A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  hundred thousand pounds a year, which was afterwards doubled.

  Besides this, the King of France, by means of his corrupt

  ambassador - who wrote accounts of his proceedings in England,

  which are not always to be believed, I think - bought our English

  members of Parliament, as he wanted them. So, in point of fact,

  during a considerable portion of this merry reign, the King of

  France was the real King of this country.

  But there was a better time to come, and it was to come (though his

  royal uncle little thought so) through that very William, Prince of

  Orange. He came over to England, saw Mary, the elder daughter of

  the Duke of York, and married her. We shall see by-and-by what

  came of that marriage, and why it is never to be forgotten.

  This daughter was a Protestant, but her mother died a Catholic.

  She and her sister ANNE, also a Protestant, were the only survivors

  of eight children. Anne afterwards married GEORGE, PRINCE OF

  DENMARK, brother to the King of that country.

  Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the injustice of supposing

  that he was even good humoured (except when he had everything his

  own way), or that he was high spirited and honourable, I will

  mention here what was done to a member of the House of Commons, SIR

  JOHN COVENTRY. He made a remark in a debate about taxing the

  theatres, which gave the King offence. The King agreed with his

  illegitimate son, who had been born abroad, and whom he had made

  DUKE OF MONMOUTH, to take the following merry vengeance. To waylay

  him at night, fifteen armed men to one, and to slit his nose with a

  penknife. Like master, like man. The King's favourite, the Duke

  of Buckingham, was strongly suspected of setting on an assassin to

  murder the DUKE OF ORMOND as he was returning home from a dinner;

  and that Duke's spirited son, LORD OSSORY, was so persuaded of his

  guilt, that he said to him at Court, even as he stood beside the

  King, 'My lord, I know very well that you are at the bottom of this

  late attempt upon my father. But I give you warning, if he ever

  come to a violent end, his blood shall be upon you, and wherever I

  meet you I will pistol you! I will do so, though I find you

  standing behind the King's chair; and I tell you this in his

  Majesty's presence, that you may be quite sure of my doing what I

  threaten.' Those were merry times indeed.

  There was a fellow named BLOOD, who was seized for making, with two

  companions, an audacious attempt to steal the crown, the globe, and

  sceptre, from the place where the jewels were kept in the Tower.

  This robber, who was a swaggering ruffian, being taken, declared

  that he was the man who had endeavoured to kill the Duke of Ormond,

  and that he had meant to kill the King too, but was overawed by the

  majesty of his appearance, when he might otherwise have done it, as

  he was bathing at Battersea. The King being but an ill-looking

  fellow, I don't believe a word of this. Whether he was flattered,

  or whether he knew that Buckingham had really set Blood on to

  murder the Duke, is uncertain. But it is quite certain that he

  pardoned this thief, gave him an estate of five hundred a year in

  Ireland (which had had the honour of giving him birth), and

  presented him at Court to the debauched lords and the shameless

  ladies, who made a great deal of him - as I have no doubt they

  would have made of the Devil himself, if the King had introduced

  him.

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  Infamously pensioned as he was, the King still wanted money, and

  consequently was obliged to call Parliaments. In these, the great

  object of the Protestants was to thwart the Catholic Duke of York,

  who married a second time; his new wife being a young lady only

  fifteen years old, the Catholic sister of the DUKE OF MODENA. In

  this they were seconded by the Protestant Dissenters, though to

  their own disadvantage: since, to exclude Catholics from power,

  they were even willing to exclude themselves. The King's object

  was to pretend to be a Protestant, while he was really a Catholic;

  to swear to the bishops that he was devoutly attached to the

  English Church, while he knew he had bargained it away to the King

  of France; and by cheating and deceiving them, and all who were

  attached to royalty, to become despotic and be powerful enough to

  confess what a rascal he was. Meantime, the King of France,

  knowing his merry pensioner well, intrigued with the King's

  opponents in Parliament, as well as with the King and his friends.

