Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Part 5

MARRIAGE TREATY AND RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENT

The two preceding chapters have antic.i.p.ated the strict order of time in regard to Scotland and Ireland, where Clarendon's action was only incidental to his position as English Minister. We have now to turn back to the months that intervened between December, 1660, when the Convention Parliament was dissolved, and May, 1661, when the more legally const.i.tuted Parliament met for the first time. In the interval some events had occurred which stimulated the flow of the Royalist tide in the nation, and helped to imbue the general loyalty with something of arrogant intolerance; but other incidents had weakened the position by giving new stimulus to Court intrigues, and by quickening the animosity of rival factions. Clarendon found the tide occasionally too strong to control, and his difficulties encouraged those who were jealous of his power.

In January, London had been startled by the outbreak of a fanatical insurrection, which gives sufficient proof of the strangely hysterical state into which the nation had been driven by a series of bewilderingly rapid transformations, political and religious. It was the natural result of the sudden suppression of the strange freaks of religious fancy which were symptomatic of the age, and alike in its origin and in its consequences, it showed how p.r.o.ne public opinion was to perturbation. Its leader, one Venner, a vintner of good credit in the City, evidently believed himself inspired by Divine revelation. His motto was "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and he called on all "to take arms to a.s.sist the Lord Jesus Christ." The outbreak was nothing but a frenzied burst of religious mania; but its effect showed how dangerous was the state of the nation of which this was a symptom. All London was thrown into wild alarm.

Only those of strong nerves could make a stand against what was, with ludicrous exaggeration, represented to be a popular movement on a vast scale. The Lord Mayor won mighty renown for having the courage to summon a great body of adherents, and advance personally against the rioters, who were said to be murdering all whom they met. Wild rumours flew from the City to Whitehall; the guards were called out; Whitehall was put in a state of defence; and poor Pepys, whose combats were generally confined to the chastis.e.m.e.nt of page-boys and kitchen-wenches, found himself--"with no courage at all, but that I might not seem to be afraid"--obliged to carry with him sword and pistol, and make his way to the Exchange, to learn the extent of the rising, which was scarcely so terrible as had been reported.

Pepys returned safely to his home, and that no worse result arose from his unwonted and warlike venturesomeness was no doubt due to the fact that he had been wise enough to put no powder in his pistols.

After all the alarm, the Lord Mayor found only thirty men to oppose the loyal bands whom he had summoned to his aid. But these thirty fought valiantly and desperately enough, and every man of them was either slain, or captured and reserved for speedy punishment. The little knot of fiery zealots did their best to make up in their fanatical enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers, and that the rising shook the confidence of the Government and quickened the pulse of timid loyalty throughout the country, only showed how sensitive were the nerves of the sorely galled nation. None knew better than Hyde that there was much amiss in the temper of the people, and that quiet and settlement were essential to soothe this epidemic hysteria. Meantime--so intense had been the alarm--the disbanding of the King's Guards was countermanded, and Monk's regiment of Coldstreams was retained. It is curious to reflect that the occasion for the formation of the nucleus of the British standing army was the brief outbreak of a handful of frenzied men, stirred to momentary madness by a religious fanatic, and ready to go to death for the avenging of the saints. Already the seeming unanimity of loyalty was gone; those who were Royalists at heart found that they had still enemies to meet; and it was proved that the new Government could in no wise relax the vigilance of their defence of order, or presume upon the support of an undivided nation.

Before the new Parliament met in May, the Coronation of the King took place, on April 23rd, with all the splendour that copious expense could achieve in an age saturated with a love of florid display, and with what was doubtless a careful and politic anxiety to revive in their most authentic form all the ancient observances and ceremonies which had in the past attended the rite. Already the most prominent adherents of the King had been advanced in the peerage, and on the day before the Coronation ceremonies six Earls--amongst whom Clarendon was one--were invested with their new dignity with the ancient and stately ceremonial so long in abeyance. But even amid the rejoicings of the Coronation new seeds of dissension were laid in a soil only too fertile for their propagation. The Duke of York was deemed, by those who held to older fas.h.i.+ons, to have a.s.sumed too much of that precedence which was accorded to Monsieur the brother of the King in the Court of France, but which had no warrant in the usages of England; and the fact that he was allowed to appropriate a place in the procession for his own "Master of the Horse," and that the holder of the honoured place was a youthful member of the upstart family of the Jermyns, was enough to stir up much heartburning amongst the older Royalist n.o.bility, and to engage the attention and compel the anxiety even of Clarendon himself. The Chancellor had to steer his course amidst a very hotbed of popular excitement, and of Court factions and intrigues, but thinly covered by a veneer of seemingly whole-hearted loyalty.

