gallows a dozen or more at a time-this good-| courts, and in all the departments of government, natured king rarely or never exercising the prerogative of mercy in their behalf. In the middle of the month of May, Charles, "after giving such thanks to them as they deserved," prorogued parliament till November.'

66

resembled those of an inquisition; and yet Archbishop Sharp was never satisfied, but complained, like Clarendon, that there was not vigour enough. He accused Lauderdale to the king; he intrigued to bring Middleton into business again; and when he found that he could not succeed, that his plot was discovered, he fell a trembling and weeping before the mighty and choleric pacha, protesting that he meant no harm, that he was only sorry that Lauderdale's friends were, upon all occasions, pleading for favour to the fanatics.

The English parliament re-assembled on the 24th of November, with cries of foreign war, and anticipations of victory and plunder. The Duke of York, as lord high-admiral and governor of the African Company, had ordered the seizure of some Dutch settlements on the coast of Guinea; the Dutch had retaliated, and captured a number of English merchantmen. The king, hoping to appropriate to himself a good part of the war-money that should be voted, fell in with the popular humour; peaceful negotiations were broken off, and both countries prepared their fleets. The commons, by a large majority, voted a supply of £2,000,000, the king

this war for the protection, honour, and benefit of his subjects. The city of London furnished several sums of money.'

In Scotland, where there were few or no conventicles or sects, the whole force of this conventicle act was turned against the Presbyterians, whose faith was decidedly the national religion. "All people," says Burnet, were amazed at the severity of the English act; but the bishops in Scotland took heart upon it, and resolved to copy from it: so an act passed there almost in the same terms." Lord Lauderdale, who had supplanted Middleton, and made himself supreme in Scotland, which he governed for many years like a Turkish pachalic, forgetting his old Presbyterianism, at the passing of the bill expressed great zeal for Episcopacy and the church; and the voice of the Earl of Kincardine, an enemy to all persecution, was drowned in the plaudits of the timeserving majority. By another act, the Scottish parliament made an offer to the king of an army of 20,000 foot and 2000 horse, to be ready, upon summons, to march with forty days' provision into any part of his majesty's dominions, to oppose in-protesting that he was compelled to enter into vasions, to suppress insurrections, or to do any other duty for the authority or greatness of the crown. The Earl of Lauderdale wished by this to let the king see what use he might make of Scotland, if he should attempt to set up arbitrary government in England by force of arms. The Scots, according to the reasoning of this able and resolute but unprincipled minister, had not much money to offer, but they could send him good and hardy soldiers. Invigorated by the Scotch conventicle act, Archbishop Sharp "drove very violently," establishing what proved to be a high commission court-one of the worst tyrannies cast down by the Civil war-and persecuting his former brethren of the kirk without pity, and without calculation of the personal danger he was thereby incurring. The prisons in Scotland were soon crammed like those of England, the prisoners meeting with still worse usage. Sometimes they were fined, and the younger sort whipped about the streets. Troops were quartered throughout the country to force the people to respect the bishops, the Liturgy, and the new-imposed Episcopalian preachers. These troops were commanded by Sir James Turner, "who was naturally fierce, but he was mad when he was drunk, and that was very often." The proceedings in the law

"3

As soon as the war broke ont, a A.D. 1665. most terrible plague broke out also in the city of London, and in the course of five months it swept away about 100,000 souls. The anguish and despair, the wild recklessness and profligacy which characterized the progress of the plague in ancient Athens, as recorded in the pages of Thucydides, were upon this occasion repeated in the metropolis of Christian England, and the loud wail and lamentation over the whole of London was strangely mingled with shouts of jollity and madness. In many cases, it seemed as if men had set themselves in earnest to "curse God and die!" When the visitation approached its height, those who could escape fled from the city, leaving their all behind them, while those who were unable or unwilling to flee, remained as the certain victims of the evil. At length, the public haunts, whether for business, religion, or pleasure, were deserted; the lonely streets were covered with grass; and not a sound was heard but the warning bell that accompanied the death-cart in its visits from house to house, and the cry of the undertakers, "Bring out your dead!" answered by the melancholy cry from the opened windows, "Pray for us!" In the more

for which he was often chid both by Lord Rothes and Sharp, but was never checked for his illegal and violent proceedings." Parl. Hist.: Clarendon; Burnet.

