Tyranny of Cromwell.

9

Those who had hitherto been so zealous in aiding Cromwell, soon found that they had misunderstood his designs and character; and that they had only given themselves a new master, abler no doubt, but far more arbitrary in his disposition, more severe in his temper, and more unscrupulous in his dealings than his worst enemies had ever accused Charles of showing himself. He did not venture, indeed, to assume the title of king: he longed to do so, but feared the discontent of the army, with whose support he could not afford to dispense; for, in fact, during the whole remainder of his life he kept the nation under martial law. He divided the kingdom into districts, with one of his general officers as his lieutenant in each, and all civil law he set wholly at defiance, trampling on those very articles of Magna Charta the disregard of which had raised the first opposition to the late King. He imposed taxes by his single authority; he imprisoned, executed with a mere mockery of trial, and even sold for slaves those who for one cause or another fell under his displeasure. He remodelled the House of Commons; dictated the acts of the different Parliaments which he convoked while he allowed them to sit; and dissolved them as capriciously and wantonly as ever Charles had dissolved his, on one occasion clearing the House with his troops at the point of the bayonet.

For two years he ruled without even the pretence of a Parliament. In the emphatic but most accurate words of Hallam, "The civil wars had ended in a despotism com"pared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all "that had cost Charles his life and his crown, appeared as "dust in the balance;" and "a sense of present evils not only "excited a burning desire to live again under the ancient

"monarchy, but obliterated, especially in the new genera❝tion, that had no distinct remembrance of them, the appre"hension of its former abuses."

Cromwell died in rather less than ten years after the murder of the King: and his death at once undid the whole of the Revolution. Had his life been protracted, many, even of his own supporters, doubted whether he would have been able to maintain his power much longer; and his son, to whom he had hoped to secure a peaceful succession to his Protectorate, resembled him in no point whatever, but was equally destitute of ability and ambition; and it was probably with no great reluctance that he found himself, in the course of the next summer, compelled to resign his post.

In fact, from the moment that his father died, every one perceived that the restoration of the royal family was inevitable; and in May, 1660, Charles II. was replaced on the throne of his ancestors amid the acclamations of a vast majority of the nation. So general was the reaction, that the first Parliament which met after the Restoration was rather inclined to abandon some of the securities for the rights of the subject which had been extorted from Charles I.; and though they did indeed pass Bills for the confirmation of the Petition of Rights, they repealed the Act for Triennial Parliaments, which had been one of the most laudable measures of the Long Parliament in its first session, and which at the time of its enactment had been regarded by its promoters as the surest of all the bulwarks of the Constitution.

Other laws of recent enactment which they also abrogated were no doubt of a mischievous character, such as that for the exclusion of the Bishops from the House of Peers.

Character of Charles II.

II

But the repeal of this provision for the constant re-election and reassembling of Parliament did once more virtually lay the liberties of the people at the King's mercy. Great virtue and sound judgment would have been needed to enable a prince, restored to his throne under such circumstances as Charles, to withstand the temptation to misuse the power thus imprudently placed in his hands.

Unhappily, Charles had no such qualities. He was, indeed, far from being deficient in ability; but the wandering, uncertain life which he had led since his removal to the Continent in his boyhood, the constant disappointment of his hopes and plans for the recovery of his crown, had undermined his principles, and had implanted in him a recklessness and indifference to every object but that of the gratification of the moment. And he was not long in finding councillors who sought their own ends in encouraging him in designs and conduct not more ruinous to his own character than fatal to the honour and even the independence of the kingdom.

His first Minister, indeed, was the Earl of Clarendon, who in the first session of the Long Parliament had been a leader of the Opposition, till a conviction that Charles had made sufficient concessions to secure real freedom, and that many of those with whom he had at first connected himself were encroaching unduly and dangerously on the royal authority, led him to espouse the side of the King, and to take office as one of his ministers. As the course of the war grew more and more unfavourable, Charles entrusted him with the especial care of the Prince of Wales; he managed his escape from the kingdom, acted in some degree as his tutor and guardian at Paris; and when the young Prince had become titular King by his father's death, he accompanied him from

place to place as his principal adviser throughout the remaining period of his exile.

His administration cannot be pronounced perfect in point of liberality or prudence; indeed, it was impossible that so long an absence from his native land should have failed to deprive him of that insight into the feelings of the nation which is indispensable to one who would successfully govern it, while the events which had happened during that time, and the state of affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical, after the Restoration, made his position one of unusual difficulty. Still, his government was generally able, and always upright and patriotic; and though he could not prevent the supplies which should have been appropriated to the defence of the kingdom from being diverted to glut the rapacity of the King's courtiers and mistresses, nor, in consequence, save the country from the disgrace of seeing an enemy burn its finest ships in the waters of the Thames itself, he kept the King in the paths of the law, and during his tenure of power no inroad was attempted on the Constitutional rights of the people.

But when, seven years after the Restoration, the ungrateful King, weary of his minister's very virtues, which he felt as in some degree a reproach to himself, abandoned him to his enemies, the advisers by whom he replaced him eagerly co-operated with Charles in discarding all restraints of law, prudence, and even decency; and the rest of the reign presented a systematic violation not only of every principle of Constitutional government, but of all the ordinary obligations of private honour. The national creditors were defrauded by the shutting of the Exchequer; Charles himself became a pensioner of Louis of France; the money which he received being partly

a bribe to induce him to acquiesce in the French monarch's aggressions upon his neighbours, and partly a resource to enable him himself to bribe his Parliament; or, if it should not prove sufficiently compliant, to dispense with convoking it.

It was no wonder that such practices produced deep and general discontent. The formal agreement which the Royal cousins had made was, indeed, not known; but the manifest servility of the English Government to that of France excited suspicions; and presently those suspicions took a direction which has at all times been more powerful than any other to kindle the fiercest passions in the nation. It began to be suspected that Charles's object was not so much to establish his own absolute power as to favour the Roman Catholic religion. His brother and next heir, the Duke of York, had publicly avowed himself a Roman Catholic some years before; and it was feared that his influence over the King, which was known to be great, might lead him to adopt the same belief. Such a suspicion made even the most venal members of Parliament unmanageable.

Charles, in imitation of his father, who had suspended the penal laws against the Roman Catholics, had by his own authority issued what he called a Declaration of Indulgence, suspending the penal laws against Nonconformists of any kind, whether Popish or Protestant; the two Houses compelled him to cancel his proclamation; and even passed a Test Act, which bound all holders of office to profess an adherence to the Church of England. Though one of its effects was to deprive the Duke of York himself of the post of Lord High Admiral, and Lord Clifford, the most respectable of the ministers, of the Lord Treasurer's staff, Charles could not venture to refuse his assent to the Bill. But he