Before Parliament met, another project had been fully discussed and practically settled. This was the marriage of the King with the Portuguese Princess, Catherine of Braganza. It was an alliance which involved many dangers, and what were, at the best, but doubtful advantages. Clarendon had, at a later date, to bear the blame of an arrangement which brought no satisfaction either to the King or to the nation, and which eventually did much to check the tide of loyalty. But he is careful to tell us that the inception of the scheme did not come from him; that the first suggestion was not even made to him, and that he interfered in it no further than his relations to the King imperatively demanded. But he adds that had it been otherwise, he would have felt no reason to disavow, or be ashamed of, his action in promoting the marriage of the King to any suitable consort.

Such a project had, indeed, much to commend it, had Fate been kinder, and had not the position of European affairs been so tangled. Clarendon had long urged the propriety of the King's marriage. It was all the more his duty to do so now, when any delay in the matter might seem to promise the eventual succession to the Crown of the children of his own daughter, the d.u.c.h.ess of York. Clarendon had no ambition for such elevation, and he knew well how any suspicion of such a scheme would expose him to the accusations of his enemies. He would best have liked that the King should choose a Protestant consort, but the only one who could be suggested was the daughter of the Dowager Princess of Orange, and to that match Charles was invincibly opposed. The Portuguese alliance offered certain advantages. It promised a counterpoise to the power of Spain (and, as such, it would unquestionably secure the friendliness of France), and thus seemed to offer help in maintaining a safe position in foreign relations, and preventing the probability of foreign war. For the stable settlement of affairs at home, no condition was more absolutely essential than the maintenance of peace abroad; and for this, if for no other reason, Clarendon was pa.s.sionately determined to avoid any foreign complications.

If an alliance with a Catholic Princess were necessary, none could apparently involve less danger than one which brought about a Portuguese rather than a Spanish connection.

Clarendon had no mind to cultivate an alliance with Spain, which must be purchased by such concessions as would have inflicted grave injury on England. The Spanish Amba.s.sador, Batteville, had, at his very first audience, pressed for the surrender of Jamaica, which had been taken from Spain by the King's rebellious subjects. He claimed also that Dunkirk and Mard.y.k.e, which had been handed over to Cromwell in virtue of his treaty with France, should be restored to their rightful sovereign. These demands he made, seemingly as matters of form. They were points which need not be pressed, if England were prepared to make a treaty which would be advantageous to Spain, and if Portugal received no encouragement from England. If Clarendon disliked the Spanish alliance he disliked quite as much the methods of Court intrigue by which it was pressed. Batteville was astute enough to take a correct measure of English courtiers. He conformed himself to the slipshod methods and the rollicking humour of Charles and his circle. He insinuated himself into the intimacy of the King's boon companions: availed himself of the easy access to the King, which Charles's nonchalance permitted, and knew how to suggest what might be useful to him as a diplomat, in the careless intercourse of the table, and amidst the jests of a carouse at Court. Bristol did his best to aid the Spanish diplomat. Charles's facile temper made him forget Bristol's double-dealing, and Bristol, having regained some of his favour, "had an excellent talent in spreading that gold-leaf very thin, that it might look much more than it was." [Footnote: _Life_, i. 505.] A whisper in the King's ear might do much to foster Spanish designs, and with them Bristol's influence. Clarendon knew well the dangers that success in that direction might involve.

Nor were solid attractions wanting in the Portuguese alliance. For national prosperity, there was no greater essential than an encouragement to commerce, in an age when commerce throughout Western Europe was making immense advances, in which England had already earned, and must secure, her share. If this country were to balance the growing naval power of the Dutch, and their increasing mercantile marine, she must strengthen her hold upon the ever extending trade in the Eastern and Western seas.

Holland must always be more of a rival than an ally; and Spain was a power with which no permanent or favourable alliance was probable or desirable, except in so far as it might be a balance against the power of France.

Portugal commanded a wider range of colonial trade, both in the East Indies and in Brazil, and it presently appeared, when definite proposals were laid before the King and his Ministers by the Portuguese Amba.s.sador, that she was prepared to pay highly for the privilege of an English alliance. A dowry of 500,000 was promised with the Portuguese Princess-- no ineffective bait for one whose coffers were so ill-supplied as those of Charles. The port of Tangier, which could easily be made into an effective harbour and seemed likely to offer a command of the Mediterranean trade, was to be placed in the hands of England. Bombay was to be granted to her in the East Indies; and perhaps most important of all--the privilege of free trade to the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and the East Indies was to be accorded to her. An abundant return was thus to be reaped both by the Crown and by the nation, at once in an enhancement of naval supremacy and in an extension of commercial opportunities. It was only necessary to guard against the danger lest a Portuguese alliance might involve England in a war with Spain,

Charles was attracted by the offers, and all the more so when he received from Montague--now Earl of Sandwich--a favourable account of the value of Tangier. Portugal had given more generous aid to the Royalist cause in its extremity than either Prance or Spain, and it had incurred the vengeance of Cromwell by giving shelter in the Tagus to Prince Rupert's fleet when it was hard pressed by Cromwell's s.h.i.+ps. Such an alliance seemed not unlikely to be well received by the nation.

