culty, and therefore Charles replied in a seeming friendly manner. Upon that Argyle posted up to Whitehall, where, being denied admittance, he was seized and sent to the Tower as a traitor and regicide, it being asserted that he had encouraged the Commonwealth men to put the late king to death. The Earl of Glencairn, a leader of the Scottish Cavalier party, was sent to Edinburgh to restore the Committee of Estates as it existed in 1650, when Charles was in the country, which Oliver Cromwell had not as yet reduced to a dependency of the English Commonwealth. General Middleton, who had been so very unsuccessful in his attempts at shaking off Cromwell's yoke, was elevated to the Scottish peerage, and appointed general of the forces and king's commissioner for holding the parliament; Glencairn was made chancellor, and the Earl of Lauderdale (afterwards the ill-famed and bloody Duke Lauderdale) secretary of state. The chief power was divided for a time between Middleton and Lauderdale, who were fiercely jealous of each other. These two selfish, unprincipled, and violent men, sometimes with the consent of the Scottish parliament, and more frequently in spite of that disjointed and always ill-constructed legislature, soon erected one of the worst tyrannies that ever cursed a country. The Marquis of Argyle, after being basely trepanned at Whitehall, was sent down to Edinburgh, to be tried by the men that were thirsting for his blood and hungering for his estates. The old marquis, who was assisted by the notoriety of the facts, made an admirable defence. The state trials were just so much worse in Scotland than in England, as the Scottish civilization fell short of the English. Fletcher, the lord-advocate, called the noble prisoner at the bar an impudent villain! Argyle gravely said, that he had learned in his affliction to bear reproaches. While the trial was in progress before the Scottish parliament, his son, the Lord Lorn, obtained a letter from the king, ordering that the lord-advocate should not insist upon any offences committed by the marquis previously to the year 1651, when the present king had given his indemnity; and that when the trial was ended, the whole process should be submitted to his majesty before the parliament gave sentence. But the king's commissioner, Middleton, who expected to be enriched by Argyle's forfeiture, induced the king to revoke one part of his letter, and took it upon himself to disregard the other. Middleton also made a search for precedents of men who had been condemned in Scotland upon presumptive evidence, and argued the matter in person, hoping that the weight of his authority would bear down all opposition. But Gilmore, though recently promoted to be president of the Court of Session, had the honesty to say that to attaint Argyle upon such evidence would be more unjust than the much-decried attainder of the Earl of Strafford; and, after a fierce debate, in which Middleton stormed, and swore, and blasphemed as was his wont-Gilmore carried a majority, and the prisoner was acquitted on that count. Argyle now thought that he was safe; but Middleton resolved to make his compliance with Cromwell high treason. Even here the lordcommissioner would have been defeated, had it not been for the villainous offices of his friend Monk, Duke of Albemarle. Monk, the restorer -a servant worthy of the prince he had restored -searched among his papers, and found some private letters which Argyle had written to him when he (Monk) was the sworn friend of Cromwell, and the general of the Commonwealth, and in which the marquis expressed his zeal for the maintenance of that system of government. These private letters Monk sent down to Scotland by an express, and Middleton ordered them to be read in parliament at a stage when the produc tion of further evidence was strictly illegal. The effect was instantaneous and fatal; all the friends of the marquis ran out of the parliament house as if a bomb had fallen among them; the rest agreed that these letters sufficiently proved that the prisoner's compliance with the usurper was not feigned and compulsory, but sincere and voluntary; and they condemned him as guilty of treason. Argyle begged for ten days' respite, in order that the king's pleasure might be known; but when this was refused he understood the inten tion of the court, and exclaimed, "I placed the crown upon his head, and this is my reward." [When Charles was crowned at Scone, in 1651, Argyle really placed the crown upon his head, and at that time it was very generally believed that he would soon be the king's father-in-law.] He was beheaded at the market-cross of Edinburgh, only two days after receiving sentence, and his head was set up over the jail where the Covenanters had exposed the head of Montrose. Other trials ensued, in which still less attention was paid to the forms of law. Twelve eminent Presbyterian preachers, who came to Edinburgh with a petition, were seized and cast into prison. Guthrie, one of them, who, ten years ago, “had let fly at the king in his sermons," was hanged, for example's sake, a few days after the execution of Argyle. With him was hung one Gowan, who had deserted to Cromwell while the king was in Seotland. "The man," says Bishop Burnet, "was inconsiderable, till