SECTION I. — Wars.
THE history of western Europe in the seventeenth century is a history of wars.
“Wars destroy the morals of mankind by habituating them to refer everything to force, and by necessitating them so often to dispense with the ordinary suggestions of sympathy and justice.” This is true of wars in general; but the demoralizing effect is much greater if wars are civil wars; or religious wars—wars, that is, between fellow-citizens to serve the ends of some political party, or to enforce the observance of some political truth; or wars between fellow-Christians to force all to follow some religious creed. Moral virtues are in these cases uprooted; military virtues, which may exist in the most depraved man or state, flourish.
The era of the great Protestant Revolution ushered in the period of religious wars, France was devastated by religious and civil wars combined in the latter half of the sixteenth, and in the beginning of the seventeenth century. It took part in the Thirty Years’ War of Germany (1618-1648); it was again the theatre of the civil war of the Fronde, in which aimless attempts were made to oppose the absolutism of the French crown (1648- 1653). Germany was almost ruined by its great civil and religious Thirty Years’ War. England had also suffered in its great civil and partly religious war, which ended in 1648, with the execution of Charles I.
The great principle of religious toleration was unknown in the sixteenth century, and taught without success by a few great thinkers in the seventeenth century. Men believed great truths, by believing which they thought they secured their salvation, and they deemed it their bounden duty to make others believe, in order that they too might be saved. So not merely were wars undertaken for the sake of religious tenets, but within the several countries there were persecutions of Christians by Christians, of Englishmen by Englishmen, Frenchmen by Frenchmen, Germans by Germans.
Nevertheless it is only through the fire of religious and civil wars, and of religious persecutions, that the cause of religious and civil liberty comes out triumphant. The fall of the Stuarts, of which we shall treat, is an event in the successful struggle for civil and religious liberty.
The latter half of the seventeenth century was occupied by wars of a less demoralizing character than civil and religious wars; by wars undertaken by one man, Louis XIV., to obtain certain personal ends, These ends were the supremacy of Western Europe, the Imperial crown, and the succession to the throne of Spain. Of what befell Louis in his attempts to secure the supremacy of Western Europe, and how the “balance of power” was eventually righted, we shall also treat.
SECTION II.—Peace of Nimwegen, 1678.
The sovereigns of the principal states of Europe in 1678 were: — Leopold of Hapsburg, Emperor; Louis XIV., King of France; Charles II., King of England; Charles II., King of Spain; William, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder or Governor of the United Provinces of Holland.
Holland and England were the great naval powers; France coming next to them, and then Spain. Louis XIV. having designs on the independence of the United Provinces of Holland, prevailed on Charles II. of England to join him in declaring war on Holland in 1672. In England the war was so unpopular that when a parliament was summoned in 1673 in order to vote supplies to carry on the war, the majority in it, opposed to the policy of Charles and his ministers, drove the ministry from power, declined to vote further supplies and forced the king in 1674 to make peace with Holland.
The Emperor Leopold and Charles II., King of Spain, alarmed for the safety of their dominions, which were threatened by the success of Louis against Holland, concluded an alliance with the United Provinces.
Although the private intrigues of Louis XIV. with the King of England kept that country neutral, the sympathies of the English nation were so strongly excited on behalf of the Dutch and their Stadtholder William of Orange, that it became evident to both Louis and Charles that this neutral position could not long be maintained. Louis, by the aid of his ambassador, Barillon, attempted to foment dissensions amongst the popular party in the parliament by bribery, the means which he had hitherto effectually employed with Charles and his ministers. But his success was not sufficient to warrant him in advising Charles to oppose the wishes of the nation. In 1677 William of Orange married Mary, elder of the two daughters of James, the Duke of York and heir presumptive of Charles II., and thus had claims of relationship on Charles, which in the seventeenth century, were considered by politicians more binding than they are now. Charles and Louis consequently, agreed that the former should become the mediator for a peace, by which France should profit, Holland should not suffer, and the pride of the English should be gratified by the prominent position which their country should occupy in the negotiations. After many difficulties, overcome chiefly by the diplomatic tact of Sir William Temple, the English ambassador at the Hague on the one hand, and by that of the plenipotentiary of Louis on the other, a treaty was signed August 10, 1678.
