in the confidence of Laud, and had been the chief agent in carrying out his reforms in the University of Oxford. This must of itself have been sufficient to earn for him the warm sympathy of Clarendon, and his subsequent career had confirmed those early ties. To Clarendon, he was not only the trusted friend of his early patron, Laud, but the man to whom his royal master had committed, in solemn words, the religious education of his son; and that duty Duppa had carried out with an unswerving devotion, with however small success. His own personal character, the gentleness of his temper, and his saintly life, had strengthened the respect which was felt for him by all loyal Churchmen, and during the short time that he survived the Restoration, he had a deserved influence on the counsels that directed the policy of the Church.

George Morley was another of the old fraternity that had gathered at Great Tew, under the hospitable roof, and in the genial company, of Hyde's early and most cherished friend, Lord Falkland. Morley's scholarship, his social gifts, his ready wit, and his unfailing tact, had secured for him a prominent place amongst that goodly fellowship. He followed a line of his own in Church politics, and in early days was not pliable enough always to win the approval and the confidence of Laud. His reply, when bored by an inconvenient questioner as to what the Arminians "held,"—"that they held all the best preferments in England,"—was pointed enough to spread quickly, and the sarcasm it implied was not agreeable to Laud. But Morley was none the less a loyal son of the Church, and gave abundant evidence of his loyalty to the good cause. He had been one of the Chaplains of Charles I., remained with him throughout the days of trouble and danger to the end, and had been an exile from his master's death to the Restoration. In Morley, Clarendon could place the trust due to an old friend, a loyal Churchman, and a man of fearless character, and of ripe judgment. Against his uprightness of life no insinuation could be made.

Gilbert Sheldon was a man of a different type from either of these two. While a stout defender of the rights of the Church, he, like Morley, had not always seen eye to eye with Laud. But he and Hyde were in closest sympathy. They had lived together at All Souls when Hyde was present at Oxford during the Civil War, and when the burden of directing the affairs of the King had rested chiefly upon him. Sheldon, in later days, had manfully resisted the encroachments of the Parliamentary Commissioners on the University, and upon All Souls, of which he was Warden; and it was only by military violence that he was expelled from his charge, under the order of these Commissioners. He had then retired to the country, and continued during the Commonwealth to lead a quiet life, in which he spent his time and his own resources in assisting the loyal adherents of the King. Just before the Restoration, the Warden appointed by the Protector had died; and Sheldon was quietly restored to his former post, at the moment when the political world was occupied with the still doubtful struggle between the contending factions. A few months later he was called to play a leading part, as Bishop of London, in the critical negotiations for the settlement of the Church. Sheldon was a new type of the ecclesiastical statesman.

He had thrown off the habits of the student for those of the administrator, and one may add, of the politician. Sound and sincere Churchman as he was, his religion was that of the man of the world, suspicious of fanaticism, more earnest in inculcating an upright life than in a show of enthusiastic fervour, regular in his religious duties, but preferring a religion which displayed itself in the cheerful activity of a regular life, rather than in any overstrained attention to devotional routine. It was only natural that his enemies should charge him with being worldly-minded, and should insinuate that with him religion was only an instrument of government, and an element in policy. It need not lessen our respect for him that his religious faith showed itself more in lavish charity, and in a cheerful energy, than in the strict pursuit of the conventional routine of religious exercises. He could be a stern moralist when necessary, and he did not scruple to rebuke the King for his licentious life, and even, as Swift tells us, refused to him the Sacrament on that account. If such a man attracts to himself little of a halo of sanctity, he perhaps compensates for this by the manliness of an upright life and conduct. [Footnote: We need give no attention to the scandalous and baseless gossip as to Sheldon's licentiousness which Pepys gathered from the irresponsible tittle-tattle of the coffee-house, and entrusts to the confidential pages of a diary which was never intended for publication. If we enjoy and profit by the vivid pictures of the day which his memoirs give us, we ought at the same time to feel ourselves bound to discredit the occasional thoughtless gossip about characters which stand too unassailable to be smudged by the mischievous sallies of Pepys's pen.] In his balanced judgment, in his unswerving honesty, and in his absolute uprightness of purpose, Hyde found just that help which was most useful at this juncture; and that both he and Sheldon suffered from some testiness of temper was no hindrance to their friendship.