they made him more considered by putting him to death on such an account, at so great a distance of time." The fourth vietim was Bishop Burnet's own uncle, Johnstone of Warriston, one of the greatest and most eloquent assertors of the Covenant. This aged man fl-d royal proclamation; and presently all men were required to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy, acknowledging the right of the king to settle religion and the church. In the midst of a general subservience in parliament, two noble Scotsmen, the Earl of Cassilis, and Dr. Robert Leighton, Bishop of Dunblane, had the courage to resist. Leighton said that the land mourned already by reason of the many compulsory oaths that had been taken. Archbishop Sharp, who had so recently worn the Genevan gown himself, replied with great bitterness and insolence, flying out against the Presbyterian stiffness. The enlightened Leighton said that it ill became the very same persons who had complained of the rigour of the Covenanters to practise a like rigour themselves, "for thus it would be said that the world goes mad by turns." Middleton, who wanted the oath as a trap for scrupulous consciences, was furious at this opposition; but in the end the odious act was passed, and made as trenchant as Archbishop Sharp and the king's commissioner desired. Not satisfied with this, they brought forward another oath, abjuring for National Covenant; and between these two oaths to the Continent; but some time after, the French | restored hierarchy was made very absolute by government gave him up to Charles, and he was sent back to Scotland, and tried and hanged. It had been assumed as a principle that the destroyers of Montrose, the idol of the Cavalier party, should feel the full weight of retaliation; and yet Macleod of Assynt, the false friend who had so infamously betrayed Montrose to his enemies, "was let go without any censure." Burnet attributes this impunity to habits of debauchery in Macleod, which were largely sympathized with by the now dominant faction; but possibly Macleod's purse and estates told another story. Vengeance was often defeated by the love of lucre, or by personal jealousies among the new great men. Swinton, who had been attainted, and who had been the man of all Scotland most trusted and employed by Cromwell, was admitted to mercy, because Middleton, in hatred to Lauderdale, who had got the gift of his estate, recommended him to the king. Many others suffered in liberty and estate; but as open bribery was a rule of government, and as money bought pardons, no more executions took place for the present. Middleton and Lauderdale continued to quarrel with one another, to accuse one an-mally both the League and Covenant, and the other in an underhand way, and to plot against one another. At one time Middleton wanted to impeach his rival, but Clarendon told him that impeachments were dangerous things-that "the assaulting of a minister, as long as he had an interest in the king, was a practice that never could be approved; it was one of the uneasy things that a House of Commons of England sometimes ventured on, which was ungrateful to the court." Thus the matter dropped; and the two rivals, reconciled in appearance, went on in amicable unison to ride roughshod over the kirk and the laws and liberties of Scotland. This," says Burnet, who was living in the midst of it," was a mad roaring time, full of extravagance; and no wonder it was so, when the men of affairs were almost perpetually drunk." In spite of the alarming warning held out by the past, it was resolved to set up Episcopacy; and Sharp, a minister who was to the Kirk of Scotland what Monk had been to the Commonwealth, pressed Middleton to take advantage of the present general consternation, and establish bishops. At the same time he duped his brethren with professions of an ardent zeal for the kirk, and persuaded them to send him up to court as their delegate. Sharp soon returned from London Archbishop of St. Andrews! Other men "were sought out to be bishops," and these men, after receiving consecration from the Archbishop of Canterbury, hurried down to Scotland, "all in one coach," to take possession of their sees. Forthwith bishops again appeared among the lords of parliament. The power in the church of this lanca Aulica; Malcolm Laing, Hist. Scot. The new English parliament met on the 8th of May. The elections had gone greatly in favour of the royalist and high-church party, and not more than fifty or sixty of the Presbyterian party found their way into the House of Commons. This parliament for the disgrace of the country-lasted much longer than that which is distinguished in history by the name of the Long Parliament; but а distinctive epithet was not wanting-it was called the "Pension Parliament." The House of Commons began with voting that all their members should receive the sacrament by a certain day, according to the rights of the Church of England, under pain of exclusion. Then, in concert with the lords, the commons condemned "that great instrument of mischief, the Solemn League and Covenant," to be burned by the common hangman. The acts establishing the Commonwealth, and the chief ordinances of the Long Parliament, were treated in the same manner. They