speedily to be gone, and that he had the king's word for all that had been undertaken by the Bishop of Hereford." And that same rough November night, as soon as it was dark, the infirm old chancellor fled with two servants to Erith, and there embarked for France. When his departure and safe arrival at Calais were known to his friend the Earl of Denbigh, that peer rose in his seat and said he had an address to the House from the Earl of Clarendon, which he desired might be read. This was an apology, under the name of an humble petition and address, in which the ex-chancellor defended himself against some of the imputations, or, as he called them, "foul aspirsions," of his accusers. After the paper had been read in the Lords it was sent to the Commons, who voted that it contained much untruth, and scandal, and sedition, and that it should be publicly burned by the hand of the hangman. The Lords concurred in this sentence, and the paper was burned accordingly. A bill for banishing and disenabling the fugitive was soon passed by both Houses. By this bill, unless he surrendered himself before the 1st of February, he was to be banished for life; disabled from ever again holding any office; subjected, if he afterward returned to England, to the penalties of high treason; and rendered incapable of pardon without the consent of the two Houses of Parliament. Only Hollis and a few others of no name protested against this bill. The proud old man bore his misfortunes with Little dignity, and he died an exile in France about seven years after his flight. Sir Thomas Clifford, first commissioner of the treasury, afterward Lord Clifford and high treasurer, the Earl of Arlington, secretary of state, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Ashley, chancellor of the exchequer, afterward Earl of Shaftesbury and lord chancellor, and the Duke of Lauderdale, now divided among them the authority and profits of government. The five initial letters of their names, put together, spelt the word CABAL, and their doings answered to this title, by which their ministry is commonly designated. Secretary Morrice, the creature of Monk, was succeeded by Sir John Trevor, a creature of Buckingham; and, under the same influence, the government of Ireland was taken from Ormond and given to Lord Robarts. A.D. 1668. Some of the acts of the Cabal ministry were, however, such as might meet the approval of better and purer politicians than the members of the parliament of that time. They took alarm at the daring ambition of Louis XIV., who had invaded Spanish Flanders with three armies, and was threatening the independence of the United Provinces, and, by means of that able diplomatist, Sir William Temple, they opened negotiations with the great De Witt, who was still at the head of the Dutch republic. The speedy result was, the formation of the famed triple alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden, with the object of mediating a peace between France and Spain, and checking the schemes of Louis.' The French monarch 1 In relinquishing the pay of the French king, Charles tried to get supplies for his pleasures from the now humbled and impoverished knew that a league where Charles was concerned could not be lasting, and, setting on foot new intrigues, he, for the present, made a show of moderation, and in the month of April concluded the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, retaining Lille, Tournay, Douay, Charleroi, and other places of great strength and importance in Flanders, and giving back to Spain the whole of Franche-Compté, which he had overrun. As a sample of his public honesty, it may be mentioned that, while his minister was actually negotiating the triple alliance at the Hague, Charles was maintaining a close correspondence at Paris, and, through his sister, the Duchess of Orleans, the Duke of Buckingham, and Rouvigny, was making overtures for a clandestine treaty with Louis. The Duke of York also was bent upon this union with the despotic court of France, declaring that nothing else could reëstablish the English court.' In fact, it was already the cherished project of both brothers to make the power of the English crown absolute by the aid of Louis XIV. Parliament had met on the 10th of February. It was charmed with the triple league--with its essentially Protestant character, and with the recognition by Spain of the independence of Portugal. By his marriage treaty Charles had engaged to support the interests of the House of Braganza, and he had even sent a small body of English troops into Portugal, where, though left in a miserable, payless condition, they had behaved very gallantly at the great battle of Evora, in which the Spaniards, under Don John of Austria, had been completely defeated. The parliament was further gratified by a treaty of commerce which had been concluded with Spain. But all their good humor disappeared at the first blush of a project of religious toleration. The king, in his