When Parliament resumed in November, 1661, its first business was to pass certain acts for restoring the power of the Crown. The Solemn League and Covenant was pronounced illegal, and the Acts erecting the High Court of Justice for the trial of the King, and for establishing the Commonwealth, were contumeliously annulled. The power of Militia was declared to rest solely in the King, and it was enacted that no legislative power resided in Parliament without the King. These and like Acts were passed without discussion, and amounted to little more than expressions of the dominant loyalist feeling. The first step in restoring the power of the Church was the Corporation Act, which enacted that every corporation official should take an oath against the Covenant, and against the traitorous doctrine that arms might, by the King's authority, be levied against his person, and imposing upon every such official to be elected in future the obligation to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. The supremacy of the Church was vindicated. Whether wise or not as a platform on which English politics should rest—and as to this doubts are no doubt permissible—this Test Act was the expression of the convinced resolution of the nation at the time. The more difficult question remained for decision: how should the basis of the Church be arranged, and to what extent was it to be made more comprehensive?

Since the end of the Savoy Conference, the strife between the adherents of the Church and the Nonconformists had been growing in intensity. Both sides were exasperated by the uncertainty, and both were furious against what they believed to be the exaggerated claims of their opponents. The King's pliant humour had permitted to the various Dissenters an easy access to his person, and he was only too prone to give rise to expectations which were bound to be disappointed, and to unwary boasts on the part of the Nonconformists, which stimulated the Churchmen to an unyielding temper. The Bishops had been engaged during the vacation in revising the Book of Common Prayer, and sharp division of opinion had arisen amongst them—a division in regard to which Clarendon held strong views. Ought an attempt to be made to meet the views of the Nonconformists by modification of the Liturgy—or was it best to put a peremptory stop to agitation and discussion by restoring the ritual and the usages of the Church unchanged, so that the historic weight of continuity should be added to the authority of the law?

"Some of the bishops," says Clarendon, "who had greatest experience, and were in truth wise men," adhered to the latter view." Others, equally grave, of great learning and unblemished reputation, "pressed for alterations and additions. [Footnote: Life, ii. 119.] He desired to hold the balance even between these opposite opinions. But his own judgment was decided.

"The truth is," he adds, "that what show of reason so ever and appearance of charity the latter opinion seemed to carry with it, the former advice was the more prudent, and would have prevented many inconveniences which ensued." "It is," he proceeds, "an unhappy policy, and always unhappily applied, to imagine that that classes of men can be recovered and reconciled by partial concessions, or granting less than they demand. And if all were granted they would have more to ask. Their faction is their religion; nor are those combinations ever entered into upon real and substantial motives of conscience, how erroneous so ever, but consist of many glutinous materials, of will, and humour, and folly, and knavery, and malice, and ambition, which make men cling inseparably together till they have satisfaction in all their pretences, or till they are absolutely broken and subdued, which may always be more easily done than the other." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 121.]

Clarendon recognized, as clearly as did Swift a generation later, that dissent was the essential motive of dissenters, and that all concessions would be with them but an incitement to new divergences. He remembered the case of the Scottish liturgy, in which changes were introduced in order to meet the desire for a distinctive liturgy, and were afterwards resented as departures from the established order, which might otherwise have been peaceably accepted. Changes were now sought only that they might be the starting-point for further change. Meanwhile the Nonconformists inveighed with new bitterness against the old liturgy, and their angry invective provoked the House of Commons to greater impatience at the delay in its restoration. Clarendon recognized the old and ever-present fact that it was easier to preserve an old form, with all its possible defects, than to devise a new one with the view of reconciling irreconcilable divergences. He had to remember also that besides the Presbyterians there was the strong phalanx of the Independents, who would rather see episcopacy flourish than that the Presbyterians should govern.