This treaty put an end to the war. It was called the Peace of Nimwegen, (Nimeguen), from the small town on the frontier between Holland and Germany were it was signed. The treaty was drawn up in French, although Latin had hitherto been the diplomatic language, and this is an important fact in diplomatic history, as marking the claim of supremacy in Europe put forth by France.
The results of the treaty were that the United Provinces of Holland retained their integrity, Maestricht being restored to them, so that the boundaries of the state governed by William of Orange were almost identical with those of the present kingdom of the Netherlands. France, however, kept its conquest of Senegal and Guiana, and these settlements were the sole loss of Holland at the conclusion of a terrible war which had threatened to annihilate her. The United Provinces agreed to be neutral in any war which might continue between France and any other powers, and guaranteed the neutrality of Spain. Treaties of commerce between France and Holland, conferring equal privileges on both nations for twenty-five years, were also signed. France gained from Spain, a declining power, and therefore the principal suffers, Franche Comté (part of the old duchy of Burgundy, now forming the French departments of Haute Saône, Doubs, and Jura); and the towns of St. Omer, Valenciennes, Gassel, and the adjacent districts, sometimes called French Flanders, and forming the department of the Nord. Spain retained that part of her dominions in the Netherlands which is almost conterminous with the present kingdom of Belgium. Lothringen (Lorraine) was restored to its duke, and again formed one of the states of the Empire, although practically deprived of its independence by being obliged to keep up for Louis four military roads, each two miles broad, and also to give up its two fortified towns, Nancy and Longwy. It was at the time of the peace of Nimwegen that the power of France, and the glory of Louis XIV., were at their height.
SECTION III. — Louis XIV. and France.
Louis XIV. was, when the peace of Nimwegen was signed, forty years old; his figure was handsome, his manners were engaging, although at the same time dignified. He had an excellent constitution, and was able to endure fatigue, cold and hunger. He was not easily moved to anger, nor easily dispirited. These being his natural gifts, he himself, in his “Mémoires historiques,” tells us the chief motives which influenced his actions.
He had the most exalted idea of the kingly office. “It is the will of God,” wrote he, “who has given kings to men, that they should be revered as His vicegerents, He having reserved to Himself alone the right to scrutinize their conduct.""It is the will of God that every subject should yield to his sovereign an implicit obedience.""All property within the nation belongs to the king by virtue of his title.""Kings are absolute lords.” “L’Etat—c’est moi.” (The State—I am the State.) His ambition was unbounded. “Self-aggrandizement,” he writes, “is at once the noblest and most agreeable occupation of kings.” Magnificence in daily life, and in pleasures, involving the greatest extravagance, was thus upheld by him—"A large expenditure is the almsgiving of kings.”
His habitual disregard of treaties was not the result of dishonesty or fickleness, but was the deliberate design of one who preferred pleasant manners to sincerity, who condemned a noble to exile with a sweet smile, and bowed with infinite grace to a courtier who before night fall was on the road to prison. “In dispensing,” he says, “with the exact observance of treaties, we do not violate them; for the language of such instruments is not to be understood literally. We must employ in our, treaties a conventional phraseology, just as we use complimentary expressions in society. They are indispensable to our intercourse with one another, but they always mean much less than they say.”
Louis’ intellectual powers were good, but not extraordinary. He was a man of strong opinions, of strong will, of strong health, a practical man of business, but not an originator, a governor rather than a statesman.
His private life was regulated by his pleasures; he, as a king, was subject to none of those laws which rule the lives of ordinary mortals, but his desires were never too strong to make him forget his ambitious designs.
From his mother, Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III. of Spain, he inherited the Spanish fondness for ceremony and etiquette. Most of the European monarchs copied Louis, and many of the silly and unmeaning ceremonies still practiced in some continental courts may thus be traced to a Spanish source.
