Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration

by Antonia Fraser

  Only one thing was lacking: an heir. It was not for lack of effort on the King’s part. It was reported that he slept regularly with the Queen. (All contemporary evidence indicates that, while Charles kept many mistresses, he also made love to his own wife a great deal – no doubt this contributed to the marital status quo.) But royal brides were watched for signs of pregnancy virtually from their wedding night. Any failure to conceive immediately was converted into total barrenness by the unkind rumour-mongers within and without the Court. It was suggested that the Queen was barren as early as December 1662, surely a premature conclusion. Catharine had only been married a year when she was to be found taking the waters at Tunbridge Wells, as her mother-in-law had done a generation earlier. Catharine took the waters repeatedly that summer without success. Later she turned to the spa at Bath.

  It was hardly surprising that, during her severe illness of the autumn of 1663, the delirious Queen raved of pregnancy and childbirth. To the King at her bedside, Catharine confided that she had been delivered of a ‘very ugly’ boy.

  ‘No, it’s a pretty boy,’ Charles answered gently.

  ‘If it be like you, it is a fine boy indeed,’ whispered the Queen. There followed further rambling remarks on the same subject: at one time the Queen thought she had three children, including a girl who did look like the King.

  ‘How do the children?’ she enquired anxiously.40

  The King might equip her chapel, redecorate her apartments, employing Catharine’s favourite greens and yellows, start to build her a new palace at Greenwich – none of this could bring the Queen true security or happiness without the longed-for heir. Yet for all the impatience of the Court gossips, there was a precedent. The example of Henrietta Maria was in itself encouraging – four years of marriage without conception, followed by a quiverful of healthy children. For the present, Catharine continued to justify Dryden’s high praise of her and of her devotion to Charles:

  The best of Queens, the most obedient wife …

  His life the theme of her eternal prayer.

  The Marvell who called her an ‘Ill natured little goblin … designed/For nothing but to dance and vex mankind’ reflected his own dislike of the royal family, rather than the prevailing opinion of Catharine’s character.

  The day would come when Catharine’s unarguable goodness would stand her in good stead. By the time of the Popish Plot, even the prickly, suspicious English had been so won to the side of their little foreign Catholic Queen that she was preserved from serious harm throughout this whole inflamed period. No-one could seriously believe ill of her. This was a major achievement in such an age, and can be compared with the very different treatment earned by the equally Catholic and foreign Henrietta Maria.

  King Charles, in view of his preoccupation with the study of physiognomy, must have been delighted that his first impression of her character proved so accurate.

  1 Charles II was however the last English monarch to take part in this eve-of-ceremony procession.

  2 Although Pepys, who had had to get up at four a.m. and had been for hours in the Abbey in his sumptuous velvet suit, needed to piss (as doubtless did some others).9

  3 There was of course the King’s first cousin, Prince Rupert; if not wholly English, he had served the English Crown faithfully on land and at sea during the recent war and was a Protestant. But Rupert was by now over forty and hopes of his marriage – his own and other people’s – died away after the Restoration.13

  4 The date is wrongly given in the entry in the registry of St Thomas’s Parish Church (made to comply with the Commonwealth Act of 1654), preserved today in Portsmouth Cathedral.

  5 She was born on 25 November, the Feast of St Catharine; it was an unfortunate coincidence that by English dating – ten days different – this was close to the Accession Day of Queen Elizabeth, an anniversary which later in the reign became an occasion for Pope-burnings and other manifestations of Protestant extremism.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Dutch Business

  ‘All the news now is what will become of the Dutch business, whether war or peace. We all seem to desire it, as thinking ourselves to have advantages at present over them; but for my part I dread it.’

  Samuel Pepys, Diary, 30 April 1664

  On 8 May 1661 King Charles II opened the newly elected Parliament: it was twenty years since a reigning English monarch had given the traditional speech from the throne. It was more than twenty years since there had been a legally elected Parliament. A comment was made on the youth of the members. ‘I will keep them till their beards grow,’ replied King Charles ominously.1 And he was as good as his word. This body, known as the Cavalier Parliament, would yield little to its predecessor in longevity, for it was not to be dissolved until 1679.

  Yet its first tasks were still redolent of the past. For all the valiant work of the Convention Parliament, there remained much to achieve in the nature of settlement for this new body, quite apart from confirming the acts of its predecessor. One outstanding question was of course religion. That wonderfully open, peaceful desire of Breda, that no-one should be ‘disquieted or called in question’ for their religious opinions, so long as they did not disturb the peace, still remained to be implemented after the fiasco of the previous autumn. What finally emerged as a religious settlement – the so-called Clarendon Code enacted between 1662 and 1665 – was however as far from the heady spirit of Breda as could be imagined. Only two-and-a-half years divided the Declaration of Breda from the first Act of the Clarendon Code, but it might have been an aeon.

