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

my Lord." A judicious observer might easily

have predicted that the blood then shed would shortly have blood.


The King determined to try once more the experiment of a

dissolution. A new Parliament was summoned to meet at Oxford, in

March, 1681. Since the days of the Plantagenets the Houses had

constantly sat at Westminster, except when the plague was raging

in the capital: but so extraordinary a conjuncture seemed to

require extraordinary precautions. If the Parliament were held in

its usual place of assembling, the House of Commons might declare

itself permanent, and might call for aid on the magistrates and

citizens of London. The trainbands might rise to defend

Shaftesbury as they had risen forty years before to defend Pym

and Hampden. The Guards might be overpowered, the palace forced,

the King a prisoner in the hands of his mutinous subjects. At

Oxford there was no such danger. The University was devoted to

the crown; and the gentry of the neighbourhood were generally

Tories. Here, therefore, the opposition had more reason than the

King to apprehend violence.


The elections were sharply contested. The Whigs still composed a

majority of the House of Commons: but it was plain that the Tory

spirit was fast rising throughout the country. It should seem

that the sagacious and versatile Shaftesbury ought to have

foreseen the coming change, and to have consented to the

compromise which the court offered: but he appears to have

forgotten his old tactics. Instead of making dispositions which,

in the worst event, would have secured his retreat, he took up a

position in which it was necessary that he should either conquer

or perish. Perhaps his head, strong as it was, had been turned by

popularity, by success, and by the excitement of conflict.

Perhaps he had spurred his party till he could no longer curb it,

and was really hurried on headlong by those whom he seemed to

guide.


The eventful day arrived. The meeting at Oxford resembled rather

that of a Polish Diet than that of an English Parliament. The

Whig members were escorted by great numbers of their armed and

mounted tenants and serving men, who exchanged looks of defiance

with the royal Guards. The slightest provocation might, under

such circumstances, have produced a civil war; but neither side

dared to strike the first blow. The King again offered to consent

to anything but the Exclusion Bill. The Commons were determined

to accept nothing but the Exclusion Bill. In a few days the

Parliament was again dissolved.


The King had triumphed. The reaction, which had begun some months

before the meeting of the House at Oxford, now went rapidly on.

The nation, indeed, was still hostile to Popery: but, when men

reviewed the whole history of the plot, they felt that their

Protestant zeal had hurried them into folly and crime, and could

scarcely believe that they had been induced by nursery tales to

clamour for the blood of fellow subjects and fellow Christians.

The most loyal, indeed, could not deny that the administration of

Charles had often been highly blamable. But men who had not the

full information which we possess touching his dealings with

France, and who were disgusted by the violence of the Whigs,

enumerated the large concessions which, during the last few years

he had made to his Parliaments, and the still larger concessions

which he had declared himself willing to make. He had consented

to the laws which excluded Roman Catholics from the House of

Lords, from the Privy Council, and from all civil and military

offices. He had passed the Habeas Corpus Act. If securities yet

stronger had not been provided against the dangers to which the

constitution and the Church might be exposed under a Roman

Catholic sovereign, the fault lay, not with Charles who had

invited the Parliament to propose such securities, but with those

Whigs who had refused to hear of any substitute for the Exclusion

Bill. One thing only had the King denied to his people. He had

refused to take away his brother's birthright. And was there not

good reason to believe that this refusal was prompted by laudable

feelings? What selfish motive could faction itself impute to the

royal mind? The Exclusion Bill did not curtail the reigning

King's prerogatives, or diminish his income. Indeed, by passing

it, he might easily have obtained an ample addition to his own

revenue. And what was it to him who ruled after him? Nay, if he

had personal predilections, they were known to be rather in

favour of the Duke of Monmouth than of the Duke of York. The most

natural explanation of the King's conduct seemed to be that,

careless as was his temper and loose as were his morals, he had,

on this occasion, acted from a sense of duty and honour. And, if

so, would the nation compel him to do what he thought criminal

and disgraceful? To apply, even by strictly constitutional means,

a violent pressure to his conscience, seemed to zealous royalists

ungenerous and undutiful. But strictly constitutional means were

not the only means which the Whigs were disposed to employ. Signs

were already discernible which portended the approach of great

troubles. Men, who, in the time of the civil war and of the

Commonwealth, had acquired an odious notoriety, had emerged from

the obscurity in which, after the Restoration, they had hidden

themselves from the general hatred. showed their confident and

busy faces everywhere, and appeared to anticipate a second reign

of the Saints. Another Naseby, another High Court of Justice,

another usurper on the throne, the Lords again ejected from their

hall by violence, the Universities again purged, the Church again

robbed and persecuted, the Puritans again dominant, to such

results did the desperate policy of the opposition seem to tend.


