Who all our seamen cheated of their debt, And all our prizes who did swallow? Pett.
Who did advise no navy out to set?
And who the forts left unprepared? Pett.
Who to supply with powder did forget Languard, Sheerness, Gravesend, and Upnor? Pett.
Who all our ships exposed in Chatham net?
Who should it be but the fanatic Pett?"
This outburst can hardly fail to remind the reader of a famous outburst of Mr. Micawber"s on the subject of Uriah Heep.
The satire concludes with the picture of the king in the dead shades of night, alone in his room, startled by loud noises of cannons, trumpets, and drums, and then visited by the ghost of his father.
"And ghastly Charles, turning his collar low, The purple thread about his neck does show."
The pensive king resolves on Clarendon"s disgrace, and on rising next morning seeks out Lady Castlemaine, Bennet, and Coventry, who give him the same advice. He knows them all three to be false to one another and to him, but is for the moment content to do what they wish.
I have omitted, in this review of a long poem, the earlier lines which deal with the composition of the House of Commons. All its parties are described, one after another--the old courtiers, the pension-hunters, the king"s procurers, then almost a department of State.
"Then the Procurers under Prodgers filed Gentlest of men, and his lieutenant mild Bronkard, love"s squire; through all the field arrayed, No troop was better clad, nor so well paid."
Clarendon had his friends, soon sorely to be needed, and after them,
"Next to the lawyers, sordid band, appear, Finch in the front and Thurland in the rear."
Some thirty-three members are mentioned by their names and habits. The Speaker, Sir Edward Turner, is somewhat unkindly described. Honest men are usually to be found everywhere, and they existed even in Charles the Second"s pensionary Parliament:--
"Nor could all these the field have long maintained But for the unknown reserve that still remained; A gross of English gentry, n.o.bly born, Of clear estates, and to no faction sworn, Dear lovers of their king, and death to meet For country"s cause, that glorious thing and sweet; To speak not forward, but in action brave, In giving generous, but in council grave; Candidly credulous for once, nay twice; But sure the devil cannot cheat them thrice."
No member of Parliament"s library is complete without Marvell, who did not forget the House of Commons smoking-room:--
"Even iron Strangways chafing yet gave back Spent with fatigue, to breathe awhile tabac."
Charles hastened to make peace with Holland. He was not the man to insist on vengeance or to mourn over lost prestige. De Ruyter had gone after suffering repulses at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Torbay. Peace was concluded at Breda on the 21st of July. We gave up Poleroone. _Per contra_ we gained a more famous place, New Amsterdam, rechristened New York in honour of the duke. All prisoners were to be liberated, and the Dutch, despite Sheerness and the _Royal Charles_, agreed to lower their flag to all British ships of war.
The fall, long pending, of Clarendon immediately followed the peace.
Men"s tempers were furious or sullen. Hyde had no more bitter, no more cruel enemy than Marvell. Why this was has not been discovered, but there was nothing too bad for Marvell not to believe of any member of Clarendon"s household. All the scandals, and they were many and horrible, relating to Clarendon and his daughter, the d.u.c.h.ess of York, find a place in Marvell"s satires and epigrams. To us Lord Clarendon is a grave and thoughtful figure, the statesman-author of _The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England_, that famous, large book, loftily planned, finely executed, full of life and character and the philosophy of human existence; and of his own _Autobiography_, a production which, though it must, like Burnet"s _History_, be read with caution, unveils to the reader a portion of that past which usually is as deeply shrouded from us as the future. If at times we are reminded in reading Clarendon"s _Life_ of the old steward in Hogarth"s plate, who lifts up his hands in horror over the extravagance of his master, if his pedantry often irritates, and his love of place displeases, we recognise these but as the shades of the character of a distinguished and accomplished public servant. But to Marvell Clarendon was rapacious, ambitious, and corrupt, a man who had sold Oliver"s Dunkirk to the French, and shared the price; who had selected for the king"s consort a barren woman, so that his own damaged daughter might at least chance to become Queen of England, who hated Parliaments and hankered after a standing army, who took money for patents, who sold public offices, who was bribed by the Dutch about the terms of peace, who swindled the ruined cavaliers of the funds subscribed for their benefit, and had by these methods heaped together great wealth which he ostentatiously displayed. Even darker crimes than these are hinted at. That Marvell was wrong in his estimate of Clarendon"s character now seems certain; Clarendon did not get a penny of the Dunkirk money. The case made against him by the House of Commons in their articles of impeachment was felt even at the time to be flimsy and incapable of proof, and in the many records that have come to light since Clarendon"s day nothing has been discovered to give them support. And yet Marvell was a singularly well-informed member of Parliament, a shrewd, level-headed man of affairs, who knew Lord Clarendon in the way we know men we have to see on business matters, whose speeches we can listen to, and whose conduct we discuss and criticise. "Gently scan your brother-man" is a precept Marvell never took to heart; nor is the House of Commons a place where it is either preached or practised.
