Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration

by Antonia Fraser

  Many rumours do not necessarily add up to one hard fact, particularly if unsupported by firm evidence of the King’s own commitment. Charles’ public interest in the Roos Bill does seem to provide this evidence. John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, who was its chief intellectual promoter, referred significantly to the fact that ‘divorce might be not only in case of adultery but also of the immundicity of the womb, which is given forth to [be] the queen’s condition’.24

  The Roos case was decided in the husband’s favour but the King did not take advantage of the decision. There is a sharp distinction to be drawn between the King’s flirtation – it may have been no more than that – with the idea of a divorce, and the parallel rumours concerning the legitimization of Monmouth. This move would have been of course even more unwelcome to James. A new Queen (who might prove barren in her turn) had to be accepted; at least her offspring would stand quite indubitably ahead of him in the succession. The legitimization of Monmouth was quite another matter, constituting a lethal snub to James. And although rumours continued to fly about on the subject, it has to be faced that the King never at any time gave them countenance.

  The favourite canard was that Charles would declare himself to have legally married Lucy Walter (who had died a few years before he married Catharine, so that the validity of this second ceremony would not be affected). As has been pointed out, the idea of this marriage was a fantasy, the King having been very much otherwise engaged at the time, unlikely to contemplate any wife except a rich and powerful princess. There is no solid evidence to suggest that Charles ever contemplated dispossessing James by a piece of calculated deception concerning Monmouth’s birth. On the other hand, it may easily have crossed his mind to divorce Catharine, and thus by implication dispossess James – but that move would incidentally have been in direct contradiction to the policy of legitimizing Monmouth.

  The Monmouth coterie, like Monmouth himself, were the prey of their own optimistic visions: how the King would like to ‘own’ Monmouth but did not know how to do so. But the King did nothing. Catharine remained undivorced, Monmouth unacknowledged. Meanwhile, this temporary ruffle between King and York became gradually smoothed. A better relationship was established. James’ stature as heir presumptive was undiminished.

  The King’s true preoccupation from the fall of Clarendon onwards was not his own successor but his serpentine discussions with France. He may even have been cynically pleased that the hue and cry over Queen, Duke and Monmouth diverted the loud mouths of the Commons and Court from a secret wooing which was taking place between the two kings, Charles II and Louis XIV. For Charles, described so often by his contemporaries as being lazy at business, was not showing himself lazy where foreign policy was concerned. Quite as much as his subjects, he was humiliated and furious at the memory of that ‘Black Day accurs’d’ when the Dutch had ravished the chaste Medway. By the end of 1668 he had secured a remarkable diplomatic triumph from this degrading position. After the Peace of Breda, a Triple Alliance was constructed between England, Holland and Sweden. Newly vulnerable, France immediately concluded the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle with Spain, and an ostensible tranquillity prevailed across the map of Europe.

  It is probably correct to regard this apparent turnabout in alliances – two of the three powers concerned had recently been fighting each other in a nasty and quite prolonged war – as mere shadow-boxing. There is no evidence that Charles II’s competitive aversion to the Dutch had abated. But he hoped that the Triple Alliance might prove an efficient way of dealing with his growing domestic problems. These included a bankrupt Treasury and a highly restive House of Commons, many of whose members were beginning to voice anti-French – and anti-Catholic – sentiments. The Triple Alliance had a nice Protestant sound to it; more money might be forthcoming from Parliament as a result. It is significant that Clifford, ever representing the naval point of view, disliked the Alliance. At the same time, of course, Charles had effectively prevented Holland from ganging up with France against England once more.