then passed a number of bills, which all had for their object the strengthening of the monarchical power. They imposed a fresh oath, importing that neither house could lawfully take up arms against the king, in any case whatsoever. They restored the bishops to their seats in the House of Peers; Burnet, Own Times; Clarendon, Life; State Trials; Miscel they increased the rigour of the law of treason; one of these collects a new epithet was added to they declared it to be a high misdemeanour to the title of the openly profane and immoral call the king a Papist; and they materially cur- Charles, he being styled "our most religious tailed one of the most important of the popular king;" and the Dissenters "could not down with" rights the right of petitioning the king or par- the story of Bel and the Dragon, introduced liament, by enacting that no petition should have from the Apocrypha; nor with the new holidays, more than twenty signatures, unless by permis- such as St. Barnabas, the Conversion of St. Paul, sion of three justices of the peace, or the major- and the 30th of January, now dedicated to King ity of a grand jury. The Cavaliers would also Charles the Martyr. When the commons had gladly have struck at the bill of indemnity, in done with this conformity bill, they voted the order to wrench from the adherents of the Com-king a subsidy of £1,200,000, and a hearth or monwealth all the property they had acquired; but Clarendon felt that any such invasion of that act would be too dangerous, and the Cavaliers were obliged to content themselves with a vote of £60,000 to be distributed among themselves, and to confirm the said indemnity act. chimney tax for ever:' and the parliament was prorogued on the 19th of May with a flattering speech from Charles, who promised to take better care both of his money and his morals. of crowned heads as de facto King of England. Charles held himself at auction, and Portugal became the highest bidder, offering with the Princess Catherine, Tangiers, Bombay, the advantages of a free trade, and half a million sterling; and it was resolved that the offer should be accepted, notwithstanding the religion of the princess, and the opposition of Spain, which still claimed the Portuguese kingdom, and treated the house of Braganza as rebels and usurpers. The orthodox Clarendon decided Charles in this resolution, in spite of the representations of many of his own party, who rationally feared that the king, already suspected of Popery, would be still more mistrusted when he should have a Catholic wife and a mass-chapel in his own house. After some necessary delays that were irksome to the king, not because he longed for the royal bride, but because he was greatly in need of the dower, the treaty was concluded, and Lord Sandwich was despatched with a small fleet to take possession of Tangiers and bring home the bride and the money. Catherine of Braganza arrived at Portsmouth on the 20th of May, and was there met by her husband, who conducted her in state to Hampton Court. At this time Charles's mis It was high time, for he was on the eve of marriage. Nearly all the courts of Europe had When this parliament re-assembled at the end struggled for the honour of giving a wife to this of November, there was no visible diminution of dissolute prince, for whatever contempt Charles its loyalty or orthodoxy; and Clarendon excited | had excited on the Continent as an exiled, errant its zeal by disclosing a pretended conspiracy, king de jure, he became one of the most important which was said to extend all over the country. The king confirmed the awful disclosures made by the chancellor; but perhaps at that moment the indolent Charles may have been made to believe that the airy conspiracy really existed. The commons, in a paroxysm of rage and terror, called for more blood-for the execution of such of the condemned regicides as had hitherto been spared and especially demanded the trial of Sir Harry Vane and General Lambert, who had both been excepted from the act of oblivion, but recommended by the Convention Parliament to the king, who had promised to spare their lives. But Charles, who never respected a promise, lent a ready ear to the recommendation of the Pension Parliament, and it was arranged that Vane and Lambert should suffer during the next recess. In the meantime, to stay the appetite of vengeance, three distinguished Commonwealth men, the Lord Monson, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Sir Robert Wallop, were drawn upon sledges, with ropes round their necks, from the Tower to the gallows at Tyburn, and then back to the Tower, there to remain prisoners for life. In this session a conformity bill, recommended, if not actually drawn up by Clarendon, was debated and passed in all its intolerant rigour, the lords hav-tress, en titre, was "one of the race of the Villiers," ing vainly attempted to soften some of its clauses. It enacted that every parson, vicar, or other minister, should publicly declare before his congregation, his unfeigned assent and consent to every-age as Earl of Castlemaine. People expected thing contained and prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer; and that every preacher that had not received ordination from the hands of a bishop must