When Clarendon was well nigh at the height of his great unpopularity, he built himself a fine big house on a site given him by the king where now is Albemarle Street. Where did he get the money from? He employed, in building it, the stones of St. Paul"s Cathedral. True, he bought the stones from the Dean and Chapter, but if the man you hate builds a great house out of the ruins of a church, is it likely that so trivial a fact as a cash payment for the materials is going to be mentioned? Splendid furniture and n.o.ble pictures were to be seen going into the new palace--the gifts, so it was alleged, of foreign amba.s.sadors. What was the consideration for these donations? England"s honour! Clarendon House was at once named Dunkirk House, Holland House, Tangiers House.
Here is Marvell upon it:--
UPON HIS HOUSE
"Here lie the sacred bones Of Paul beguiled of his stones: Here lie golden briberies, The price of ruined families; The cavalier"s debenture wall, Fixed on an eccentric basis: Here"s Dunkirk-Town and Tangier-Hull, The Queen"s marriage and all, The Dutchman"s _templum pacis_."
Clarendon"s fall was rapid. He knew the house of Stuart too well to place any reliance upon the king. Evelyn visited him on the 27th of August 1667 after the seals had been taken away from him, and found him "in his bed-chamber very sad." His enemies were numerous and powerful, both in the House of Commons and at Court, where all the buffoons and ladies of pleasure hated him, because--so Evelyn says--"he thwarted some of them and stood in their way." In November Evelyn called again and found the late Lord-Chancellor in the garden of his new-built palace, sitting in his gout wheel-chair and watching the new gates setting up towards the north and the fields. "He looked and spoke very disconsolately. After some while deploring his condition to me, I took my leave. Next morning I heard he was gone."[139:1]
The news was true; on Sat.u.r.day, the 29th of November, he drove to Erith, and after a terrible tossing on the n.o.bly impartial Channel the weary man reached Calais, and died seven years later in Rouen, having well employed his leisure in completing his history. His palace was sold for half what it cost to the inevitable Monk, Duke of Albemarle.
On the 3rd of December Marvell writes that the House, having heard that Lord Clarendon had "withdrawn," forthwith ordered an address to his Majesty "that care might be taken for securing all the sea ports lest he should pa.s.s there." Marvell adds grimly, "I suppose he will not trouble you at Hull." The king took good care that his late Lord-Chancellor should escape. An act of perpetual banishment was at once pa.s.sed, receiving the royal a.s.sent on the 19th of December.
Marvell was kept very busy during the early months of 1668, inquiring, as our English fashion is, into the "miscarriages of the late war." The House more than once sat from nine in the morning till eight at night, finding out all it could. "What money, arising by the poll money, had been applied to the use of the war?" This was an awkward inquiry. The House voted that the not prosecuting the first victory of June 1665 was a miscarriage, and one of the greatest: a snub to the Duke of York. The not furnishing the Medway with a sufficient guard of ships, though the king had then 18,000 men in his pay, was another great miscarriage. The paying of the fleet with tickets, without money, was a third great miscarriage. All this time Oliver Cromwell"s skull was grinning on its perch in Westminster Hall.
Besides the honour of England, that of Hull had to be defended by its member. A young Lieutenant Wise, one of the Hull garrison, had in some boisterous fashion affronted the corporation and the mayor. On this correspondence ensues; and Marvell waits upon the Duke of Albemarle, the head of the army, to obtain reparation.
