1673.]

THE DANBY MINISTRY-STATE OF PARTIES.

328

During the interval

prorogued the Parliament to the 7th of January. Shaftesbury was dismissed from the custody of the Great Seal; Buckingham retired; the Cabal ministry was broken up. Sir Thomas Osborne, soon after created earl of Danby, became the chief minister, and retained power till 1678; Shaftesbury became the great leader of the party opposed to the Court. The history of England for the next seven years is the history of a continual struggle between the Crown and the Commons, during which time we trace, amidst some honesty of purpose, an equal degradation of the principles of loyalty and of independence. Monarchical government was never more profligate and anti-national, and representative government was never more factious and corrupt, than in the years from 1673 to 1681. The House of Commons elected after the Restoration first met on the 8th of May, 1661. It continued to sit till the 25th of January, 1679. Vacancies had been filled up from time to time by new elections; and in these what was called the Country Party gradually preponderated. But the general composition of the House was a curious admixture of by-gone and current opinions. There is "A Letter from a Parliament Man to his Friend," published in 1675, and attributed to Shaftesbury, which describes with admirable humour, and probably with equal truth, the composition of the House of Commons: *-" Sir, I see you are greatly scandalized at our slow and confused proceedings. I confess you have cause enough; but were you but within these walls for one half day, and saw the strange make and complexion that this house is of, you would wonder as much that ever you wondered at it; for we are such a pied Parliament, that none can say of what colour we are; for we consist of Old Cavaliers, Old Round-heads, Indigent Courtiers, and true Country-Gentlemen: the two latter are most numerous, and would in probability bring things to some issue were they not clogged with the humourous uncertainties of the former. For the Old Cavalier, grown aged, and almost past his vice, is damnable godly, and makes his doting piety more a plague to the world, than his youthful debauchery was: he forces his Loyalty to strike sail to his Religion, and could be content to pare the nails a little of the Civil Government, so you would but let him sharpen the Ecclesiastical talons: which behaviour of his so exasperates the Round-head, that he, on the other hand, cares not what increase the interest of the Crown receives, so he can but diminish that of the Mitre: so that the Round-head had rather enslave the man than the conscience; the Cavalier, rather the conscience than the man; there being a sufficient stock of animosity as proper matter to work upon. Upon these, therefore, the Courtier usually plays: for if any Anti-Court motion be made, he gains the Round-heads either to oppose or assent, by telling them, If they will join him now, he will join with them for Liberty of Conscience. And when any affair is started on behalf of the country, he assures the Cavaliers, if they will then stand by him, he will then join with them in promoting a Bill against the Fanatics. Thus play they on both hands, that no motion of a public nature is made but they win upon the one or other of them: and by this art gain a majority against the country gentlemen, which otherwise they would never have: wherefore it were happy that we had neither Round-head nor Cavalier in the House; for they are each of them so prejudicate against

* Printed in "Parliamentary History," vol. iv., Appendix IV.

324

SEPARATE PEACE WITH HOLLAND.

[1674.

the other, that their sitting here signifies nothing but their fostering their old venom, and lying at catch to snap every advantage to bear down each other, though it be in the destruction of their country." The same letter does not spare the corruption of that very considerable body of members that it terms "Indigent; "a corruption which king Charles and king Louis each found availing with patriots as well as with placemen: "You now see all our shapes, save only the Indigents, concerning whom I need say but little, for their votes are publicly saleable for a guinea and a dinner every day in the week, unless the House be upon Money, or a Minister of State: for that is their harvest; and then they make their earnings suit the work they are about, which inclines them most constantly as sure clients to the Court. For what with gaining the one, and saving the other, they now and then adventure a vote on the Country side; but the dread of Dissolution makes them straight tack about. The only thing we are obliged to them for is, that they do nothing gratis, but make every tax as well chargeable to the Court as burdensome to the country, and save no man's neck but they break his purse.'