speech, had recommended “some course to beget a better union and composure in the minds of his Protestant subjects in matters of religion;" and it became known that Bridgman, now lord keeper, the chief baron, Sir Matthew Hale, Bishop Wilkins, Ashley, and Buckingham had laid the foundations of a treaty with the Non-conformists, on the basis of a comprehension for the Presbyterians and a toleration for the minor Protestant sects. The orthodoxy of the House of Commons was as powerful and as intolerant as it had been in 1662. Members could not speak fast enough or loud enough. They declared that the only true Protestant religion and monarchy would be subverted; they kept back the supplies; they spoke of making a searching inquiry into the miscarriages of the late Dutch war, and into the corruptions and peculations of ministers and other servants of government. Charles wanted the money, was alarmed at their fury, and gave up the scheme of toleration. It was said at the time, that whoever proposed new laws about religion must do it with a rope about his neck! The Commons finished by continuing the Conventicle Act and increascourt of Spain; and Temple was instructed to ask from the Spanish ambassador "as much money as he could spare." 1 Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, by Sir John Dalrymple, bart. 2 Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe, wife of Sir Richard Fanshawe, ambassador from Charles II. to the courts of Portugal and Madrid. ing its rigor. They adjourned on the 8th of May to the 11th of August, at the desire of the king, who wisely interrupted a struggle which had arisen between the two Houses touching a question of privilege, and a bold attempt of the Lords to extend their jurisdiction at the expense of the Commons. They had voted a supply of £310,000. Parliament reassembled in October to vote the king more money, to strengthen the coercive powers of the church, and to do nothing else; for they were abruptly dissolved after a short session. They were not so liberal as was desired, and Charles was now completing his arrangements with Louis, which he hoped would render him forever independent of parliaments.3 and Charles chiefly loved absolutism for the command it would give him over the purses, pens, and tongues' of his people, conceived that it would now be an easy task to change both the religion and gov ernment of the nation. They proposed to fortify Plymouth, Hull, and Portsmouth. The fleet was under the duke, who was still the lord-admiral; the The bishops and high-churchmen were satisfied, guards had been increased, and it was calculated— and continued to preach divine right and passive | rather rashly, no doubt that both the army and obedience, while the court plunged more deeply navy would stand by the king in any attempt. Louis than ever into debauchery and profaneness. My stepped in with offers of assistance in men and Lady Castlemaine was now "mightily out of re- money; but he drove a hard bargain, and involved his quest, the king going little to her." He had been secret ally in a foreign scheme of gigantic iniquity. captivated by Mary Davies, who danced a jig mar- The French monarch panted to crush the independvelously, and by Nell Gwyn, another public actress, ent republic of Holland, and to grasp the entire both of whom he was accustomed to introduce at Spanish monarchy, which was then feebly held by a court. Lady Castlemaine retaliated; but, in spite boy, the sickly and imbecile Charles II., who was of the king's inconstancies and her own, she retained not expected to live. He therefore proposed:for many years a great influence. There were 1. That he and Charles should declare and make royal projects of abduction and divorce, adulterous war with their united forces by land and sea upon if not incestuous intrigues, which might figure in the United Provinces, and never make peace or the Satires of Juvenal, but which can find no place truce until they had completely conquered that unin our pages. grateful and insolent republic: then Louis was to give the king of England a part of Zealand, to provide, if possible, a territory or an indemnity for Charles's young nephew, William Prince of Orange. 2. That, in the event of any new rights or titles accruing to his Most Christian Majesty (that is, on the death of the young king of Spain), Charles should assist him with all his force by sea and land, the expense of that war to be borne by Louis, and Charles to have, as his share of the spoil, Ostend and Minorca, and such parts of Spanish South America as he might choose to conquer for himself at his own expense and risk. And then came the more immediate or most tempting part of the bargain, which was, that Charles was to have an annual pension of £200,000, to be paid quarterly by the king of France, and the aid of 6000 French infantry. With this assistance he was to make a public declaration of Catholicity. Louis wished to begin with a declaration of war against