22. =The Fire of London. 1666.=--In September, =1666=, London suffered a calamity only second to that of the Plague. A fire broke out, and burnt for three days. All the City from the Tower to the Temple, and from the Thames to Smithfield, was absolutely destroyed.
Old St. Paul"s, the longest cathedral in England, perished in the flames. Great as the suffering caused by the fire was, it was not without its benefits, as the old houses with their overhanging storeys were destroyed by it, and were replaced by new ones built in the modern fashion, so that there was more air in the streets. After this reconstruction of London it was never again visited by the Plague.
23. =Designs of Louis XIV. 1665-1667.=--Soon after the fire died down Parliament voted 1,800,000_l._ for continuing the war, but the country was exhausted, and it was known that it would be impossible to collect so large a sum. Both king and Parliament were therefore anxious for peace, and there were now reasons which made the Dutch also ready to make peace. In =1665= Philip IV. of Spain died, and was succeeded by his only surviving son, Charles II., as yet a mere child, hopelessly weak in body and mind. Philip also left two daughters, the elder, Maria Theresa, a child of his first wife, being the wife of Louis, whilst the younger, Margaret Theresa, the wife of the Emperor Leopold I., was, with Charles II., the offspring of a second marriage.[27] Both of the daughters had renounced all future claim to the Spanish Crown, but Louis, knowing that the young Charles II. of Spain was so sickly as to make his early death probable, was prepared to a.s.sert his wife"s claim whenever that event took place. In the meanwhile he put forward a demand that the greater part of the Spanish Netherlands should be immediately handed over to her, because in those countries there was a law, known as the law of devolution, enacting that the daughter of a first wife should receive a larger share of her father"s property than a son of the second. Louis chose to construe a right to succeed to property as though it implied a right to govern. In March, =1667=, he made a secret treaty with Charles II. of England, in which, on condition of his engaging not to help the Dutch, he was allowed to do as he pleased in the Spanish Netherlands. In May he began what is known as the War of Devolution, with Spain. Spain had neither money nor means to defend her territory in the Netherlands, and the French armies captured one place after another.
[Footnote 27: Genealogy of the surviving children of Philip IV:--
1. Elizabeth of France = Philip IV. = 2. Mary of Austria.
| | +----------------+ +---+------------------------+ | | | Maria Theresa = Louis XIV. Margaret Theresa = Leopold I. Charles II.]
24. =The Dutch in the Medway, and the Peace of Breda. 1667.=--The advance of Louis into the Spanish Netherlands and the establishment of the French armies so near their frontier in the place of the now exhausted forces of Spain greatly alarmed the Dutch. The mere risk of this danger had, even before the war between France and Spain began, inclined them to peace with England, and a conference was opened at Breda to consider the terms. All was quickly agreed on except the question about the right of England to Pularoon (see p.
589), and Charles, imagining that this would be settled in his favour, dismissed his sailors and dismantled his fleet, in order to save money to spend on his own extravagant pleasures. The Dutch fleet at once entered the Thames, sailed up the Medway, burnt three men-of-war, and carried off a fourth. For some days it blockaded the Thames, so that the Londoners could get no coals. Men openly said that such things would not have happened if Oliver had been living.
Orders were sent to the English amba.s.sadors at Breda to give up Pularoon, and on July 31 the Treaty of Breda was signed. It was not wholly disastrous. If England lost her last hold on the spice islands of the East, she gained New York and all the territory formerly Dutch in the West, which had broken up the continuity of her colonies in America.