Clarendon was not unwilling that a calm and rational spirit of concession should prevail, and that non-essential usages should be modified to meet conscientious scruples. In the abstract this ought to have been possible; but as things stood it was a hopeless ideal. He had to take account of the angry exasperation of temper that prevailed; and for the general weal he felt that some settlement, however peremptory, was essential. However unwillingly, he was compelled to decide for the drastic exercise of authority which might, once for all, compose the strife and produce a settlement. Expedition was of the first importance in the business.

It was in this spirit that the speech of the King to Parliament was framed. He had hoped, said the King, that the composing of differences in regard to non-essentials might have already been obtained. He was grieved at the delay. The Book of Common Prayer was now to be presented to him by Convocation. It would thereafter be laid before the House of Lords; and upon that foundation he trusted that an Act of Uniformity might be based.

As approved by Convocation, with certain alterations which rather strengthened than diminished the force of the ecclesiastical authority, the Book of Common Prayer was presented to the House of Lords. The Earl of Northumberland, whose Presbyterian leanings were pronounced, suggested that no change whatever should be made, and that the Act of Uniformity of Elizabeth's reign should once more be the authority for its observance. But the time for that was too late. Convocation had already done its work, and that work could not be disregarded. The legal authority had given its pronouncement; it remained only to say how that pronouncement should be enforced. In this spirit the House of Lords entered upon the discussion of the Bill of Uniformity.

The first question of importance was the imposition of episcopal ordination as a necessary condition of the tenure of any ecclesiastical office. That was decided in the affirmative; and the requisition of assent as well as consent to all contained in the Book of Common Prayer was carried against the resistance of those who, on behalf of the Nonconformists, argued that "assent" implied a more complete approbation than mere "consent." When the Bill had passed the House of Lords and was sent to the Commons, it soon appeared that the Church party there was determined to increase its severity. "Every man," says Clarendon, "according to his passion, thought of adding something to it that might make it more grievous to somebody whom he did not love." However earnest was Clarendon's loyalty to the Church, these words give evidence enough of the vexation of the Statesman at the unmeasured bitterness of ecclesiastical partizanship.

A new and rigid subscription, abjuring the lawfulness of resistance and the Solemn League and Covenant, was imposed upon every holder of a benefice, or of an office in a University. This created bitter opposition when the Bill was sent back to the Lords, and the discussion mainly turned upon the express repudiation of the Covenant, to which many laymen had already sworn. These, while they consented to its being laid aside for the future, were by no means ready to repudiate all the principles which it embodied. The Covenant still represented the charter of Presbyterianism, and to inflict a needless insult upon tenets conscientiously held by many who had given powerful aid towards the King's restoration, seemed a needless perpetuation of bitter memories. But the Lords could not refuse their assent, and this new instrument of exclusion was added to the Bill substantially in the form desired by the ultra-Royalists of the House of Commons.

In this form the Bill received the royal assent on the day when Parliament was adjourned, May 19th. No long delay was to occur before the axe of authority fell, and the penalty of any divergence from the uniform discipline of the Church was to take effect forthwith. On August 24th, St. Bartholomew's Day—of evil omen—all incumbents who declined to accept and conform to the whole contents of the Book of Common Prayer were, ipso facto, with no further legal process, to be deprived of their benefices, and the patrons were to present others in their place.