Holland; Charles, with his profession of the Roman Catholic religion-or so at least he pretended. He also wanted money from France before he did any thing. To remove these difficulties Louis employed Henrietta, duchess of Orleans, Charles's sister, who came over to Dover with the fascinating Mademoiselle Kerouaille in her train. Charles wavered in his resolutions, and, with Clifford, Arundel, and Arlington, all Catholics (Arundel not being of the cabinet), fully concluded the treaty on this footing on the 22d of May, 1670. The Duchess of Orleans returned with the treaty to France, where she died very shortly after, not without unusually strong suspicions of being pois A.D. 1670. When the Houses met again (on the 14th of February), Charles, contrary to English usage, and in imitation of Louis XIV., went to open the session with an escort of his guards. His whole tone, too, was changed, and he seemed to threaten where he used to cajole. Nor was there any increase of spirit on the part of the Commons to meet this absolute bearing. They allowed the king to speak contemptuously of the commission for auditing the public accounts; and, after voting some supplies, they separated like a set of venal cowards. Charles, and his brother, whose religious zeal was very different, but whose love of absolute power was pretty equal, though James was the steadier despot, 1 Pepys says, "This law against conventicles is very severe; but Creed, whom I meet here, do tell me that it being moved that papists' meetings might be included, the House was divided upon it, and it was carried in the negative; which will give great disgust to the people, I doubt.... And this business of religion do disgust every body, the parliament being vehement against the Non-conformists, while the king seems to be willing to countenance them. So we are all poor and in pieces, God help us!" 2 As the king had two actresses, so "the lady" took to herself two actors-or, rather, one stage-player and a rope-dancer! She also gambled outrageously. "I was told," says the gossiping Pepys, "that my Lady Castlemaine is so great a gamester as to have won £15,000 in one night, and lost £25,000 in another night at play, and hath played £1000 and £1500 at a cast." In the following year (1670), by which time she had had four or five children, which the king owned, he elevated her to be Duchess of Cleveland, with remainder to her natural sons. "She was," says Burnet, a woman of great beauty, but most enormously vicious and ravenous; foolish, but imperious; very uneasy to the king, and always carrying on intrigues with other men, while yet she pretended she was jealous of him. His passion for her, and her strange behavior toward him, did so disorder him, that often he was not master of himself nor capable of minding business." This account is more than borne out by a variety of authorities. • Dalrymple. 1 According to Burnet, Charles once told Lord Essex that he did not wish to sit like a Turkish sultan, and sentence his subjects to the bowstring; but he could not bear that a set of fellows should inquire into his conduct. 2 Dispatches, Memorials, &c., in Appendix to Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, by Sir John Dalrymple, who had the merit of first producing many of them from the friendly obscurity of the Dépôt des Affaires Etrangères at Versailles. 3 The treaty, as finally concluded at Dover, is given at length by Dr. Lingard (Hist. Eug) from the original, in possession of Lord Clifford. oned by her husband. Mademoiselle Kerouaille became mistress to Charles, Duchess of Portsmouth, &c.; and, as she served his interests well in many ways, Louis XIV., in 1673, gave her a French title and estate. Of the Cabal ministry only Clifford and Arlington were admitted into the secret of the treaty; and, the better to keep Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale in the dark, they were employed upon a simulated treaty, in which Charles's change of religion was omitted. 66 When parliament reassembled in the month of October, the badge of corruption and slavery was still more conspicuous on the majority in the Commons. They voted an extraordinary supply for the navy, because they were told by the court that the French king was enlarging his fleet and required looking after. In providing the ways and means, they had put a tax upon land, a tax upon stock, a tax upon law proceedings, a tax upon salaries, &c. It was asked why a tax should not be put upon playhouses? It was answered, that the players were the king's servants, and a part of his pleasure. Sir John Coventry put a question, which was taken as a gross reflection on the king's amours, and the unlucky member was denounced with fury at court. It was said that, if this were allowed to pass, worse disloyalty would follow; that it would grow into a fashion, and that it was therefore fit to take such severe notice of this slip as should stop people's mouths for the future.' The Duke of York," says Burnet, told