25. =Clarendon and the House of Commons. 1667.=--The events of the last months of the war had produced important effects upon the temper of Parliament. Long before the Dutch appeared in the Medway, the House of Commons had demanded an inquiry into the expenditure of the money granted to the Crown, suspecting that much of the supply distinctly intended for purposes of war had been diverted to pay for the amus.e.m.e.nts of the Court. This demand, which opened a new chapter in the history of the financial struggle between the House of Commons and the Crown, brought the Commons into collision with Clarendon. It had been settled by the Long Parliament that the king was to levy no taxes without a grant from Parliament. The Cavalier Parliament, Royalist as it was, was beginning to ask that the king should not spend the proceeds of taxes without the approbation of Parliament. When once this had been secured, Parliament would indubitably become supreme. Against this attempt to obtain the mastery Clarendon struggled. He was a good lawyer and an excellent man of business, but he was not a statesman of genius. He wanted each part of the government to act in harmony with the others; but he could never understand the meaning of the saying that if two men ride on horseback, one must ride in front. He wanted the king and Parliament both to ride in front, both--that is to say--to have their own way in certain directions. His notion of a king was that of one prudently doing his best for his people, always ruling according to law, and irresponsible in everything, even in the expenditure of money. A wasteful, riotous Charles II. was a phenomenon for the control of which his const.i.tutional formulas were not prepared.
26. =The Fall of Clarendon. 1667.=--Though Clarendon was unable to concur in any diminution of the power of the Crown, his eyes were widely open to the profligacy of Charles"s life. Again and again he had remonstrated with him, and had refused to pa.s.s under the great seal grants in favour of Lady Castlemaine, to whom, amongst his many mistresses, Charles was at this time most completely subjugated. As might have been expected, this abandoned woman irritated her paramour against his upright Chancellor, telling him that he was no king as long as he was ruled by Clarendon. As Parliament continued its attacks, Charles, on August 30, dismissed Clarendon from office.
On October 10, the fallen minister was impeached by the House of Commons, on charges the greater part of which were ridiculously untrue. He tried to rouse Charles to support him, reminding him that, after Charles I. allowed Strafford to die, the king"s own head had fallen on the scaffold. Charles II., an easy-going but clever politician, probably thought that he could always escape his father"s fate by refraining from imitating his father"s stiffness.
He gave Clarendon a strong hint to withdraw, and on November 29 the minister who had done more than any other man to establish the restored monarchy, fled to France, never to return alive.
27. =Scotland and Ireland. 1660.=--At the Restoration, the close connection established by Cromwell between England and Scotland was necessarily broken up. Scotland hated English control even when it came in the guise of a union of Parliaments, and the old relation of separate states united only by the Crown was at once resumed. Argyle and his princ.i.p.al followers were executed as traitors. The main profit of the restoration in Scotland, however, fell to the n.o.bility. The clergy was discredited by its divisions, and the n.o.blemen, whose fathers had supported Presbyterianism against Charles I., now supported Charles II. against Presbyterianism. Once more, as in the days of James I., the clergy were muzzled by the restoration of episcopacy and the a.s.sertion of the authority of the Crown. In Ireland the main question was how to satisfy alike the recent English immigrants who had received lands from Cromwell and the Irish proprietors who had been deprived of their lands in favour of the intruders. In =1661=, at the king"s desire, an Act of Settlement was pa.s.sed, making, in elaborate detail, an attempt to satisfy as many as possible of both parties; but as men of English descent and Protestant religion filled the Irish House of Commons, the English settlers contrived to maintain, by const.i.tutional authority, much of what they had taken with the strong hand.
According to the best evidence now procurable, whereas before =1641= about two-thirds of Irish lands fit for cultivation had been in the hands of Catholics, before the end of the reign of Charles II.
