336 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CHAP. X. Scotland was sufficient to show how little any sense of honour or dignity would have stood in his way. But on what grounds did his English friends, nay, some of the presbyterians themselves, advise his submission to the dictates of that party? It was in the expectation that the next free parliament, summoned by his own writ, would undo all this work of stipulation, and restore him to an unfettered prerogative. And this expectation there was every ground, from the temper of the nation, to entertain. Unless the convention parliament had bargained for its own perpetuity, or the privy council had been made immovable, or a military force independent of the crown had been kept up to overawe the people (all of them most unconstitutional and abominable usurpations), there was no possibility of maintaining the conditions, whatever they might have been, from the want of which so much mischief is fancied to have sprung. Evils did take place, dangers did arise, the liberties of England were once more impaired; but these are far less to be ascribed to the actors in the restoration than to the next parliament, and to the nation who chose it. and elected On the same § 29. On the 25th of April the commons met Grimston, a moderate presbyterian, as their speaker. day the doors of the house of lords were found open; and ten peers, all of whom had sat in 1648, took their places as if nothing more than a common adjournment had passed in the interval. A message was sent down to the commons on April 27, desiring a conference on the great affairs of the kingdom. This was the first time that word had been used for more than eleven years. But the commons, in returning an answer to this message, still employed the word nation. It was determined that the conference should take place on the ensuing Tuesday, the first of May. In this conference there can be no doubt that the question of further securities against the power of the crown would have been discussed. But Monk, whether from conviction of their inexpedience or to atone for his ambiguous delay, had determined to prevent any encroachment on the prerogative. He caused the king's letter to the council of state and to the two houses of parliament to be delivered on that very day. A burst of enthusiastic joy testified their long-repressed wishes; and, when the conference took place the earl of Manchester was instructed to let the commons know that the lords "do own and declare that, according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the government is and ought to be by king, lords, and commons." On the same day the commons resolved to agree in this vote, and appointed a committee to report what pretended acts and ordinances were inconsistent with it. 4 These were the earls of Manchester, Suffolk; lords Say, Wharton, Hunsdon, Northumberland, Lincoln, Denbigh, and Grey, Maynard. It is, however, so far from being true that this convention gave itself up to a blind confidence in the king, that their journals during the month of May bear witness to a considerable activity in furthering provisions which the circumstances appeared to require. They appointed a committee on May 3rd to consider of the king's letter and declaration, both holding forth, it will be remembered, all promises of indemnity, and everything that could tranquillize apprehension, and to propose bills accordingly, especially for taking away military tenures. One bill was brought into the house to secure lands purchased from the trustees of the late parliament; another, to establish ministers already settled in benefices; a third, for a general indemnity; a fourth, to take away tenures in chivalry and wardship; a fifth, to make void all grants of honour or estate made by the late or present king since May, 1642. Finally, on the very 29th of May, we find a bill read twice and committed, for the confirmation of privilege of parliament, Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and other great constitutional statutes. These measures, though some of them were never completed, proved that the restoration was not carried forward with so thoughtless a precipitancy and neglect of liberty as has been asserted. There was undoubtedly one very important matter of past controversy which they may seem to have avoided, the power over the militia. They silently gave up that momentous question. Yet it was become, in a practical sense, incomparably more important that the representatives of the commons should retain a control over the land forces of the nation than it had been at the commencement of the controversy. War and usurpation had sown the dragon's teeth in our fields; and, instead of the peaceable trained bands of former ages, the citizen soldiers who could not be marched beyond their counties, we had a veteran army accustomed to tread upon the civil authority at the bidding of their superiors, and used alike to govern and obey. It seemed prodigiously dangerous to give up this weapon into the hands of our new sovereign. The experience of other countries as well as our own demonstrated that the public liberty could never be secure if a large standing army should be kept on foot, or any standing army without consent of parliament. But this salutary restriction the convention parliament did not think fit to propose; and in this respect I certainly consider them as having stopped short of adequate security. § 30. Of Monk himself it may, I think, be said that, if his conduct in this revolution was not that of a high-minded patriot, it did not deserve all the reproach that has been so frequently thrown on it. No one can, without forfeiting all pretensions to have his own word believed, excuse his incomparable deceit and perjury; a masterpiece, no doubt, as it ought to be reckoned by those who set ST. C. H. E. 338 CONDUCT OF MONK. СНАР. Х. at nought the obligations of veracity in public transactions, of that wisdom which is not from above. But, in seconding the public wish for the king's restoration, a step which few perhaps can be so much in love with fanatical and tyrannous usurpation as to condemn, he seems to have used what influence he possessed-an influence by no means commanding—to render the new settlement as little injurious as possible to public and private interests. If he frustrated the scheme of throwing the executive authority into the hands of a presbyterian oligarchy, I, for one, can see no great cause for censure; nor is it quite reasonable to expect that a soldier of fortune, inured to the exercise of arbitrary power, and exempt from the prevailing religious fanaticism which must be felt or despised, should have partaken a fervent zeal for liberty, as little congenial to his temperament as it was to his profession. He certainly did not satisfy the king, even in his first promises of support, when he advised an absolute indemnity, and the preservation of actual interests in the lands of the crown and church. In the first debates on the bill of indemnity, when the case of the regicides came into discussion, he pressed for the smallest number of exceptions from pardon; and, though his conduct after the king's return displayed his accustomed prudence, it is evident that, if he had retained great influence in the council, which he assuredly did not, he would have maintained as much as possible of the exísting settlement in the church. The deepest stain on his memory is the production of Argyle's private letters on his trial in Scotland; nor indeed can Monk be regarded, upon the whole, as an estimable man, though his prudence and success may entitle him, in the common acceptation of the word, to be reckoned a great one. CHAPTER XI. FROM THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES THE SECOND TO THE FALL OF THE CABAL ADMINISTRATION. 