me he said all he could to the king to divert him from the resolution he took, which was to send some of the guards, and watch in the streets where Sir John lodged, and leave a mark upon him. Sands and Obrian, and some others, went thither, and, as Coventry was going home, they drew about him. He stood up to the wall and snatched the flambeau out of his servant's hand, and, with that in one hand and his sword in the other, he defended himself so well that he got more credit by it than by all the actions of his life. He wounded some of them, but was soon disarmed; and then they cut his nose to the bone, to teach him to remember what respect he owed to the king; and so they left him, and went back to the Duke of Monmouth's, where Obrian's arm was dressed. That matter was executed by orders from the Duke of Monmouth, for which he was severely censured, because he lived then in professions of friendship with Coventry, so that his subjection to the king was not thought an excuse for directing so vile an attempt on his friend, without sending him secret notice of what was designed. Coventry had his nose so well sewed up that the scar was scarce to be discerned." This outrage was so atrocious that 1 Very severe notice had been taken of other slips before this. In 1668 the Puritans and apprentices about Moorfields took the liberty to pall down certain brothels, and then to say that they did ill in con tenting themselves with pulling down the little brothels and did not go and pull down the great one at Whitehall." Eight of the ringleaders of these rioters and censors were condemned to die; but this did not prevent the composition and circulation of a bitter satire, in the shape of a petition to the king's mistress, from the poor prostitutes whose houses had been pulled down." This," adds Pepys, "shows that the times are loose, and come to a great disregard of the king, or court, or government." VOL. III.-44 even that parliament could not overlook it. They passed a bill, known by the name of the Coventry Act, making cutting and maiming a capital offense: but they had not courage sufficient to bring the king's bastard or any of his bravoes to trial. “Lord's noses," said Sir Robert Holt, in the course of the debate, "are even as our noses, and not of steel; it concerns the Lords as weil as us-as in Lord Ormond's case." Here allusion was made to outrages committed the same year by a very conspicuous villain, the noted Colonel Blood. This desperado, with five other ruffians, had seized the Duke of Ormond as he was returning from a public dinner in the city, dragged him out of his coach, mounted him behind one of the gang on horseback, to whom they bound him fast, and rode off with him toward Tyburn, with a design to hang him there, to revenge the deaths of Blood's fellow-conspirators, who were executed for a plot to surprise the castle of Dublin in 1663: but, in the way thither, his grace made a shift to dismount his man, and while they lay struggling together on the ground, his domestics, who had been alarmed by his coachman and some people living in the neighborhood, came up to his assistance. Blood then let go his hold, and made off, firing a pistol at the duke. So villainous an attempt excited the indignation of the whole kingdom, and a proclamation was issued offering a thousand pounds reward to any man who should discover any one of the assassins; and the like sum and a free pardon to any one of the band who should betray the rest. But no discovery was made till Blood himself was taken the next year in a most daring attempt to carry off the crown of England out of the Tower. "The king," says Ralph, "had the curiosity to see a villain of a size and complexion so extraordinary; and the Duke of Ormond remarked upon it, that the man need not despair, for surely no king should wish to see a malefactor but with intention to pardon him." Blood's behavior before the king is described as being as extraordinary as his exploits. It is said that he not only avowed his crimes, but seemed to glory in them-observing that his attempt on the crown he could not deny, and that on the Duke of Ormond he would not; that, upon being asked who were his associates, he replied that he would never betray a friend's life, nor ever deny a guilt in defense of his own; that he even confessed that he had once been engaged in a plot to shoot the king with a carabine, for his severities to the godly, when his majesty went to swim the Thames above Battersea; but that, struck by an awe of majesty, his heart failed him, and he not only gave over the design, but obliged his confederates to do the same. It is added that he boasted of his indifference to life or death, but said that the matter was of more consequence to his majesty, inasmuch as there were hundreds of his friends, yet undiscovered, who were all bound to each other by the strongest of oaths to revenge the death of any of the fraternity. Charles, it is said, was touched pleasantly in his vanity and very unpleasantly in his fears, and thought it most advisable to be friends with such a desperado. Blood was not only pardoned, but his pardon was Since the robbery by Colonel Blood, the Regalia have been covered by a strong iron grating, omitted in the Cut in order to show the articles more clearly. 