Clarendon encouraged, rather than checked, the proposal, and this is all that can be said of his att.i.tude. But after the preliminary steps had been taken, and engagements had already proceeded far with Portugal, he found that the whole project was threatened by a secret intrigue. Again that restless and versatile contriver, Bristol, had set himself to overturn the scheme. It is hard to decide what were his motives. In spite of his adoption of Roman Catholicism, Bristol's religious convictions were hardly of a kind to dominate his policy; but he had linked his lot with that of the Catholics--he may perhaps have already suspected Charles's inclination to their faith--and he may well have thought that a Spanish alliance would confirm the influence which he hoped thus to acquire. It may be that he was angry only because he had not been taken into confidence at an earlier stage in the affair; such a motive is not to be set aside in the case of one in whose character personal vanity predominated so largely, and who could so little estimate the general tendency of national feeling. Be that as it may, Clarendon found that Bristol's influence was countermining the scheme, and that the King had been so far gained over as to contemplate the breach of an engagement to which his honour was already pledged, and which would have inflicted a galling wound on the pride of his expected allies. Already, it appeared, tempting offers had been conveyed to Charles of marriage with one or other of two Italian Princesses, whose dowry would be provided by the Spanish Court, and the choice of one of whom would have had its value enhanced by a close alliance with Spain. Even with one of more controlled temperament than Charles possessed, the element of personal qualifications might not unreasonably tell for a good deal in the selection of a wife. Bristol was commissioned to visit and report upon the ladies proposed for Charles's hand, and made no secret of the reason of his voyage to Italy. The Spanish amba.s.sador spoke openly in disparagement of the person and the attractions of Catherine, and boasted that he had effectually stopped the presumption of the upstart Court of Braganza in attempting to bolster up its rebellion against the Spanish Crown by an English alliance.

Clarendon took his usual method in dealing with such a mixture of intrigue and arrogance. To the somewhat nauseous personal details which were furnished in disparagement of the Portuguese Princess, he perhaps, as politician, gave but scant attention. He permitted Bristol to depart on his extraordinary mission, and addressed himself to the King with his customary plainness of speech. He exposed to him the braggart boasts of Bristol, whose vanity had not permitted him to keep even a secret of his own contriving. He desired him to remember the extent of his own engagement to Portugal, and how far his honour was involved. If arguments were to be found for withdrawing from the project, it would be well to consult on these with his Council. The choice of a consort was perhaps a matter somewhat too delicate for discussion at a Council Board. But Clarendon might, at least, suggest that the King of England could hardly with dignity submit his marriage to the judgment of the Court of Spain.

The Chancellor knew his master well. It was by appeals to his vanity and to his love of ease that Charles could best be moved. The plain reproaches of his Minister were irksome, and in the long run became unbearable to him, but they impressed his pliable spirit. He minimized the extent of the charge given to Bristol, and then consented to his recall. He found, or fancied that he found, that the portrait of Catherine belied the unflattering accounts he had deceived. His temper was irritated by the impudent threats of the Spanish amba.s.sador, who was imperiously commanded to quit the Kingdom, Above all, the Ministers of France took steps to prevent that triumph to Spain which would have accrued from a breach of the alliance. La Bastide was sent with full credentials to deal personally with the Chancellor. The French King, he told him, was friendly to Portugal, although for the present his alliance with Spain prevented any overt a.s.sistance to the Braganza family. But he was ready to help the King of England with financial aid, if Charles should himself, by private understanding, undertake such a.s.sistance. Meanwhile he thought that the King "could not bestow himself better in marriage than with the Infanta of Portugal." Further, hints were given that an understanding might be reached between the Crowns as to their relations to the States of Holland, and as to the steps to be taken against the dangers which the Dutch naval power threatened to both.