At the opening of the Session of Parliament in 1674, the king uttered these words with his own lips: "I know you have heard much of my alliance with France, and I believe it hath been very strangely misrepresented to you, as if there were certain secret articles of dangerous consequence; but I will make no difficulty of letting the treaties, and all the articles of them, without any the least reserve, to be seen by a small committee of both Houses, who may report to you the true scope of them." Charles I. did not hesitate to employ indirect falsehood; but he never uttered such an audacious lie as his son now used, to stem the discontents which were gathering around him. Supplies were wanted to carry on the Dutch war; but the nation hated the war, and the Commons would not grant the supplies. To avert greater dangers a separate peace was made with Holland. The war went on between France and the United Provinces, who were now fully supported by Spain and the German powers. The noble resistance of the prince of Orange to the ambition of Louis had saved his country; but had England taken a more honest course, future wars arising out of the same lust of dominion might have been effectually prevented. The Parliament was in some degree propitiated by the separate peace with Holland; but it was in a dangerous temper, and was quickly prorogued. It met again on the 13th of April, 1675. English troops under Monmouth had been left to assist the French, notwithstanding the English peace with Holland. The House of Commons demanded their recall. The violent scenes between furious partisans were suddenly mitigated, as if a god had descended to separate the combatants in a cloud. The god of money had effected this peacefulness. The English troops remained as auxiliaries of the French. After a protracted struggle to extend the oath required to be taken by officers of corporations to privy counsellors and members of parliament, which attempt was defeated by Shaftesbury, the Parliament was prorogued. There was another short Session. It was again prorogued for fifteen months on the 22nd of November.

The alternations of indulgence towards non-conformists and their persecution was one of the most striking symptoms of the utter want of

1675.1

CHARLES PENSIONED BY LOUIS XIV.

325

principle in the conduct of public affairs. The sufferings of a large body of people were never taken into account when the Court and the Parliament were each striving to rule by factions. Defoe, who well knew the system which had been in operation from his boyhood, said, "the persecution of Dissenters has been all along the effect of state policy, more than error of zeal or a mistake of religion." Persecution "has very seldom been carried on any where from mere zeal, but with a complication of private ends, intrigues, and all kinds of abstracted villainy."* Under Danby's administration, in 1675, the king issued proclamations enforcing the laws against nonconformists. How these measures worked may be seen in Baxter's simple relation: "I was so long wearied with keeping my doors shut against them that came to distrain on my goods for preaching, that I was fain to go from my house, and sell all my goods, and to hide my library first, and afterwards to sell it." He shifted his abode. "When I had ceased preaching I was, being newly risen from extremity of pain, suddenly surprised in my house by a poor violent informer, and many constables and officers, who rushed in and apprehended me, and served on me one warrant to seize on my person for coming within five miles of a Corporation, and five more warrants to distrain for an hundred and ninety pounds, for five sermons."+ Though the king was straitened in his means of extravagance by the jealousy of Parliament, the prodigality of the Court was as manifest as ever. On the 10th of September, 1675, Evelyn writes in his Diary: "I was casually showed the duchess of Portsmouth's splendid apartment at Whitehall, luxuriously furnished, and with ten times the richness and glory beyond the queen's; such massy pieces of plate, whole tables, and stands of incredible value." The lady looked down with contempt upon her sister-strumpets. She affected a decency that was not characteristic of some other ladies. When the wit of Nell Gwynn was praised, "yes," exclaimed La Querouaille, "but any one may know she has been an orange-wench by her swearing." The great duchess was the arbitress of the destiny of statesmen. She quarrelled with Buckingham, and he was driven into opposition. She corresponded with the French monarch, who settled an estate upon her for her valuable aid in the degradation of England. Time did not diminish her influence over the besotted king. Incredible as it may appear, there is a record of particular payments to her out of the Secret Service Money in the one year of 1681, of 136,6687. 10s. ‡ The most hidden crimes cannot wholly be concealed, especially when subordinate agents are connected with them. The long prorogation of the Parliament in November, 1675, was a specific arrangement between Charles and Louis, for which the unworthy king of England received five hundred thousand crowns. The two sovereigns, with the connivance of Danby and Lauderdale, concluded a formal agreement not to enter upon any treaties but with mutual consent; and Charles accepted a pension, upon his pledge to prorogue or dissolve any Parliament that attempted to force such treaties upon him. The money was regularly paid by the French minister to Chiffinch, the notorious pander to the vices of his master; and the degraded king regularly signed a receipt for the wages of his iniquity. * "Review," vol. ii. quoted in Wilson's "Life," vol. i. p. 60. +"Life of Baxter," Part iii. pp. 172, 191.

"Moneys received and paid for Secret Services;" Camden Society.

326

COFFEE-HOUSES CLOSED BY PROCLAMATION.