  The Clarendon Code was in fact a direct reversion to the harsh laws promulgated by the Puritans against the Church of England: such, sadly, was to be the Anglican revenge. It embraced a number of provisions. The Corporation Act, for example, excluded from municipal bodies all those who refused to take the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. These rites themselves were later defined by the Act of Uniformity to include not only episcopal government, but a standard liturgy: it was in essence a reinforcement of the Act of 1559, which had been generally enforced up till 1640. It was not even necessary to pass a new Act penalizing those who refused to adhere to the rites: the old Act of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I came happily to hand. The way was paved for the Conventicle Act; whereas the Act of Uniformity penalized those who did not attend Anglican services, the Conventicle Act penalized those who worshipped elsewhere. The subsequent Five Mile Act harried the nonconformist ministers by forbidding them to live in certain areas.

  To understand this rigidity, one has to appreciate that it was certainly greater than Clarendon had contemplated, for all that the code bears his name. There is much argument over the exact nature of Clarendon’s Anglicanism and how far he was genuinely prepared to exercise tolerance to dissenters.2 What is however unarguable is the enormous decline of official toleration from the Breda high point to the Clarendon Code low, a decline to which Clarendon the man certainly acceded. We have also seen how staunchly he defended Anglicanism under attack during the Interregnum, how bitterly he resented the compromise with the Covenanters.

  Breda itself had represented nonetheless a new deal. Yet almost immediately Clarendon found himself occupying that treacherous political territory, the middle ground. As plots and conspiracies, many of them found amongst the dissenters, darkened the political horizon, it was easy for Clarendon to revert to the exclusive Anglicanism which in his heart of hearts he had probably never really deserted.

  For these measures King Charles himself held no brief at all. They represented if anything the exact reverse of what he conceived as the best religious settlement. Quickly he made his own position clear, by proposing a Declaration of Indulgence which would allow him to exempt certain individuals from the effects of the Act of Uniformity. To the fury of the Court and King (but not to that of Clarendon, who had thought it folly), the measure failed to pass through the Lords. ‘That which shocks most people in it is the favourable mention of Roman Cat
holics,’ wrote the King’s rising new assistant, Henry Bennet.3

  In August 1662 nearly a thousand nonconformist incumbents of livings had to vacate them or wrestle with their consciences for ever more. The Victorian division of ‘church and chapel’ was for the first time introduced into the fabric of English society, as nonconformity became a social force of its own, albeit a deprived one. And there was nothing whatsoever the King could do about it. William Denton, one of the King’s physicians and a political writer, described a significant incident in that same August 1662. Some Presbyterian ministers visited Charles as ‘humble suitors’ for an indulgence against the laws. They ended up before some judges who declared that the King could not dispense with an Act of Parliament. ‘So,’ commented Denton, ‘their cake is dough at present.’4

  The King’s cake was in an equivalent condition. The rejection of the sovereign’s own measure, the Declaration of Indulgence, showed how ineffective the King was to control the Parliamentary will, once it ran contrary to his own.

  Only one body of dissenters actually managed to derive benefit from the Clarendon Code. This was the Anglo-Jewish community.5 A series of historical accidents, as well as the genial nature of Charles II, contributed to this. The Jews had been expelled from England at the end of the thirteenth century, but had nevertheless been resettling secretly in the country for many years until their lot publicly improved under the Commonwealth. Cromwell was philo-semitic for philosophical reasons; practically, he also employed Jews in his intelligence service. It was therefore on his ‘nod’, as Lord Protector, that the Jews’ presence in England was once more tacitly acknowledged. However, a large proportion of the English merchant community remained resolutely anti-semitic from traditional motives of commercial rivalry: to the great distress of the Jews’ leaders, they did not secure an official recognition of their position.

  King Charles II was not particularly philosophically inclined towards – or against – the Jews: such was not the measure of the man. But he was kind and he was tolerant. He had another useful quality, gratitude, and, like Cromwell, he too was practical. In exile he had promised certain Royalist Jews in Amsterdam toleration in return for a loan: ‘When God shall restore us … we shall extend that protection to them which they can reasonably expect and abate that rigour of the Laws which is against them in our several dominions.’ He may also have been aided by Augustin Coronel Chacon – ‘the little Jew’ – later agent to the King of Portugal in London. In the summer of 1660 the King’s personal repute with the Jewish leaders was high. Conversations with the then powerful Monck produced this verdict: ‘Segundo todos dizem he sua Benignidade tanta que nào se nesesitava de medianero algum.’ (According to what everyone says his good will is such that no intermediary is necessary).6

  For all this, the atmosphere immediately after the Restoration was tense so far as the Anglo-Jewish community was concerned. For they were still without written permission to resettle. Although their synagogue in Cree Lane became one of the tourist sights of London (the ever-curious Pepys paid it two visits, and Gentile women made nuisances of themselves gaping) it was still theoretically possible to eject the Jews once more. The frowning rivalry of the English merchants remained a threat, and there were hostile references in the House of Commons. The Jews felt harassment to be on the increase. Then the Conventicle Act, that part of the Clarendon Code forbidding any religious assembly not in accordance with the laws of the Church of England, offered a chance to the Jews’ enemies: no synagogue could possibly fit in with its provisions. First, Paul Ruycart threatened the Jewish leaders with removal under the new law. Then the Earl of Berkshire, son of the King’s old governor, intervened in a manner which was hardly more attractive. He offered to intercede with the King on the Jews’ behalf – but they would have to come to a speedy financial arrangement with him first, otherwise ‘he will endeavour and prosecute the seizure of their estates’. In short, it was blackmail. Desperately, the Jewish leaders decided to go directly to the King. Their petition reminded him of their good behaviour and asked that they might remain ‘under the like Protection with the rest of your Majesty’s subjects’.