as if the people of England were slaves both by act of parliament and by the Word of God. Their pastoral charges and their sermons rolled in louder thunder than that of Laud and Mainwaring upon the Divine right of kings, the duty of passive obedience, and the eternal damnation provided for those who resisted the Lord's anointed and the ministers of the only true church upon earth. Meanwhile the debauchery of the court continued on the increase, and Oxford became the scene of scandalous intrigues, drinking, gaming, duelling, and ruffianly quarrels. "The lady," though allowed to dictate to chancellors and secretaries of state, and to dispose of benefices and promotion in this loyal church, was obliged to share the king's affections with various other women; the Duke of York in these respects closely copied his elder brother; and at Oxford the duchess (Clarendon's daughter) began to retaliate in kind.'

dated

large

GENERAL VIEW OF LONDON BEFORE THE GREAT FIRE, taken from the Tower of St. Mary Overies, Southwark.

Carefully copied from Hollar's

ngraving,

1649.

The great plague which A.D. 1666. had converted a large part of London into a wilderness disappeared altogether in the month of February, after a tremendous hurricane. The court ventured as far as Hampton Court, and at last, when all danger was over, the king returned to Whitehall. During his absence the seamen of the royal navy, upon whose bravery and conduct the honour and safety of the nation depended, had been left to lie starving and moaning in the streets for lack of money to pay their arrears. And now the war threatened to be more formidable; for the French king, by a sudden turn in his politics, made common cause with the Dutch. The English fleet, commanded by Monk and Prince Rupert, had been divided at sea. Early in the morning of the 1st of June Monk unexpectedly discovered De Ruyter and his fleet lying at anchor half-channel over. Seeing the great inferiority of their force, an English council of war urged that it would be rash to begin a fight; but his Grace of Albemarle, who had taken to drinking to excess, and who was probably then drunk, resolved to wait neither for better weather nor for Prince Rupert, and he gave the signal for attack. He had only sixty ships to oppose to eighty-four, and most of these ships were badly officered. The old officers who had served under the great Blake had been nearly all dismissed on account of their republicanism or their nonconformity; and the Duke of York had filled up their places with a set of lordlings, courtiers, and pages. In this day's "mad fight" the English suffered severely; a ship

Burnet: Pepys.

and a frigate were taken, and all their ships that
came really into action were ruined in their masts
and rigging by the chain-shot-a new invention
attributed to the great De Witt. In the course of
the night the Dutch received some reinforcements,
yet, on the morrow Monk renewed the combat, and
all that day, however ill commanded, the English
mariners vindicated their old reputation. Night
again separated the combatants; and again the
dawn of day-the third day of carnage-saw the
fight renewed. But now Monk fought retreat-
ing, and, after taking out the men, he burned
several of his most disabled ships. Towards
evening he saw the whole squadron under Prince
Rupert making towards him. Nearly at the
same moment the Prince Royal-esteemed the
best man-of-war in the world-struck on a sand-
bank and was taken by the Dutch. Next day
the battle was renewed, both sides fighting more
desperately than ever, until a thick fog inter-
rupted the slaughter. When the fog dispersed
De Ruyter was seen in retreat, but Monk and
Prince Rupert were in no condition to follow
him.
By the month of July the Dutch admiral
was again at sea with a still stronger fleet; but
now Monk and Rupert gave him a decided de-
feat, and drove him back in rage and despair
to the Texel. They then detached Sir Robert
Holmes with a considerable force, which scoured
the Dutch coast, burning two ships of war, 150
unprotected merchantmen and shipping craft,
and one or two defenceless villages.

accused himself of having been in a plot with two other poor Frenchmen, and of having set fire to the first house. His confession plainly indicated the state of his intellect, and the chiefjustice told the king that all his discourse was so disjointed that he could not believe him guilty. No one appeared to prosecute or accuse Hubert; yet the jury found him guilty, and the king and the judges allowed the poor insane creature to be hanged.