[1675.

Such things could not go on without exciting some suspicion. How could the extravagance of the Court be maintained? Where did the money come from? The annual revenue was large, but all knew that it was insufficient to meet the riots and follies of Whitehall. Serious thinkers began to murmur. Gossiping loungers about the coffee-houses began to sneer and whisper. Coffee-houses were in those days what clubs are in our day-the great marts for the interchange of town talk, political, or literary, or fashionable, or scandalous, or simply stupid. A Coffee-house, says a tract of 1673, "is an exchange where haberdashers of political small-wares meet, and mutually abuse each other, and the public, with bottomless stories." Roger North takes a more serious view of Coffee-house gossip, in 1675: "There was such licentiousness of seditious and really treasonable discourse, in coffee-houses, of which there were accounts daily brought to the king, that it was considered if coffee-houses ought not to be put down."+ Clarendon, in 1666, had proposed either to put down coffee-houses, or to employ spies to frequent them and report the conversation. If in 1675 the king had daily reports of "treasonable discourse," we may presume that the spysystem had been tried, although it was not quite efficient. On the 29th of December, a proclamation appeared, recalling all the licences issued for the sale of coffee, and ordering all coffee-houses to be shut up, "because in such houses, and by the meeting of disaffected persons in them, divers false, malicious, and scandalous reports were devised and spread abroad, to the defamation of his majesty's government, and the disturbance of the quiet and peace of the realm." The licences were withdrawn, through a legal quibble upon the same Statute under which they had been issued. By the Act granting the king certain excise duties in perpetuity,‡ a duty of fourpence was imposed "for every gallon of coffee made and sold, to be paid by the maker." The licence to sell was under a subsequent Act, by which the Justices in Sessions, or the Chief Magistrate of a Corporation, were to grant Licences for the selling of Coffee, Chocolate, Sherbet, or Tea, no Licence being to be granted unless the retailer had first given security for the payment of the dues to the king.§ There was no complaint that the securities had not been given, or that the dues were unpaid. The pretence under which the licences were recalled was, that as the Statute made no mention of a time for which the licences were granted, they might be recalled at any time by a higher authority than that of the magistrates who issued them. There never was a more flagrant violation of law under a show of some submission to law. The Coffee-houses were closed. "The great Coffee-house in Covent Garden' Will's Coffee-house-where Mr. Pepys saw in 1664, "Dryden the poet, and all the wits of the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our college," was suddenly shut up at the merry Christmas time. Mr. Dryden had no longer there "his armed chair, which in the winter had a settled and prescriptive place by the fire." || His opera of "The State of Innocence and Fall of Man" was his last previous dramatic production; and he could no longer tell to the groups around him, how when he went to the old blind

*

"Harleian Miscellany," vol. viii. p. 7.

Lives of the Norths," vol. i. p. 316.

12 Car. II. c. 21.

§ 15 Car. II. c. 11. "Johnson's Lives of the Poets;" Cunningham's edit. vol. i. p. 338.

1675.]

COFFEE-HOUSES RE-OPENED.

327

schoolmaster in Bunhill-fields, and "asked leave to put his Paradise Lost into a drama in rhyme, Mr. Milton received him very civilly, and told him he would give him leave to tag his verses."* Milton about a year before, had been carried to his last resting-place in Cripplegate-church; and amongst the "treasonable discourse" of the frequenters of coffee-houses some might have uttered the thought that Milton was not far wrong when, in his last political treatise, he raised his warning voice against the way his countrymen were marching, "to those calamities which attend always and unavoidably on luxury, all national judgments under foreign and domestic slavery."+ Pro

bably no political measure was more indicative of a disposition in the government to attack the liberties of the people in their social habits than this shutting-up of the coffee-houses. The popular indignation soon compelled the government to retract its proclamation. "The faction was much incensed," writes North. "They said that Mr. Attorney [sir William Jones] should answer it in Parliament." Mr. Attorney was frightened; and possibly some higher authorities were not at their ease. Permission was given to re-open the houses for a certain time; under a severe admonition to the keepers, that they should stop the reading of all scandalous books and papers, and hinder every scandalous report against the government. Despotism would be more dangerous though not more odious than it is, amongst nations with preten

Aubrey. "Lives," vcl. iii. p. 444.

"Way to establish a free Commonwealth."