two-thirds were in the hands of Protestants.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII
CHARLES II. AND THE CABAL. 1667-1674
LEADING DATES
Reign of Charles II., 1660-1685
Treaty of Dover June 1, 1670 Second Dutch War of the Restoration March 13, 1672 Declaration of Indulgence March 15, 1672 Test Act March 29, 1673 Dismissal of Shaftesbury Nov. 9, 1673 Peace with the Dutch Feb. 19, 1674
1. =Milton and Bunyan.=--Whilst Clarendon and his allies were fortifying the legal position of the Church of England, the old Puritanism which they attempted to crush found a voice in literature. Milton, who had become blind, in consequence of his intense devotion to the service of the State, as the secretary of Cromwell, at last, after long preparation, gave to the world "Paradise Lost," in =1667=. The poem was Puritan, not only because its main theme was the maintenance or destruction of the purity of a single human soul, but because it based that purity on obedience to the commands of the great Taskmaster; whilst, in the solemn cadence of its blank verse there is something to remind the reader of the stern world of duty, in the midst of which the n.o.bler spirits of the Commonwealth and Protectorate had moved. As Milton was the poet of Puritanism, John Bunyan was the prose-poet of Dissent. He had himself fought as a soldier on the side of Parliament in the Civil War, and, having become an earnest Baptist preacher, he continued to preach after the Restoration, and, boldly defying the law, was requited with a long imprisonment. His masterpiece, "The Pilgrim"s Progress," was probably not written till =1675=, but many of his religious writings were published before that date. His force of imagination made him the greatest allegorist the world has seen. His moral aim lay in the preservation of a few choice souls from the perils and temptations of a society wholly given up to evil.
[Ill.u.s.tration: John Milton in 1670.]
2. =Butler and the Dramatists.=--There was, doubtless, much in the world round Milton and Bunyan to awake indignation. Samuel Butler was a man of genius, but his "Hudibras," which appeared in =1663=, shows but poorly by the side of "Paradise Lost" and "The Pilgrim"s Progress." This mock-heroic account of a Puritan knight is the work of a strong writer, who can find nothing better to do with the warriors and disputants who had lately controlled England than to laugh at them. The ma.s.s of Restoration poetry was far weaker than "Hudibras," whilst its dramatic writers vied with one another in the expression of licentious thought either in prose or in the regular heroic couplets which were, at this time, in vogue. It was, indeed, impossible to put much human pa.s.sion into two neat lines which had to be made to rhyme; but at Court love-making had been subst.i.tuted for pa.s.sion, and the theatres, now re-opened, after they had been suppressed by the Puritans, were meant for the vicious Court and not for the people at large.
3. =Reason and Science.=--The satire of Butler, and the licentiousness of the dramatists, both sprang from a reaction against the severe morality of the Puritans; but it would have been a poor prospect for the generation following that of Puritan repression if the age had not produced any positive work of its own.
Its work was to be found in the increase of respect for human reason. In the better minds amongst the clergy of the Restoration, the reasonable character of the Church of England was more than ever predominant. A few, such as Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, and Stillingfleet, Dean of St. Paul"s, were even anxious to find some way of comprehension by which Dissenters might be reconciled to the Church, whilst others, like Morley and Barrow, attached far more importance to arguments addressed to the understanding, than to that uniformity of ceremonial which had been so dear to the mind of Laud.
Still more important was the spread of devotion to natural science.
The Royal Society, founded for its promotion in =1660=, brought together men who thought more about air-pumps than about the mysteries of theology; and it was mainly the results of their inquiries which made any renewed triumph of Puritanism impossible.
In "The Pilgrim"s Progress" the outer world was treated as a mere embarra.s.sment to the pursuit of spiritual perfection. By the Fellows of the Royal Society it was treated as calling for reverent investigation, in order that, in the words of Bacon, nature might be brought into the service of man by his obedience to her laws.
4. =Charles II. and Toleration. 1667.=--In the long run the rise of the scientific spirit would conduce to religious toleration, because scientific men have no reason to desire the suppression of any form of religious belief. The first step taken after the restoration in the direction of religious toleration had come from Charles (see p.
581), who was actuated partly by a sneaking fondness for the Roman Catholic Church and partly by dislike of being dictated to by Parliament. He therefore, after Clarendon"s fall, gave his confidence mainly to men who, for various reasons, were inclined to support his wishes in this respect.
5. =Buckingham and Arlington. 1667-1669.=--Amongst these men the princ.i.p.al were the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Arlington.
