his private pleasures. While he was extravagant enough, the root of the trouble lay deeper: supplies were voted so tardily and collected so grudgingly that the Government was obliged to anticipate by borrowing; and the prevailing high rate of interest cut into revenues that at best were hardly adequate even for legitimate expenses. Niggardly as the Commons were, they were wise in keeping a tight hold on the purse-strings, and made notable gains during the Clarendonian régime. In a grant, made in 1665, a clause was inserted that the moneys voted should be used only for the purposes of the war. Suggested by a wily royal adviser to prevent the goldsmiths from claiming any portion for debts due to them, this marks another important step toward the practice of appropriation of supplies. Two years later, in the spring of 1667, after a sharp and prolonged struggle, the King made the important concession of appointing a committee of Parliament to audit accounts. One issue raised in this period was settled, 3 July, 1678, when the Commons carried a resolution that all bills of supply should originate in their House, and that such bills ought not to be changed or altered by the House of Lords." From that date the Lords have never made a serious attempt to originate or amend a money bill. In spite, however, of these evidences of the growing strength of the Commons, Charles, directly his old mentor was disposed of, proceeded to collect about him a body of Ministers of his own choice and to develop a policy quite at variance with Parliament's, a policy which he struggled for some years to maintain.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING

Narrative. Besides Trevelyan, Ranke, Lingard, and Cambridge Modern History already cited, Richard Lodge, The Political History of England, 1660-1702 (1910). Macaulay, History of England (illus. ed. C. B. Firth, 6 vols., 1914) gives a brief survey of the reign.

Constitutional. In addition to Taylor, Taswell-Langmead and Hallam, A. Amos, The English Constitution in the Reign of Charles II (1857) and W. C. Abbott, "Long Parliament of Charles II," English Historical Review (January-April, 1906).

Contemporary. Samuel Pepys's Diary (most complete ed. H. B. Wheatley, 9 vols., 1893-1899).. Evelyn, Diary. G. Burnet, The History of My Own Time (ed. O. Airy, the reign of Charles II, 2 vols., 1897-1900) in spite of some partisanship and inaccuracies, an indispensable authority.

Biography. O. Airy, Charles II (1901), an admirable biography and a good survey of the reign. Violet Barbour, Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington (1914). A. Browning, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and Duke of Leeds (1913). Lady Burghclere, George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham

(1903). W. D. Christie, Life of the First Earl of Shaftesbury (2 vols., 1871), a scholarly vindication. H. D. Traill, Shaftesbury (1888), a brief sketch. T. H. Lister, Life of Edward, First Earl of Clarendon (3 vols., 1838); has not been superseded by the recent Life by Sir Henry Craik (2 vols., 1911). A. C. Ewald, Life and Times of Algernon Sidney (2 vols., 1873). Helen C Foxcroft, Life and Letters of George Savile, First Marquis of Halifax (2 vols., 1898). Foxcroft and Clarke, Life of Gilbert Burnet (1907). A. Fea, King Monmouth (1902). H. B. Irving, Life of Lord Jeffreys (1898), an apology. Roger North, The Lives of the Norths (ed. A. Jessopp, 3 vols., 1890), a classic.

Special. G. B. Hertz, English Public Opinion after the Restoration (1902). C. B. R. Kent, The Early History of the Tories (1908). Seeley, British Policy. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power on History, 1660-1783 (15th ed., 1898), an epoch-making work. A. W. Tedder, The Navy of the Restoration (1916), an excellent study.

Church. Hutton; Wakeman; and Stoughton.

Scotland and Ireland. Works already cited. For further reading on Scotland and Ireland see Lodge, 487-471. Cambridge Modern History, V, 825-837.

Selections from the sources. Adams and Stephens, nos. 221-226. C. G. Robertson, Select Statutes, Cases and Documents (1904), pt. I, nos. I-IX; pt. II, no. I.

CHAPTER XXXIII

FROM THE FALL OF CLARENDON TO THE DEATH OF CHARLES II (1667-1685)

Charles Seeks to Make Himself Absolute (1667). – Charles took advantage of the fall of Clarendon to carry out a design which he had been cherishing for years to establish himself as an absolute Monarch. To that end, he applied himself with renewed energy to the four means by which he sought to accomplish his purpose: to building up the standing army; attaching the Dissenters by offering the 2 toleration which Parliament refused to grant; restoring Roman Catholicism; and securing a closer alliance with the French King, to whom he looked for supplies, and, in case of need, for troops. The obstacles, however, proved so formidable that he had to follow a very crooked course, and, before many years had passed, to alter his plans profoundly. In sensing the situation at the proper moment and in the means which he adopted to meet it, the King, who appeared to most of his subjects as a good-natured and witty trifler, proved himself to be one of the most cunning politicians of the century.