Louis was a sincere Roman Catholic, but he never allowed his religious feelings to weaken his belief in the prerogatives of a king. He kept the temporalities of the Church in his own disposal. He was for all practical purposes as much the head of the Gallican Church, the Church of France, as Henry VIII. had been of the English Church.
His most trusted ministers were Colbert and Louvois; but, as Louis was an absolute monarch, they were responsible to no one but their master; both alike were ministers dependent on his will, but they were directly opposed to each other on all questions of home or foreign policy. There was an unceasing struggle between Colbert and Louvois. During the war just ended, Colbert was continually advising Louis to make peace; and, now that the peace was concluded, Louvois was continually urging him to renew the war. This difference which existed between them was a natural result of their respective duties. To Colbert was entrusted by Louis the direction of finance, commerce, public works, and the colonies; to Louvois was given the post of minister of war.
On one point Colbert and Louvois was agreed, and that was in the employment of Vauban, the great master of the art of fortification. By Vauban 300 French fortresses were either built, repaired, or enlarged. These fortresses were designed chiefly for the defence of the French frontiers, which offered, and more particularly), on the north-east, many vulnerable points. Colbert for his part looked on the money expended in carying out Vauban’s plans, as sunk in insuring against the possibility of a war, which might be brought about by the temptation offered to a strong power of overrunning the north-eastern provinces of France, some of the richest provinces of the kingdom.
Colbert was a man of unimpeachable integrity, of great industry, and of bold and inventive genius. His political theories may now appear antiquated, but they prevailed universally for many generations, and by some French statesmen of the present day Colbert is considered the great authority on all national financial questions. His leading idea was to protect native produce and industry by placing heavy duties on exports, so heavy as to be almost prohibitory, and in some cases stopping importation altogether. To give an example. He allowed corn to be exported only when there had been an abundant harvest. If he anticipated a deficiency, the export was not permitted. Hence no agriculturist cared to cultivate poor land, but threw it out of cultivation, and the results of this were that there was a large extent of waste ground in France, and that the agriculturists were very poor. The poverty of the agriculturists again prevented their being customers of the manufacturers, and thus there was a loss of trade to the manufacturers.
Another principle of Colbert’s finance, now everywhere recognized as a pernicious principle, was the forbidding, as much as possible, gold and silver to be sent out of the kingdom. Coin, was, therefore, everywhere hoarded, and this practice has continued in the rural districts of France even to the present day. Colbert did not perceive that if there was a deficiency of gold or silver in France, and coin consequently became dearer, there would be a rush of coin from other countries, where it was more abundant, and consequently cheaper, to supply that deficiency.
In the chief European nations, in England, France, Holland, Germany, Italy, there existed guilds, or companies, at the head of each trade and manufacture. These corporations regulated the practice of their trades, and fixed the prices to be paid to the laborers, and to be received for goods. They were often possessed of great wealth, and were of influence in the State. Their power was now beginning to decline, owing to various reasons, amongst others to greater freedom of communication. But Colbert endeavored in France to prop up their failing influence. He promulgated edicts enforcing the regulations of the guilds; and these regulations were minute, pedantic, and tyrannical. The result was that trades and manufacturers were artificially fostered; that they did not follow the natural wants of the population, as they do when perfect freedom is allowed them, but became producers and distributors of luxuries rather than of necessaries. During Colbert’s ministry, there were 17,300 persons engaged in manufacturing lace, a luxury; whilst 60,400 were all that were employed in woollen manufacture.
Colbert was extremely rigorous against those who usurped privileges to which they were not legally entitled. This was in keeping with his action in upholding the authority of the guilds. There were certain privileges claimed by the nobility, which were assumed by some who had no legal right to do so. All such pretenders were punished by fines and imprisonments. He also endeavored to introduce a uniform tariff throughout the kingdom. In this he only partially succeeded, an newly acquired provinces claimed privileges which had been reserved for them when they were added to France. With more complete success he reorganized the navy of France, and first raised it to the strength of a great maritime power. He codified the French laws. He carried out some magnificent public works; the most noteworthy of which is the great canal of Languedoc, connecting the Mediterranean and Atlantic, completed under his influence by the engineer, Pierre Paul de Riquet.
