temperate country. The people were tired of the Puritan gloom and rigour; their habitual love of order had been offended by continual revolutions, which seemed fruitless of any permanent settlement; and the old affection for the monarchy, as part of the ancient historic life of the nation, awoke once more when Charles addressed himself to his loving subjects, and made as many fine promises as he had words to express. The old order was at once restored, both in Church and State; such of

natural or accidental causes, as in the case of the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of London of 1666; but, in the generality of instances, the national discontent was due to the bad govern. ment and immoral life of Charles himself. The closing of the Exchequer in 1671, and the suspension of the payment of either principal or interest upon loans advanced to the Treasury, previous to the war with Holland in 1672, was one of those acts which spread general dismay throughout a nation.

the regicides as could be found were tried and executed; and in 1662 the Presbyterian clergy were, by an Act of Uniformity, compelled to resign their livings. These proceedings, harsh as many of them were, do not seem to have caused any general unpopularity, and even the profligate life of the King was at first regarded with toleration, owing to the gay and attractive manner by which it was set off. It was not until the sale of Dunkirk to the French, in the latter part of 1662, that the English people began to doubt whether they had done wisely in bringing back Charles II., without imposing on him very stringent conditions for the proper discharge of his office. Thenceforward the King was regarded with constantly-increasing distrust, and the events of his reign were in many respects such as to depress the national spirit. This sometimes resulted from

The foreign complications of Charles's reign have been related in other connections. They were almost wholly disgraceful and unfortunate; but the domestic state of the kingdom was equally deplorable. Lord Clarendon, who, whatever his faults, was at one with the House of Commons in opposing the more extreme inclinations of the King, was dismissed from the Chancellorship in 1667, and affairs then progressed without a check. The notorious Cabinet called the Cabal, after the initials of its five members, encouraged Charles in his attempts to establish an uncontrolled despotism. The power of this Administration lasted from 1667 to 1674, and for a time Charles II. imperilled the throne itself by his opposition to the general sentiment. In 1673, the Duke of York, afterwards James II., openly declared his adhesion to the Roman Catholic Church, and it

was suspected that the King himself had privately followed the same course. The so-called Popish plot of 1678, the alleged object of which was the assassination of the King and the introduction of the Roman Catholic religion, led to a terrible persecution of the Papists, and to many judicial sentences of great cruelty; but it is now doubted whether the conspiracy had any actual existence. In the main, it was probably concocted by the infamous Titus Oates; yet it is unquestionably the fact that intrigues had for some time been proceeding between the French Court and the English Catholics headed by the Duke of York, with a view to the reintroduction of Romanism. The Meal-tub Plot of Dangerfield, when the Protestants were accused of treason by the adherents of the King's brother, followed in October, 1679; and the popular agitation again went up to fever heat. The Duke of York had been compelled early in the year to leave England for Brussels, and even Charles had proposed some limitation of his power in the event of his succeeding to the throne. A Bill for his total exclusion passed the House of Commons; and the same session of Parliament-that of 1679-was rendered memorable by the famous Habeas Corpus Act, which secured the liberties of the subject in several important respects. Charles was frequently at issue with his Parliaments, and often dissolved them after very brief sittings; but popular rights made progress during this reign, and the despotic schemes of the monarch were circumscribed, if not entirely foiled. It was about 1680, or a little earlier, that the division into Whigs and Tories first appeared in our national annals; the former party representing the principle of freedom, the latter that of court supremacy.

The country was still agitated by considerations as to the succession; but the Exclusion Bill, directed against the Duke of York, was thrown out by the House of Lords in 1680, though it had again passed the Commons. Many persons felt

that to exclude James's Protestant children from the throne, in favour of one of Charles's illegitimate offspring (the Duke of Monmouth), would be an act of great injustice, and the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Shaftesbury, who had all along been the leader of the extreme Protestant party, fell in general estimation when the tide began to turn. Parliament was dissolved in 1681; its successor was summoned to meet at Oxford. It sat only a week, and was then dismissed by the King, who could not tolerate its opposition to his arbitrary measures. From that time until the close of his reign, Charles governed without Parliaments—a bold stroke, considering what the same conduct had cost his father.

Two years before, the Scottish Covenanters, exasperated to madness by the tyranny of Lauderdale, had risen in insurrection, but, being defeated at Bothwell Bridge, on the 22nd of June, 1679, were compelled to acknowledge a despotism which they hated, but were not strong enough to overthrow. This triumph doubtless encouraged Charles in his designs against the liberties of both kingdoms. Being now delivered from the fear of Parliament, he obliged many of the Municipal Corporations, in 1683, to surrender their charters into his hands; after which they were restored with such modifieations as placed them entirely under the control of the Crown. At the same time, the Nonconformists were treated with great rigour, and all persons suspected of republican principles were ejected from posts of trust or profit. The latter years of the King's reign were embittered by fears of conspiracy and insurrection, which were not entirely without cause. The Rye House Plot aimed at the assassination of the King; but the more moderate of the malcontents, such as Lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney, thought only of an armed rising which should free the nation from the despotism fast settling down upon it. Russell and Sidney were executed for an alleged share in the plot for assassination; but there is no real ground for supposing that they contemplated any such act, and their names have ever since been cherished as those of martyrs to the principles of constitutional freedom. Both England and Scotland now lay helpless at the feet of a triumphant autocrat; yet Charles had grave doubts as to whether he could permanently maintain his position, and it is said that he had resolved to follow a different course, when an apoplectic fit brought his life to a close on the 6th of February, 1685. On his deathbed he received the sacraments of the Romish Church, and there can be no doubt that he had for some years belonged to that communion, though, unlike his brother, he had not the honesty to proclaim it. Charles was a witty and to some extent a shrewd man; but the open profligacy of his life infected the manners and the literature of the nation to an extent which had never before been equalled, and which left behind it a depth of corruption not easily cured. His political principles were no better than his morals; and it is probable that, had he lived much longer, he would have suffered the fate which soon afterwards overtook his brother.