"I waited yesterday upon my Lord General--and first presented your usual fee which the General accepted, but saying that it was unnecessary and that you might have bin pleased to spare it, and he should be so much more at liberty to show how voluntary and affectionate he was toward your corporation. I returned the civilest words I could coin on for the present, and rendered him your humble thanks for his continued patronage of you ... and told him that you had further sent him up a small tribute of your Hull liquor. He thanked you again for all these things which you might--he said--have spared, and added that if the greatest of your military officers should demean himself ill towards you, he would take a course with him."
A mealy-mouthed Lord-General drawing near his end.[140:1]
Wise was removed from the Hull garrison. The affronted corporation was not satisfied, and Marvell had to argue the point.
"And I hope, Sir, you will incline the Bench to consider whether I am able or whether it be fit for me to urge it beyond that point. Yet it is not all his (Wise"s) Parliament men and relations that have wrought me in the least, but what I simply conceive as the state of things now to be possible and satisfactory. What would you have more of a soldier than to run away and have him cashiered as to any command in your garrison? The first he hath done and the second he must submit to. And I a.s.sure you whatsoever he was among you, he is here a kind of decrepit young gentleman and terribly crest-fallen."
The letter concludes thus:--
"For I a.s.sure you they use all the civility imaginable to you, and as we sat there drinking a cup of sack with the General, Colonel Legge[141:1] chancing to be present, there were twenty good things said on all hands tending to the good fame, reputation, and advantage of the Town, an occasion that I was heartily glad of."
Corporations may not have souls to save and bodies to kill, but evidently they have vanities to tickle.
In November 1669 the House is still busy over the accounts. Sir George Carteret was Treasurer of the Navy. Marvell refers to him in _The Last Instructions to a Painter_ as:--
"Carteret the rich did the accountants guide And in ill English all the world defied."
The following letter of Marvell"s gives an excellent account of House of Commons business, both how it is conducted, and how often it gets accidentally interrupted by other business unexpectedly cropping up:--
"_November 20, 1669._
"GENTLEMEN, MY VERY WORTHY FRIENDS,--Returning after our adjournment to sit upon Wednesday, the House having heard what Sir G. Cartaret could say for himselfe, and he then commended to withdraw, after a considerable debate, put it to the question, whether he were guilty of misdemeanour upon the Commissioners first observation, the words of which were, That all monyes received by him out of His Majesty"s Exchequer are by the privy seales a.s.signed for particular services, but no such thing observed or specified in his payments, whereby he hath a.s.sumed to himselfe a liberty to make use of the King"s treasure for other uses then is directed. The House dividing upon the question, the ayes went out, and wondered why they were kept out so extraordinary a time. The ayes proved 138 and the noes 129; and the reason of the long stay then appeared; the tellers for the ayes chanced to be very ill reckoners, so that they were forced to tell severall times over in the House, and when at last the tellers for the ayes would have agreed the noes to be 142, the noes would needs say that they were 143, whereupon those for the ayes would tell once more and then found the noes to be indeed but 129; and the ayes then coming in proved to be 138; whereas if the noes had been content with the first error of the tellers, Sir George had been quit upon that observation. This I have told you so minutely because it is the second fatall and ominous accident that hath fain out in the divisions about Sir G. Cartaret. Thursday was ordered for the second observation, the words of which are, Two hundred and thirty thousand seven hundred thirty and one thousand pounds thirteen shillings and ninepence, claimed as payd, and deposited for security of interest, and yet no distinct specification of time appeares either on his receits or payments, whereby no judgment can be made how interest accrues; so that we cannot yet allow the same. But this day was diverted and wholy taken up by a speciall report orderd by the Committee for the Bill of Conventicles, that the House be informed of severall Conventicles in Westminster which might be of dangerous consequences. From hence arose much discourse; also of a report that Ludlow was in England, that Commonwealths-men flock about the town, and there were meetings said to be, where they talkt of New Modells of Government; so that the House ordered a Committee to receive informations both concerning Conventicles and these other dangerous meetings; and then entered a resolution upon their books without putting it to the question, That this House will adhere to His Majesty, and the Government of Church and State as now established, against all its enemyes. Friday having bin appointed, as I told you in my former letter, for the House to sit in a grand Committee upon the motion for the King"s supply, was spent wholy in debate, whether they should do so or no, and concluded at last in a consent, that the sitting in a grand Committee upon the motion for the King"s supply should be put of till Friday next, and so it was ordered. The reason of which kind of proceeding, lest you should thinke to arise from an indisposition of the House, I shall tell you as they appeare to me, to have been the expectation of what Bill will come from the Lords in stead of that of ours which they threw out, and a desire to redresse and see thoroughly into the miscarriages of mony before any more should be granted. To-day the House hath bin upon the second observation, and after a debate till foure a"clock, have voted him guilty also of misdemeanor in that particular. The Commissioners are ordered to attend the House again on Munday, which is done constantly for the ill.u.s.tration of any matter in their report, wherein the House is not cleare. And to say the truth, the House receives great satisfaction from them, and shows them extraordinary respect. These are the things of princ.i.p.all notice since my last."