  Across the straits of the North Sea, Johann De Witt was animated by a similar consideration, to keep England from the arms of France. Indeed, the first move towards the alliance came from De Witt.25 The notion was delicately conveyed to Charles’ Ambassador in Holland, Sir William Temple, in the autumn of 1667. Temple was instructed to explore the possibility. From the first it was an unnatural alliance, much less sweet to Charles than the ultimate prospect of ‘revenge on Holland’. Nevertheless there was certain unfinished business between the Dutch and English rulers which these negotiations might assist. This was the position of Charles’ nephew, William III of Orange.fn4

  At the end of the war, De Witt considered it prudent to have the seventeen-year-old boy admitted to the Council of State; but at the same time the Stadtholdership of Holland was abolished (although not hereditary it might have been granted to William as Prince of Orange). William however showed some sign of that implacable political quality which would one day both chill and dazzle Europe. He went before the States of Zeeland and pleaded successfully to be admitted as first noble, by right of his inherited position as Margrave of Flushing and Vere. On his eighteenth birthday, 14 November 1668, he was declared to have come of age.

  There was also the question of the considerable sums of money Charles had borrowed from the private coffers of the House of Orange, while in exile. These monies had never been returned and even the late Princess Mary’s dowry had never been paid in full: the total was nearly a quarter of a million pounds. William paid a four-month visit to England in 1670 to try to secure them – an optimistic foray in view of his uncle’s financial position. However recourse was had to one of the King’s chief financial agents, Edward Backwell. He had already burnt his fingers over the Queen’s dowry by advancing money to the King before the Portuguese paid up (a slow business as it proved and never satisfactorily completed). Even so, valuing the royal connection, Backwell took on the task of paying off William over a period of four years on the security of orders on the Customs’ receipts.26

  More immediately William was given the due precedence of his blood royal, out-ranking, for example, his cousin Prince Rupert (also the son of a Stuart princess) in an age when such things were marked. For Charles, whatever cozening noises he made towards his nephew’s Dutch hopes, continued to view him as a Stuart dependent who was conveniently placed in the enemy’s camp.

  A portrait of William as a boy, by Adriaen Hanneman, together with a portrait of his dead mother Mary, hung in the King’s bedchamber at Whitehall: unconsciously Charles may still have thought of him as that child. The King’s attitude to the young man was both patronizing and critical. The French Ambassador reported that King Charles found Prince William too passionate a Hollander, too much a Protestant.27 The King’s surprise that this should be so, in view of William’s upbringing (did he expect a Catholic-oriented Frenchman?), betrays a certain naïveté. Given their respective tastes and characters, it was perhaps not to be expected that Charles II and the future William III would fall into each other’s arms. Nevertheless, the stance adopted by the uncle towards his nephew did nothing to increase the prospect. As it was, Charles, who expected both to help William by the alliance and be helped by him, was disappointed.

  The Dutch involvement was popular with the English Parliament because it aimed at France. Nor did all Charles’ ministers disapprove of it as Clifford did: Arlington, for example, the Spanish sympathizer, with a Dutch heiress for a wife –‘Espagnol par lui-même et Hollandais par sa femme’, as Ruvigny termed him – loved the concept. ‘God be thanked it is done,’ he exclaimed.28 Determined to fan some financial warmth out of the Members of Parliament with his new bellows, the King spoke eloquently in February 1668 of his renewed need for money: ‘I lie under great debts contracted in the last war; but now the posture of our neighbours abroad, and the consequence of the new alliance will oblige me, for our security, to set out a considerable fleet to sea this summer.’ Fortifications had to b
e repaired and ‘besides, I must build more great ships’.29

  The King’s financial situation at the time is best summed up by the later witticism, ‘desperate but not serious’. A committee was set up for retrenchment; pensions were cut, or stopped, without being cancelled, by the simple expedient of not paying them. Ambassadorial expenses were severely checked and plate, often regarded as a perquisite of office, was demanded back after use. When Lord Sandwich asked for £5,000 for his mission to Spain, he was asked to be more specific about his needs.30

  Nor did the influence of Buckingham introduce any kind of order into the chaos. Buckingham, as has been observed, devoted his elastic energies to the demolition of the York party, in the process of which he chose to bring about the fall of Sir William Coventry. It was comparatively easy to lay the blame for the naval failures at the Admiralty’s door. In October 1668 Pepys described Buckingham as ‘all in all’ and determined to ‘ruin Coventry if he can’.31 Despite the fact that Coventry had joined in the hue and cry against Clarendon, he was attacked in his turn, and attacked successfully. A brief spell of imprisonment in the Tower in the spring of 1669 followed an imbroglio with Buckingham over a satirical play; later Coventry retired altogether from politics.