  An unpublished Hebrew letter from Rabbi Jacob Sasportas to Rabbi Josiah Pardo of Rotterdam describes the incident: ‘We live at a time in which God has seen fit greatly to ameliorate the condition of his people, bringing them forth from the general condition of serfdom into freedom, and to set them beneath the authority of one appropriate indeed to hold them in a subjection that is itself the essence of liberty [that is, Charles II]: specifically, in that we are free to practise our own true religion…. A further miracle has been vouchsafed us in these last days. Two nobles, being themselves in possession of access to the royal council, approached us purporting to have been given authority over our persons and property. We requested them to give us time, and we apprised the King, who chuckled and spat at the business; and a written statement was issued from him, duly signed, affirming that no untoward measures had been or would be initiated against us, and that “they [the Jews] should not look towards any protector other than his Majesty: during the continuance of whose lifetime they need feel no trepidation because of any sect that might oppose them, inasmuch as he himself would be their advocate and assist them with all his power.” Blessed be the Lord….’ So Charles II implemented that promise made in exile.

  On 22 August 1664 the Jews trading in England received from the Privy Council the precious, long-sought document, an Order in Council, by which they might ‘promise themselves the effects of the same favour as formerly they have had, so long as they demean themselves peaceably and quietly with due obedience to His Majestie’s laws and without scandal to his Government’.7 Charles II, as good as his word, continued to act generously towards the Jews, granting letters of endenization (that is, moderated naturalization) with an open hand, so that the Jewish community increased and flourished in his reign. Recognition of their religious status was further granted in 1673.

  If only the King could have acted in a similar manner towards all those dissenters living ‘peaceably and quietly’ within his dominions! Such was certainly his inclination, and it was the good fortune of the Jews that they at least were able to benefit from it. Catholics, because held to be politically dangerous (which no one considered the Jews to be), were another matter.

  Parliament was the bane. The basic trouble was with its composition. The newly elected body was subject almost immediately to an enormous turnover.8 Part of this was due to natural (noble) wastage: a quantity of MPs who were eldest sons of peers replaced their fathers in the House of Lords between 1661 and 1667. Other MPs, of proven loyalty, were sent to the Lords as a reward. By 1664 forty-eight seats had changed their occupants and by the fall of Clarendon in 1667 well over a hundred. A body chosen in a moment of popular acclaim was subtly if unintentionally transformed. As a result, King Charles found himself reaping a bleak harvest. He could not in the end reconcile, in an age when the national divisions turned out to be great, and the art of parliamentary management was not yet understood.

  On 30 January 1662, a day dedicated to the solemn commemoration of the murder of the late King, Pepys reported, ‘All people discontented, some that the King doth not gratify them enough; and the others, Fanatiques of all sorts, that the King doth take away their liberty of conscience….’ By April 1663 Parliament was capable of being described by the same source as being ‘in a very angry pettish mood’.

  It is true that 1664 saw the repeal of one Triennial Act and the introduction of a new one. It would prove a remarkably convenient victory for the Crown, even if the fact was not realized at the time. The Triennial Act of 1641 had laid down that a King should meet Parliament once every three years and its passing had been considered a notable concession by Charles I. The Act of 1664, however, referred to that of 1641 as ‘in derogation of his Majesty’s just rights and prerogative’, as a result of which it might ‘much endanger the peace and safety of his Majesty and all his liege people �
��’. In the future, while it was regarded as right that no more than three years should elapse between Parliaments, it was left to the King to secure this happy state of affairs; no procedure was suggested for compelling him. This victory was the result of clever manœuvring on the part of the Crown, playing on those general fears regarding ‘peace and safety’ to which the Act alluded. Yet the Crown’s tactics – proceedings were pushed ahead rapidly to avoid a full house – were aimed at this single success, rather than general Parliamentary management.9

  The King’s policy towards the House of Lords did nothing to reverse this effect created in the Commons.10 It was Clarendon, not the King, who was eager to readmit the Anglican Bishops to the seats from which they had been expelled in 1641 – the King’s Catholic friends, such as Lord Bristol, feared for their effect on Catholic toleration. And, unlike his father and his brother, Charles was not free with his new creations. After the first rewards for loyalty were over, creations only outweighed extinctions over his whole reign by nine; only ten peers were created between 1662 and 1670. As a result, the House of Lords during this period was once again by no means the docile Royalist body which might have been expected. Had not thirty of its members fought against Charles I? It would be a powerful hostile element in the fall of Clarendon. The fuss over the Irish Castle Bill, in which Buckingham kept the House of Lords talking till the candles ran out, was a typical example of the unruly paths down which these post-Restoration peers could stray.