A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  the entreaties of all the ambassadors in London.

  One of Oliver's own friends, the DUKE OF OLDENBURGH, in sending him

  a present of six fine coach-horses, was very near doing more to

  please the Royalists than all the plotters put together. One day,

  Oliver went with his coach, drawn by these six horses, into Hyde

  Park, to dine with his secretary and some of his other gentlemen

  under the trees there. After dinner, being merry, he took it into

  his head to put his friends inside and to drive them home: a

  postillion riding one of the foremost horses, as the custom was.

  On account of Oliver's being too free with the whip, the six fine

  horses went off at a gallop, the postillion got thrown, and Oliver

  fell upon the coach-pole and narrowly escaped being shot by his own

  pistol, which got entangled with his clothes in the harness, and

  went off. He was dragged some distance by the foot, until his foot

  came out of the shoe, and then he came safely to the ground under

  the broad body of the coach, and was very little the worse. The

  gentlemen inside were only bruised, and the discontented people of

  all parties were much disappointed.

  The rest of the history of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell is a

  history of his Parliaments. His first one not pleasing him at all,

  he waited until the five months were out, and then dissolved it.

  The next was better suited to his views; and from that he desired

  to get - if he could with safety to himself - the title of King.

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  He had had this in his mind some time: whether because he thought

  that the English people, being more used to the title, were more

  likely to obey it; or whether because he really wished to be a king

  himself, and to leave the succession to that title in his family,

  is far from clear. He was already as high, in England and in all

  the world, as he would ever be, and I doubt if he cared for the

  mere name. However, a paper, called the 'Humble Petition and

  Advice,' was presented to him by the House of Commons, praying him

  to take a high title and to appoint his successor. That he would

  have taken the title of King there is no doubt, but for the strong

  opposition of the army. This induced him to forbear, and to assent

  only to the other points of the petition. Upon which occasion

  there was another grand show in Westminster Hall, when the Speaker

  of the House of Commons formally invested him with a purple robe

  lined with ermine, and presented him with a splendidly bound Bible,

  and put a golden sceptre in his hand. The next time the Parliament

  met, he called a House of Lords of sixty members, as the petition

  gave him power to do; but as that Parliament did not please him

  either, and would not proceed to the business of the country, he

  jumped into a coach one morning, took six Guards with him, and sent

  them to the right-about. I wish this had been a warning to

  Parliaments to avoid long speeches, and do more work.

  It was the month of August, one thousand six hundred and fiftyeight,

  when Oliver Cromwell's favourite daughter, ELIZABETH

  CLAYPOLE (who had lately lost her youngest son), lay very ill, and

  his mind was greatly troubled, because he loved her dearly.

  Another of his daughters was married to LORD FALCONBERG, another to

  the grandson of the Earl of Warwick, and he had made his son

  RICHARD one of the Members of the Upper House. He was very kind

  and loving to them all, being a good father and a good husband; but

  he loved this daughter the best of the family, and went down to

  Hampton Court to see her, and could hardly be induced to stir from

  her sick room until she died. Although his religion had been of a

  gloomy kind, his disposition had been always cheerful. He had been

  fond of music in his home, and had kept open table once a week for

  all officers of the army not below the rank of captain, and had

  always preserved in his house a quiet, sensible dignity. He

  encouraged men of genius and learning, and loved to have them about

  him. MILTON was one of his great friends. He was good humoured

  too, with the nobility, whose dresses and manners were very

  different from his; and to show them what good information he had,

  he would sometimes jokingly tell them when they were his guests,

  where they had last drunk the health of the 'King over the water,'

  and would recommend them to be more private (if they could) another

  time. But he had lived in busy times, had borne the weight of

  heavy State affairs, and had often gone in fear of his life. He

  was ill of the gout and ague; and when the death of his beloved

  child came upon him in addition, he sank, never to raise his head

  again. He told his physicians on the twenty-fourth of August that

  the Lord had assured him that he was not to die in that illness,

  and that he would certainly get better. This was only his sick

  fancy, for on the third of September, which was the anniversary of

  the great battle of Worcester, and the day of the year which he

  called his fortunate day, he died, in the sixtieth year of his age.

  He had been delirious, and had lain insensible some hours, but he

  had been overheard to murmur a very good prayer the day before.

  The whole country lamented his death. If you want to know the real

  worth of Oliver Cromwell, and his real services to his country, you

  can hardly do better than compare England under him, with England

  under CHARLES THE SECOND.