  Far more serious was Buckingham’s freakish vengeance on the Duke of Ormonde, which resulted in the fall of that genuinely great man. Buckingham had the frivolous energy of a born intriguer, which from small beginnings will often secure calamitously great results. Ormonde’s removal from the Lord Lieutenancy was brought about in February 1669. Probably there were some instances during his period of office which justified impeachment, or at least did not bear close inspection. Ormonde would have been unique in his period to have headed an administration in Ireland without stain. Yet in another way Ormonde was unique: in his appreciation of the native quality of Ireland. He had, for example, influenced the foundation of the Irish College of Physicians, and prohibited the import of Scottish linen in revenge for the iniquitous Bill (Buckingham’s delight) prohibiting the import of Irish cattle into England. Ormonde’s removal, followed by the appointment of the ineffective Lord Robartes, demonstrated once again how adversely the feuding of English internal politics seemed to affect Ireland’s internal destiny.

  If Buckingham, and for that matter Osborne, had pursued some constructive policy of their own, their destructive efforts in other directions might not have proved so catastrophic. As it was, they were more obsessed with building up and maintaining their own power base without in fact offering the King, within Parliament, a particularly solid structure.32 It was true that there were numerous Court officials. Also, Buckingham could muster his own body of MPs, the Duke of York (once reconciled to his brother) and his friends, another body. Counting those MPs who had demonstrated a willingness to support the Crown on various occasions, there was in theory a substantial conglomerate at the King’s disposal.

  Reality was very different. Between the pro-Dutch sympathies of Arlington, for example, and the pro-French leanings of Buckingham there was an obvious and unbridgeable gulf. Other pettier divisions existed. In the late 1660s nothing like a homogeneous Court party was in fact at the command of Charles II. His groans to Madame over his constant financial troubles amply illustrate one side of this, as do his reiterated pleas to Parliament itself on the subject of money. Charles expressed it to Parliament, called again in October 1669 after an eighteen months’ gap for this precise purpose, thus: ‘I desire that you will now take my debts effectually into your consideration.’ The House of Commons remained more interested in its internal disputes, arguments over the relative powers of the House of Lords. In February of the following year the King was reduced to begging that their squabbles should cease, while asking for money ‘with greater instance’.33

  This irksome impotence was the background not only to the King’s crucial initiative in foreign policy in the direction of France, but also to the efforts of Lauderdale to bring about a proper union between England and Scotland. In 1667 Lauderdale had acquired at last the position he coveted, as Lord High Commissioner for Scotland. His protégé Lord Rothes was further installed as Chancellor. Lauderdale played some part in the fall of Clarendon, and subsequently developed that influence over Charles which had begun as far back as 1648, when Lauderdale turned out to be the one Scot Charles really liked. He paid his first visit to Edinburgh in his splendid new vice-regal role in October 1669. Neither Lauderdale himself nor his termagant red-haired wife, the former Bess Countess of Dysart, allowed any tinge of austerity to touch their conception of their Scottish court. Bribery, nepotism, corruption, louche – and lavish spending: these would be amongst the charges whispered and shouted against the Lauderdales. For all that, Lauderdale was no Buckingham in his lack of a proper policy to pursue.

  The coarseness of the man, the extravagance of his entourage (he was said to cost the King £18,000 a year in Scotland), should not blind one to the fact that Lauderdale was intent on offering something positive to his sovereign in the shape of a Scottish policy. To him the country he referred to as ‘poor old Scotland’ could nevertheless be turned into ‘a citadel for his Majesty’s service’.34 To be frank, it was about the one proposition for Scotland’s future which was likely to sound musically in Charles’ ears. If Scotland could genuinely be transformed into a monarchical citadel, how much more fortunate might Charles II prove than Charles I, for whom Scotland had been a quagmire rather than a bastion?