Carteret eventually was censured and suspended and dismissed.
The sudden incursion of religion during a financial debate is highly characteristic of the House of Commons.
Whilst Queen Elizabeth and her advisers did succeed in making some sort of a settlement of religion having regard to the questions of her time, the Restoration bishops, an inferior set of men, wholly failed. The repressive legislation that followed upon the Act of Uniformity, succeeded in establishing and endowing (with voluntary contributions) what is sometimes called, absurdly enough, Political Dissent. On points, not of doctrine, but of ceremony, and of church government, one half of the religiously-minded community were by oaths and declarations, and by employing the Sacrament of the Lord"s Supper as "a picklock to a place," drawn out of the service of the State. Excluded from Parliament and from all corporate bodies, from grammar-schools and universities, English Dissent learned to live its own life, remote from the army, the navy, and the civil service, quite outside of what perhaps may be fairly called the main currents of the national life. Nonconformists venerated their own divines, were reared in their own academies and colleges, read their own books, went, when the modified law permitted it, to their own conventicles in back streets, and made it their boast that they had never entered their parish churches, for the upkeep of which they were compelled to subscribe--save for the purpose of being married. The nation suffered by reason of this complete severance. Trade excepted, there was no community of interest between Church and Dissent. Sobriety, gravity, a decent way of life, the sense of religious obligation (even when united with the habit of _extempore_ prayer, and a hereditary disrespect for bishops" ap.r.o.ns), are national a.s.sets, as the expression now goes, which cannot be disregarded with impunity.
The Conventicle Act Marvell refers to was a stringent measure, imposing pecuniary fines upon any persons of sixteen years of age or upwards who "under pretence of religion" should be present at any meeting of more than five persons, or more than those of the household, "in other manner than allowed by the Liturgy and practice of the Church of England."
Heavier fines were imposed upon the preachers. The poet Waller, who was "nursed in Parliaments," having been first returned from Amersham in 1621, made a very sensible remark on the second reading: "Let them alone and they will preach against each other; by this Bill they will incorporate as being all under one calamity."[145:1] But by 144 to 78 the Bill was read, though it did not become law until the following session. An indignant Member of Parliament once told Cromwell that he would take the "sense" of the House against some proposal. "Very well,"
said Cromwell, "you shall take the "sense" of the House, and I will take the "nonsense," and we will see who tells the most votes."
In February 1670 the king opened a new session, and in March Marvell wrote a private letter to a relative at Bordeaux, in which he "lends his mind out," after a fashion forbidden him in his correspondence with his const.i.tuents:--
"DEAR COUSIN,-- ... You know that we having voted the King, before Christmas, four hundred thousand pounds, and no more; and enquiring severely into ill management, and being ready to adjourn ourselves till February, his Majesty, fortified by some undertakers of the meanest of our House, threw up all as nothing, and prorogued us from the first of December till the fourteenth of February. All that interval there was great and numerous caballing among the courtiers.