  He had appointed his son Richard to succeed him, and after there

  had been, at Somerset House in the Strand, a lying in state more

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  splendid than sensible - as all such vanities after death are, I

  think - Richard became Lord Protector. He was an amiable country

  gentleman, but had none of his father's great genius, and was quite

  unfit for such a post in such a storm of parties. Richard's

  Protectorate, which only lasted a year and a half, is a history of

  quarrels between the officers of the army and the Parliament, and

  between the officers among themselves; and of a growing discontent

  among the people, who had far too many long sermons and far too few

  amusements, and wanted a change. At last, General Monk got the

  army well into his own hands, and then in pursuance of a secret

  plan he seems to have entertained from the time of Oliver's death,

  declared for the King's cause. He did not do this openly; but, in

  his place in the House of Commons, as one of the members for

  Devonshire, strongly advocated the proposals of one SIR JOHN

  GREENVILLE, who came to the House with a letter from Charles, dated

  from Breda, and with whom he had previously been in secret

  communication. There had been plots and counterplots, and a recall

  of the last members of the Long Parliament, and an end of the Long

  Parliament, and risings of the Royalists that were made too soon;

  and most men being tired out, and there being no one to head the

  country now great Oliver was dead, it was re
adily agreed to welcome

  Charles Stuart. Some of the wiser and better members said - what

  was most true - that in the letter from Breda, he gave no real

  promise to govern well, and that it would be best to make him

  pledge himself beforehand as to what he should be bound to do for

  the benefit of the kingdom. Monk said, however, it would be all

  right when he came, and he could not come too soon.

  So, everybody found out all in a moment that the country MUST be

  prosperous and happy, having another Stuart to condescend to reign

  over it; and there was a prodigious firing off of guns, lighting of

  bonfires, ringing of bells, and throwing up of caps. The people

  drank the King's health by thousands in the open streets, and

  everybody rejoiced. Down came the Arms of the Commonwealth, up

  went the Royal Arms instead, and out came the public money. Fifty

  thousand pounds for the King, ten thousand pounds for his brother

  the Duke of York, five thousand pounds for his brother the Duke of

  Gloucester. Prayers for these gracious Stuarts were put up in all

  the churches; commissioners were sent to Holland (which suddenly

  found out that Charles was a great man, and that it loved him) to

  invite the King home; Monk and the Kentish grandees went to Dover,

  to kneel down before him as he landed. He kissed and embraced

  Monk, made him ride in the coach with himself and his brothers,

  came on to London amid wonderful shoutings, and passed through the

  army at Blackheath on the twenty-ninth of May (his birthday), in

  the year one thousand six hundred and sixty. Greeted by splendid

  dinners under tents, by flags and tapestry streaming from all the

  houses, by delighted crowds in all the streets, by troops of

  noblemen and gentlemen in rich dresses, by City companies, trainbands,

  drummers, trumpeters, the great Lord Mayor, and the majestic

  Aldermen, the King went on to Whitehall. On entering it, he

  commemorated his Restoration with the joke that it really would

  seem to have been his own fault that he had not come long ago,

  since everybody told him that he had always wished for him with all

  his heart.

  CHAPTER XXXV - ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY

  MONARCH

  THERE never were such profligate times in England as under Charles

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  the Second. Whenever you see his portrait, with his swarthy, illlooking

  face and great nose, you may fancy him in his Court at

  Whitehall, surrounded by some of the very worst vagabonds in the

  kingdom (though they were lords and ladies), drinking, gambling,

  indulging in vicious conversation, and committing every kind of

  profligate excess. It has been a fashion to call Charles the

  Second 'The Merry Monarch.' Let me try to give you a general idea

  of some of the merry things that were done, in the merry days when

  this merry gentleman sat upon his merry throne, in merry England.

  The first merry proceeding was - of course - to declare that he was

  one of the greatest, the wisest, and the noblest kings that ever

  shone, like the blessed sun itself, on this benighted earth. The

  next merry and pleasant piece of business was, for the Parliament,

  in the humblest manner, to give him one million two hundred

  thousand pounds a year, and to settle upon him for life that old

  disputed tonnage and poundage which had been so bravely fought for.