  It was Lauderdale’s conviction that Scotland’s internal government – and problems – should be her own, while the strong central administration which he expected to set up would ensure her a place in the British monarchical scheme of things. To draw a line between Lauderdale’s instinct for self-aggrandizement in all this, and his genuine desire to discover some solution for a strong Scotland, is probably impossible: like many men of force, Lauderdale was inclined to equate his own best interests with his country’s. Yet in the sense that Lauderdale did intend to right the many grievances of the Scots – suffering as second-class citizens – by an Act of Union, he did display both understanding and patriotism. He showed an unfortunate impatience towards his Presbyterian opponents, characteristic of one side of him; yet even in the opinion of Robert Law, a Covenanting minister, he was ‘a man very national’.35

  To many Lauderdale was quite simply ‘the Hector of State,/The rascal we hate’ as in the rude rhyme of the Earl of Aboyne. Yet he reacted with genuine indignation to the Navigation Acts, whose careless neglect of the very existence of Scottish trade caused the country much unplanned suffering. Ever since the reign of James VI and I, indeed, the Scots had been penalized over their trading, whether with the colonies or the Dutch. The fact that this sprang more from lordly English indifference to Scottish interests than deliberate victimization still did not endear the process to the Scots. Lauderdale demanded that Scottish trade conditions should revert to the situation as it was before the punitive Navigation Acts. He considered it intolerable, for example, that the Scots should have to pay duties on English imports.

  To Lauderdale the Union offered the Scots the opportunity to flourish equally with England. In his rough and wily way (the two adjectives were compatible where Lauderdale was concerned) he was a patriot. By offering brilliantly to Charles a ‘citadel’ where his prerogative would be respected and enforced, he hoped to overcome those coldly negative feelings which the King had long entertained, in so far as he entertained any feelings at all, towards Scotland. In return, the King would ameliorate the conditions of Scottish trade.

  By October 1669 Lauderdale had worked on Charles sufficiently to win him to the idea of a Union. The King recommended the idea to his Parliament. Unfortunately, by exaggerating the nature of the support the King would find there he also laid up further political troubles along the way. There was a question of a body of 24,000 men: the King believed in its existence, taking Rothes’ word for it, and the opposition fulminated at the idea. Yet all along this force was more of a phantom
army than a power base.

  The Union of 1670 failed however not so much on this aspect as through English xenophobia. Another Union had failed in the same way, that finely conceived Union proposed by King James I in 1606 (which, if accepted, might have altered the entire internal history of the two countries). King James had spoken of ‘a perpetual marriage’, suggesting eloquently that two nations ‘under one roof or rather in one Bed’ ought to have economic integration. But the House of Commons merely expressed disgust at granting parity to the carpet-bagging Scots. The Parliament of Charles II had similar doubts. Nor were the Scots for their part accommodating, after sixty years of maltreatment, including the Cromwellian occupation. They claimed – without success – equal representation in the united Parliament.

  In the House of Commons Andrew Marvell symbolized the angry English reaction to these proposals: when Lauderdale was given the Garter, Marvell declared he actually deserved a halter. The King himself was not prepared to transform cautious approval of the Union into anything much warmer. In November 1670, he told the commissioners appointed to look into the whole matter that they must meet later: union was not at present feasible. Thus the Union of 1670 joined the ranks of Anglo-Scottish unions – and Anglo-Scottish opportunities – lost. King James’ two nations in one bed would continue to toss and turn restlessly, without the perpetual marriage of his dreams, for another thirty-seven years.

  1 A more modern parallel may be drawn between the Catholicism of King Charles II and that of the first Catholic President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. He made it clear that he drew a distinction between his role as President and as a private member of the Catholic Church; as the former, for example, he was not subject to the authority of the Papacy.