II. Charles, on account of the pestilence in London, had CHAP. summoned the parliament to meet in Oxford. His A.D. 1665. object was to obtain another supply of money. The expenses of the war, partly through the want of naval stores,' partly through the negligence and rapacity of the officers, had considerably exceeded the calculations of his ministers, and the whole of the last parliamentary grant was already mortgaged to the creditors of the public. With the king's request that the two Oct. 11. houses, by their liberality, would complete their own work, they cheerfully complied; and an additional grant of one million two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, with a present of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds to the duke of York, was voted without a murmur. The next object which claimed Oct. 23. their attention was the danger to be feared from the enemies of monarchy. Algernon Sydney, and many of the exiles, had hastened to Holland, and offered their services to the States. Whether the latter seriously meditated an invasion of England or Scotland may be doubted; but they certainly gave naval and military commands to several of the refugees, and encouraged the formation of a council of English malcontents at the Hague. These corresponded with their friends in England; the most sinister reports were put in circulation; strangers, notwithstanding the mortality, were observed to resort to the capital; and information was sent to Monk of secret meetings of conspirators, and of plots for the seizure of the Tower and the burning of the city. Rathbone, Tucker, and six of their asso- Sept. 1. Miscel. Aul. 361. D'Estrades, ii. 364, 369. Pepys, ii. 324, 347, 352. Evelyn, ii. 248. 1 To supply the naval arsenals, Charles, of his own authority, suspended the Navigation Act, and yet the parliament took no notice of it-Coke, ii. 140. He revoked the suspension, 27th Sept. 1667. II. CHAP. ciates had been apprehended, and paid the forfeit of A.D. 1665. their lives; but Colonel Danvers, the leader, escaped from the grasp of the officers, and found an asylum in Sept. 3. the country. Alarmed by this insignificant plot, the parliament attainted several of the conspirators by name, and, in addition, every natural-born subject who should remain in the service of the States after a fixed day.' These enactments, however, did not satisfy the more timid or more zealous. During the pestilence, many of the orthodox clergy in the metropolis persisted with the most laudable constancy in the discharge of their duties; many, yielding to their fears, had skulked away from the scene of danger, and sought security in the country. The Presbyterian ministers who had recently been ejected seized the opportunity to ascend the vacant pulpits amidst the loud cries of their congregations, "What must we do to be saved?" The self-devotion of these men, who braved the perils of death that they might administer the consolatious of religion to their afflicted brethren, is said to have provoked the jealousy of their rivals; and that jealousy, if it really existed, was speedily gratified by new penal enactments. That the law had been violated, no one could deny; but the violation had been committed in circumstances so extraordi 1 L. Journ. xi. 688, 692. St. of Realm, v. 578. Parker, 7887. Burnet, i. 393. Clarendon, 290. It has been often asserted that these plots, and the correspondence said to be carried on between the disaffected in England and the Dutch, were mere fictions. The following extracts from the letters of d'Estrades, the French minister at the Hague, to his sovereign, will perhaps prove the contrary. Les états ont de grandes intelligences en Ecosse, et parmi les ministres de leur religion en Angleterre.-Mémoires d'Estrades, ii. 383, Oct. 3, 1665. L'Ecosse fait entendre aux états que dès que votre majesté se declarera, elle a un fort parti à mettre en campagne, et que les ministres de l'Angleterre de la même religion de ceux de ce pays mandent la même chose.-Id. 385. PUNISHMENT OF NONCONFORMISTS. 119 II. nary as to be more worthy of praise than censure. CHAP To add, therefore, to the legal offence, it was A.D. 1665. pretended that the ministers had employed the opportunity to disseminate from the pulpit principles of sedition and treason, representing the plague as a visitation from Providence, partly on account of their own expulsion from the churches, and partly on account of the immorality of the sovereign and his court; a charge in which it is probable that the indiscretion of one or two individuals was not only exaggerated, but unjustly extended to the whole body. However that may be, an act was passed, prohibiting Oct. 30. every nonconforming minister to come, unless he were passing on the road, within five miles of any town sending members to parliament, or