The "Cabal" (1667-1673). In the meantime, until the turning point of his policy, in 1673, he governed with a body of intimate councilors known as the "Cabal." It formed an inner circle of the Privy Council, and its members, who were consulted by the King singly or collectively, or in groups of two or three, were responsible to him and not to Parliament. While such Cabals, even under that name, were not unknown in English history long before the body in question came into existence, some have derived the word from the initial letters of the names of its leading members - Clifford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington and Lauderdale.1 Ablest of them all was Anthony Ashley Cooper, who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1661 to 1672, when he was created Lord Chancellor and Earl of Shaftes

1 In reality it is derived from a Hebrew word cabala, which meant a "secret," hence it came to be applied to a party or faction engaged in a secret design, and later, to a group of secret councilors. Charles's body, however, is the most famous of them all.

bury. He was a born agitator and demagogue, a forerunner of the modern party leader; yet, with all his ambition and his turnings against men and parties, he was ever consistent in the pursuit of his two ideals - civil liberty and toleration for all Protestants. He was himself a freethinker. The Duke of Buckingham was a man of engaging manners and not without accomplishments, but was vain, unsteady, and ever striving for powers in the State which he was incapable of using. Though he espoused the cause of the Dissenters for a time, he was not only devoid of religious opinions but a libertine to boot, perhaps the worst of all the dissolute set who surrounded the King. Lauderdale was a former Covenanter who devoted himself chiefly to Scotch affairs with the design of making the Crown supreme in that country. While Charles used all these men in the development of far reaching plans which, if they had been carried to completion, would have destroyed Protestantism and popular liberty in England, the "Cabal," as such, never enjoyed his full confidence, to say nothing of dominating him as Clarendon had done.

The Secret Treaty of Dover (1670). The English were embittered at the French King for taking the Dutch side in the late war, and apprehensive of his growing power as well. Nevertheless, Charles soon came to terms with Louis XIV; for, to his mind, the French alliance was closely bound up with the introduction of Roman Catholicism and the revival of the old monarchial power. In pursuance of this design, the famous Treaty of Dover was concluded with France, 22 May, 1670. Only two of the Cabal were present, and the terms long remained a secret. They were, in substance: that Charles, in return for an annual grant during the period of hostilities, agreed to join Louis in making war on the Dutch, and to assist him in securing the inheritance which he claimed - through his wife, a daughter of Philip IV of Spain in the Spanish Netherlands. Furthermore, and this was the secret part, the English King, in consideration of a sum of money, was, at a fitting time, to declare himself a Roman Catholic, and in case Charles's subjects resisted, Louis was to send troops to aid him. Though Charles was inclined to declare his conversion forthwith, the French ambassador persuaded him that such a step would strengthen the hands of the Dutch as champions of Protestantism, whereas, if the English were kept in ignorance of their Sovereign's change of faith they would continue to regard them merely as trade rivals. So, of the two objects contemplated in the Treaty, that of the destruction of the Dutch was thrust into the foreground. Since the negotiations leading up to the secret Treaty were known to all the Ministers, Charles commissioned Buckingham to negotiate a sham

treaty, concluded in February, 1671, which was practically the same as that of the previous spring except for the provision concerning religion. Meantime, Charles by nursing Parliament in the delusion that a Triple Alliance - concluded with the Dutch and Swedes in 1667 still held, secured large sums for the purpose of rendering it effective. Had he stood loyally by the Dutch, the designs of Louis XIV might have been checked and later costly and devastating wars might have been avoided.

The Declaration of Indulgence (1672-1673). The religious situation was such as to cause "all Protestant hearts to tremble." On 15 March, 1672, the King issued a Declaration of Indulgence, suspending "all manner of penal laws in matters ecclesiastical against whatsoever sort of Nonconformists or recusants." Although the Declaration only granted to Catholics liberty of private worship, while all Protestant sects were to be allowed to worship in public, men suspected it was issued mainly in the Catholic interest. Nor did it allay the suspicions, particularly of the Presbyterians, when the jails were opened and hundreds of Quakers and other Dissenters were released, although a large body of the Nonconformists sent the King a deputation to express their gratitude. When Parliament met, in February, 1673, the opposition was so intense, that Charles, in return for a grant of money which he sorely needed, announced, 8 March, that he would cancel the Declaration.

The Test Act and the Break-up of the Cabal (1673). — To clinch their victory, Parliament passed the famous Test Act providing that all holders of civil and military office must receive the sacrament according to the Church of England and take an oath declaring their disbelief in transubstantiation. That test excluded Roman Catholics and conscientious Dissenters for over a century and a half.1 The immediate result of the Test Act was the break-up of the Cabal Ministry, though Arlington and Buckingham managed to hold on till 1674, and Lauderdale till 1680. Shaftesbury, the lifelong friend of religious liberty, who had been one of the instigators of the Declaration, but who, on gaining an inkling of the real purport of the Treaty of Dover and the King's Catholic designs, had reversed his policy and had lent his support to the Test Act, was dismissed from the office of Lord Chancellor, and became the most active leader and organizer of the opposition party forming against the Court. The anti-Catholic party had renewed cause for apprehension when the King's brother James, Duke of York, whose first wife, Anne Hyde, had died the previous year, married, in the autumn of 1673, Mary of Modena, who had been 1 Some Nonconformists did not scruple to qualify by taking the sacrament.