The matter proceeded no further than an interchange of friendly proposals; but there was one incident connected with it, of which Clarendon has given us a full account. Before the negotiations closed, La Bastide took the opportunity of a confidential interview with the Chancellor to broach to him a proposal which, to one of Hyde's character, was nothing but an insult. He was commissioned, La Bastide said, by Fouquet, the Finance Minister of France, to express his deep respect for Clarendon, and his sense of the trust and power he now enjoyed. But he understood how easily the Chancellor might, under present circ.u.mstances, be hard put to it to maintain his high position from scantiness of means, and he had therefore sent him a present, small indeed, but only as an earnest of as much, or more, to be paid him every year. He would have need of it to secure, by becoming generosity, the means of meeting the secret machinations of his enemies at Court. La Bastide concluded by showing him bills for 10,000, payable at sight.

However much such a proposal was in accordance with the political morality of the day, Clarendon did not hesitate to show his indignation, and his disgust that it should have been made to him. "If this correspondence must lead him to such a reproach," he said, "he would unwillingly enter upon it." La Bastide must let Monsieur Fouquet know "that the Chancellor of England could receive wages only from his own master. "Such an excess of scrupulosity could only appear, to one trained in the school to which La Bastide was accustomed, as merely a.s.sumed. He still pressed the absolute secrecy of the gift, until Clarendon broke off the interview in stern anger.

The sequel was what we might expect. The King and the Duke of York came to Clarendon before the angry fit was gone, and heard the story told with Hyde's usual plainness of indignant speech. "They both laughed at him, saying 'that the French did all their business that way;' and the King told him 'he was a fool,' implying 'that he should take his money.'" The Chancellor vainly sought to impress upon the King something of his own feeling of pride, and besought him "not to appear to his servants so unconcerned in things of that nature." Either the French King would believe that he took the money without his master's knowledge, and so look on him as a treacherous knave; or "that he received it with his Majesty's approbation, which must needs lessen his esteem of him, that he should permit his servants of the nearest trust to grow rich at the charge of another prince, who might the next day become his enemy." [Footnote: _Life_, i. 523.] The King could only smilingly reply "that few men were so scrupulous." There is something almost comical in the effort on the part of Clarendon to press upon the King that self-respect, which he had long since cast aside, and the place of which was supplied by a mask of cynicism. It was quite true that scruples such as those of Hyde were rare in his day, and formed no part of the usages of the Court of France.

But Clarendon did not know that it would soon be unnecessary to go to France for an example of shameless venality. The time was not far distant when Charles, having got rid of his irksome Mentor, was himself to fill his own coffers by accepting a bribe more infamous than that which he vainly tried to persuade his prouder servant not to reject with scorn and contempt.

For good or ill, the project of the Portuguese alliance weathered the storm of intrigue directed against it at home and abroad. Without being its proposer, or the chief guide in the negotiations, Hyde did not refuse a joint responsibility for its arrangement. We shall afterwards see how little it realized his hopes; in what sordid wrangles it involved him; how unpopular it became; and how much it contributed to deepen the degradation of Charles's Court. But for the time the prospect seemed promising enough.

The fact of the Princess's religion was, no doubt, a stumbling-block which might well have caused greater anxiety to Clarendon, and which might have fretted the prejudices of the English people. But here, as on many other occasions, he seems to have forced himself, against what to a later day must seem fairly strong evidence, to discredit any idea that action on the part of Charles might be prompted by an inclination to the Church of Rome.

To that Church Clarendon was as invincibly opposed as was his first master, Charles the First. He knew the earnestness of the injunctions laid on his son, by that master whose memory he so deeply revered. It is impossible to believe that doubts and anxieties were not repeatedly roused in Clarendon's mind with regard to the relations of the present King to that Church. But he seems sternly to have fought against and repressed any such suspicions. Apparently, the realization of these suspicions would have ruined his faith in the honesty and good feeling of his master, and with almost exaggerated energy he repudiates any such belief. If he suspected any danger of the kind from the Portuguese alliance, he put it firmly aside. And it is certain that whatever ill accrued from that marriage, it was not from that cause. Catherine of Braganza remained throughout a negligible quant.i.ty in English politics. Neither at Court, nor with any section of society, did she exercise any appreciable influence, either in promoting or r.e.t.a.r.ding the acceptance in her adopted country of the tenets of her Church. Whatever the closeness of the King's relations to that Church, and whatever his determination to strain his prerogative in its favour, neither was influenced in the smallest degree by the religion of his wife. It is true that at a later day, the religion of the Queen, and the presence at Court of her Catholic attendants, enhanced the fury of an unthinking storm of anti-Catholic feeling. But it was only a small aggravation of an irrational outburst of religious prejudice.

