Thus in March, ’81, when he dissolved his last Parliament at Oxford, there was no angry outburst by the nation as a whole; for the moment the majority were content to stand apart, watching the duel between Shaftesbury and the King.
The following months Charles took the offensive. Far too long he had suffered abuse and defamation in those scurrilous pamphlets which were the newspapers of the day. Now he replied by issuing a newspaper of his own, The Observator, in which he unmasked the designs of the conspirators and explained his policy to the people. It was a stroke of genius; eagerly the publication was seized upon and read by all. In a few months the Tory leaders had followed suit, and Shaftesbury’s envenomed propaganda was being countered by a thousand angry pamphlets from the pens of writers for the Crown.
Charles now felt himself strong enough to deal with the informers. One after another these idols of the London mob were seized and brought before him, rigorously examined, their lies unmasked, and dealt with according to their deserts. Then one July morning he left Windsor in the greatest secrecy before dawn, arrived in London by nine o’clock, arrested Shaftesbury in his bed, and seized his papers. By evening Charles was back at Windsor, with no disturbance but the snarling of the mob.
The papers proved beyond all doubt that Shaftesbury was implicated in a plot to overthrow both King and Government. In November he was brought to trial, but the devilish machinery by which he had subverted justice saved him. The rabble stormed the Old Bailey, howled down the judges, and stoned the witnesses for the Crown; while a jury packed by the Whig Sheriffs secured the acquittal of their leader. Yet Charles had the last word, for he published the demagogue’s papers, and after that, except for the scum of the streets and his fellow conspirators, Shaftesbury lost all credit. In the following year he sought refuge in Holland—a dying, embittered, and broken man.
It was largely through Shaftesbury’s creation of the Liberal Party, who inherited his hatred of Charles, that so much unjustified vilification has adhered to the wise, tolerant King. But the evidence against the bitter Ear! remains for all to read in the trials of those thousands of poor people who suffered at the hands of his packed juries and through the false accusations of his iniquitous informers. Dryden, who knew him, has preserved the true portrait of this arch-traitor for posterity:
‘A name to all succeeding ages cursed,
For close designs and crooked councils fit
Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit...
In friendship false, implacable in hate,
Resolved to Ruin, or to Rule the State.’
Charles now prepared to attack that last stronghold of sedition—the City. He was determined that at all costs justice in the law courts should be restored, and proceeded against the City Charter with a writ of ‘Quo Warranto’. During the Whig tyranny the citizens had been forced by a hostile crowd to poll for Shaftesbury’s nominees at the election of the Sheriffs. Now, with the assistance of a loyal Lord Mayor, Charles drove away the mob and made possible a free election. Two loyalists were returned by a sweeping majority and the Whigs thrown out, so at last juries could again be chosen irrespective of the politics, and justice was restored to London Town.
The Whigs died hard, but now, without a Parliament to hamper him and with his loyal press bringing his motives more clearly before the people, England was at last coming to understand the King and value him at his true worth. James was brought home, Catholics and Dissenters given a more reasonable liberty, and all the while England grew richer with the constant arrival of her merchant fleets.
It was not till ’83 that Charles became supreme, and that through a well-planned attempt upon his life. He had been to Newmarket, as was his custom in the spring, for he loved his horses, the racing, and the country air, but he was forced to return to London earlier than he had planned, owing to a serious stable fire. A few days later he was made acquainted with the details of a plot against his life. Forty fanatics, mostly old Cromwellian troopers, had planned to hold up his coach at the ‘Rye House’, near Ware, on the date originally fixed for his return. But for their premature departure owing to the fire, both James and he would have been assassinated.
The conspiracy, however, was far more widespread than this. Upon the news of his death, Monmouth, Russell, Essex, Sidney and the rest of the Whig Lords were to seize Whitehall and form a Regency. It was Shaftesbury’s last attack, engineered by him from Holland. The ringleaders were seized, a true bill being found against twenty-one persons. Essex cut his throat in the Tower, Russell and Sidney went to the scaffold. Yet such was Charles’ generosity of nature that in both instances he commuted their sentence to beheading, observing of the former ‘that he would not deny him that courtesy which he had endeavoured to withhold from the innocent Stafford’, and sent him a message before he died ‘that his confiscated estates should be restored to his wife and children’.
Once again Charles published the evidence, that all might be acquainted with the details of the plot, and then the true feelings of the people were made manifest. The rebellious Whigs were scattered and the voice of the nation rose in a paean of thanksgiving for the preservation of the King. All who had ever come into contact with him knew his tolerant spirit, his unfailing kindness and generosity; ‘a man who liked to be easy and see those about him so’. He had brought England out of anarchy and chaos to law and order, and never at any time in her history had Britain been so prosperous before. Money was pouring into the country from every land and clime. Ships could not be built quick enough to cope with the increasing commerce. A new and better London had risen from the ashes of the old. Fine manor houses were rising up in every village of the kingdom. There was ample employment and money for all. From the richest to the poorest a higher standard of living had become the order of the day, and to that smiling England it seemed that the golden age had come at last.
