King Charles II

by Fraser, Antonia

  Shaftesbury was finally released from the Tower on 26 February. Halifax had presented his first petition a fortnight earlier; but it was not until Shaftesbury had fully and publicly recognized his error, both in demanding a dissolution and in appealing to the King’s Bench thereafter, that he was allowed to go free. It all had the air of an abject apology. But wise observers like the French ambassador saw in Shaftesbury’s reappearance ‘a great mortification’ for Danby. Shaftesbury after all understood only too well the art of reculer pour mieux sauter. And he was probably aware in advance of Louis XIV’s negotiations, since Lord Russell had been a frequent visitor to the Tower. Buckingham, who, like Rochester, had the knack of hitting on the unpleasant truth about his contemporaries (hence his demolition of Dryden in The Rehearsal), compared Shaftesbury to a Will-o’-the-Wisp ‘that uses to lead men out of the way, then leads them at last in a ditch and darkness and nimbly retreats for self-security’.29

  All the same, neither side had yet devised a way out of the familiar stalemate – a policy of If No War, Then No Money on Parliament’s side; If No Money, Then No War on the King’s. Charles II made an equally familiar move on 25 March when he wrote privately to Louis XIV. He suggested that in return for a subsidy of six million livres annually for the next three years, he would secure a proper peace in Europe, along conciliatory lines. But his winning streak had not left King Louis in the mood for territorial compromise: for the time being, he rejected both terms and subsidy.

  King Charles was left with the elaborate Parliamentary game of cat and mouse which was being played at home over the question of supplies: with Parliament as the cat and the King for once in the position of the mouse. Later it was claimed in the memoirs of James II that at this point the House of Commons was in reality far more jealous of the King’s power than of that of France.30 Certainly their behaviour lent plausibility to the theory. The opposition bore every sign of being terrified that the King would escape their financial clutches. Although they were armed with their own private subsidies from France, they set up a continual caterwaul that help should be given to the Dutch; yet when money was finally voted which would enable the King to declare war on France (should he so wish), Parliament immediately followed this up by an embargo on French imports. Since the only effective way of raising money quickly was to use the Excise, and since the French imports provided by far the largest share of this, it will be seen that the second action effectively nullified the first…. The result was, as before, a stalemate.

  The absolute monarch, Louis XIV, Charles was beginning to find, was easier to cope with than his own elected Parliament. A deft piece of diplomatic blackmail from the English king – the threat of an alliance with Holland, Spain and Austria – did produce the first promised payment of six million livres from the French King in May.

  In the meantime, Charles II was not the only one at home who was beginning to think back edgily to the events of 1641 and 1642. So traumatic had been the experience of those days on two generations – the men in their prime and the young who also suffered the consequences – that the survivors tended to see fearful parallels when certain circumstances prevailed. Trouble with the Scots, especially on religious matters, was always held to be a bad omen, so that when an English Parliamentary attack was mounted on the King’s regent in Scotland, the Duke of Lauderdale, in May, that too seemed all of a piece. Charles II suspected that the English opposition had been stirring up Lauderdale’s new enemies, the Scottish supporters of ‘Conventicles’, as had previously suspected Shaftesbury of being in touch with the Hamiltonians.

  ‘Conventicles’ were a form of independent religious gathering unlawful under the new regime, and a series of moves of increasing severity were made against those taking part in them from 1669 onwards. In fact, the rise of this new type of Covenanter was a manifestation of the Scottish national character which Lauderdale, and by implication Charles II, should have taken more seriously. Originally, they had been animated not so much by political motives as by a sincere desire to practise their religion in their own fashion. It was really impossible to cut out the truly Presbyterian heart of the Scots, as successive rulers had found to their cost.

  It was made incumbent upon local magnates to put down Conventicles held upon their land. Yet as the Covenanters were driven towards more violent resistance, it was virtually out of the question for the landowners to carry out this provision without force. And force, military force, should surely be provided by the central government. Furthermore, if it was to be a question of a military crusade against the Covenanters, that raised the second question of who was going to pay for it. In July 1678 the Scottish Parliament voted an extremely large sum – £1,800,000 – for the suppression of the Conventicles. It was quite clear that the raising of this money would be enormously resented by those who did not wish the Conventicles suppressed in the first place. No, the auguries in Scotland were definitely not encouraging.