The marriage treaty was arranged in time to be notified to Parliament when it met in May, 1661, and from that time the negotiations proceeded with all the customary diplomatic deliberation. The announcement was received with the same loyal acceptance as the other proposals of the Government, in an a.s.sembly much more markedly Royalist in feeling than even the Convention Parliament, which had carried out the first steps in the Restoration settlement. Its zeal might even have been deemed embarra.s.sing, and Clarendon was chiefly urgent that a permanent settlement should be provided for, by confirming the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, before the Royalists devised new means of reaping fresh spoils of conquest. Another Act which he pressed forward was that bringing back the bishops to the House of Lords. It was, to his mind, a guarantee for the restoration of the Church, which it had been the central aim of his late master, as it was his own, to accomplish. Whatever compromise might be made as to ceremonies and articles, Clarendon could not admit that his debt to the Church had been paid until she had been re-established in her rightful position in the State. The memory of those bitter days, when what he recognized as the good work of the Long Parliament had been rudely marred by the subsequent excesses of the zealots, and when the const.i.tution had been overturned by violence which posed as legislation, was too vividly impressed upon his mind to suffer him to rest until the prelates of the Church were placed on their former level with the temporal peers.

Here, again, he met with fractious opposition from Bristol. It is difficult to find a consistent clue to all the windings of policy devised by that mercurial brain, and to guess at the objects which inspired him.

The Bill was easily pa.s.sed by the House of Commons, where some opposition might have been expected. In the House of Lords its pa.s.sage was less easy.

Those peers, who had in the old days a.s.sented to the exclusion, were only too ready to have their former vote forgotten, and raised no voice against the Bill. It was Bristol who, to secure the support of the Catholics, put himself forward as its opponent, and contrived to impress the King with the conviction that the restoration of the bishops to the House of Lords would render impossible any Bill for modifying the penal laws against the Roman Catholics. The progress of the Bill was slow, and it was only on inquiring into the cause of this, that Clarendon found that Bristol had succeeded in conveying the idea that the King did not wish it to pa.s.s.

With his usual blunt directness Clarendon asked the King for an explanation, and then heard of Bristol's machinations. His reply was prompt. He regretted that the King had been prevailed upon to obstruct a Bill on which he knew his Majesty's heart was so much set. If the reason for such obstruction were known, it would be fatal to all Roman Catholic hopes, "to which his Majesty knew that Hyde was no enemy." These last words were an intimation, as plain as could be given, that Hyde might easily be converted into an enemy to their hopes, Charles took his lesson submissively, and orders were given that the Bill should pa.s.s. Bristol attempted to bl.u.s.ter, and threatened "that if the Bill were pa.s.sed that day he would speak against it," "To which," adds Hyde, "the Chancellor gave him an answer that did not please him; and the Bill was pa.s.sed that day." Clarendon's methods could compel the consent of the King, and could silence the arrogance or the persistency of fractious opponents. They were scarcely fitted to conciliate either.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE DIGBY, SECOND EARL OF BRISTOL. (_From the original by Sir Anthony Vand.y.k.e, in the collection of Earl Spencer._)]

Parliament had been compliant, and had pa.s.sed at least two Acts which Clarendon deemed imperatively urgent. It was prorogued, after a short session, on July 30th, to meet again on November 20th. There remained still to be dealt with what were perhaps the most difficult problems of all, the questions of compromise as to the ceremonies and the doctrines of the Church, of the relation between the Nonconformists and the orthodox Churchmen, and of the degree of toleration that might be allowed to divergent forms of belief. These were three absolutely distinct branches of the religious controversy, and to confuse them leads only to prejudice and error. Clarendon had seen enough of the temper of the Parliament to perceive that time was necessary to ripen these questions for a settlement, and that the process would go on more smoothly during a recess than in the heated atmosphere of Parliamentary discussion. The discussions at the Savoy, the negotiations between the leading Nonconformists and the bishops, and the formulating of proposals on either side, had represented one phase of the discussions, and had led to little result. The matter was now one in which the Crown and its advisers must initiate a policy, and do their best to smooth its pa.s.sage during the next session of Parliament. It could not be indefinitely delayed. Laxity, if too long tolerated, from however good a motive, quickly pa.s.ses into anarchy.

In this matter it was inevitable that the leading part in framing a policy should fall to Clarendon. Of the old friends who would have been his chief advisers and guides in this work, many had pa.s.sed away. But amongst the bishops three especially remained who were a.s.sociated with old memories, and linked to him by mutual sympathy and respect. These were Brian Duppa, the former tutor of Charles II., lately Bishop of Salisbury, and now of Winchester; George Morley, now Bishop of Worcester, and soon after, successor of Duppa at Winchester; and Gilbert Sheldon, at first Bishop of London, and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury on the death of Juxon, in 1663. Juxon's claims to the Primacy were pre-eminent; he had appeared with the Martyr-King in that memorable scene on the scaffold at Whitehall, and none other than he could fill the Archiepiscopal chair, which had been vacant since Laud had preceded his master in his death upon Tower Hill.