  The fears that the country had of the Catholic religion being

  restored, if the Duke of York should come to the throne, and the

  low cunning of the King in pretending to share their alarms, led to

  some very terrible results. A certain DR. TONGE, a dull clergyman

  in the City, fell into the hands of a certain TITUS OATES, a most

  infamous character, who pretended to have acquired among the

  Jesuits abroad a knowledge of a great plot for the murder of the

  King, and the re-establishment if the Catholic religion. Titus

  Oates, being produced by this unlucky Dr. Tonge and solemnly

  examined before the council, contradicted himself in a thousand

  ways, told the most ridiculous and improbable stories, and

  implicated COLEMAN, the Secretary of the Duchess of York. Now,

  although what he charged against Coleman was not true, and although

  you and I know very well that the real dangerous Catholic plot was

  that one with the King of France of which the Merry Monarch was

  himself the head, there happened to be found among Coleman's

  papers, some letters, in which he did praise the days of Bloody

  Queen Mary, and abuse the Protestant religion. This was great good

  fortune for Titus, as it seemed to confirm him; but better still

  was in store. SIR EDMUNDBURY GODFREY, the magistrate who had first

  examined him, being unexpectedly found dead near Primrose Hill, was

  confidently believed to have been killed by the Catholics. I think

  there is no doubt that he had been melancholy mad, and that he

  killed himself; but he had a great Protestant funeral, and Titus

  was called the Saver of the Nation, and received a pension of

  twelve hundred pounds a year.

  As soon as Oates's wickedness had met with this success, up started

  another villain, named WILLIAM BEDLOE, who, attracted by a reward

  of five hundred pounds offered for the apprehension of the

  murderers of Godfrey, came forward and charged two Jesuits and some

  other persons with having committed it at the Queen's desire.

  Oates, going into partnership with this new informer, had the

  audacity to accuse the poor Queen herself of high treason. Then

  appeared a third informer, as bad as either of the two, and accused

  a Catholic banker named STAYLEY of having said that the King was

  the greatest rogue in the world (which would not have been far from

  the truth), and that he would kill him with his own hand. This

  banker, being at once tried and executed, Coleman and two others

  were tried an
d executed. Then, a miserable wretch named PRANCE, a

  Catholic silversmith, being accused by Bedloe, was tortured into

  confessing that he had taken part in Godfrey's murder, and into

  accusing three other men of having committed it. Then, five

  Jesuits were accused by Oates, Bedloe, and Prance together, and

  were all found guilty, and executed on the same kind of

  contradictory and absurd evidence. The Queen's physician and three

  monks were next put on their trial; but Oates and Bedloe had for

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  the time gone far enough and these four were acquitted. The public

  mind, however, was so full of a Catholic plot, and so strong

  against the Duke of York, that James consented to obey a written

  order from his brother, and to go with his family to Brussels,

  provided that his rights should never be sacrificed in his absence

  to the Duke of Monmouth. The House of Commons, not satisfied with

  this as the King hoped, passed a bill to exclude the Duke from ever

  succeeding to the throne. In return, the King dissolved the

  Parliament. He had deserted his old favourite, the Duke of

  Buckingham, who was now in the opposition.

  To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland in this

  merry reign, would occupy a hundred pages. Because the people

  would not have bishops, and were resolved to stand by their solemn

  League and Covenant, such cruelties were inflicted upon them as

  make the blood run cold. Ferocious dragoons galloped through the

  country to punish the peasants for deserting the churches; sons

  were hanged up at their fathers' doors for refusing to disclose

  where their fathers were concealed; wives were tortured to death

  for not betraying their husbands; people were taken out of their

  fields and gardens, and shot on the public roads without trial;

  lighted matches were tied to the fingers of prisoners, and a most

  horrible torment called the Boot was invented, and constantly

  applied, which ground and mashed the victims' legs with iron

  wedges. Witnesses were tortured as well as prisoners. All the

  prisons were full; all the gibbets were heavy with bodies; murder

  and plunder devastated the whole country. In spite of all, the

  Covenanters were by no means to be dragged into the churches, and

  persisted in worshipping God as they thought right. A body of

  ferocious Highlanders, turned upon them from the mountains of their

  own country, had no greater effect than the English dragoons under

  GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE, the most cruel and rapacious of all their

  enemies, whose name will ever be cursed through the length and

  breadth of Scotland. Archbishop Sharp had ever aided and abetted

  all these outrages. But he fell at last; for, when the injuries of

  the Scottish people were at their height, he was seen, in his

  coach-and-six coming across a moor, by a body of men, headed by one

  JOHN BALFOUR, who were waiting for another of their oppressors.

  Upon this they cried out that Heaven had delivered him into their

  hands, and killed him with many wounds. If ever a man deserved

  such a death, I think Archbishop Sharp did.

  It made a great noise directly, and the Merry Monarch - strongly

  suspected of having goaded the Scottish people on, that he might

  have an excuse for a greater army than the Parliament were willing

  to give him - sent down his son, the Duke of Monmouth, as

  commander-in-chief, with instructions to attack the Scottish

  rebels, or Whigs as they were called, whenever he came up with

  them. Marching with ten thousand men from Edinburgh, he found

  them, in number four or five thousand, drawn up at Bothwell Bridge,

  by the Clyde. They were soon dispersed; and Monmouth showed a more

  humane character towards them, than he had shown towards that

  Member of Parliament whose nose he had caused to be slit with a

  penknife. But the Duke of Lauderdale was their bitter foe, and

  sent Claverhouse to finish them.