Before his accession to the regal state, James II. had had some experience of government in Scotland, where he had acted as the representative of Charles after his return from Brussels in the

autumn of 1679; but his actions in that country had given the people of the South every reason to dread his occupation of the throne. In his first address to the Privy Council, he promised to preserve the government, both in Church and State, as it was by law established; but he immediately began to act in contravention of accepted principles, and lost no time in making arrangements with the French Ambassador at London for occupying the same humiliating position towards Louis XIV. that Charles had so long filled, for the sake of the yearly income that it brought him. He offended the religious sense of the nation by going openly to Mass, and he sent an agent to Rome to make arrangements for the readmission of England into the Romish Church. A Parliament was indeed called; but this was simply to save appearances, for the King had no intention of being guided by its wishes. Discontent soon became general, and, in the very year of the accession of James, the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth in England, and that of the Earl of Argyle in Scotland, showed how formidable was the spirit of opposition thus early aroused. Terrible severities followed, and, at the Bloody Assize in the West of England, the infamous Judge Jeffreys hanged three hundred and twenty persons. Many other persons perished during the military excesses of Colonel Kirke, after the suppression of Monmouth's rising; and James now considered that he might safely proceed with the projects he had formed. By an apparent act of liberality, the really sinister nature of which it is not difficult to discern, the King issued, on the 4th of April, 1687, a Declaration of Indulgence, in which he announced his intention of protecting the Dissenters in the free exercise of their religion. His object (like that of Charles in a similar proceeding) was simply to weaken the Church of England, and thus prepare the way for the introduction of Romanism; after which, the Nonconformists would have had little opportunity of following their conscience. The Puritans, however, were not deceived by so transparent a device, and the detestation of the King rapidly increased in all but Papistical quarters. Nevertheless, James would take no warning, and the arbitrary manner in which, by sheer military force, he imposed Dr. Parker, Bishop of Oxford, a known Roman Catholic, upon the Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, as their President, gave convincing proof of the spirit in which he was determined to act against the whole Protestant body of Great Britain.

The quarrel with the Seven Bishops followed in 1688. On the 27th of April in that year, James

333

published a second Declaration of Indulgence, which he ordered to be read in all churches. The clergy, for the most part, disobeyed, and seven of the Bishops sent a written remonstrance, for which they were committed to the Tower. Considered in the abstract, the position of the Bishops was manifestly illiberal; but, on grounds of legality, and with reference to the obvious intentions of the King, their action was perfectly correct. The asserted power of the monarch to dispense with the effect of Acts of Parliament had been frequently declared to be against the laws and constitution of England. On the 29th of June, however, the Bishops were brought to trial before the Court of King's Bench, on the charge of publishing a seditious libel; but the jury pronounced a verdict of acquittal, which was received with popular rejoicings. The regiments encamped at Hounslow, to overawe the discontented Londoners, cheered loudly when they heard the news; but the infatuation of James was such that even this warning did not bid him pause. He had already deeply offended the people of Scotland by placing the government of that kingdom in the hands of two Lords who had been converted to Romanism, and by ordering the Scottish Judges to treat all laws against the Catholics as null and void an order which the Judges had the servility to obey, but which kindled a flame of indignation in the hearts of the people. In Ireland, James incurred the hatred of the Protestants by admitting Papists to the Council and to civil offices, by cashiering Protestant officers in the army, and by enrolling two thousand of the Catholic Irish among its ranks. Every Englishman in the island was turned out of office; all the great functions of State were confided to adherents of the older religion; and English ascendency was so completely annihilated that fifteen hundred Protestant families crossed the channel in dread of a James's object was apparently to create a Catholic and independent Ireland, in order that, supposing he should be succeeded on the English throne by a Protestant, the sister country might serve as a place of refuge for the Catholics and himself. At the same time, he was determined to make England as Catholic as Ireland, if any human efforts could accomplish the result.

massacre.

A man of less dogged resolution would have drawn back when he heard the shouts of the soldiery, and saw in every direction the most unmistakable signs that the vast majority of the English people were determined to resist such enroachments. But James was besotted with a sense of his own power, and inspired with a certain

Hume, "the whole Church of England, two hundred excepted." His despotism was met by the calm front of an united nation, determined to uphold the laws, and to save the life of English freedom. It had by this time become evident that nothing was to be hoped from James himself, and the eyes of the patriotic leaders were turned towards William, Prince of Orange, the Stadtholder of Holland, who had already, in his own country, given proofs of the highest abilities, both as a soldier and a statesman. The Prince's mother was the eldest daughter of Charles I.; his wife was the eldest daughter of James II. William had therefore a claim to the throne of England, in default of James leaving no heir; but it happened, shortly before the appeal to the Stadtholder, that a son was born to the King by his second wife, Mary of

family, and might, under conceivable circumstances, be the actual heir to the throne.

However this may have been, the Prince of Orange was invited to appear in England, that he might save the public liberties; and, after some hesitation, he acceded to the request. A fleet of fifty men-of-war, accompanied by, three hundred transports, and an army of about 14,000 men, appeared on the 5th of November, 1688, at Wrexham, in Torbay. James had heard of what was contemplated, and, seized with sudden terror at the prospect of his overthrow, endeavoured to gain popularity by the withdrawal of his most obnoxious acts. But it was now too late. England was ready to welcome the friendly invader, although the people of the West, remembering all they had suffered after the futile rebellion of the Duke of