Clarendon was too sober in his judgment, and had too much of the statesman in his composition, to welcome the rigid terms which the triumphant Churchmen were determined to exact. He was not one of those who thought a victory was confirmed by an arrogant disregard of the claims of the vanquished. Had he been able to shape the terms of the Act according to his own ideas of policy and prudence, he would undoubtedly have imposed checks upon the ambition of the fiery spirits of his party. But we must remember his position and his sympathies. The double object of all his long struggles had been to establish in all its dignity the constitutional monarchy, and to restore the Church to its rights and privileges. It was not for him to fight too hard against the full assertion of these rights. We must remember, too, that his own inclination towards moderation came from policy and prudence, and not from any sympathy with the vanquished, or any conviction that the measure meted out to them was in any whit more severe than that which they had exacted in their day of triumph, and would readily have reinforced were it again in their power to do so. Above all, Clarendon saw that in the hard task which lay before him in re- establishing a settled Government, the first essential was the ending of weary struggles, and the settling of doubtful contentions. Any settlement was better than perpetual controversy. It was a smaller matter to adjust the balance according to an ideal of just and politic moderation, than to comply with the imperious maxim, "that it is for the advantage of the State that there be an end of litigation."

That there should be an outburst of anger from those who believed themselves to be martyrs was only to be expected. The Declaration of Breda, it was said, had been flagrantly violated. The answer was perfectly easy. The King had referred the religious settlement to Parliament, and had promised that meanwhile there should be no interference with liberty of conscience. It is noteworthy that Clarendon rests the case upon this plea—that the Crown must act subject to a Parliamentary decision. So far as it goes it is an adequate defence. But there remains the far stronger argument that liberty of conscience was a very different thing from a pledge that those who refused to accept the principles of the Church should have a right to hold her benefices and dictate her policy. That would have meant, not toleration of, but surrender to, the divergent forces.

But the outburst of anger on the part of a defeated faction had serious effects on the action of Charles II. Now, as often before, his Chancellor had to lament that "he was too irresolute, and apt to be shaken in those counsels which, with the greatest deliberation, he had concluded." Concessions might be right or wrong; but once a policy was decided, concessions wrung from the weakness of a vacillating and indolent nature were fatal. Anything that love of ease did not accomplish, the flattery of the defeated Nonconformists achieved. The King was their only hope; in his mercy they looked for a recompense for that loyalty which was none the less sincere because they shrank from straining their consciences by compliance with minute points of order and of discipline. At least, let three months pass before the blow fell that was to strip them of their livelihood and separate them from their flocks. Such an act of mercy would vindicate the royal prerogative. Whether the King "thought it would do them no good," in other words, that he was giving a worthless concession, or that he thought the delay "no prejudice to the Church," or, as was more likely, that it would rid him of painful importunity, the desired promise was given. That it proceeded from any inclination to the Roman Catholic faith, and any hope that, by its means, easier terms might be obtained for that faith, was a supposition that Clarendon would have deemed derogatory to the King's honesty. Clarendon would gladly have seen terms more merciful granted by the Act of Uniformity. But once the Bill was passed he saw how fatal vacillation was, and would fain have persuaded his master against it. But the promise had been given; and once again he had to remind that master that it was for his honour that a promise given should be redeemed. Such a position was no unusual experience to any one who served Charles II. "It was no new thing to the Chancellor to be reproached for opposing the resolving to do such or such a thing, and then to be reproached again for pursuing the resolution."

A new conference was hastily summoned at Hampton Court. Archbishop Juxon, Sheldon and Duppa were to represent the Church, while the Chancellor, Monk, and Ormonde, with the Secretaries Nicholas and Morrice, were there as lay politicians, and the Chief Justice Bridgeman, with the Attorney General, were to advise as to the law. The Bishops did not conceal their vexation, and resolutely demanded "to be excused for not conniving at any breach of the law." Clarendon attempted to maintain the pledge given by the King, as but a small matter, which could not harm the Church. But the opinion of the lawyers was clear and decided. The King had no power to suspend the law, nor to interfere with the rights of patrons. Once more that vacillating temper yielded. The poor fragment of the royal honour which Clarendon would fain have saved had to be abandoned. The Church had to resent a threatened danger; the Nonconformists were embittered by the overclouding of those hopes on which they had been taught to rely. The only effect of Clarendon's enforced interference was to involve him in the hatred of the dissenters, and in the suspicions of the Bishops and the Churchmen.