Buckingham, the son of the favourite of Charles I.--"everything by turns and nothing long"--was trying his hand at politics by way of amus.e.m.e.nt. Arlington, who, like Charles, hardly knew whether he was Catholic or Protestant, was entrusted, as Secretary of State, with the direction of foreign affairs. He was a man of considerable ability, but perfectly unscrupulous in shifting his ground to suit his personal ambition. Both hated Clarendon as sour and austere, and both were ready to support the king in any scheme upon which he might set his heart. The Dissenters confined to prison were liberated, and a Bill prepared to modify the ceremonies of the Church, so as to enable the expelled Presbyterians to re-enter the Church. When, however, Parliament met in February, =1668=, it showed its determination to have nothing to do with either toleration or comprehension (see p. 598). It offered the king 300,000_l._, but only under the implied condition that he would abandon his scheme.
Charles took the money and dropped his scheme. He prorogued Parliament in May, and did not re-a.s.semble it till October, =1669=.
Whilst Parliament was not in session Charles sheltered the Dissenters from persecution, and even thought of dissolving Parliament. Albemarle (see p. 580), however, cautiously reminded him that, even if he got a new Parliament in which the Dissenters and their friends were predominant, it would probably cause him trouble by wanting to persecute those who had hitherto persecuted the Dissenters. Accordingly Charles, who hated nothing so much as trouble, not only allowed the old Parliament to meet again, but even issued a proclamation enforcing the penal laws against Dissenters.
6. =The Triple Alliance. 1668.=--In =1668= a triple alliance was formed between England, the Dutch Republic, and Sweden, to put an end to the War of Devolution (see p. 593). Its originators were De Witt, and Sir William Temple, the English amba.s.sador at the Hague.
The allies demanded that Louis should content himself with certain strong towns on his northern frontier which he had already conquered from Spain, and should desist from attempting to conquer more. Louis a.s.sented, and the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed on these conditions. In England there was already a rising feeling against the French, and Charles acquired no little popularity by his supposed firmness. In reality he had betrayed the secrets of the alliance to Louis, and had only shown his teeth to gain good terms for himself from the French king.
7. =Charles"s Negotiations with France. 1669-1670.=--Louis owed the Dutch a deep grudge, and set himself to win Charles to neutrality, if not to active help, in the war which he now purposed to make against them. Charles disliked the Dutch as the commercial rivals of England, and was ready to sell himself to Louis if only the price offered was high enough. Though Charles never suffered religion of any kind to be a check on his conduct, his facile nature yearned after the imposing authority of the Roman Church. In =1669= his brother, James, avowed himself a Catholic, and in the same year Charles, under the strictest secrecy, declared his own conversion to a small circle of men whom he could trust. Before the end of the war he offered Louis support against the Dutch, but asked such enormous concessions in return that Louis refused to agree to them. Charles, before lowering the terms of his bargain with Louis, drove another bargain with his Parliament. In the spring of =1670=, by dropping his demand for toleration, he obtained a grant of 300,000_l._ a year for eight years. In return he gave the royal a.s.sent to a second Conventicle Act, even more stringent than the first.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Temple Bar, London, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1670. Taken down in 1878 and since rebuilt at Waltham Cross.]
8. =The Treaty of Dover. 1670.=--Having secured a grant, Charles prorogued Parliament, which he had deceived by giving it to understand that he had abandoned the idea of toleration, and turned to Louis. Louis sent over Charles"s youngest sister, Henrietta, d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, to conclude an alliance, and on June 1, =1670=, a treaty between England and France was secretly signed at Dover.
Charles agreed to join Louis in his projected war against the Dutch, by sending an English force of 6,000 men to serve in the French army, and to a.s.sist Louis to seize upon the territories of the Spanish monarchy in the event of the death of Charles II. of Spain without male heirs. Charles was also to acknowledge himself a Catholic whenever he thought fit to do so. To support Charles against his subjects in case of their resisting him in the declaration of his conversion, Louis was to give him 154,000_l._ and the aid of 6,000 troops to be employed in England in his defence.