Strongly moved by these apprehensions, the majority of the upper

and middle classes hastened to rally round the throne. The

situation of the King bore, at this time, a great resemblance to

that in which his father stood just after the Remonstrance had

been voted. But the reaction of 1641 had not been suffered to run

its course. Charles the First, at the very moment when his

people, long estranged, were returning to him with hearts

disposed to reconciliation, had, by a perfidious violation of the

fundamental laws of the realm, forfeited their confidence for

ever. Had Charles the Second taken a similar course, had he

arrested the Whig leaders in an irregular manner, had he

impeached them of high treason before a tribunal which had no

legal jurisdiction over them, it is highly probable that they

would speedily have regained the ascendancy which they had lost.

Fortunately for himself, he was induced, at this crisis, to adopt

a policy singularly judicious. He determined to conform to the

law, but at the same time to make vigorous and unsparing use of

the law against his adversaries. He was not bound to convoke a

Parliament till three years should have elapsed. He was not much

distressed for money. The produce of the taxes which had been

settled on him for life exceeded the estimate. He was at peace

with all the world. He could retrench his expenses by giving up

the costly and useless settlement of Tangier; and he might hope

for pecuniary aid from France. He had, therefore, ample time and

means for a systematic attack on the opposition under the forms

of the constitution. The Judges were removable at his pleasure:

the juries were nominated by the Sheriffs; and, in almost all the

counties of England, the Sheriffs were nominated by himself.

Witnesses, of the same class with those who had recently sworn

away the lives of Papists, were ready to swear away the lives of

Whigs.


The first victim was College, a noisy and violent demagogue of

mean birth and education. He was by trade a joiner, and was

celebrated as the inventor of the Protestant flail.23 He had been

at Oxford when the Parliament sate there, and was accused of

having planned a rising and an attack on the King's guards.

Evidence was given against him by Dugdale and Turberville, the

same infamous men who had, a few months earlier, borne false

witness against Stafford. In the sight of a jury of country

squires no Exclusionist was likely to find favour. College was

convicted. The crowd which filled the court house of Oxford

received the verdict with a roar of exultation, as barbarous as

that which he and his friends had been in the habit of raising

when innocent Papists were doomed to the gallows. His execution

was the beginning of a new judicial massacre not less atrocious

than that in which he had himself borne a share.


The government, emboldened by this first victory, now aimed a

blow at an enemy of a very different class. It was resolved that

Shaftesbury should be brought to trial for his life. Evidence was

collected which, it was thought, would support a charge of

treason. But the facts which it was necessary to prove were

alleged to have been committed in London. The Sheriffs of London,

chosen by the citizens, were zealous Whigs. They named a Whig

grand jury, which threw out the bill. This defeat, far from

discouraging those who advised the King, suggested to them a new

and daring scheme. Since the charter of the capital was in their

way, that charter must be annulled. It was pretended, therefore,

that the City had by some irregularities forfeited its municipal

privileges; and proceedings were instituted against the

corporation in the Court of King's Bench. At the same time those

laws which had, soon after the Restoration, been enacted against

Nonconformists, and which had remained dormant during the

ascendency of the Whigs, were enforced all over the kingdom with

extreme rigour.


Yet the spirit of the Whigs was not subdued. Though in evil

plight, they were still a numerous and powerful party; and. as

they mustered strong in the large towns, and especially in the

capital, they made a noise and a show more than proportioned to

their real force. Animated by the recollection of past triumphs,

and by the sense of present oppression, they overrated both their

strength and their wrongs. It was not in their power to make out

that clear and overwhelming case which can alone justify so

violent a remedy as resistance to an established government.

Whatever they might suspect, they could not prove that their

sovereign had entered into a treaty with France against the

religion and liberties of England. What was apparent was not

sufficient to warrant an appeal to the sword. If the Lords had

thrown out the Exclusion Bill, they had thrown it out in the

exercise of a right coeval with the constitution. If the King had

dissolved the Oxford Parliament, he had done so by virtue of