Slavery existed in the West Indian colonies of France, as in those of all other European nations. To Colbert’s honor be it stated that, by the Code Noir introduce by him, the evils attendant on slavery were greatly mitigated, and the relations thus establish between master and slave were not nearly so unrighteous as those which existed in the colonies of other States.
All Colbert’s financial projects had been deranged during the war just ended. The first period of his ministry, previous to 1672, had been styled by him a period of construction; the second, from 1672 to 1678, had been a period of destruction, owing to the expenses of the war; the third period he fondly hoped would be one of reconstruction, but this hope was not destined to be realized. In the years 1681 and 1682, Colbert redeemed 90 millions of livres of national debts; in the same years Louis incurred debts to the amount of 100 millions.
To meet the expenses of the war, it had been necessary to raise large sums by taxation. There was a tax on landed property and persons called the “taille,” and almost every necessary of life was also taxed, even pewter vessels. One of the most hated of these taxes was that on salt, called the “gabelle.” These burdens were borne almost exclusively by the producing and laboring classes, for among the many privileges of the nobility was that of large exemption from taxation. Those, therefore, paid least who could best afford to pay most. Distress among the tax-paying classes was universal. Popular tumults arose in numerous districts and were put down with great severity. The wretched peasants were reduced to eating grass and the bark of trees; and famine slew thousands.
The system under which a great portion of the land in France was cultivated, which is called métairie, is an evil one. The métayer, (medietarius, middleman) or occupier of the land, was provided by the owner with seed, cattle, and agricultural implements, and in return, besides paying all taxes, gave half the gross produce to the land-owner. Though an advance on the serf system it did not invite peasants to spend money on the improvement of the land, and so produced poor cultivation. Half the produce was also too large a rent. The métayer grew as little corn as possible, and fed his geese in his wheat fields, for his half of the gross produce was insufficent to pay for the labor of cultivation. The farms of the métayers were very small, in reality but peasant-holdings. The relations existing between the peasant- farmer and his lord were very different from those existing in England between the village laborer and the squire. The French lord (seigneur) visited his estates only for retrenchment or to squeeze out larger yieldings from his métayers.He lived at the court. The magnificence and extravagance of Louis XIV. were imitated on a smaller scale by all the nobility. Life in the country was looked on by a seignur as exile. The responsibilities of a landlord were not recognised by him. He sought advancement at court, and for this advancement he intrigued and bribed. Even military service he seldom undertook from patriotic motives, but as a means of procuring court favor. When once a nobleman had secured a firm standing and influence at court, he made use of his position to replenish his fortune by selling his influence to less fortunate aspirants.
The hereditary and exclusive privileges of the nobility and place-holders were so valuable that Louis and his ministers increased the revenue by the sale of the titles and offices which conferred such privileges. By degrees monopolies were created. To such an extent was this system carried, that the privilege of exercising the meanest callings, such as those of porters, or of mutes at funerals, was reserved to certain families, in consideration of a large money payment.
In the provincial estates and parliaments of France existed the elements of civil liberty. The local government of each province was entrusted to its estate. The estate met in assembly in the three orders of clergy, nobility, and commons. It raised the revenue required by the king, had authority to borrow money, and superintended the expenditure of money to be laid out on local purposes. But in the reign of Louis, there was placed over each provincial estate a royal functionary, called an intendant, and under him served various officials. He was appointed by the king’s will, was removable at the king’s pleasure, and, in reality, controlled everything. The provincial estates often grumbled, but their opposition seldom extended further. The greater nobles lived at court, the clergy were faithful servants of the Crown, the intendant was the king’s representative, so that although, theoretically, the power and privileges of the provincial estates still belonged to them, their power and their privileges were practically in the hands of the intendant. Opposition to the wishes of the intendant was easily silenced by quartering troops on a refractory district, or by the arbitrary imprisonment of an independent member of the estate.