  Then, General Monk being made EARL OF ALBEMARLE, and a few other

  Royalists similarly rewarded, the law went to work to see what was

  to be done to those persons (they were called Regicides) who had

  been concerned in making a martyr of the late King. Ten of these

  were merrily executed; that is to say, six of the judges, one of

  the council, Colonel Hacker and another officer who had commanded

  the Guards, and HUGH PETERS, a preacher who had preached against

  the martyr with all his heart. These executions were so extremely

  merry, that every horrible circumstance which Cromwell had

  abandoned was revived with appalling cruelty. The hearts of the

  sufferers were torn out of their living bodies; their bowels were

  burned before their faces; the executioner cut jokes to the next

  victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands together, that were reeking

  with the blood of the last; and the heads of the dead were drawn on

  sledges with the living to the place of suffering. Still, even so

  merry a monarch could not force one of these dying men to say that

  he was sorry for what he had done. Nay, the most memorable thing

  said among them was, that if the thing were to do again they would

  do it.

  Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence against Strafford,

  and was one of the most staunch of the Republicans, was also tried,

  found guilty, and ordered for execution. When he came upon the

  scaffold on Tower Hill, after conducting his own defence with great

  power, his notes of what he had meant to say to the people were

  torn away from him, and the drums and trumpets were ordered to

  sound lustily and drown his voice; for, the people had been so much

  impressed by what the Regicides had calmly said with their last

  breath, that it was the custom now, to have the drums and trumpets

  always under the scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane said no more

  than this: 'It is a bad cause which cannot bear the words of a

  dying man:' and bravely died.

  These merry scenes were succeeded by another, perhaps even merrier.

  On the anniversary of the late King's death, the bodies of Oliver

  Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were torn out of their graves in

  Westminster Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all

  day long, and then beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell

  set upon a pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whom

  would have dared to look the living Oliver in the face for half a

  moment! Think, after you have read this reign, what England was

  under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his grave, and what it

  was under this merry monarch who sold it, like a merry Judas, over

  and over again.

  Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter were not to be

  spared either, though they had been most excellent women. The base

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  clergy of that time gave up their bodies, which had been buried in

  the Abbey, and - to the eternal disgrace of England - they were

  thrown into a pit, together with the mouldering bones of Pym and of

  the brave and bold old Admiral Blake.

  The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped to get

  the nonconformists, or dissenters, thoroughly put down in this

  reign, and to have but one prayer-book and one service for all

  kinds of people, no matter what their private opinions were. This

  was pretty well, I think, for a Protestant Church, which had

  displaced the Romish Church because people had a right to their own

  opinions in religious matters. However, they carried it with a

  high hand, and a prayer-book was agreed upon, in wh
ich the

  extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were not forgotten. An Act

  was passed, too, preventing any dissenter from holding any office

  under any corporation. So, the regular clergy in their triumph

  were soon as merry as the King. The army being by this time

  disbanded, and the King crowned, everything was to go on easily for

  evermore.

  I must say a word here about the King's family. He had not been

  long upon the throne when his brother the Duke of Gloucester, and

  his sister the PRINCESS OF ORANGE, died within a few months of each

  other, of small-pox. His remaining sister, the PRINCESS HENRIETTA,

  married the DUKE OF ORLEANS, the brother of LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH,

  King of France. His brother JAMES, DUKE OF YORK, was made High

  Admiral, and by-and-by became a Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen,

  bilious sort of man, with a remarkable partiality for the ugliest

  women in the country. He married, under very discreditable

  circumstances, ANNE HYDE, the daughter of LORD CLARENDON, then the

  King's principal Minister - not at all a delicate minister either,

  but doing much of the dirty work of a very dirty palace. It became

  important now that the King himself should be married; and divers

  foreign Monarchs, not very particular about the character of their

  son-in-law, proposed their daughters to him. The KING OF PORTUGAL

  offered his daughter, CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA, and fifty thousand

  pounds: in addition to which, the French King, who was favourable

  to that match, offered a loan of another fifty thousand. The King

  of Spain, on the other hand, offered any one out of a dozen of

  Princesses, and other hopes of gain. But the ready money carried

  the day, and Catherine came over in state to her merry marriage.

  The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of debauched men and

  shameless women; and Catherine's merry husband insulted and

  outraged her in every possible way, until she consented to receive

  those worthless creatures as her very good friends, and to degrade

  herself by their companionship. A MRS. PALMER, whom the King made

  LADY CASTLEMAINE, and afterwards DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND, was one of

  the most powerful of the bad women about the Court, and had great

  influence with the King nearly all through his reign. Another

  merry lady named MOLL DAVIES, a dancer at the theatre, was

  afterwards her rival. So was NELL GWYN, first an orange girl and