XVII. 213. dulgence, an act of high prerogative, yet directed CHAP. against the friends of prerogative, was his measure. Immediately freedom of conscience awakened in Eng- Penn lish industry unparalleled energies, and Shaftesbury, the skeptic chancellor, was eulogized as the savior of religion. Had the king been firm, the measure would probably have succeeded. The king wavered; for he feared the dissenters: the Presbyterians wavered also; for how could they be satisfied with relief dependent on the royal pleasure? The seal of the declaration was broken in the king's presence; and Shaftesbury, confiding no longer in the favor of his fickle sovereign, courted a popular party by securing the passage of a test act against Papists, and advocating with power a bill for the ease of Protestant dissenters. Shaftesbury 1673. fell. to to 1679. Under the Lord Treasurer Danby, the old Cavaliers 1673 recovered power. It was the day for statues Charles I., and new cathedrals. To win strength for his party from the favor of Protestant opinion, Danby avowed his willingness to aid in crushing Popery, and he 66 cry as loud as he pleases; I will cry a note louder, and soon take his place at the head of the plot ;" and, indifferent to perjuries and judicial murders, he was successful. In the subservient house of commons, there were many corrupt members who would never have been elected but in the first fit of loyalty at the restoration. Danby preferred the unfitness of a perpetual parliament to the hazard of a new election, and, by pensions and rewards, purchased the votes of the profligate. But knavery has a wisdom of its own; the 436 SHAFTESBURY COMPELS AN APPOINTMENT FROM THE KING. XVII. CHAP. profligate members had a fixed maxim, never to grant so much at once that they should cease to be wanted; and, discovering the intrigues of Danby for a permanent revenue from France, they were honorably true to na1679. tionality, and true also to the base instinct of selfishness, Jan. they impeached the minister. To save the minister, this longest of English parliaments was dissolved. 24. April When, after nineteen years, the people of England were once more allowed to elect representatives, the great majority against the court compelled a reorganization of the ministry; and, by the force of public opinion, and of parliament, Shaftesbury, whom, for his mobility and his diminutive stature, the king called Little Sincerity, compelled the reluctant monarch to 21. appoint him lord president of the council. The event is an era in English history. Ministers had been impeached and driven from office by the commons. It is the distinction of Shaftesbury, that he was the first statesman to attain the guidance of a ministry through parliament by means of an organized party, and against the wishes of the king. In the cabinet, the bill of exclusion of the duke of York from the succession was demanded; a bill for that purpose was introduced into the house of commons; and it was observed, that the young men cried up every measure against the duke; "like so many young spaniels, that run and bark at every lark that springs."-" The axe," wrote Charles, "is laid to the root; and monarchy must go down too, or bow exceeding low before the almighty power of parliament;" and just after Shaftesbury, who, as James, chancellor, had opened the prison-doors of Bunyan, James, now, as president of the council, had procured the 1679. passage of the habeas corpus act, the commons were May 27 prorogued and dissolved. Shaftesbury was displaced, James, i. 548. Mackin tosh. ii. 621. and henceforward the councils of the Stuarts inclined CHAP. to absolutism. XVII. Penn, iii. 181. 1679. Oct. 5. Dryden. Immediately universal agitation roused the spirit of the nation. Under the influence of Shaftesbury's genius, on Queen Elizabeth's night, a vast procession, bearing devices and wax figures representing nuns and monks, bishops in copes and mitres, and also-it should be observed, for it proves how much the Presbyterians were courted-bishops in lawn, cardinals in red caps, and, last of all, the pope of Rome, side by side in a litter with the devil, moved through the streets of London, under the glare of thousands of flambeaux, and in the presence of two hundred thousand spectators; the disobedient Monmouth was welcomed with bonfires and peals of bells; a panic was created, as if every Protestant freeman were to be massacred, every wife and daughter to be violated; the kingdom was divided into districts among committees to procure petitions for a parliament, one of which had twenty thousand signatures, and measured three hundred feet; and at last the most cherished Anglo-Saxon institution was made to do service, when Shaftesbury, proceeding 1680. to Westminster, represented to the grand jury the mighty dangers from Popery, indicted the duke of York as a recusant, and reported the duchess of Portsmouth, the king's new mistress, as "a ccmmon neusance." The extreme agitation was successful; and in two suc- Oct. cessive parliaments, in each of which men who were at 1681 heart dissenters had the majority, the bill for excluding the duke of York was passed by triumphant votes in Penn the house of commons, and defeated only by the lords and the king. But the public mind, firm, even to superstition, in its respect for hereditary succession, was not ripe for June 16. 1680. and Mar. 438 DESPOTISM IN ENGLAND CHAP. the measure of exclusion. After less than a week's March 27. XVII. session, Charles II. dissolved the last parliament of his 1681. reign, and appealed to the people against his enemies. 21 to To avoid the charge of despotism, he still hanged a Papist whom he knew to be innocent; and his friends declared him to have no other purpose than to resist the arbitrary sway of "a republican prelacy," and the installation of the multitude in the chair of infallibility. The ferocious intolerance which had sustained the Popish plot, lost its credit; men dreaded anarchy and civil war more than they feared the royal prerogative. The king had already exercised the power of restricting the liberty of the press; through judges, who held places at his pleasure, he was supreme in the courts ; omitting to convoke parliament, he made himself irresponsible to the people; pursuing a judicial warfare against city charters and the monopolies of boroughs, he reformed many real abuses, but, at the same time, subjected the corporations to his influence. Controlling the appointment of sheriffs, he controlled the nomination of juries; and thus, in the last three or four years of the reign of King Charles II., the government of England was administered as an absolute monarchy. An "association" against the duke of York could not succeed among a calculating aristocracy, as the Scottish covenant had done among a faithful people; and, on its disclosure and defeat, the voluntary exile of Shaftesbury excited no plebeian regret. No deep popular indignation attended Russel to the scaf fold; and on the day on which the purest martyr to aristocratic liberty laid his head on the block, the university of Oxford decreed absolute obedience to be the character of the Church of England, while parts of the writings of Knox, Milton, and Baxter, were pronounced XVII. "false, seditious and impious, heretical and blasphe- CHAP. mous, infamous to the Christian religion, and destructive of all government, " and were therefore ordered to be burnt. Algernon Sidney followed to the scaffold. Thus liberty, which excited loyalty, at the restoration, banished from among the people, made its way through rakes and the king's mistress into the royal councils. Driven from the palace, it appealed to parliament and the people, and won power through the frenzied antipathy to Roman Catholics. Exiled from parliament by their dissolution, from the people by the ebb of excitement, it concealed itself in an aristocratic association and a secret aristocratic council. Chased from its hiding-place by disclosures and executions, and having no hope from parliament, people, the press, the courts of justice, the king, it left the soil of England, and fled for refuge to the country of the prince of Orange. 1683. Dec. 7. How entirely monarchy had triumphed in England, 1685 appeared on the death of Charles II. His brother, whom the commons, in three successive parliaments, had desired to exclude, ascended the throne without opposition, continued taxes by his prerogative, easily suppressed the insurrection of Monmouth, convened a parliament, under the new system of charters, so subservient, that it bowed its back to royal chastisement ; while the " Presbyterian rascals," the troublesome Calvinists, who, from the days of Edward VI., had kept English liberty alive, were consigned to the courts of law. "Richard," said Jefferies to Baxter, "Richard, thou art an old knave; thou hast written books enough to load a cart, every one as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. I know thou hast a mighty party, and a great many of the brotherhood are waiting in corners |