Moreover, Charles was to receive 230,000_l._ a year during the proposed war, and thirty French ships were to serve under an English admiral. At the end of the war he was to receive Walcheren, Sluys and Cadsand from the Dutch Republic, and ultimately, if Louis made good his claims to the Spanish monarchy, he was to gain from Spain, Ostend, Minorca, and various territories in South America. Charles II. was no more scrupulous than his father had been about using the troops of foreign princes to suppress the opposition of his own subjects, but he was shrewd enough to know--what Charles I. had never known--that foreign princes would not lend him troops unless he gave them something in return. The breach of the Triple Alliance and the a.s.sistance offered by Charles to Louis in the proposed war against the Dutch were considered in France to be a fair equivalent for the payments which Louis had bound himself to make. It was another question whether Charles could be kept to his engagements.
To secure this as much as possible Louis sent him over a new French mistress, Louise de Keroualle. Charles soon created her d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth, and she fulfilled her duty to her own king by betraying to him all the secrets of her lover.
9. =The Cabal. 1670.=--After Clarendon"s fall Charles had been his own chief minister. The ministers whom he consulted from time to time were known as his Cabal, a word then applied to any body of secret advisers, without carrying with it the opprobrious meaning which it now has. At last the wits discovered that the initials of five ministers who were princ.i.p.ally consulted about the time of the Treaty of Dover, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, spelt the word cabal, and writers have since talked about them as forming what has been called the Cabal Ministry, though no such ministry, in the modern sense of the word, ever existed. Not only did they not form a council meeting for purposes of government, but, though they agreed together in favouring toleration, they disagreed on other points. Nor were they usually consulted by Charles in a body. Sometimes he took the advice of persons not of their number; sometimes he took the advice of some of them only, whilst he kept the others entirely in the dark. Thus Clifford, who was a brave and honest Catholic, and Arlington, who would support any measure as long as it was his interest to do so, knew all about the Treaty of Dover, whilst Buckingham, Lauderdale, and Ashley were in complete ignorance of it. Of Buckingham and Arlington enough has been already said (see p. 599). Lauderdale, who had little to do with English affairs, kept himself almost entirely to the task of building up the king"s authority in Scotland, where he had already got together an army completely at Charles"s disposal. The character of Ashley deserves a longer consideration.
10. =Ashley"s Policy.=--Anthony Ashley Cooper,[28] who had been created Lord Ashley since the Restoration, had changed sides again and again during the late troubles. He was a born party-leader, and had signalised himself as a youth at Exeter College, Oxford, by leading a successful revolt of the freshmen against the older undergraduates, who, according to custom, tried to skin the chins of the freshmen and to force them to drink a nauseous compound prepared for the occasion. Though in party conflict he was quite unscrupulous and despised no means which would enable him to gain his ends, he had the statesmanlike qualities of common sense and moderation. He had deserted Charles I. when he leant upon the Catholics (see p.
541), had supported Cromwell in his struggle with the zealots of the Barebone"s Parliament (see p. 566), and had left him when he rejected the const.i.tutional scheme of the first Parliament of the Protectorate (see p. 570). In disgust at the humours of the Rump and the army, he had done everything in his power to hasten the Restoration, and had soon shown hostility to Clarendon and to the persecuting laws of the Cavalier Parliament. In fact, there were two principles to which he was never entirely false, a love of Parliamentary government and a love of toleration, which last was based, not as was that of Oliver, upon sympathy with religious zeal of every kind, but upon dislike of clerical interference. At present he attached himself to Charles, because he knew of Charles"s alleged wish to establish toleration, and knew nothing of the conspiracy against Parliament on which Charles had embarked, or of Charles"s secret design to favour the Roman Church under cover of a general scheme of toleration.