The parliaments of France, originally nine, afterwards fifteen in number, were the supreme legal tribunals. The parliament of Paris was naturally the chief, but each parliament claimed to be independent of every other. They were jealous of each other’s authority, and had no common principle of action. Besides their legal functions, they claimed the power of refusing to register, in their archives any law which the king had promulgated, and they asserted that this refusal on their part rendered the law inoperative. Louis, however, would not admit this claim of the parliaments; he compelled them to register his laws, he forbade them to prosecute any royal official who disobeyed their orders, and enforced his will by banishing any members of a parliament who upheld this privilege. The legal offices attached to the membership of a parliament were, as those attached to the Crown, saleable. Louis therefore was soon enabled to fill a great number of these with devoted adherents; and by cleverly turning to good account the jealousy felt by each parliament for the other, he soon rendered it impossible for them to take common action in rejecting a royal mandate.
France did not come out unscathed from the war ended by the peace of Nimwegen. The ambition of its monarch had impoverished the country. The agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, and colonial interests had all suffered. The conditions of peace were advantageous to France as regarded her territory and military power; but on the other hand, the protective duties on which the manufacturers, especially those of woolen goods and silk, had relied, were relaxed in favor of Holland and England.
Louis’s inordinate ambition and firm belief in the divine rights of kings combined to make him desire to see himself at the head of Europe, not as king of France only, but as Emperor, and king of Spain. France, though impoverished, had great natural resources, and Colbert was there to provide funds, Louvois to look to the “matériel” of his army, Vauban to build his fortresses. One man only stood in Louis’s way, William of Orange.
SECTION IV.—The United Provinces and William of Orange.
William of Orange was born November 4, 1650, eight days after the death of his father, the Stadtholder of the United Provinces of Holland. A strong party opposed to the idea of the Stadtholdership being hereditary in the house of Orange, endeavored for some years to carry on the government. But Holland thus became divided against itself, and an easy prey therefore to its enemies. Seven provinces with independent provincial assemblies, sending members to the States General, afforded a fine field for French diplomacy. In a few years the meetings of the States General were scenes of confusion. To add to the difficulties which stood in the way of unanimity, there were eighteen cities in Holland, governed each by a municipal council, and each of these claimed an independent voice in many affairs of state. The character of William had, young as he was, become known, and in 1672, Zealand, followed soon after by the other provinces, chose him Stadtholder. The French had invaded Holland, and William took desperate measures to drive them out of his country. He appealed to the patriotism of his countrymen, the dykes were burst open, the whole country was flooded, and the French were forced to beat a speedy, retreat. For six years the war continued, and Holland, at first almost ruined, had, at the peace of Nimwegen, preserved its independence and its territory, had gained commercial advantages, and had won the respect of Europe. William had also established his reputation. He had shown himself, under a cold, calm exterior, to be capable of originating bold designs, and of tenaciously carrying them out. He had proved himself as a diplomatist second to none. He had already gained a hold on the German powers which he presently used to good effect.
William, a Calvinist, the upholder of civil and religious liberty, was naturally hated by Louis, a bigoted Catholic, and maintainer of despotism. William, well aware of this antipathy, was also a far-sighted statesman, who saw that among the many projects of Louis’s ambition, not the most difficult to be realized, was that of making the whole of Western Europe subservient to France. For if England entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Louis, and placed its naval resources at his disposal, then Western Europe would be at his feet. Louis therefore directed all his intrigues to gain England to his side. William worked as strenuously to frustrate those intrigues.
By William’s marriage, he acquired a right to be consulted on England’s foreign policy, for Charles, the king, was childless, and his only brother, James, had as yet but two children, both daughters, and of them Mary was the elder. William’s wife therefore stood not far from the succession. William had many warm friends amongst the liberal-minded and patriotic men there were in the English nobility, although these were few in number, and already (in 1678) had gained influence among English statesmen. This influence it was the great aim of Louis to destroy. He instructed his ambassador, Barillon, to work on Charles’s love of pleasure and want of money; to work on the religious feelings of James, who had now the enthusiasm of a convert to Roman Catholicism, and also on his hatred of constitutional liberty; to work on the courtiers by bribery, and by encouraging their jealousies one of the other; to work on the English people by stirring up the spirit of persecution, by pitting Protestant against Papist, by sowing enmity between the country and the court. And well Barillon did his work. The history of the last seven years of the reign of Charles II. of England cannot be understood unless we remember that Charles and his statesmen were but the puppets of the show, that Barillon was the underling who pulled the strings, and that Louis XIV. was the director, whilst William of Orange sat looking on, a quiet, but by no means unobservant, spectator.
