The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

the state. But the

Parliament was still the Cavalier Parliament, chosen in the

transport of loyalty which had followed the Restoration.

Nevertheless it soon became evident that no English legislature,

however loyal, would now consent to be merely what the

legislature had been under the Tudors. From the death of

Elizabeth to the eve of the civil war, the Puritans, who

predominated in the representative body, had been constantly, by

a dexterous use of the power of the purse, encroaching on the

province of the executive government. The gentlemen who, after

the Restoration, filled the Lower House, though they abhorred the

Puritan name, were well pleased to inherit the fruit of the

Puritan policy. They were indeed most willing to employ the power

which they possessed in the state for the purpose of making their

King mighty and honoured, both at home and abroad: but with the

power itself they were resolved not to part. The great English

revolution of the seventeenth century, that is to say, the

transfer of the supreme control of the executive administration

from the crown to the House of Commons, was, through the whole

long existence of this Parliament, proceeding noiselessly, but

rapidly and steadily. Charles, kept poor by his follies and

vices, wanted money. The Commons alone could legally grant him

money. They could not be prevented from putting their own price

on their grants. The price which they put on their grants was

this, that they should be allowed to interfere with every one of

the King's prerogatives, to wring from him his consent to laws

which he disliked, to break up cabinets, to dictate the course of

foreign policy, and even to direct the administration of war. To

the royal office, and the royal person, they loudly and sincerely

professed the strongest attachment. But to Clarendon they owed no

allegiance; and they fell on him as furiously as their

predecessors had fallen on Strafford. The minister's virtues and

vices alike contributed to his ruin. He was the ostensible head

of the administration, and was therefore held responsible even

for those acts which he had strongly, but vainly, opposed in

Council. He was regarded by the Puritans, and by all who pitied

them, as an implacable bigot, a second Laud, with much more than

Laud's understanding. He had on all occasions maintained that the

Act of indemnity ought to be strictly observed; and this part of

his conduct, though highly honourable to him, made him hateful to

all those Royalists who wished to repair their ruined fortunes by

suing the Roundheads for damages and mesne profits. The

Presbyterians of Scotland attributed to him the downfall of their

Church. The Papists of Ireland attributed to him the loss of

their lands. As father of the Duchess of York, he had an obvious

motive for wishing that there might be a barren Queen; and he was

therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The sale

of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war with Holland,

he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his

arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he

grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he squandered them,

his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which

had once been the property of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which

reared its long and stately front right opposite to the humbler

residence of our Kings, drew on him much deserved, and some

undeserved, censure. When the Dutch fleet was in the Thames, it

was against the Chancellor that the rage of the populace was

chiefly directed. His windows were broken; the trees of his

garden were cut down; and a gibbet was set up before his door.

But nowhere was he more detested than in the House of Commons. He

was unable to perceive that the time was fast approaching when

that House, if it continued to exist at all, must be supreme in

the state, when the management of that House would be the most

important department of politics, and when, without the help of

men possessing the ear of that House, it would be impossible to

carry on the government. He obstinately persisted in considering

the Parliament as a body in no respect differing from the

Parliament which had been sitting when, forty years before, he

first began to study law at the Temple. He did not wish to

deprive the legislature of those powers which were inherent in it

by the old constitution of the realm: but the new development of

those powers, though a development natural, inevitable, and to be

prevented only by utterly destroying the powers themselves,

disgusted and alarmed him. Nothing would have induced him to put

the great seal to a writ for raising shipmoney, or to give his

voice in Council for committing a member of Parliament to the

Tower, on account of words spoken in debate: but, when the

Commons began to inquire in what manner the money voted for the

war had been wasted, and to examine into the maladministration of

the navy, he flamed with indignation. Such inquiry, according to

him, was out of their province. He admitted that the House was a

most loyal assembly, that it had done good service to the crown,

and that its intentions were excellent. But, both in public and

in the closet, he, on every occasion, expressed his concern that

gentlemen so sincerely attached to monarchy should unadvisedly

encroach on the prerogative of the monarch. Widely as they

differed in spirit from the members of the Long Parliament, they

yet, he said, imitated that Parliament in meddling with matters

which lay beyond the sphere of the Estates of the realm, and

which were subject to the authority of the crown alone. The

country, he maintained, would never be well governed till the

knights of shires and the burgesses were content to be what their

predecessors had been in the days of Elizabeth. All the plans

which men more observant than himself of the signs of that time

proposed, for the purpose of maintaining a good understanding

between the Court and the Commons, he disdainfully rejected as

crude projects, inconsistent with the old polity of England.

