1667 THE WAR OF DEVOLUTION 593 Spain was so sickly as to make his early death probable, was prepared to assert his wife's claim whenever that event took place. In the meanwhile he put forward a demand that the greater part of the Spanish Netherlands should be immediately handed over to her, because in those countries there was a law, known as the law of devolution, enacting that the daughter of a first wife should receive a larger share of her father's property than a son of the second. Louis chose to construe a right to succeed to property as though it implied a right to govern. In March, 1667, he made a secret treaty with Charles II. of England, in which, on condition of his engaging not to help the Dutch, he was allowed to do as he pleased in the Spanish Netherlands. In May he began what is known as the War of Devolution, with Spain. Spain had neither money nor means to defend her territory in the Netherlands, and the French armies captured one place after another. 24. The Dutch in the Medway, and the Peace of Breda. 1667. The advance of Louis into the Spanish Netherlands and the establishment of the French armies so near their frontier in the place of the now exhausted forces of Spain greatly alarmed the Dutch. The mere risk of this danger had, even before the war between France and Spain began, inclined them to peace with England, and a conference was opened at Breda to consider the terms. All was quickly agreed on except the question about the right of England to Pularoon (see p. 589), and Charles, imagining that this would be settled in his favour, dismissed his sailors and dismantled his fleet, in order to save money to spend on his own extravagant pleasures. The Dutch fleet at once entered the Thames, sailed up the Medway, burnt three men-of-war, and carried off a fourth. For some days it blockaded the Thames, so that the Londoners could get no coals. Men openly said that such things would not have happened if Oliver had been living. Orders were sent to the English ambassadors at Breda to give up Pularoon, and on July 31 the Treaty of Breda was signed. It was not wholly disastrous. If England lost her last hold on the spice islands of the East, she gained New York and all the territory formerly Dutch in the West, which had broken up the continuity of her colonies in America. 25. Clarendon and the House of Commons. 1667.-The events of the last months of the war had produced important effects upon the temper of Parliament. Long before the Dutch appeared in the Medway, the House of Commons had demanded an inquiry into the expenditure of the money granted to the Crown, suspecting that much of the supply distinctly intended for purposes of war had been diverted to pay for the amusements of the Court. This demand, which opened a new chapter in the history of the financial struggle between the House of Commons and the Crown, brought the Commons into collision with Clarendon. It had been settled by the Long Parliament that the king was to levy no taxes without a grant from Parliament. The Cavalier Parliament, Royalist as it was, was beginning to ask that the king should not spend the proceeds of taxes without the approbation of Parliament, When once this had been secured, Parliament would indubitably become supreme. Against this attempt to obtain the mastery Clarendon struggled. He was a good lawyer and an excellent man of business, but he was not a statesman of genius. He wanted each part of the government to act in harmony with the others; but he could never understand the meaning of the saying that if two men ride on horseback, one must ride in front. He wanted the king and Parliament both to ride in front, both-that is to say -to have their own way in certain directions. His notion of a king was that of one prudently doing his best for his people, always ruling according to law, and irresponsible in everything, even in the expenditure of money. A wasteful, riotous Charles II. was a phenomenon for the control of which his constitutional formulas were not prepared. 26. The Fall of Clarendon. 1667. Though Clarendon was unable to concur in any diminution of the power of the Crown, his eyes were widely open to the profligacy of Charles's life. Again and again he had remonstrated with him, and had refused to pass under the great seal grants in favour of Lady Castlemaine, to whom, amongst his many mistresses, Charles was at this time most completely subjugated. As might have been expected, this abandoned woman irritated her paramour against his upright Chancellor, telling him that he was no king as long as he was ruled by Clarendon. As Parliament continued its attacks, Charles, on August 30, dismissed Clarendon from office. On October 10, the fallen minister was impeached by the House of Commons, on charges the greater part of which were ridiculously untrue. He tried to rouse Charles to support him, reminding him that, after Charles I. allowed Strafford to die, the king's own head had fallen on the scaffold. Charles II., an easy-going but clever politician, probably thought that he could always escape his father's fate by refraining from imitating his father's stiffness. He gave Clarendon a strong hint to withdraw, and on November 29 the minister who 1660-1661 THE IRISH ACT OF SETTLEMENT 595 had done more than any other man to establish the restored monarchy, fled to France, never to return alive. 27. Scotland and Ireland. 1660.--At the Restoration, the close connection established by Cromwell between England and Scotland was necessarily broken up. Scotland hated English control even when it came in the guise of a union of Parliaments, and the old relation of separate states united only by the Crown was at once resumed. Argyle and his principal followers were executed as traitors. The main profit of the restoration in Scotland, however, fell to the nobility. The clergy was discredited by its divisions, and the noblemen, whose fathers had supported Presbyterianism against Charles I., now supported Charles II. against Presbyterianism. Once more, as in the days of James I., the clergy were muzzled by the restoration of episcopacy and the assertion of the authority of the Crown. In Ireland the main question was how to satisfy alike the recent English immigrants who had received lands from Cromwell and the Irish proprietors who had been deprived of their lands in favour of the intruders. In 1661, at the king's desire, an Act of Settlement was passed, making, in elaborate detail, an attempt to satisfy as many as possible of both parties; but as men of English descent and Protestant religion filled the Irish House of Commons, the English settlers contrived to maintain, by constitutional authority, much of what they had taken with the strong hand. According to the best evidence now procurable, whereas before 1641 about two-thirds of Irish lands fit for cultivation had been in the hands of Catholics, before the end of the reign of Charles II. two-thirds were in the hands of Protestants. I. Milton and Bunyan.-Whilst Clarendon and his allies were fortifying the legal position of the Church of England, the old Puritanism which they attempted to crush found a voice in literature. Milton, who had become blind, in consequence of his intense devotion to the service of the State, as the secretary of Cromwell, at last, after long preparation, gave to the world ‘Paradise Lost,' in 1667. The poem was Puritan, not only because its main theme was the maintenance or destruction of the purity of a single human soul, but because it based that purity on obedience to the commands of the great Taskmaster; whilst, in the solemn cadence of its blank verse there is something to remind the reader of the stern world of duty, in the midst of which the nobler spirits of the Commonwealth and Protectorate had moved. As Milton was the poet of Puritanism, John Bunyan was the prose-poet of Dissent. He had himself fought as a soldier on the side of Parliament in the Civil War, and, having become an earnest Baptist preacher, he continued to preach after the Restoration, and, boldly defying the law, was requited with a long imprisonment. His masterpiece, 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' was probably not written till 1675, but many of his religious writings were published before that date. His force of imagination made him the greatest allegorist the world has seen. His moral aim lay in the preservation of a few choice souls from the perils and temptations of a society wholly given up to evil. 2. Butler and the Dramatists.-There was, doubtless, much in 1663 MILTON AND BUTLER 597 the world round Milton and Bunyan to awake indignation. Samuel Butler was a man of genius, but his 'Hudibras,' which appeared in 1663, shows but poorly by the side of Paradise Lost' and 'The 6 Pilgrim's Progress.' This mock-heroic account of a Puritan knight is the work of a strong writer, who can find nothing better to |