66 accompanied with the grant of an estate in Ireland | told Buckinghom, in the king's presence, that he worth £500 a-year. Nor was this all: he was ad- knew very well that he was at the bottom of the mitted into all the privacy and intimacy of the court design. And, therefore," continued his lordship, -became a personal favorite of the king'-was con- "I give you fair warning, if my father comes to a stantly seen about Whitehall-" and, by a particular violent end by sword or pistol-if he dies by the affectation, oftenest in the very room where the hand of a ruffian, or by the more secret way of Duke of Ormond was."2 "All the world," says poison-I shall not be at a loss to know the first auCarte, "stood amazed at this mercy, countenance, thor of it: I shall consider you as the assassin-I and favor shown to so atrocious a malefactor, the shall treat you as such; and, wherever I meet you, reasons and meaning of which they could neither see I shall pistol you, though you stood behind the king's nor comprehend. The general opinion, at the time, chair; and I tell it you in his majesty's presence, was, that Blood was put upon the assassination by that you may be sure I shall keep my word."the Duke of Buckingham and the Duchess of Cleve- [Our omissions, for the sake of brevity, are numerland (late Lady Castlemaine), who both hated the ous, but it is necessary to give a few of these deDuke of Ormond mortally."" And it is considered tails, in order to convey a true notion of this reign.] probable that the ruffian acted from a double motive, and not simply out of revenge for Ormond's having hanged some of his friends seven years before. Ormond's son, the gallant, free-spoken Lord Ossory, 1 Blood was immediately admitted into what was called the very best society. On the 10th of May, 1671, when his exploits were fresh, Evelyn mentions-"Dined at my lord treasurer's, where dined Mons. de Grammont and several French noblemen, and one Blood, that impuperial crown itself out of the Tower, pretending curiosity of seeing the regalia there, when, stabbing the keeper, though not mortally, he boldly went away with it through all the guards, taken only by the accident ceived in favor, not only after this, but several other exploits almost as daring both in Ireland and here, I could never come to understand. Some believed he became a spy of several parties, being well with the sectaries and enthusiasts, and did his majesty service that way, which dent, bold fellow, who had not long before attempted to steal the im of his horse falling down. How he came to be pardoned, and even re none alive could do so well as he; but it was certainly, as the boldest The chief state performances of the next year (1671) were a cruel persecution of the Non-conformists, "to the end that these might be more sensible of the ease they should have when the Catholics prevailed;" a public proclamation made by Charles, that as he had always adhered to the true religion established, so he would still employ his utmost care and zeal in its maintenance; and hurried preparations for that joint war with Louis, who was bound to make England a Catholic and an absolute monarchy. De Witt, who suspected from the beginning where the first blow would fall, who had certainly more than an inkling of the Dover treaty, and who felt that the vaunted triple alliance was now a mockery, concluded an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the bewildered and insulted court of Spain. Louis imperiously demanded from that court a free passage through the Spanish Netherlands in order to humble the Hollanders; and told them that if they refused, he would force his way with 60,000 men. A.D. 1672. overran three of the seven United Provinces, and spread such consternation in the great trading city of Amsterdam, that the municipal authorities proposed sending their keys to the conqueror. Even the great De Witt despaired, and suggested the inevitable necessity of submission. But behind the river Maas and the broad dikes of South Holland there lay a phlegmatic youth who never knew despair, and who was destined to check the proud monarch of France in his prime-to oppose him with marvelous perseverance through thirty years, and to organize a system which triumphed over him in his old age. This was William of Nassau, prince of Orange, who was then in his twenty-first year, of a sickly habit of body, and, as yet, of no experience. He was the posthumous child (by the daughter of our Charles I.) of William Prince of Orange, who had rendered the stadtholderate, which had become almost hereditary in his house, so odious by his tyranny, and close imitations of the proceedings of