prevailed. It was believed that the principle of unity-an abstract idea that obtained a kind of superstitious reverencecould be maintained only in the person of a monarch. The political thought of the time conceived dimly of a civitas Dei, or of an imperium mundi, comprehending the universe, of a divinely-ordered harmony of parts making up a whole; of individual States as microcosms of the world; of oneness and unity, as the basis of all things, and therefore of social existence. It was believed that all order consists in the subordination of plurality to unity, and that this result could only be obtained when the one ruled the many; that a single force to control the subordinate forces was absolutely necessary; and, the ruler being considered as a head, the inference was drawn that nature demanded a monarchy, since one head alone was possible. It appeared self-evident that the government of a nation by a king was the closest likeness to the government of the universe by God; while a republic, on the other hand, seemed irreligious, inasmuch as it was impossible to anoint a council or a popular assembly. The State, again, being sometimes conceived of as an organism like the human body, it was consequently argued that the unifying principle of political bodies was the will, and that one man's will was the necessary agent of control. It is little wonder that the medieval publicists, thinking that they saw a monarchical order in the constitution of the universe, alike in animate and inanimate nature, should have believed that of all forms of government monarchy was the best suited for the preservation of society and for the attainment of its ends.1 If there ever was an English monarch whose right of succession was marked by infirmity of title, that one was James I. His family had been expressly excluded by statute and by Henry VIII.'s testamentary disposition; his mother had been put to death for treason, and he himself was born an alien. Yet by the universal consent of the nation he stepped into the vacant place, and his title was ratified by Parliament. The dangers of a disputed succession were too insistent to be disregarded, and in defiance of all precedent he succeeded by the right of birth alone. The Dedication of the Authorised Version 1 Gierke's Political Theories of the Middle Age of the Bible is a masterpiece of audacious contradiction of the truth; for it declares that a monarch whose title to reign was exceedingly infirm was in possession of an undoubted title to the throne. It is no wonder that the dedicators sought to cover his deficiencies by such obsequious terms of address as 'most dread sovereign,' 'sanctified person,' and 'your sacred majesty.' The fact was a new and significant one in English history, and destined, as will hereafter be seen, to have most momentous consequences in relation to the history of Toryism. So completely inverted was the point of view from which men regarded kingship that, whereas originally the capacity of the ruler was the qualification almost exclusively regarded, now + lineal descent was the only thing that was seriously considered. The weaker the sovereigns became, the more solicitude they showed about their title.1 There can be no question that to the great mass of the English people the Restoration was not only welcome, but an event to which they could scarcely conceive of an alternative. Reason, tradition, history, and natural inclination all pointed in the same direction. Monarchy not only seemed to be placed in just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, but, under the new conception of it, to be the body and express image of conservatism. For, to quote the noble words of Burke, 'the people of England well know, that the idea of an inheritance furnished a sure principle of conservatism, and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement.' Such a principle of inheritance and transmission, he goes on to say, corresponds to that mysterious corporation of the human race' of which the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged or young, but in a condition of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the State, in what we improve, we are never wholly new, in what we retain, we are never wholly obsolete.' The Royalist of 1660 might well think that he held an incontrovertible and inexpugnable position. 2 1 Studies in English History, by James Gairdner and James Spedding; Essay on the Divine Right of Kings. 2 Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.} 6 2 6 3 1 * There can be very little doubt that the home-coming of Charles II. was, except to a small body of irreconcilable extremists, very popular. It is almost certain, indeed, that an appeal to the people would at any time since the death of Charles I. have been fatal to the Puritan cause. Now the wheel had come full circle. The whole nation,' says a contemporary, Sir John Bramston, was desirous of the King's return, without whom they see there would be no end of war and trouble.' The exclamation of John Evelyn, who stood and watched the King's progress in the Strand, must have echoed the thoughts of many minds: 'It was,' he said, 'the Lord's doing, for such a restoration was never mentioned in any history, ancient or modern, since the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity.' The year might well appear an annus mirabilis, with which a series of new time began.' Men's hopes ran high. There began,' says the biographer of Jeremy Taylor, a new world, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and out of a confused chaos brought forth beauty and order, and all the three nations were inspired with a new life and became drunk with an excess of joy.' There were some hypocrites among the revellers, of course, time-servers who hastened to fall down in adulation before the rising sun, or who wished to have the appearance at least of penitence for their conduct in the past. The joy of the nation as a whole was, however, quite sincere; for to many, indeed, the period of the Commonwealth had been a worse than iron age. The progress of the King from Dover to London was one continuous triumph. In many churches and houses, and on merchant vessels in the Thames, the royal arms were seen again. 