[Footnote 28: Two Christian names were exceedingly rare in the seventeenth century.]
11. =Buckingham"s Sham Treaty. 1671.=--To deceive those who were in ignorance of the secret treaty of the previous year, Buckingham was sent to Paris to negotiate a sham treaty in which all mention of Charles"s conversion was omitted, and the whole of the money offered by Louis represented as given solely for the war. Charles particularly enjoyed making a fool of Buckingham, who imagined himself to be exceedingly clever, and he had also the temporary satisfaction of gaining the hearty support of Ashley as well as Buckingham, because Ashley was quite ready to accept Louis" help in a joint enterprise for crushing the commerce of the Dutch, and had no scruples about abandoning the Triple Alliance. Charles was the more ready to begin the war because he had lately succeeded in obtaining from Parliament another 800,000_l._ on the false plea that he wanted the money to enable him to hold head at sea against the French as well as the Dutch. As soon as the money was obtained he prorogued Parliament.
12. =The Stop of the Exchequer. 1672.=--Charles prudently delayed the declaration of his conversion to a more convenient season, but the opening of the war was fixed for the spring of =1672=. In spite of the large sums which he drew from Louis and from Parliament, his finances were in hopeless confusion, because of the enormous amount of money which he squandered on his numerous mistresses and his illegitimate children. It is said that the yearly income of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth was 40,000_l._, and that in one year she received no less than 136,000_l._ A caricature published in Holland aptly represented him as standing between two women, with empty pockets hanging out. At this time he had in his exchequer 1,400,000_l._, lent to him by the goldsmiths who, in those days, acted as bankers. On January 2, =1672=, probably at Clifford"s suggestion, he refused to repay the princ.i.p.al, and arbitrarily diminished the interest from 12 to 6 per cent.[29] In consequence of this stop of the exchequer, as it was called, many of the goldsmiths became bankrupt, but Clifford became a peer and Lord High Treasurer.
[Footnote 29: In the time of James I. the usual interest was 10 per cent. The Long Parliament paid 8.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Anthony Ashley-Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621-1683: from the National Portrait Gallery.]
13. =The Declaration of Indulgence. 1672.=--On March 15, Charles, though still hesitating to proclaim himself a Catholic, issued a Declaration of Indulgence. Claiming a dispensing power,[30] he suspended all penal laws in matters ecclesiastical, affecting either recusants or non-conformists, thus giving complete religious liberty to Roman Catholics as well as to Dissenters. To this measure, wise and statesmanlike in itself, but marred by the motives of its author and by its defiance of the law and of public opinion, Ashley gave his hearty support. He was rewarded with the Earldom of Shaftesbury.
He had shortly before been made Lord Chancellor: being the last who held that post without being a lawyer. At that time the decisions of the Court of Chancery were still given in accordance with the view taken by the Chancellor of what seemed fair and equitable, and did not therefore require any elaborate legal knowledge. Even Shaftesbury"s bitterest enemies acknowledged that he was scrupulously just.
[Footnote 30: The right of pardon allows the king to remit the consequences to a particular person of a sentence pa.s.sed on him. The right of dispensation allows him to remit beforehand the consequences of a breach of a law either to such persons as are named, or to all persons generally who may commit such a breach.]