To one tall, dark ageing roue the credit for all this happiness was due. ‘Better one King than five hundred,’ he had declared when he dismissed that last Parliament as ‘A House of Talkers’. And how can we ignore the verdict of that happy, prosperous England, for which he had striven so hard throughout all his reign, and that had become an actual fact during the last years of ‘despotism’?
In the loving hearts of his people, their devotion and enthusiasm, Charles—reigning without a Parliament— stands justified.
Eight
The Apotheosis
During the last years Charles was a poor man. It was the old business of no Parliament—no money; but he cut down his household, lived mostly in the country for economy’s sake, and managed quite happily on the French subsidies.
The feeling of loyalty in these years was so great that no less than sixty-five boroughs voluntarily surrendered their Charters to the King that they might be amended in such a manner that they could never again be used by another Shaftesbury to subvert justice in the interests of a political party.
One trouble remained. His beloved, empty-headed son, who had so foolishly allowed himself to be made a puppet by the conspirators. For the time, Monmouth was sent abroad in disgrace, but, before he died, Charles had made arrangements to recall and pardon him.
James gained reflected glory from the King’s popularity. His courage and fine work as Lord High Admiral were recalled, and the throne assured to him upon his brother’s death. Yet that Charles was uneasy as to what troubles James’ bigoted Catholicism might lead him into is shown by the confidence which he made to Sir Richard Bulstrode. ‘I am w'eary,’ he said, ‘of travelling, and am resolved to go abroad no more. But when I am dead and gone, I know not what my brother will do: I am much afraid that when he comes to wear the crown he will be obliged to travel again. And yet I will take care to leave my kingdoms to him in peace, wishing he may long keep them so. But this hath all my fears, little of my hopes, and less of my reason.’ Time was to show how right that master-mind was in its shrewd judgment.
He expressed the same view in a more jovial manner when, after th
e Rye House Plot, James became nervous for his safety. ‘Fear not, James; they will never kill me to make thee King.’
From time to time he received deputations and petitions asking him to call a Parliament, but he would never venture upon those troubled waters again, and to one collection of Berkshire Brewers who approached him on the matter his reply was typical of his tactful methods. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said amiably, ‘brewing is your concern and governing mine, and I wonder that my neighbours should meddle with my business, but we will argue the matter over a cup of your good ale when next we meet at Windsor’—and thus another batch of malcontents were turned from enemies to friends.
He still remained hale and hearty as the years advanced, walking ten miles of a morning over Newmarket Heath or spending long days in the more restful pastime of fishing Dachet Reach, which was a very favourite spot with him. Journeys of inspection to the Fleet were frequent, and always a great pleasure to him. Pepys, the one-time poor relation of Sir Edward Montagu, was now amassing his fine library, and was his sovereign’s old and trusted friend. Charles had himself assumed the post of Lord High Admiral and the honest Samuel was his right-hand man.
The King also exercised his small but well-trained Army which he had increased as much as his straitened circumstances would allow. To the already established Coldstream, Blues, Royal Scots, and Buffs he had added a regiment of Grenadiers, two troops of Life Guards, the Royal Dragoons, the Queen’s Regiment and the Scots’ Greys—and he particularly concerned himself that their arms should be of the very latest pattern. Bayonets were Invented which did away with the necessity for pikemen to protect the musketeers, clumsy old powder horns abolished, and cartridges introduced. In Chelsea, at the suggestion of Sir Stephen Fox, then Paymaster of the Forces, he established the hospital for old soldiers, and at Greenwich he personally conducted those experiments which led to hand grenades and the filling of hitherto solid cannon balls with gunpowder which converted them into the forerunner of the modern shell. His interest in science never flagged, and many experiments were always in progress in his own laboratory.
On Sundays he attended church and, although he was by no means a religious man, listened to the sermons of his divines with interest. To one impertinent who took advantage of his well-known good nature to upbraid him from the pulpit for the irregularities of his private life he sent a message. ‘Tell him,’ he said gently, ‘that I am not angry to be told my faults, but would have it done in a gentlemanly like manner.’ He often afterwards commented upon the sermons, saying of one preacher that ‘He had played the fool upon the doctrine of purgatory’ and of another, ‘He gave us quite an unnecessary sermon on the doctrine of original sin,’ and he made Thomas Ken Bishop of Bath and Wells for the gentle, saintly way in which he remonstrated with him for his sins. In fact, at no time in the history of England have the high offices of the Church been filled with so many saintly and scholarly divines, worthy in every way of their position, as in his reign. The personal selection of all these men was one of the King’s most closely guarded privileges.