But Juxon's tenure of the office was little more than nominal, and, even during his lifetime, Sheldon was the foremost representative of the Church.

Duppa, the Bishop of Winchester, had been the man closest in the confidence of Laud, and had been the chief agent in carrying out his reforms in the University of Oxford. This must of itself have been sufficient to earn for him the warm sympathy of Clarendon, and his subsequent career had confirmed those early ties. To Clarendon, he was not only the trusted friend of his early patron, Laud, but the man to whom his royal master had committed, in solemn words, the religious education of his son; and that duty Duppa had carried out with an unswerving devotion, with however small success. His own personal character, the gentleness of his temper, and his saintly life, had strengthened the respect which was felt for him by all loyal Churchmen, and during the short time that he survived the Restoration, he had a deserved influence on the counsels that directed the policy of the Church.

George Morley was another of the old fraternity that had gathered at Great Tew, under the hospitable roof, and in the genial company, of Hyde's early and most cherished friend, Lord Falkland. Morley's scholars.h.i.+p, his social gifts, his ready wit, and his unfailing tact, had secured for him a prominent place amongst that goodly fellows.h.i.+p. He followed a line of his own in Church politics, and in early days was not pliable enough always to win the approval and the confidence of Laud. His reply, when bored by an inconvenient questioner as to what the Arminians "held,"--"that they held all the best preferments in England,"--was pointed enough to spread quickly, and the sarcasm it implied was not agreeable to Laud. But Morley was none the less a loyal son of the Church, and gave abundant evidence of his loyalty to the good cause. He had been one of the Chaplains of Charles I., remained with him throughout the days of trouble and danger to the end, and had been an exile from his master's death to the Restoration. In Morley, Clarendon could place the trust due to an old friend, a loyal Churchman, and a man of fearless character, and of ripe judgment. Against his uprightness of life no insinuation could be made.

Gilbert Sheldon was a man of a different type from either of these two.

While a stout defender of the rights of the Church, he, like Morley, had not always seen eye to eye with Laud. But he and Hyde were in closest sympathy. They had lived together at All Souls when Hyde was present at Oxford during the Civil War, and when the burden of directing the affairs of the King had rested chiefly upon him. Sheldon, in later days, had manfully resisted the encroachments of the Parliamentary Commissioners on the University, and upon All Souls, of which he was Warden; and it was only by military violence that he was expelled from his charge, under the order of these Commissioners. He had then retired to the country, and continued during the Commonwealth to lead a quiet life, in which he spent his time and his own resources in a.s.sisting the loyal adherents of the King. Just before the Restoration, the Warden appointed by the Protector had died; and Sheldon was quietly restored to his former post, at the moment when the political world was occupied with the still doubtful struggle between the contending factions. A few months later he was called to play a leading part, as Bishop of London, in the critical negotiations for the settlement of the Church. Sheldon was a new type of the ecclesiastical statesman.

He had thrown off the habits of the student for those of the administrator, and one may add, of the politician. Sound and sincere Churchman as he was, his religion was that of the man of the world, suspicious of fanaticism, more earnest in inculcating an upright life than in a show of enthusiastic fervour, regular in his religious duties, but preferring a religion which displayed itself in the cheerful activity of a regular life, rather than in any overstrained attention to devotional routine. It was only natural that his enemies should charge him with being worldly-minded, and should insinuate that with him religion was only an instrument of government, and an element in policy. It need not lessen our respect for him that his religious faith showed itself more in lavish charity, and in a cheerful energy, than in the strict pursuit of the conventional routine of religious exercises. He could be a stern moralist when necessary, and he did not scruple to rebuke the King for his licentious life, and even, as Swift tells us, refused to him the Sacrament on that account. If such a man attracts to himself little of a halo of sanct.i.ty, he perhaps compensates for this by the manliness of an upright life and conduct. [Footnote: We need give no attention to the scandalous and baseless gossip as to Sheldon's licentiousness which Pepys gathered from the irresponsible t.i.ttle-tattle of the coffee-house, and entrusts to the confidential pages of a diary which was never intended for publication. If we enjoy and profit by the vivid pictures of the day which his memoirs give us, we ought at the same time to feel ourselves bound to discredit the occasional thoughtless gossip about characters which stand too una.s.sailable to be smudged by the mischievous sallies of Pepys's pen.]

In his balanced judgment, in his unswerving honesty, and in his absolute uprightness of purpose, Hyde found just that help which was most useful at this juncture; and that both he and Sheldon suffered from some testiness of temper was no hindrance to their friends.h.i.+p.