absolute monarchs, that, upon his premature death in the year 1650, the States had abolished for ever that supreme magistracy, and created a sort of president in the person of the pensionary John De Witt, who not only administered the affairs of government, but took charge of the education of the young prince. At the present terrible crisis the Dutch remembered that it was the princes of Orange that had first made them an independent people by rescuing them from the atrocious tyranny of the Spaniards; and as, besides the prestige of his name, young William had given indications of unusual prudence and conduct, they resolved to intrust him with the supreme command of all their forces. De Witt, who could not prevent this appointment, induced the republican party to bind the prince by an oath to observe the edict of the abolition of the stadtholderate, and never advance himself to that office. But now, the people seeing their towns and garrisons fall daily into the hands of the enemy, began to suspect the fidelity of De Witt, who, unfortunately for himself, had contracted an alliance with the French in the course of the preceding war between Holland and England, and, still more unfortunately, had now recommended treating with the haughty and ungenerous Louis. The two parties had always been Charles attempted to keep on the mask to the last moment. He offered himself as a mediator, and he probably imposed for some time both upon the Spaniards and the Dutch. But Louis was now ready, and his satellite rushed into the war like a robber and a pirate. During one of those long prorogations of parliament which were now becoming so frequent, he, with the advice of the Cabal ministers, and without the least opposition from any one member of his council, on the 2d of January, suddenly shut up the exchequer, an act which amounted to an avowed national bankruptcy, and which had the immediate effect of spreading ruin far and wide, and of entirely uprooting credit. This was the robbery; now for the piracy. Before any declaration of war, and while, as he thought, the Dutch were relying upon him as a mediator and friend, he detached Sir Robert Holmes to capture the homeward bound Smyrna fleet of Dutch merchantmen, whose freight was supposed to be worth a million and a half sterling. Holmes, afterward styled "the cursed beginner of the two Dutch wars," fell in with this rich fleet, and attacked it; but he found it so well prepared that he was beaten off, and, after two days' hard fighting, he got little or nothing save the eternal disgrace of the attempt. Then Charles, sorely disappointed of his expected prey, declared war; and his ally, Louis, put forth his ordinance, proclaiming his intention of "running down" the Dutch. De Witt was well prepared at sea; and, on the 28th of May, the brave De Ruyter attacked the combined English and French fleets at Solebay. The English were commanded by the Duke of York and Lord Sandwich; the French by D'Estrées, La Rabiniere, and Du Quesne. The battle was terrible, which never failed to be the case when Dutch met English; but the French, whose navy was in its infancy, were very careful of their ships and men, as they were afterward in other seafights. There appears, indeed, to have been a standing order to the French admirals that they should risk as little as possible, and promote all occasions for the Dutch and English navies to de-inveterate against each other, and now, while the stroy each other. The Dutch vice-admiral, Van Ghent, was killed-the Earl of Sandwich was blown up by a fire-ship and perished, with nearly all his crew-and the Duke of York was well-nigh sharing the same fate. After fighting from morning till evening, the fleets separated, miserably shattered, and with no very apparent advantage on either side. Meanwhile Louis, threatening to drown those shopkeepers in their own ditches, was marching to the Rhine with 100,000 men, commanded by those great and experienced generals, Turenne, Condé, and Luxembourg, and with money-chests filled with gold, to bribe and to buy. He crossed the Rhine almost without a show of opposition, 1 La Rabiniere, the rear-admiral of the French, died of his wounds and was buried at Rochester. republicans blundered, the Orangeists-the quasiroyalists-who had long been deprived of the honor and emoluments of office, intrigued, and, without doubt, fanned the popular fury into a flame. At Dort, at Rotterdam, at Amsterdam, and Middleburgh, the people rose and called for a stadtholder; the pensionary De Witt and his brother were barbarously murdered at the Hague; and the Prince of Orange, being absolved from his oath both civilly and canonically, took the reins of government into his own hands. William rewarded the assassins; and then, with an undivided command, and all the resources of the country at his disposal, he made head against the French. Amsterdam was saved by inundating the surrounding country; and, whereever the enemy attempted an advance, the dikes |