submit to that process before the next feast of St. Bartholomew. A few new collects, added by the bishops to the Prayer Book, did not tend to make this act more palatable. In married to Mr. Palmer, who, on her account, and for his base connivance, was taken into the diplomatic service and raised to the Irish peer that he would now break with the mistress, or at least manage his intercourse with her as privately as possible. But he was not prepared to make any, the least sacrifice, either to duty or decency: he dined and supped with Lady Castlemaine every day and night of the week that Every house rated above 208, was to pay 28. his employer of all that had passed, and to request, not that he would give up his design of fixing his mistress constantly in court as the servant of his wife, but that he would forbear pressing the queen in that matter for a day or two, till he had once more waited upon her. But, according to his narrative, the king listened to other counsellors, and resolved to make his wife submit at once. "The fire flamed that night higher than ever: the king reproached the queen with stubbornness and want of duty, and she him with tyranny and want of affection: he used threats and menaces which he never intended to put in execution, and she talked loudly how ill she was treated, and that she would return again to Portugal. He replied, that she should do well first to know whether her mother would receive her; and he would give her a fit opportunity to know that, by sending to their home all her Portuguese servants; and that he would forthwith give order for the discharge of them all." What the threats and menaces were which Charles never intended to put in execution we know not, but he forthwith executed his cruel threat of depriving his wife of her servants-her countrymen and countrywomen, the friends of her childhood. After an interview with the chancellor, who had been again with the queen, using argu preceded the queen's arrival; he was there on the night that bonfires were lit in the street for that event;' he left her to go to his bride; and, when Catherine was established at Hampton Court, he not only presented her himself, but also insisted that she should be one of the queen's ladies of the bedchamber. Clarendon, who worshipped the proprieties and outward appearances. according to his own account, spoke with great boldness to the king on the subject of this scandalous appointment, telling him "of the hardheartedness and cruelty in laying such a command upon the queen which flesh and blood could not comply with. The king," says he, "heard him with patience enough, yet with those little interruptions which were natural to him, especially to that part where he had levelled the mistresses of kings and princes with other lewd women, at which he expressed some indignation, being an argument often debated before him by those who would have them looked upon above any other men's wives." But, according to the historian's own account, the moral conversation ended by the king's "requiring him to use all those arguments to the queen which were necessary to induce her to a full compliance with what the king desired." And the Lord High-chancellor of England--the model Clarendon-who is still styled, by some, one of the most illustrious of Eng-ments and cajolery to overcome her natural relishmen, one that through all circumstances maintained the innate dignity of his character-the upright minister, the true patriot, and the honest man-undertook the office, and waited several times on the forlorn young queen to prove to her the suitableness of submission and resignation "to whatsoever his majesty should desire of her," and to insinuate (his own words!) "what would be acceptable with reference to the lady." Catherine, who had told this hoary-headed mediator for royal profligacy that she had to struggle with more difficulties than ever woman of her condition had known-that at times she was forced "to give vent to that passion that was ready to break her heart"-now assured him "that the king's insisting upon that particular could proceed from no other ground but his hatred of her person, and to expose her to the contempt of the world, who would think her worthy of such an affront if she submitted to it, which before she would do, she would put herself on board any little vessel, and so be transported to Lisbon." The chancellor upon this reminded her "that she had not the disposal of her own person, nor could go out of the house where she was without the king's leave;" and, therefore, advised her "not to speak any more of Portugal, where there were enough who would wish her to be." The chancellor then made haste to inform Pepys, Diary. pugnance, "he persevered in all his resolutions without any remorse-directed a day for all the Portugueses to be embarked without assigning any considerable thing of bounty to any of them, or vouchsafing to write any letter to the King or Queen of Portugal of the cause of the dismission of them. And this rigour prevailed upon the great heart of the queen, who had not received any money to enable her to be liberal to any of those who had attended her out of their own country, and promised themselves places of great advantage in her family; and she earnestly desired