On the 21st of September, while the citizens were yet bivouacking on the ruins of London, the parliament re-assembled after nearly a year's recess, and voted £1,800,000 for prosecuting the ill-managed war. A regular opposition to the court was, however, now gaining some ground in both houses. Although it included some few honest and patriotic men, it was chiefly directed by the passions and interests of a selfish crew, that were not a whit more honest or virtuous than the court, and it was headed by the profligate Duke of Buckingham, who had a mortal quarrel with the lady." These men courted the Presbyterians and Nonconformists, got up a fresh cry against Popery, and brought about the appointing a committee to examine and report on the alarming growth of that proscribed religion. Having thus disturbed the court in its faith, they proceeded to touch it in the purse; and they introduced a bill for appointing commissioners to examine the accounts of those who had received and issued the money for this war. Mistresses and ministers, and all men holding public employments, were thrown into consternation: they declared that this would be touching the royal prerogative in its most vital

But a mightier conflagration was at hand. The summer had been the hottest and driest that had been known for many years; London, being then for the most part built of timber filled up with plaster, was as dry and combusti-parts; and Clarendon opposed the proceedings ble as fire-wood; and in the middle of the night between the 2d and 3d of September a fire broke out, "that raged for three days, as if it had a commission to devour everything that was in its way." It began at a baker's house near London bridge, on the spot where the obelisk called the Monument now stands, and it was not stopped until it had reduced nearly the whole of the city from the Tower to Temple Bar to a sightless heap of cinders and ashes. In the midst of this terrific conflagration a report was raised and spread that it was the effect of a conspiracy of the French and Dutch with the Papists. A stupified and desperate mob ran up and down seizing all the foreigners and English Catholics they could find; but, to the lasting honour of the London populace, desperate and bewildered as they were, they shed no blood, leaving such iniquities to be perpetrated by the fabricators of Popish plots, the parliament and the judges. A mad Frenchman, of the name of Hubert, who had been for many years looked upon as insane,

with all his might, exhorting the king to prevent these "excesses in parliament”—not "to suffer them to extend their jurisdiction to cases they had nothing to do with"--and to "restrain them within their proper bounds and limits." In the lords an attempt was made to defeat the bill. The commons hotly resented this interference with their privileges, and threatened to impeach the chancellor and the Lady Castlemaine. Hereupon Charles, in spite of Clarendon's advice "to be firm in the resolution he had taken," ordered the lords to submit, and so the bill was allowed to pass. But the party who had won this victory knew not how to use it, or could not agree among themselves as to the division of the personal profit to be derived from it; and, in the end, it was turned into a mockery by the king's being allowed to appoint a commission of his own for auditing the accounts. Charles told the commons that they had dealt unkindly with him in manifesting a greater distrust than he merited, and parliament was prorogued with

evident ill-humour on both sides. The Duke of | plunder and prize-money, was well disposed to Buckingham was for a time deprived of all his places.

peace. Negotiations between the three powers of France, Holland, and England were opened at Breda. But hostilities were not suspended; and De Witt, being well aware of the condition of the English fleet, resolved to avenge his country for the injury it had sustained at the hands of Sir Robert Holmes. To save the money which parliament had voted, and to apply it to his own pleasures, Charles had neglected to pay the seamen and to fit out the fleet. The streets of London were again full of starving sailors; and only a few second and third rate ships were in commission. In the beginning of June, De Ruyter dashed into the Downs with

mouths of the Medway and the Thames, destroyed the fortifications at Sheerness, cut away the paltry defences of bombs and chains drawn across the rivers, and got to Chatham on the one side, and nearly to Gravesend on the other. In the Medway the Royal Charles, one of the best of our ships, was taken; the Royal James, the Oak, and London, were burned. Upnor Castle had been left without gunpowder; and there was scarcely any gunpowder or shot in any of the ships. There were many desperate English sail