Towards the young orators, who were rising to distinction and

authority in the Lower House, his deportment was ungracious: and

he succeeded in making them, with scarcely an exception, his

deadly enemies. Indeed one of his most serious faults was an

inordinate contempt for youth: and this contempt was the more

unjustifiable, because his own experience in English politics was

by no means proportioned to his age. For so great a part of his

life had been passed abroad that he knew less of that world in

which he found himself on his return than many who might have

been his sons.


For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons. For very

different reasons he was equally disliked by the Court. His

morals as well as his polities were those of an earlier

generation. Even when he was a young law student, living much

with men of wit and pleasure, his natural gravity and his

religious principles had to a great extent preserved him from the

contagion of fashionable debauchery; and he was by no means

likely, in advanced years and in declining health, to turn

libertine. On the vices of the young and gay he looked with an

aversion almost as bitter and contemptuous as that which he felt

for the theological errors of the sectaries. He missed no

opportunity of showing his scorn of the mimics, revellers, and

courtesans who crowded the palace; and the admonitions which he

addressed to the King himself were very sharp, and, what Charles

disliked still more, very long. Scarcely any voice was raised in

favour of a minister loaded with the double odium of faults which

roused the fury of the people, and of virtues which annoyed and

importuned the sovereign. Southampton was no more. Ormond

performed the duties of friendship manfully and faithfully, but

in vain. The Chancellor fell with a great ruin. The seal was

taken from him: the Commons impeached him: his head was not safe:

he fled from the country: an act was passed which doomed him to

perpetual exile; and those who had assailed and undermined him

began to struggle for the fragments of his power.


The sacrifice of Clarendon in some degree took off the edge of

the public appetite for revenge. Yet was the anger excited by the

profusion and negligence of the government, and by the

miscarriages of the late war, by no means extinguished. The

counsellors of Charles, with the fate of the Chancellor before

their eyes, were anxious for their own safety. They accordingly

advised their master to soothe the irritation which prevailed

both in the Parliament and throughout the country, and for that

end, to take a step which has no parallel in the history of the

House of Stuart, and which was worthy of the prudence and

magnanimity of Oliver.


We have now reached a point at which the history of the great

English revolution begins to be complicated with the history of

foreign politics. The power of Spain had, during many years, been

declining. She still, it is true held in Europe the Milanese and

the two Sicilies, Belgium, and Franche Comte. In America her

dominions still spread, on both sides of the equator, far beyond

the limits of the torrid zone. But this great body had been

smitten with palsy, and was not only incapable of giving

molestation to other states, but could not, without assistance,

repel aggression. France was now, beyond all doubt, the greatest

power in Europe. Her resources have, since those days, absolutely

increased, but have not increased so fast as the resources of

England. It must also be remembered that, a hundred and eighty

years ago, the empire of Russia, now a monarchy of the first

class, was as entirely out of the system of European politics as

Abyssinia or Siam, that the House of Brandenburg was then hardly

more powerful than the House of Saxony, and that the republic of

the United States had not then begun to exist. The weight of

France, therefore, though still very considerable, has relatively

diminished. Her territory was not in the days of Lewis the

Fourteenth quite so extensive as at present: but it was large,

compact, fertile, well placed both for attack and for defence,

situated in a happy climate, and inhabited by a brave, active,

and ingenious people. The state implicitly obeyed the direction

of a single mind. The great fiefs which, three hundred years

before, had been, in all but name, independent principalities,

had been annexed to the crown. Only a few old men could remember

the last meeting of the States General. The resistance which the

Huguenots, the nobles, and the parliaments had offered to the

kingly power, had been put down by the