When Parliament resumed in November, 1661, its first business was to pa.s.s certain acts for restoring the power of the Crown. The Solemn League and Covenant was p.r.o.nounced illegal, and the Acts erecting the High Court of Justice for the trial of the King, and for establis.h.i.+ng the Commonwealth, were contumeliously annulled. The power of Militia was declared to rest solely in the King, and it was enacted that no legislative power resided in Parliament without the King. These and like Acts were pa.s.sed without discussion, and amounted to little more than expressions of the dominant loyalist feeling. The first step in restoring the power of the Church was the Corporation Act, which enacted that every corporation official should take an oath against the Covenant, and against the traitorous doctrine that arms might, by the King's authority, be levied against his person, and imposing upon every such official to be elected in future the obligation to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. The supremacy of the Church was vindicated. Whether wise or not as a platform on which English politics should rest--and as to this doubts are no doubt permissible--this Test Act was the expression of the convinced resolution of the nation at the time. The more difficult question remained for decision: how should the basis of the Church be arranged, and to what extent was it to be made more comprehensive?

Since the end of the Savoy Conference, the strife between the adherents of the Church and the Nonconformists had been growing in intensity. Both sides were exasperated by the uncertainty, and both were furious against what they believed to be the exaggerated claims of their opponents. The King's pliant humour had permitted to the various Dissenters an easy access to his person, and he was only too p.r.o.ne to give rise to expectations which were bound to be disappointed, and to unwary boasts on the part of the Nonconformists, which stimulated the Churchmen to an unyielding temper. The Bishops had been engaged during the vacation in revising the Book of Common Prayer, and sharp division of opinion had arisen amongst them--a division in regard to which Clarendon held strong views. Ought an attempt to be made to meet the views of the Nonconformists by modification of the Liturgy--or was it best to put a peremptory stop to agitation and discussion by restoring the ritual and the usages of the Church unchanged, so that the historic weight of continuity should be added to the authority of the law?

"Some of the bishops," says Clarendon, "who had greatest experience, and were in truth wise men," adhered to the latter view." Others, equally grave, of great learning and unblemished reputation, "pressed for alterations and additions. [Footnote: _Life_, ii. 119.] He desired to hold the balance even between these opposite opinions. But his own judgment was decided.

"The truth is," he adds, "that what show of reason so ever and appearance of charity the latter opinion seemed to carry with it, the former advice was the more prudent, and would have prevented many inconveniences which ensued." "It is," he proceeds, "an unhappy policy, and always unhappily applied, to imagine that that cla.s.ses of men can be recovered and reconciled by partial concessions, or granting less than they demand. And if all were granted they would have more to ask. Their faction is their religion; nor are those combinations ever entered into upon real and substantial motives of conscience, how erroneous so ever, but consist of many glutinous materials, of will, and humour, and folly, and knavery, and malice, and ambition, which make men cling inseparably together till they have satisfaction in all their pretences, or till they are absolutely broken and subdued, which may always be more easily done than the other."

[Footnote: _Ibid._, p. 121.]

Clarendon recognized, as clearly as did Swift a generation later, that dissent was the essential motive of dissenters, and that all concessions would be with them but an incitement to new divergences. He remembered the case of the Scottish liturgy, in which changes were introduced in order to meet the desire for a distinctive liturgy, and were afterwards resented as departures from the established order, which might otherwise have been peaceably accepted. Changes were now sought only that they might be the starting-point for further change. Meanwhile the Nonconformists inveighed with new bitterness against the old liturgy, and their angry invective provoked the House of Commons to greater impatience at the delay in its restoration. Clarendon recognized the old and ever-present fact that it was easier to preserve an old form, with all its possible defects, than to devise a new one with the view of reconciling irreconcilable divergences.

He had to remember also that besides the Presbyterians there was the strong phalanx of the Independents, who would rather see episcopacy flourish than that the Presbyterians should govern.

Clarendon was not unwilling that a calm and rational spirit of concession should prevail, and that non-essential usages should be modified to meet conscientious scruples. In the abstract this ought to have been possible; but as things stood it was a hopeless ideal. He had to take account of the angry exasperation of temper that prevailed; and for the general weal he felt that some settlement, however peremptory, was essential. However unwillingly, he was compelled to decide for the drastic exercise of authority which might, once for all, compose the strife and produce a settlement. Expedition was of the first importance in the business.

It was in this spirit that the speech of the King to Parliament was framed. He had hoped, said the King, that the composing of differences in regard to non-essentials might have already been obtained. He was grieved at the delay. The Book of Common Prayer was now to be presented to him by Convocation. It would thereafter be laid before the House of Lords; and upon that foundation he trusted that an Act of Uniformity might be based.