During the session an insurrection, provoked by the tyranny of Lauderdale and Archbishop Sharp, broke out in the west of Scotland, the stronghold of the Covenanters. The people, after being ridden over by the dragoons of Turner, were excited by Sempil, Maxwell, Welsh, Guthrie, and other ministers. On the 13th of November, they rose in a mass, seized Turner, and appointed a solemn fast-day to be held at Lanark. Lauderdale was at court, and so Sharp managed this bishops' war with two troops of horse and a regiment of foot-guards. Dalziel, a military man of some reputation, commanded under the arch-eighty sail and many fire-ships, blocked up the bishop in the field. The insurgents, who now began to be called Whigamores or Whigs, had few gentlemen with them, for all the suspected had been "clapped up" long before. On the 28th of November, they were attacked by Dalziel on the Pentland Hills, and after a brave resistance, forty were killed on the spot, and 130 were taken prisoners. Even in their first fury they had been merciful-they had respected the life of their prisoner the lawless Turner; but no mercy was shown to them in return; ten were hanged upon one gibbet at Edinburgh, and thirty-ors serving on board the Dutch ships; and they five more were sent back to the west, and there hanged up before their own doors. Archbishop Sharp made a keen search for all who had been in any way concerned in the rising; and, to extort confession, he employed a new instrument of torture, for ever infamous under the name of "the boots." Though for the most part poor and obscure men, the victims bore their sufferings with heroic constancy, preferring death to the betraying of their friends. M'Kail, a young preacher, was atrociously tortured and then executed under an unproved suspicion. Dalziel, a wild drunkard, hanged a man because he would not tell where his father was concealed, and killed many others without any form of trial. When he heard of any that would not go to church, he quartered soldiers upon them to eat them up.

Louis XIV., who had now other projects in hand, wished to creep out of the war; and Charles, being sorely disappointed in his expectations of

1 Pepys, Diary.

2 To this they were tempted by the rapid decline of Spain. Lord Bolingbroke, in his Letters on the Study of History, gives a striking summary of that decline down to 1660. "As to Spain, the Spanish branch (of the house of Austria) was fallen as low twelve years afterwards, that is, in the year 1660. Philip II. left his successors a ruined monarchy. He left them something worse; he left them his example and principles of government, founded in ambition, in pride, in ignorance, in bigotry, and all the pedantry of state. I have read somewhere or other, that the war of the Low Countries alone cost him, by his own confession, five hundred and sixty-four millions, a prodigious sum, in what specie soever he reckoned. Philip III. and Philip IV.

shouted to one another, and to the people on shore, that they were now fighting for dollars instead of fighting for navy-tickets that were never paid. If De Ruyter had made for London at once, he might have burned all the shipping in the Thames; but, while he was in the Medway, Prince Rupert threw up some strong batteries at Woolwich, and sank a number of vessels to block up the passage. After doing a vast deal of mischief, and inflicting still more disgrace, the Dutch, towards the end of June, sailed from the Downs, scoured our coast, and then returned in triumph to the Texel. In the month of August a treaty of peace was concluded at Breda.

Charles had no great anxiety to redeem the honour of his arms; but he had entered into a secret treaty with Louis XIV. for the conquest of Spanish Flanders, which was to be followed, at some not distant time, by the subversion of

followed his example and his principles of government at home and abroad. At home, there was much form, but no good order, no economy, nor wisdom of policy in the state. The church continued to devour the state; and that monster, the Inquisition, to dispeople the country, even more than perpetual war, and all the numerous colonies that Spain had sent to the West Indies: for your lordship will find that Philip III. drove more than 900,000 Moriscoes out of his dominions by one edict, with such circumstances of inhumanity in the execution of it as Spaniards alone could exercise, and that tribunal who had pro voked this unhappy race to revolt, could alone approve. Abroad, the conduct of these princes was directed by the same wild spirit of ambition; rash in undertaking though slow to execute,