of any village in which he had ever lawfully or unlawfully exercised his ministry, under the penalty of a fine of forty pounds for every such offence, and of six months' imprisonment, if he refused in addition to take the oath of non-resistance. For the better execution of this, the Five-mile Act, the bishops received from the orthodox clergy the names of all nonconforming ministers within their respective parishes; spies and informers were every where employed and encouraged; and the objects of suspicion were compelled to fix themselves and their families in obscure parts of the country, where they depended for support on their own labour and the casual charity of others. But the oath was still refused; and the sufferings of the victims served only to rivet their doctrines more firmly in the minds of their hearers.1 De Witt had long sought to strengthen himself and 1 L. Journ. xi. 700. Stat. of Realm, v. 575. Wilkins, Con. iv. 583. Burnet, i. 392-393. The act did not mention nonconform II. CHAP. his party with the protection of the king of France; A.D. 1665. and Louis was not unwilling to purchase the services of a man who governed the states of Holland, and through them was able to control the other provinces of the republic. To him De Witt had communicated several proposals for the partition of the Spanish Netherlands; and the king, though he nourished a more ambitious project in his own breast, to humour the Dutchman, consented to enter into a negotiation Sept. 17. respecting the conditions. But, in 1665, Philip of Spain died, leaving the crown, and all the dominions dependent on it, to the infant his son, under the regency of Marianne of Austria, the queen-mother. Louis now determined, as he had previously intended, to take possession of Flanders, under the pretence that by the custom of several provinces in the Netherlands, called the right of devolution, those provinces belonged to his wife, Maria Teresa, the daughter of Philip by his first marriage. It was, indeed, true that Louis by contract, and his young queen by a separate instrument, had solemnly renounced all claim to the succession to the Spanish monarchy in general, and to Flanders, Burgundy, and Charolais in particular; but it was contended that the king had been released from the obligation of the contract by the non-payment of ing ministers, but included them under the description of persons who had enjoyed ecclesiastical promotion, or preached at unlawful conventicles. 1 All the letters of d'Estrades, from his arrival in Holland in 1664, show how firmly this unfortunate statesman had devoted himself to the interests of France. 2 Dumont, vi. part i. 283, 288. By the law of devolution, which prevailed in several provinces of the Netherlands, the right of inheritance was given to the children of the first marriage, even females, to the exclusion of the issue by the second. Maria Teresa, the consort of Louis, was the daughter of Philip of Spain by his first wife; Charles, the inheritor of the monarchy, was his son by the second. II. the marriage portion on the part of Spain, and that CHAP. Maria Teresa had never been bound by the renun- A.D. 1665. ciation, because it was made during her minority. It chanced, however, that the Dutch, in virtue of the defensive alliance concluded between them and France in 1662, now called upon Louis to join Louis to join as their ally in the war against Charles; and it seemed impolitic to provoke hostilities at the same moment with two such powers as England and Spain. It was, indeed, easy to elude the demand, by replying that a defensive treaty did not bind, when the party claiming aid had provoked the war; but, on the other hand, it was argued that Louis, by cheerfully uniting with the States, would render them less hostile to his intended occupation of Flanders; and that, under the pretext of preventing the descents of the English, he might covertly make preparations, and assemble troops on the nearest parts of the coast.1 Louis followed this counsel: his ambassador informed Charles that unless peace were speedily concluded, his master would feel himself bound to take part against him in the war; and the English king had the spirit to defy the power, rather than submit to the dictation, of a foreign prince. In January the French monarch, though with many 16666 expressions of regret, declared war; but, at the reclamation of the English ambassador, granted three months to British subjects to withdraw with their effects from his territories. The approach of a French 1 2 1 Dumont, vi. part ii. p. 412. Œuvres de Louis XIV. ii. 5— 11, 25, 130. 282, 288. Miscel. Aul. 373. 2 Dumont, part iii. 82. Clar. Mémoires d'Estrades, iii. 54, 64. freedom from molestation in person or property to all natives of France or the United Provinces residing in or coming into his domi |