William Penn, a religious of a different persuasion, came to see Charles at Whitehall on one occasion. This stalwart Quaker disapproved of kings and Charles II in particular, therefore he remained covered in his presence. Charles, never at a loss, removed his own befeathered headgear with that graceful sweep of which he was such a master. Penn, looking ill at ease, enquired, ‘Why dost thou remove thy hat, Charles Stuart?’ ‘Because, Penn, it is the custom here for only one person to remain covered at the time,’ smiled the King, and, having administered this gentlest of rebukes, he took the Quaker by the arm and led him in, spread out the charts and gave his able brain to the task of assisting Penn in the foundation of the great Stale of Pennsylvania.
The Court was no longer youthful and a quieter merriment prevailed. Buckingham had retired long since to his estates, disgusted by the ill success of his intrigues against a kindly master. There he gave himself to hunting and hobnobbing with the villagers. Once when the innkeeper told him that he was in a plaguy hurry for his morning draught we find recorded a flash of his old spontaneous wit:
' “Some Ale! Some Ale,” the impetuous Villiers cried.
To which the surly Landlord thus replied,
“Plague on your Grace, you treat me as your dog,
I’ll serve your Lordship when I’ve served my Hog.” ’
But the glory was departed. In his last years that restless brain turned to religion, and he published A Short Discourse upon the Reasonableness Man’s having a Religion and Worship of God. Finally he became morbidly anxious as to the state of his soul and, having caught a chill out hunting, died in 1688 at the village inn, surrounded by the local clergy but regretted by none.
For years the gay and dissolute Rochester had drunk enough each day to intoxicate six ordinary men, and, although it had never appeared to affect him at the time, it ruined his constitution and in the end, and at the age of thirty he retired from court an old and dying man. He made his bitter swan song in 1680.
‘Tir’d with the noisome Follies of the Age,
And weary of my part, I quit the Stage,
For who in life’s dull Farce a part would bear,
Where Rogues, Whores, Bawds, all the head Actors are?’
In his decline he trained the great Mrs. Barry for the stage, having unquenchable faith in her genius. At her first appearance she was voted the worst actress in the kingdom, but his faith was justified, for in the end she became the greatest tragedienne of her time. Rochester’s life among his family does something to redeem his otherwise shameful existence. He also turned to religion in the end and made a most edifying exit in the same summer as his retirement.
Sedley had become more serious and sat in Charles’ last Parliament. He was to survive the King by sixteen years, and to his intense annoyance James took his daughter, Catherine, for his mistress. ‘I hate ingratitude,’ declared the reformed rake on hearing this, ‘and therefore, as the King has made my daughter a Countess—I will endeavour to make his daughter a Queen.’ And he did—by assisting in the bringing over of William and Mary.
It was Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, who, as an old, old lady in the time of George I, came upon the even more aged Portsmouth and the then elderly Lady Orkney—who had been William Ill’s mistress—at a party, and electrified the company by exclaiming, ‘Well! Well! Well! Who would have thought to find three old whores like us in the same house?’
The son of Sedley’s old friend D’Avernant, the theatrical magnate, was with him in his last hours, and said that he died like a true philosopher, ‘without fear or superstition’.
‘Gentle George’ Etheridge lingered on at Court and after the King’s death secured an appointment as British Ambassador to Ratisbon. He had gained some little diplomatic experience as secretary to our Ambassador at the Porte in ’68, which had brought forth the couplet:
‘Ovid to Pontus sent for too much wit,
Etheridge to Turkey for the want of it.’
He set out for Ratisbon with the light-hearted irresponsibility which characterized all his actions, and at the Hague got so drunk that he passed the whole night unconscious in the streets—the only recorded instance of a representative accredited by the Court of St. James behaving in so unambassadorial a manner. At Ratisbon the gay George found the heavy Germans incredibly dull, so he spent most of his time in the more congenial atmosphere of the French Embassy. He carried on a considerable correspondence with Dryden and the other wits, maintaining an unflagging interest in the theatre. To his old companions he wrote a little sadly, recalling the joys of other days, as on one occasion, ‘Remind my Lord Dorset how he and I carried two draggle-tail nymphs one bitter frosty night over the Thames to Lambeth.’ But that Etheridge was something more than a rake and drunkard is seen from his charming verse:
‘Upon the downs when shall I breathe at ease,
Have nothing else to do but what I please.
In a fresh coo
ling shade upon the bank
Of Arden’s spring, have time to read and think,
And stretch, and sleep, when all my cares shall be
For Health, and pleasure my philosophy?
When shall I rest from business, noise and strife,
Lay down the soldier’s and the courtier’s life
And in a little melancholy seat
Begin at last to live and to forget
The nonsense and the farce of what the fools call great?’
In ’89 he left Ratisbon to spend his declining years in the Paris that he loved. In ’91 he died, a poet of no mean ability but unregenerate to the last.
Dorset, or Buckhurst, as he was in the days when Pretty, Witty Nelly came to town, had become more sober with advancing years and took upon his shoulders those burdens of the State which became his rank. He remained a true friend to Charles until the latter’s death, and then was prominent in the bringing over of William of Orange. Later he held the great office of Lord Chamberlain, and died full of years and honours at Bath in 1706, perhaps the most magnificent patron of the Arts that England has ever known.
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