As approved by Convocation, with certain alterations which rather strengthened than diminished the force of the ecclesiastical authority, the Book of Common Prayer was presented to the House of Lords. The Earl of Northumberland, whose Presbyterian leanings were p.r.o.nounced, suggested that no change whatever should be made, and that the Act of Uniformity of Elizabeth's reign should once more be the authority for its observance.

But the time for that was too late. Convocation had already done its work, and that work could not be disregarded. The legal authority had given its p.r.o.nouncement; it remained only to say how that p.r.o.nouncement should be enforced. In this spirit the House of Lords entered upon the discussion of the Bill of Uniformity.

The first question of importance was the imposition of episcopal ordination as a necessary condition of the tenure of any ecclesiastical office. That was decided in the affirmative; and the requisition of a.s.sent as well as consent to all contained in the Book of Common Prayer was carried against the resistance of those who, on behalf of the Nonconformists, argued that "a.s.sent" implied a more complete approbation than mere "consent." When the Bill had pa.s.sed the House of Lords and was sent to the Commons, it soon appeared that the Church party there was determined to increase its severity. "Every man," says Clarendon, "according to his pa.s.sion, thought of adding something to it that might make it more grievous to somebody whom he did not love." However earnest was Clarendon's loyalty to the Church, these words give evidence enough of the vexation of the Statesman at the unmeasured bitterness of ecclesiastical partizans.h.i.+p.

A new and rigid subscription, abjuring the lawfulness of resistance and the Solemn League and Covenant, was imposed upon every holder of a benefice, or of an office in a University. This created bitter opposition when the Bill was sent back to the Lords, and the discussion mainly turned upon the express repudiation of the Covenant, to which many laymen had already sworn. These, while they consented to its being laid aside for the future, were by no means ready to repudiate all the principles which it embodied. The Covenant still represented the charter of Presbyterianism, and to inflict a needless insult upon tenets conscientiously held by many who had given powerful aid towards the King's restoration, seemed a needless perpetuation of bitter memories. But the Lords could not refuse their a.s.sent, and this new instrument of exclusion was added to the Bill substantially in the form desired by the ultra-Royalists of the House of Commons.

In this form the Bill received the royal a.s.sent on the day when Parliament was adjourned, May 19th. No long delay was to occur before the axe of authority fell, and the penalty of any divergence from the uniform discipline of the Church was to take effect forthwith. On August 24th, St.

Bartholomew's Day--of evil omen--all inc.u.mbents who declined to accept and conform to the whole contents of the Book of Common Prayer were, _ipso facto_, with no further legal process, to be deprived of their benefices, and the patrons were to present others in their place.

Clarendon was too sober in his judgment, and had too much of the statesman in his composition, to welcome the rigid terms which the triumphant Churchmen were determined to exact. He was not one of those who thought a victory was confirmed by an arrogant disregard of the claims of the vanquished. Had he been able to shape the terms of the Act according to his own ideas of policy and prudence, he would undoubtedly have imposed checks upon the ambition of the fiery spirits of his party. But we must remember his position and his sympathies. The double object of all his long struggles had been to establish in all its dignity the const.i.tutional monarchy, and to restore the Church to its rights and privileges. It was not for him to fight too hard against the full a.s.sertion of these rights.

We must remember, too, that his own inclination towards moderation came from policy and prudence, and not from any sympathy with the vanquished, or any conviction that the measure meted out to them was in any whit more severe than that which they had exacted in their day of triumph, and would readily have reinforced were it again in their power to do so. Above all, Clarendon saw that in the hard task which lay before him in re- establis.h.i.+ng a settled Government, the first essential was the ending of weary struggles, and the settling of doubtful contentions. Any settlement was better than perpetual controversy. It was a smaller matter to adjust the balance according to an ideal of just and politic moderation, than to comply with the imperious maxim, "that it is for the advantage of the State that there be an end of litigation."

That there should be an outburst of anger from those who believed themselves to be martyrs was only to be expected. The Declaration of Breda, it was said, had been flagrantly violated. The answer was perfectly easy. The King had referred the religious settlement to Parliament, and had promised that meanwhile there should be no interference with liberty of conscience. It is noteworthy that Clarendon rests the case upon this plea--that the Crown must act subject to a Parliamentary decision. So far as it goes it is an adequate defence. But there remains the far stronger argument that liberty of conscience was a very different thing from a pledge that those who refused to accept the principles of the Church should have a right to hold her benefices and dictate her policy. That would have meant, not toleration of, but surrender to, the divergent forces.

But the outburst of anger on the part of a defeated faction had serious effects on the action of Charles II. Now, as often before, his Chancellor had to lament that "he was too irresolute, and apt to be shaken in those counsels which, with the greatest deliberation, he had concluded."