The King also all the while examined at council the reports from the Commissioners of Accounts, where they were continually discountenanced, and treated rather as offenders than judges. In this posture we met, and the King, being exceedingly necessitous for money, spoke to us _stylo minaci et imperatorio_; and told us the inconveniences which would fall on the nation by want of a supply, should not ly at his door; that we must not revive any discord betwixt the Lords and us; that he himself had examined the accounts, and found every penny to have been employed in the war; and he recommended the Scotch union. The Garroway party appeared with the usual vigour, but the country gentlemen appeared not in their true number the first day: so, for want of seven voices, the first blow was against them. When we began to talk of the Lords, the King sent for us alone, and recommended a rasure of all proceedings. The same thing you know that we proposed at first. We presently ordered it, and went to tell him so the same day, and to thank him. At coming down, (a pretty ridiculous thing!) Sir Thomas Clifford carryed Speaker and Mace, and all members there, into the King"s cellar, to drink his health. The King sent to the Lords more peremptoryly, and they, with much grumbling, agreed to the rasure. When the Commissioners of Accounts came before us, sometimes we heard them _pro forma_, but all falls to dirt. The terrible Bill against Conventicles is sent up to the Lords; and we and the Lords, as to the Scotch busyness, have desired the King to name English Commissioners to treat, but nothing they do to be valid, but on a report to Parliament, and an act to confirm. We are now, as we think, within a week of rising. They are making mighty alterations in the Conventicle Bill (which, as we sent up, is the quintessence of arbitrary malice), and sit whole days, and yet proceed but by inches, and will, at the end, probably affix a Scotch clause of the King"s power in externals. So the fate of the Bill is uncertain, but must probably pa.s.s, being the price of money. The King told some eminent citizens, who applyed to him against it, that they must address themselves to the Houses, that he must not disoblige his friends; and if it had been in the power of their friends, he had gone without money. There is a Bill in the Lords to encourage people to buy all the King"s fee-farm rents; so he is resolved once more to have money enough in his pocket, and live on the common for the future. The great Bill begun in the Lords, and which makes more ado than ever any Act in this Parliament did, is for enabling Lord Ros, long since divorced in the spiritual court, and his children declared illegitimate by Act of Parliament, to marry again. Anglesey and Ashly, who study and know their interests as well as any gentlemen at court, and whose sons have marryed two sisters of Ros, inheritrixes if he has no issue, yet they also drive on the Bill with the greatest vigour. The King is for the Bill: the Duke of York, and all the Papist Lords, and all the Bishops, except Cosins, Reynolds, and Wilkins, are against it. They sat all Thursday last, without once rising, till almost ten at night, in most solemn and memorable debate, whether it should be read the second time, or thrown out. At last, at the question, there were forty-two persons and six proxys against it, and forty-one persons and fifteen proxys for it. If it had not gone for it, the Lord Arlington had a power in his pocket from the King to have nulled the proxys, if it had been to the purpose. It was read the second time yesterday, and, on a long debate whether it should be committed, it went for the Bill by twelve odds, in persons and proxys. The Duke of York, the bishops, and the rest of the party, have entered their protests, on the first day"s debate, against it. Is not this fine work? This Bill must come down to us. It is my opinion that Lauderdale at one ear talks to the King of Monmouth, and Buckingham at the other of a new Queen. It is also my opinion that the King was never since his coming in, nay, all things considered, no King since the Conquest, so absolutely powerful at home, as he is at the present; nor any Parliament, or places, so certainly and constantly supplyed with men of the same temper. In such a conjuncture, dear Will, what probability is there of my doing any thing to the purpose? The King would needs take the Duke of Albemarle out of his son"s hand to bury him at his own charges. It is almost three months, and he yet lys in the dark unburyed, and no talk of him. He left twelve thousand pounds a year, and near two hundred thousand pounds in money. His wife dyed some twenty days after him; she layed in state, and was buryed, at her son"s expence, in Queen Elizabeth"s Chapel. And now,
"Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem, Fortunam ex aliis.
"_March 21, 1670._"
This remarkable letter lets us into many secrets.
The Conventicle Bill is "the price of money." The king"s interest in the Roos divorce case was believed to be due to his own desire to be quit of a barren and deserted wife.[148:1] Our most religious king had nineteen b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, but no lawful issue. It may seem strange that so high a churchman as Bishop Cosin should have taken the view he did, but Cosin had a strong dash of the layman in his const.i.tution, and was always an advocate of divorce, with permission to re-marry, in cases of adultery.