A.D. 1681.] PARLIAMENT SUDDENLY DISSOLVED.

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“parliament, and an obstruction to the further discovery of the popish plot; that if any inferior court should "proceed to the trial of Fitzharris, it would be guilty of a high breach of the privileges of the house of commons ;" and ordered that bills should be brought in for the better uniting of all his majesty's protestant subjects, and the banishment of "the most considerable papists "of England by name *.

The popular party, founding their hopes on their notion of the king's pecuniary distress, and the assurances of some in the council, had promised themselves a long session, and a certain victory. Charles on the contrary had determined in his own mind to make the duration of parliament depend on the adoption or rejection of "the expedient ;" and it so chanced that the vote respecting the bill of exclusion and the dispute respecting Fitzharris followed each other on the same day, a circumstance of which he dexterously availed himself, to conceal from the notice of his adversaries the measure which he had in contemplation. During the Saturday, the day of debate, he repeatedly visited and directed the workmen in the public theatre, to which it was intended that the commons should transfer their sittings; on the Sunday he made the accommodation which he had provided for them the frequent subject of his discourse; and at an early hour on Monday morning hastened in a Mar. chair, followed by a second chair containing the royal 27. robes, to the house of lords. Not a whisper of his intention had been heard; not a suspicion had been raised in the minds of those by whom he was surrounded and watched; even the duchess of Portsmouth, in whose apartment by means of a private communication he spent much of his time, was kept in complete ignorance. The commons, having ordered the second reading of the exclusion bill, were listening to a learned argument of sir William Jones on the accord of the 4th of Edward III., when the usher of the black rod summoned them to the

C. Journ. March 26.

other house. They found the king seated on the throne: he told them briefly that no good end could be expected when the very beginning was marked by dissension between the two houses; and immediately the chancellor by his command dissolved the parliament. The surprise, the disappointment, the rage of the leaders may be conceived. Shaftesbury called on his friends not to quit the house: let them stop and sign a protest against the dissolution: he sent to the commons, entreating them to wait, for the lords were still sitting. But all his efforts were fruitless. The popular party in the lower house gradually withdrew, and the Whig lords, deprived of support from them, abandoned the attempt. Charles mounted his carriage, was met on the road by a party of his guards, and proceeded to Windsor with a rapidity which had the appearance of flight, and gave birth to a notion that this hasty dissolution had been provoked by the discovery of some dangerous conspiracy against his person, originating with the opponents of the court *

Such was the abrupt termination of this, the last, parliament in the reign of Charles II.; and it may be considered a fortunate circumstance for the country that it

* See L. Journ. 757. Reresby, 120. North, 104. Macpherson, i. 116. Royal Declaration of April 8. Lord Grey's Confession, 12, 13. 14. By the dissolution the king spared himself the trouble of a dispute with both houses. In the last parliament a bill had been passed by the lords and commons repealing the 35th of Eliz. c. 1 (Vol. viii. 303.), the act for the repressing of "sectaries" or protestant recusants. According to the chan cellor" it had never been put in execution that he heard of but once, and "was judged by most lawyers to be expired till the act of uniformity." Several of the bishops however defended it as "the only means the church "had now left to rid herself of schism." The bill of repeal ought to have been presented to the king for his assent on the last day of the last parliament: but, before he entered the house, he sent for the clerk, and, having consulted a while with lord Halifax, ordered him to leave that bill behind, and to present the others. To these he gave his assent, and immediately prorogued the parliament. At Oxford, lord Shaftesbury did not fail to denounce this proceeding as a new kind of veto; and on his motion the lost bill was twice read, and the clerks of the crown and of the parliament were examined before the house. The commons took up the tion with equal spirit, contended that the substraction of the bill was a quesviolation of the constitution, and proposed a joint committee of the two houses, to discover the guilty, and to bring them to condign punishment. This was on the Saturday: on Monday the king dissolved the parliament. See Journals, xiii. 717. 19. 48.51. 56. and Locke's letter of 26 March, 1681, in Mr. Cooke's life of Shaftesbury, ii, 270.

A. D. 1681.]

KING'S DECLARATION.

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never brought to a termination the important question of the succession. James was not of a temper to acquiesce either in the expedient or the exclusion: he would have appealed to arms in defence of what he considered his right; and so profound was the reverence felt for the principles of the ancient constitution, so strong the prepossession in favour of the divine right of hereditary succession, that he would have found multitudes ready to draw the sword in his cause. Had he succeeded, he would have come a conqueror to the throne, armed with more formidable authority than he could have possessed in the ordinary way of inheritance; and if he had failed, there was reason to fear, from the political bias of the popular leaders, that the legitimate rights of the sovereign would have been reduced to the mere name and pageantry of a throne. It is probable that the dissolution preserved the nation from a civil war, and from its natural consequences, the establishment of a republican or of an arbitrary government.