  As the Duke of York became more and more unpopular, the Duke of

  Monmouth became more and more popular. It would have been decent

  in the latter not to have voted in favour of the renewed bill for

  the exclusion of James from the throne; but he did so, much to the

  King's amusement, who used to sit in the House of Lords by the

  fire, hearing the debates, which he said were as good as a play.

  The House of Commons passed the bill by a large majority, and it

  was carried up to the House of Lords by LORD RUSSELL, one of the

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  best of the leaders on the Protestant side. It was rejected there,

  chiefly because the bishops helped the King to get rid of it; and

  the fear of Catholic plots revived again. There had been another

  got up, by a fellow out of Newgate, named DANGERFIELD, which is

  more famous than it deserves to be, under the name of the MEAL-TUB

  PLOT. This jail-bird having been got out of Newgate by a MRS.

  CELLIER, a Catholic nurse, had turned Catholic himself, and

  pretended that he knew of a plot among the Presbyterians against

  the King's life. This was very pleasant to the Duke of York, who

  hated the Presbyterians, who returned the compliment. He gave

  Dangerfield twenty guineas, and sent him to the King his brother.

  But Dangerfield, breaking down altogether in his charge, and being

  sent back to Newgate, almost astonished the Duke out of his five

  senses by suddenly swearing that the Catholic nurse had put that

  false design into his head, and that what he really knew about,

  was, a Catholic plot against the King; the evidence of which would

  be found in some papers, concealed in a meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier's

  house. There they were, of course - for he had put them there

  himself - and so the tub gave the name to the plot. But, the nurse

  was acquitted on her trial, and it came to nothing.

  Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, and was strong

  against the succession of the Duke of York. The House of Commons,

  aggravated to the utmost extent, as we may well suppose, by

  suspicions of the King's conspiracy with the King of France, made a

  desperate point of the exclusion, still, and were bitter against

  the Catholics generally. So unjustly bitter were they, I grieve to

  say, that they impeached the venerable Lord Stafford, a Catholic

  nobleman seventy years old, of a design to kill the King. The

  witnesses were that atrocious Oates and two other birds of the same

  feather. He was found guilty, on evidence quite as foolish as it

  was false, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. The people were opposed

  to him when he first appeared upon the scaffold; but, when he had

  addressed them and shown them how innocent he was and how wickedly

  he was sent there, their better nature was aroused, and they said,

  'We believe you, my Lord. God bless you, my Lord!'

  The House of Commons refused to let the King have any money until

  he should consent to the Exclusion Bill; but, as he could get it

  and did get it from his master the King of France, he could af
ford

  to hold them very cheap. He called a Parliament at Oxford, to

  which he went down with a great show of being armed and protected

  as if he were in danger of his life, and to which the opposition

  members also went armed and protected, alleging that they were in

  fear of the Papists, who were numerous among the King's guards.

  However, they went on with the Exclusion Bill, and were so earnest

  upon it that they would have carried it again, if the King had not

  popped his crown and state robes into a sedan-chair, bundled

  himself into it along with them, hurried down to the chamber where

  the House of Lords met, and dissolved the Parliament. After which

  he scampered home, and the members of Parliament scampered home

  too, as fast as their legs could carry them.

  The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, under the law

  which excluded Catholics from public trust, no right whatever to

  public employment. Nevertheless, he was openly employed as the

  King's representative in Scotland, and there gratified his sullen

  and cruel nature to his heart's content by directing the dreadful

  cruelties against the Covenanters. There were two ministers named

  CARGILL and CAMERON who had escaped from the battle of Bothwell

  Bridge, and who returned to Scotland, and raised the miserable but

  still brave and unsubdued Covenanters afresh, under the name of

  Cameronians. As Cameron publicly posted a declaration that the

  King was a forsworn tyrant, no mercy was shown to his unhappy

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  followers after he was slain in battle. The Duke of York, who was

  particularly fond of the Boot and derived great pleasure from

  having it applied, offered their lives to some of these people, if

  they would cry on the scaffold 'God save the King!' But their

  relations, friends, and countrymen, had been so barbarously

  tortured and murdered in this merry reign, that they preferred to

  die, and did die. The Duke then obtained his merry brother's

  permission to hold a Parliament in Scotland, which first, with most

  shameless deceit, confirmed the laws for securing the Protestant

  religion against Popery, and then declared that nothing must or

  should prevent the succession of the Popish Duke. After this

  double-faced beginning, it established an oath which no human being