the king that she might retain some few of those who were known to her, and of most use, that she might not be wholly left in the hands of strangers; and employed others to make the same suit to the king on her behalf. Whereupon the Countess of Penalva, who had been bred with her from a child, and who, by the infirmity of her eyes and other indisposition of health, scarce stirred out of her chamber, was permitted to remain in the court; and some few inferior servants in her kitchen and in the lowest offices, besides those who were necessary to her devotions, were left here. All the rest were transported to Portugal." Nor did Catherine's trials end here. "In all this time," continues Clarendon, "the king pursued his point: the lady came to the court-was lodged there was every day in the queen's presence and the king in con tinual conference with her, whilst the queen sat untaken notice of; and if her majesty rose at the indignity and retired into her chamber, it may be one or two attended her; but all the company remained in the room she left, and too often said those things aloud which nobody ought to have whispered. . . All these mortifications were too heavy to be borne; so that at last, when it was least expected or suspected, the queen on a sudden let herself fall first to conversation and then to familiarity, and, even in the same instant, to a confidence with the lady; was merry with her in public, talked kindly of her, and, in private, used nobody more friendly."1 On the 2d of June, a few days after the king's marriage, the republican Sir Harry Vane was arraigned before the Court of King's Bench. or as a servant of government acting under the commission of parliament; and he maintained that he could be tried only by parliament, and not by any inferior tribunal. His judges, who were met to condemn, not to try him, overruled these objections, and bade him plead guilty or not guilty. Vane represented that he could not expect justice from judges who, in another place, had prejudged him and recorded their votes against him; that the length of time taken to search out matters against him, and the undue practices and courses to find out witnesses against him, were further proofs that he could not have an equal and impartial trial; that, during all that time, he had been kept in close imprisonment without being once examined, or having any question put to him whereby he might conjecture what would be charged against him; that he had been treated as a great delinquent-his rents stopped, his tenants forbidden to pay them, his very courts prohibited by officers of great personages claiming the grant of his estates; that, by these undue proceedings, he had not wherewithal to maintain himself in prison, and his debts, to the amount of above £10,000, were undischarged, either principal or interest; and that the hopes of private lucre and profit were such in his tenants and other persons, sought out for far and near to be witnesses against him, that it would be no wonder if, at last, some charges should be exhibited; but these charges were so general and vague, that nothing certain, or that applied peculiarly to himself, could be gathered out of them. After expressing his faith and reliance on God, who now called him to suffer, as he had formerly called him to act, for the good of his country-after expressing his consciousness that for himself the issue would be good, whatever this court might make it-he continued: "Far be it from me to have knowingly, maliciously, or wittingly offended the law, rightly Upon the Restoration, Vane, knowing that he had understood and asserted; much less, to have done taken no share in the trial or death of Charles I., anything that is malum per se, or that is morally and that the new king, in his declaration from evil. This is what I allow not, as I am a man, Breda, had promised a wide indemnity, continued and what I desire with steadfastness to resist, as at his house in Hampstead, near London. He I am a Christian. If I can judge anything of was allowed to remain undisturbed for about my own case, the true reason of the present dif five weeks, when he was arrested and sent to the ficulties and straits I am in is because I have Tower, whence he had been carried from one desired to walk by a just and righteous rule ir prison to another for the space of two years. all my actions, and not to serve the lusts and He had now been brought up from a lone castle passions of men, but rather to die than wittingly or block-house on one of the Scilly Islands. The and deliberately sin against God and transgress indictment charged him with compassing and his holy laws, or prefer my own private interest imagining the death of Charles II., and conspiring before the good of the whole community I relate to subvert the ancient frame of the kingly gov- unto, in the kingdom where the lot of my resi ernment of the realm. Vane objected that the dence is cast." The counsel for the prosecution offences charged against him were committed were reduced to silence; but the Chief-justice either in his capacity as a member of parliament, Foster muttered "Though we know not what to say to him, we know what to do with him." Vane SIR HARRY VANE. From a print by Houbraken, after Sir P. Lely. 1 Life. 2 Ludlow. |