In a few days the king published, at the suggestion of Halifax, a declaration of the causes which induced him to dissolve the two last parliaments *. After an enumeration of the several offers which he had made, offers calculated to satisfy any reasonable man, yet received with expressions of discontent, and answered in a tone of crimination and reproof, he summed up the offences of the house of commons, their illegal and arbitrary orders, by which they had taken Englishmen into custody for matters that bore no relation to parliamentary privilege; their declaration that several distinguished individuals

Aware that he would be accused of favouring the catholics by this dissolution, Charles on the same day declared in council his resolution that the laws against popery should be rigorously executed. The announcement filled archbishop Sancroft, who was present," with satisfaction and "joy:" and by a circular to the other bishops he called upon them, to consider" how acceptable it would be to Almighty God to assist his majesty "in his pious purpose of reducing the papists to the bosom of the church, "or driving them out of the kingdom" and he therefore required his brethren to watch over the due execution of the three canons of king James, providing for the conversion or punishment of recusants. Wilk. Iv. 608.

were enemies to the king and kingdom, on bare suspicion, without hearing proof against them or admitting them to their defence; their unconstitutional vote that all persons who should lend the king money in anticipation of his revenue, should be responsible for such conduct to parliament; their usurpation of the power of suspending the law by resolving that the prosecution of the penal statutes against dissenters was an encouragement to popery; their obstinacy in rejecting all "expedients," and insisting on the exclusion of the duke from the succession; their design of making important changes in the government of the realm; and their endeavours to create a quarrel between the two houses, by pronouncing the lords deniers of justice, because the latter would not consent to interrupt a prosecution which the king had ordered. This declaration was read in all the churches; the people learned from it to look upon the sovereign as an injured man, oppressed by a party whom no concessions would satisfy; and addresses expressive of attachment to his person, and of confidence in his government, were presented to him from all quarters of the kingdom *.

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It was not to be expected that the popular leaders would sit down tamely under these imputations. To the declaration they opposed an eloquent and powerful reply, under the title of " A just and modest Vindication "of the Proceedings of the Two last Parliaments," the joint production of Sydney, Somers, and Jones, men capable of imparting strength to a weak, and of ensuring victory to a righteous, cause. They professed to refute each particular charge; and it must be confessed that

Kennet, 398. The following extract from the speech made by the vicechancellor of Cambridge to the king in the name of the university, may give some notion of the sentiments of the addressers. "No earthly power, "we hope, nor menaces, nor money, shall ever be able to make us forget "our duty. We will still believe and maintain that our kings derive not "their titles from the people, but from God; that to him only they are "accountable: that it belongs not to subjects either to create or censure, "but to honour and obey their sovereign, who comes to be so by a funda"mental hereditary right of succession, which no religion, no law no fault, "no forfeiture can alter or diminish." Wilk, Concil. iv. 607.

A.D. 1681.]

ANSWER OF HIS OPPONENTS.

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assuming, as they did, the truth of the informations sworn by Oates and his fellow-labourers, their reasoning is always plausible, and frequently conclusive *. It failed, however, to persuade the nation. The plot had long, though slowly, been falling into discredit; in proportion as the first excitement died away, men began to wonder at their own credulity in believing such a mass of improbabilities and fiction; and the insulting language, the arbitrary arrests, the passionate and unprovoked resolutions of the house of commons, joined to the known connection between the leaders and the presbyterian party, forcibly recalled to the public mind the proceedings which led to the civil war in the reign of the first Charles. The tide of popularity had turned; it now ran in favour of the court; the fear of republicanism banished that of arbitrary power; and the demagogues, who for so many years had bidden defiance to the authority, now began to quail before the resentment, of the sovereign.

Charles was not slow to display his contempt for the votes of the late house of commons, by ordering the attorney-general to proceed with the trial of Fitzharris. That adventurer still clung for protection to the popular leaders, and sought to interest their passions in his favour by a succession of disclosures, some of them charging with treason or other offences sir Richard Bellings, some the earl of Danby, and others the queen and the duke of York. By their advice at his arraignment he pleaded the impeachment in bar of the April jurisdiction of the court of King's Bench; and immedi- 27. May ately all the legal talent of the party started forth in his 4. defence, not, it was pretended, for the purpose of shield- 7. ing him from punishment, but to preserve the rights of 11.

Parl. Hist. iv. App. No. xv.

+ See different bills in favour of the dissenters brought into parliament. C. Journ. Dec. 15, 16. 24. 1800: Jan. 3, 1801.

A true bill was found on his testimony against the earl of Danby for the murder of Godfrey. But the charge was utterly incredible. Fitzharris had never mentioned it before, when he affirmed that he had stated everything that he knew. James (Memoirs), i. 684. Burnet, ii. 278.