The blow fell on St. Bartholomew's Day; and on August 24th the Church saw her full triumph, when the nonconforming ministers, to the number, it was said, of some two thousand, were ejected from their livings. [Footnote: The number was variously reckoned; a more moderate computation was 1200. Mr. Bates's careful calculations (Declaration of Indulgence, Appendix II.) give 450 as the number of ministers ejected between May, 1660, and August, 1662, and 1800 as ejected on the latter date.] The triumph was bought at the price of establishing a solid, permanent, and increasing body of irreconcilable foes. The Church was entrenched in a position rendered impregnable by law, which secured her even against the power of the Crown. But the forces of nonconformity were consolidated, and gradually gathered to themselves a mass of political adherents, and equipped themselves with a whole armoury of political weapons. The Act of Uniformity did much more than settle the terms between the Church and Nonconformity. It shaped the course of the two parties which, gradually diverging farther and farther, were to divide the nation into two camps.

Charles still sought to secure his own ease by efforts after conciliation —some of them more questionable in law, and more insidious in their motives, even than his ill-considered promises to the Nonconformist ministers. To what lengths his own Roman Catholic sympathies went it is difficult to say. But there were many influences at Court which were working for the abandonment of the penal laws against the Catholics. Bristol was restless in this matter, to which personal ambition and his growing jealousy of Clarendon stimulated him, much more than any religious zeal. Concessions granted by royal prerogative would mean new force for that prerogative; it would bring with it the increase of personal influence at the expense of the law; it seemed to promise the conciliation of new adherents; and it certainly involved the weakening of the orthodox Churchman as well as the Nonconformist. Before the end of this year, 1662, Charles issued a Declaration, purporting to dispense with the more severe laws against the Roman Catholics. It was contrived by a little clique of courtiers opposed to Clarendon, and of their gradual rise to influence we shall presently see more. It was intended as a means of consolidating their hold upon the King, and of increasing the number of their own adherents. It soon became clear that the Declaration assumed a dispensing power for the royal prerogative, which the nation would repudiate, and which even the House of Commons, with all its effusive loyalty, would not confirm. In that Declaration, published on December 6th, the King expressly confirmed the Act of Uniformity and stated his own intention of maintaining it. He defended himself against the charge that in that Act he had violated the Declaration of Breda. It was intended to provide for the discipline and government of the Church; but there still remained for consideration what concessions should be made for tender consciences in view of the severe penal laws; and he announced that he would ask the concurrence of Parliament to an Act which would allow him "to exercise with a more universal satisfaction that power of dispensing which he conceived to be inherent in him." But the Declaration was careful to add that no tightening of the most severe of the penal laws was to be construed as an intention of permitting equal toleration to all religions.

Clarendon was laid aside by illness when this Declaration was concocted and published, and although those who planned it endeavoured to make out that he had been an assenting party, his own words give a direct denial to this.

When, in the spring of 1663, Charles attempted to give legislative effect to this Declaration by a Bill introduced by Lord Robartes and Lord Ashley into the House of Lords, he very quickly found out that the temper of the nation was in no compliant mood, and that there were marked limits to the submissive loyalty of the Commons. That House was not patient enough to wait for the Bill to be sent to it. A committee was at once appointed, and pronounced in no measured terms against any such scheme. It was inconsistent with the laws of England; it would endanger the peace of the kingdom; it would expose the King to the restless importunity of every sect; and it would "establish schism by law." The House of Lords acted in the same temper. Clarendon was joined in his opposition by Southampton and the Bishops, who thus fulfilled the part which Bristol had prophesied for them, of stalwart opponents of Catholic concessions. The Chancellor would not have been unwilling to see some sort of toleration. But his duty and his policy in this matter were clear. To have proceeded with the Bill would have strained to breaking point the loyalty of the Commons and of the nation. Toleration, to have any good effect, must be the voluntary work of Parliament, and not the contrivance of a Court clique. But Clarendon was under no mistake as to the odium he incurred with that clique, or as to the irritation which his conduct must arouse in the mind of the King, his master.