14. =The Second Dutch War of the Restoration. 1672.=--Both Charles and Louis had resolved to take the Dutch by surprise. On March 13, Admiral Holmes, obeying orders, attacked a rich Dutch merchant fleet sailing up the Channel, before war was declared, but only succeeded in taking two vessels. In the war now begun the discipline of the English navy was worse, and that of the Dutch navy better, than it had been in the former war (see p. 591). On June 7 there was a fierce sea-fight in Southwold Bay, in which the Dutch had slightly the advantage. Louis, on his part, crossed the Rhine, and fell upon the Dutch territory. As a land attack had not been expected, the military preparations were incomplete, and the fortresses out of repair. One place after another capitulated to the French. The young William III., Prince of Orange, Charles"s nephew, had been named Captain-General, but his army was too small to encourage him to risk a battle. Then De Witt took a heroic resolution. On June 18 he cut the d.y.k.es which protected the low-lying land from the sea which stood at a higher level. In rushed the waters, Louis found his progress stopped. De Witt had the blame of the failure to prevent the invasion; William, coming after him, had the credit of the resistance. The Republic needed a strong hand to preserve it, and the office of Stadholder was revived and given to William. Shortly afterwards De Witt, together with his brother, was brutally murdered at the Hague. William, who detested De Witt for having so long deprived him of the power which he considered his due, not only took no steps to hinder the a.s.sa.s.sination, but actually protected the murderers. Disgraceful as his conduct was, he had a temper as heroic as De Witt"s. Buckingham came to urge him to submit to Louis"
terms. "Do you not see," said the Englishman, "that the Republic is lost?" "I know one sure means of never seeing it," was William"s firm reply--"to die on the last d.y.k.e." His confidence was justified.
Louis could not pierce the girdle of waters which surrounded the Dutch towns, and, returning to Paris, brought the campaign to an end.
15. ="Delenda est Carthago." 1673.=--On February 4, =1673=.--Charles, having once more spent all his money, again met his Parliament. Shaftesbury urged the voting of supply for the war with the Dutch, whom he styled the eternal enemies of England, quoting the saying of Cato--_Delenda est Carthago_--as though they were to be destroyed as being to England what Carthage had been to Rome. So far as the war was concerned, the House of Commons answered his appeal by offering 1,260,000_l._, though they kept back the Bill till they had brought him to terms.
16. =Withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence. 1673.=--It was at the withdrawal of the Declaration of Indulgence that the House was aiming. In vain Charles simulated firmness, declaring himself to be resolved to stick to his declaration. The Commons bitterly resented his interference with the law. Forty statutes, it was said, had been violated by the Declaration, and the house pa.s.sed a resolution that "penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended but by act of Parliament." Both sides were anxious to limit the question to ecclesiastical statutes: Charles, because the powers over the Church conferred on the Tudor sovereigns were vague, and therefore more defensible than those exercised by them in political matters; the Commons, because they had precedents of Parliamentary resistance to dispensations granted to recusants, whereas former kings had usually been allowed without contradiction to suspend the law in commercial matters. Charles tried to evade the summons of the Commons, but the Lords having come on March 7 to the same conclusion as the other House, he gave way on the 8th and recalled his Declaration. As no new statute was pa.s.sed on the subject, the legal question remained just where it was before.
17. =The Test Act. 1673.=--Charles had entered on a struggle with Parliament and had been defeated. The Royalist Parliament of =1661= was still Royalist so far as the maintenance of the throne was concerned, but it had entered on a course of opposition which had brought it into open collision with the king. From first to last the chief characteristic of this Parliament was its resolution to maintain the supremacy of the Church, and it was now obvious that the Church was in more danger from Roman Catholics than from Dissenters. Though Charles"s conversion (see p. 600) was unknown, it was no secret that the Duke of York, the heir to the throne, was a Catholic, and, in spite of the veil thrown over the terms of the Treaty of Dover, the danger of an invasion by French troops in support of the English Catholics was obvious to all. For the first time since the Restoration a Bill was brought in to relieve Protestant Dissenters, and, though this proposal came to nothing, the very fact of its being made showed that a new state of feeling was growing up. Arlington, seeing how things stood, and wishing to oust the Catholic Clifford from the Treasury that he might be his successor, put up a member of the Commons to propose a Bill which soon became law under the name of the Test Act. By it, no one was to hold office who refused to take the test--that is to say, to make a declaration of his disbelief in the doctrine of Transubstantiation and to receive the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. It was only after Charles had given his a.s.sent to this Act on March 29 that the proposed grant of 1,260,000_l._ was actually made.