'Everybody,' notes Pepys, now drinks the King's health, without any fear, whereas before it was very private that a man dare do it.' No words were too extravagant to use in praise of the King and of his two brothers, the Duke of York and the Duke of Gloucester. They were The Three Royal Cedars,' or 'Great Britain's Glorious Diamonds.' A perfect flood of panegyric was let loose. From the University of Oxford alone there issued no fewer than one hundred and forty-eight poems, written in Latin, Greek, and 2 Evelyn's Diary. Pepys's Diary. 6 6 Sir John Bramston's Autobiography. 3 Gosse's Jeremy Taylor, p. 160. French. It was an orgy of extravagant adulation, in which the authors of them revelled. Men recalled to memory how, when Charles I. was on his way to St. Paul's to return thanks for his eldest son's birth, the planet Venus shone out at mid-day, and how to behold this babe Heaven seemed to open one eye more than usual.' The courtly Edmund Waller, who had written in praise of Cromwell, was ready, of course, with congratulatory verses for the King. When Charles said that he thought that the lines to the Protector were superior to those dedicated to himself, the poet's wit was equal to the occasion. 'Poets, sir,' he replied,' succeed better in fiction than in truth.' Even Cudworth the philosopher contributed some Hebrew verses to a Cambridge volume of eulogistic poems; and if Jeremy Taylor abstained from flights of fancy, he prefaced his 'Ductor Dubitantium' with some words of welcome to the King. John Evelyn, too, fell in with the fashion of the hour; for on the day after the Coronation he presented the King with a poem, which, he says, 'he was pleased to accept most graciously.' The national love of monarchy was unquestionably the strongest of the forces which combined to bring about the Restoration. It remains to estimate and analyse the rest of them. It was a common wish at this moment in the nation's history that party feeling should be merged in the unanimity of a joyful and contented people. The King himself was doubtless quite sincere when he declared in his Declaration from Breda that 'all notes of discord, separation, and difference of parties should be utterly abolished'; and Clarendon was no less so in his words of exhortation to Parliament: If the old reproaches of Cavalier and Roundhead and Malignant, be committed to the grave, let us not find more significant and better words, to signify worse things; let not piety and godliness grow into terms of reproach, and distinguish between the court, the city and the country.' But all these wishes proved nothing but an idle dream. The old party associations were, indeed, broken 2 'The Harleian Miscellany, vol. iii. 'England's Joy'; and the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report v., Appendix: The Papers of the Duke of Sutherland. 2 Cobbett's Parliamentary History, vol. iv. pp. 126–127. up and shifting, 'like floating islands,' says a contemporary writer, sometimes joining and appearing like a continent, when the next flood or ebb separates them, that it can hardly be known, where they are next.' But they reappeared in new shapes and under different names. The old line of cleavage, however, remained essentially the same. Most of the great landowners and their dependents, the clergy, the Churchmen and the Roman Catholics, were for the King and his Government; the small yeomen freeholders, the merchants, the shopkeepers, the alien settlers, and the Nonconformists were on the side of the opposition. What Colonel Hutchinson says of the Civil War remained still substantially true, though the struggle took another form. Most of the gentry of the country' were for the King, and most of the middle sort, the able substantial freeholders,' were for the Parliament. Or, as Baxter said with much insight, the tenantry of the aristocracy also, and the great body of the common people, who may be said to be constitutionally loyal, were for the monarch. He had thus two ends of the chain, but wanted the middle and connecting links.' The contest now was over, but the force of old ties and old feelings still subsisted, and they became the nucleus around which parties formed themselves anew. The old names gradually fell into disuse, for such terms as Cavalier' and Malignant,' 'Roundhead' and 'Puritan,' were old-fashioned and inapplicable to the new order of affairs. After the Restoration it would perhaps be true to say that for the first twenty years the only regular party names < were those of 'Court' and 'Country '-terms, indeed, which, as will be seen, summed up a good deal of concentrated passion, and contained a world of meaning. It is in the constituents of what may conveniently be designated the Court' party that the forces of conservatism at this time are to be found. This party formed in some respects a motley and heterogeneous group. The peer, the accomplished gentleman, and the learned members of the universities have to be classed with the illiterate peasantry, the rough squires, and the hardly less Osmond Airey's Charles II. p. 138. 2 Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, by Lucy Hutchinson. |