1. Popular Joy at the Restoration. 2. Proceedings of the Convention Parliament. §3. Act of Indemnity. Exclusion of the Regicides and others. 4. Discussions between the Houses on it. Execution of Regicides. 5. Restitution of Crown and Church Lands. § 6. Discontent of the Royalists. 7. Settlement of the Revenue. Abolition of Military Tenures. Excise granted instead. § 8. Army disbanded. 9. Clergy restored to their Benefices. § 10. Hopes of the Presbyterians from the King. 11. Projects for a Compromise. 12. King's Declaration in Favour of it. 13. Convention Parliament dissolved. § 14. Different Complexion of the next. 15. Condemnation of Vane. Its Injustice. § 16. Acts replacing the Crown in its Prerogatives. 17. Corporation Act. 18. Repeal of Triennial Act. Star-chamber not restored. 19. Attachment of the Parliament to the Established Church. § 20. Presbyterians deceived by the King. Savoy Conference. § 21. Act of Uniformity. ◊ 22. Ejection of Nonconformist Clergy. 23. Hopes of the Catholics. Bias of the King towards them. Resisted by Clarendon and the Parliament. § 24. Declaration for Indulgence. Objected to by the Commons. 25. Act against Conventicles. 26. Another of the same kind. § 27. Dissatisfaction increases. 28. Private Life of the King. § 29. Opposition in Parliament. § 30. Appropriation of Supplies. 31. Commission of Fublic Accounts. 32. Decline of Clarendon's Power. Loss of the King's Favour. 33. Coalition against him. § 34. His impeachment. Some Articles of it not unfounded. Illegal Imprisonments. Sale of Dunkirk. Solicitation of French Money. 35. His Faults as a Minister. 36. His pusillanimous Flight and consequent Banishment. 37. Cabal Ministry. Scheme of Comprehension and Indulgence. 38. Triple Alliance. 39. Intrigue with France. King's Desire to be Absolute. 40. Secret Treaty of 1670. Its Objects. 41. Differences between Charles and Louis as to the Mode of its Execution. § 42. Fresh Severities against Dissenters. 43 Dutch War. § 44. Declaration of Indulgence. Opposed by Parliament and withdrawn. 45. Test Act. 46. Fall of Shaftesbury and his Colleagues. § It is universally acknowledged that no measure was ever more national, or has ever produced more testimonies of public approbation, than the restoration of Charles II. Nor can this be attributed to the usual fickleness of the multitude. For the late government, whether under the parliament or the protector, had never obtained the sanction of popular consent, nor could have subsisted for a day without the support of the army. The king's return seemed to the people the harbinger of a real liberty, instead of that bastard commonwealth which had insulted them with its name-a liberty secure from enormous assessments, which, even when lawfully imposed, the English had always paid with reluctance, and from the insolent despotism of the soldiery. The young and lively looked forward to a release from the rigours of fanaticism, and were too ready to exchange that hypocritical austerity of the late times 340 ACT OF INDEMNITY. CHAP. XI. for a licentiousness and impiety that became characteristic of the present. In this tumult of exulting hope and joy there was much to excite anxious forebodings in calmer men; and it was by no means safe to pronounce that a change so generally demanded, and in most respects so expedient, could be effected without very serious sacrifices of public and particular interests. § 2. Four subjects of great importance, and some of them very difficult, occupied the convention parliament from the time of the king's return till their dissolution in the following December: a general indemnity and legal oblivion of all that had been done amiss in the late interruption of government; an adjustment of the claims for reparation which the crown, the church, and private royalists had to prefer; a provision for the king's revenue, consistent with the abolition of military tenures; and the settlement of the church. These were in effect the articles of a sort of treaty between the king and the nation, without some legislative provisions as to which, no stable or tranquil course of law could be expected. § 3. The king, in his well-known declaration from Breda, dated the 14th of April, had laid down, as it were, certain bases of his restoration, as to some points which he knew to excite much apprehension in England. One of these was a free and general pardon to all his subjects, saving only such as should be excepted by parliament. It had always been the king's expectation, or at least that of his chancellor, that all who had been immediately concerned in his father's death should be delivered up to punishment; and, in the most unpropitious state of his fortunes, while making all professions of pardon and favour to different parties, he had constantly excepted the regicides. Monk, however, had advised, in his first messages to the king, that none, or at most not above four, should be excepted on this account; and the commons voted that not more than seven persons should lose the benefit of the indemnity both as to life and estate. Yet, after having named seven of the late king's judges, they proceeded in a few days to add several more, who had been concerned in managing his trial, or otherwise forward in promoting his death. They went on to pitch upon twenty persons, whom, on account of their deep concern in the transactions of the last twelve years, they determined to affect with penalties not extending to death, and to be determined by some future act of parliament. As their passions grew warmer, and the wishes of the court became better known, they came to except from all benefit of the indemnity such of the king's judges as had not rendered themselves to justice according to the late proclamation. In this state the bill of indemity and oblivion was sent up to the lords. But in that house the old royalists had a more decisive |