SECTION V.—Germany and Spain. Emperor Leopold and Charles II. of Spain.
Germany, already exhausted by the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), had suffered much in the war with France, now ended by the peace of Nimwegen. It was true that no province had been lost, and that Lothringen (Lorraine) again formed a state of the empire; but the breathing time, so necessary for it to recover from its frightful losses, had been interrupted; the power of the Diet had been weakened, the bonds which united the various states, never tight, were now more slackened. Louis had gained over electors and princes of the empire, by money, by promises of increased dominions, and by flattery; and he had no occasion to trouble himself about the German people. For the German people could be hardly said to exist. Germany was now composed of numerous small courts, numerous small armies, and half-starved wretched peasants. The towns were half depopulated, and the middle class was almost annihilated.
The Emperor Leopold was both mentally and morally a weak man. Of the house of Hapsburg, duke of Austria, and king of Bohemia and of Hungary, he had no real power in the empire. Swayed hither and thither, as the interest of the moment seemed to direct him, he had been at one time the tool of Louis, but now he leant on William of Orange, for support. Louis’ designs on the empire were so manifest that Leopold, with the greatest tenacity his nature permitted, joined William in his plans for counteracting them.
Spain was fallen from its high position. The kingdom was impoverished. The wealth of its American colonies had not enriched the state. Its best blood had been drained away. Every adventurous spirit had been enthralled by the desire of becoming rich. Its court was the victim of state etiquette. Its nobles were ill-educated and the slaves of the priests. Its race of statesmen and warriors had died out. Its king, Charles II., was a sickly and feeble boy of thirteen years of age.
So the conditions of the Peace of Nimwegen compelled Spain to pay. As we have said above (p. 5), Franche Compte, and some of Spain’s best provinces in the Netherlands fell to the share of Louis.
SECTION I. — England in 1678.
LOUIS XIV. wished to gain England to his side. He endeavored therefore to undermine William’s influence and sow dissension in the nation; but England, to be of use to him, must not be weakened. The stronger the nation was, the more help it could afford him. He hoped by destroying popular government, and by restoring the Catholic religion in England, to make it both a strong and ready tool in his hands.
The affairs of the two kingdoms, England and Scotland, will for a time occupy our attention. The news of the Peace of Nimwegen was received in England with mingled joy and discontent. Englishmen were glad that William of Orange, the Stadtholder, the nephew, by marriage, of their king, had come out of his great struggle with Louis with unreduced dominions, and with increased weight in the councils of Europe. But there was discontent for three reasons. First, because the national pride was wounded. In the time of Cromwell, just twenty years ago, England had been the most respected European power, the one power which France courted. It had defeated the navies of Holland and Spain; it had been the great upholder of the Protestant cause, as William of Orange now was; and now this glory had passed away. The second reason for discontent was the fear for the cause of civil liberty. It was rumored that treaties and arrangements had been entered into by the English king with Louis XIV., which had for their object the subversion of the constitution by the aid of foreign troops. Charles had raised troops nominally to aid William of Orange; but these troops had, by Barillon’s intrigues, been kept back, and were in England, not as yet disbanded. So the old English feeling of distrust of a standing army was aggravated by the fear that French forces might be sent to join those raised by Charles in coercing Parliament. But there was a third reason for discontent in the general hatred felt for Roman Catholicism. Puritans and churchmen were united in this hatred; it was their one bond of union. The activity shown by the Roman Catholics seems to justify this hatred. Jesuit priests were known to be intriguing at court; the king was suspected of an inclination to papistry; the Duke of York, the heir presumptive, was a declared Roman Catholic, and had married for his second wife the Princess Mary of Modena, also a Roman Catholic. At the same time Louis XIV., the adviser of Charles, had already begun on a small scale those persecutions of Protestants which in a few years after he carried out in such a manner as to drive the Protestants of England and Holland wild with anger.
This popular discontent found two vents for its expression; the one in an attempt to drive Roman Catholicism from the kingdom, and to exclude the Duke of York from the succession of the throne; the other in the impeachment of the minister, Lord Danby.
SECTION II.—The Minister and the leader of the Opposition.
Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, was the minister to whom Charles II. had at this time entrusted the chief direction of affairs; the leader of the Opposition was Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury.
Political immorality was as prevalent among English, as among continental, statesmen. The use of bribery was general. If at any time the expression used in later days by an English statesman that “every man has his price,” was true, it was true in the time of Charles II. One or two rare exceptions there were, but statesmen who were considered upright, and patriots who were famed for their public spirit, condescended to receive “pensions” from Louis XIV. for themselves, and to bribe members of Parliament. This was done with so little reserve as to make it evident that conscientious men looked on giving and receiving bribes in another light than that in which we are now accustomed to view such a crime.
Osborne, Lord Danby, was not beyond his age. Of good business powers, and ready in debate, he tried to make parliament subservient to his views by purchasing it wholesale. Himself fond of money, he measured every one by his own standard. So thoroughly did he carry out his plan that the parliament which was sitting in 1678, which had, in fact, been sitting since 1661, has earned for itself in history the name of “Pension Parliament.” Danby’s own political views were moderate. He was a Protestant, but not a Puritan; an upholder of the monarchy, but no lover of arbitrary power; an adherent of the Stuarts, but no mere courtier.
Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, began public life as a royalist, and then united himself to the party of the Commonwealth. During Richard Cromwell’s brief protectorate he had joined Monk in his successful plot for the restoration of the Stuarts. Dryden in his satire of “Absalom and Achitophel” thus describes Shaftesbury under the character of Achitophel:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfixed in principles and place,
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace.
Although written by a political and religious opponent, history admits the justice of this description.
SECTION III.—The Popish Plot.
On August 13, 1678, three days after the signing of the Peace of Nimwegen, Charles II. received a warning not to walk unaccompanied in the Park, nor to expose his person heedlessly, “ for that his death was determined on.” This information was traced through various channels to one Titus Oates. Oates was on September 28 brought before the privy council.
Had it not been for the prevalent feeling of distrust and hatred of the Roman Catholics, the personal appearance and previous career of Oates would have been conclusive evidence of the falseness of his story The son of an Anabaptist, he had early in life conformed to the Church of England, been admitted to holy orders and presented to a living. This he had been compelled to resign, on a charge of perjury, and of using blasphemous expressions. He next obtained a chaplaincy on board a man-of-war, but was dismissed his ship for disgraceful behaviour. Professing then to be a convert to Roman Catholicism, he joined the English college at St. Omer, in France. His present story was that he had been entrusted by the highest Romish authorities with letters, written by the Pope himself, the purport of which was to excite the Catholics to compass the death of King Charles by any means. He added that meetings had been already held in London for that purpose; and that Coleman, the Roman Catholic secretary of the Roman Catholic Duke of York, and Father la Chaise, the confessor of Louis XIV. (whom Oates always calls Father Lee Shee), were the persons through whom the necessary correspondence was carried on.
Coleman’s house was immediately searched. He had partly destroyed his papers, but some were found containing doubtful expressions, (doubtful, that is, as to loyalty, but perfectly natural under the circumstances), setting forth the great hopes which the Catholics in England entertained for the future, when the Duke of York would be king, and Louis XIV. would be able to afford them more active assistance.
In addition to Coleman, Oates accused Wakeman the queen’s private physician, who was also a Roman Catholic. In the course of his story Oates said that he had been sent through Spain, previously to his coming to England, and that there he had an interview with Don John of Austria, the young King of Spain’s minister, who had promised to aid the English Catholics in the execution of their designs. Charles, who was present at Oates’s examination and was incredulous asked Oates what sort of a man Don John was. Oates replied, “a tall, lean man.” This answer amused Charles, for Don John was very short and fat, and made him still more incredulous of the tale.