  In England, the address against Lauderdale was carried through the Commons, for all Danby’s sedulous efforts to prevent it. Charles, although it was in his nature, as his brother James said, ‘to keep measures with everybody’, was obviously furious at the impertinence of the Commons. Saying icily that he preferred not to answer the address, he adjourned Parliament for ten days.

  In Europe a further impetus towards peace was given by the exhaustion of the Dutch. And Louis XIV, already worried by Charles II’s little gambit of proposing a quadruple alliance excluding France, was not averse to being involved in further negotiations. Even so, he retained a very hard-headed notion of the value of his own conquests: the peace negotiations underwent one further check, until Charles II, either in genuine disgust or more probably to bring about the conference he desired, proposed sending some English troops to Flanders to assist the Dutch. The way was finally cleared for the negotiations which led to the Peace of Nymegen on 10 August. By this, France was left with a good deal of the conquered Flemish territory, if not all she had desired; she also secured a workable boundary with the Spanish Netherlands.

  The Dutch got the respite that they, rather than William, wanted. William had been reluctant to see his ‘mortal enemy’ confirmed in so much new ground; nevertheless, he too was able to use the temporary lull of the next few years to build up himself and his country against the final assault. Sir William Temple hailed the role of Charles II in all of this grandiloquently: the King, he declared, was once more ‘at the head of the affairs of Christendom’.31 This was the reassurance the King wanted since the waning of his European prestige after 1673.

  The same happy claim could not be made for the King’s affairs at home. So ragged had relations between Parliament and King become by the summer of 1678 that it has been suggested that Danby at least was considering the maintenance of the King’s authority by use of the Army internally. It has also been proposed that the King himself might have contemplated such action.32 But there is no proof that Charles II ever contemplated what would have been – by his standards – a disastrous course. Mending and patching, ironing over, smoothing down, these were the natural instincts of Charles II. So deeply were they ingrained that even an outbreak of passion, as over the Lauderdale incident or the Commons’ open interference with foreign policy the previous year, was generally followed by a show of regained composure. And there were two good reasons to dissuade him.

  First, there was a practical point. He had no money in hand with which to pay the soldiers on any grand scale. It is true that the Commons had voted supplies for the ‘disbandment’ of the Army on 30 May, the King having told them a week earlier that the issue of peace or war would depend upon their supplies: ‘I leave it to you to consider whether to provide for their [the Army’s] subsistence so long or for their disbanding sooner.’ The Commons opted for the latter course on the grounds that the King was obviously determined not to fight France: peace would leave him in control of just that kind of force the Commons dreaded, unless something was done about it. When the King asked
for – and was refused – an extra £300,000 a year on 18 June to ensure peace, the Commons were even more suspicious. The King was, however, left with the ‘disbandment’ supplies, which he proceeded to use for the Army’s maintenance. But this sum alone would not take him very far.

  One lesson taught by the Commonwealth was that unpaid soldiers sought new masters. It was true Charles II had emerged from the Restoration with full powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Army. As Sir Joseph Williamson pointed out in 1678, ‘I know of nothing that can hinder the King from raising what forces he pleases, if he pays for them himself.’33 But there was no way that a king hamstrung financially could possibly have financed such an arbitrary force in such a way as to maintain power by it for any effective period.

  The second reason, which was psychological, was even more important. Charles II had witnessed at first hand the fatal – because it was unsuccessful – use of the Army by his own father. He had himself been restored by the Commonwealth Army, but in their good time, not his own; his Army in exile had proved useless in recapturing the throne. He loved the new English Army which he had constructed since 1661, devoting much time to details of its welfare. Yet an interest in the special red and black uniforms of his hundred Yeomen of the Guard – ‘a livery coat of fine red cloth guarded with black velvet with Rose and Crown, his Majesty’s motto and Scroll C R, back and breast, embroidered with silver and gilt spangles. Similar breeches’ – should not be equated with a manic wish to take away the Parliamentary bauble by military means, as Oliver Cromwell had once done.34

  Charles was perfectly prepared to sacrifice a number of things in the good cause of the peace of his kingdom – ranging from the abstract, such as the truth, to the concrete, such as his financial independence; but he was not prepared to sacrifice that peace itself. The use of the Army would have been another ‘false Step’, like the Stop on the Exchequer; this one might have disrupted the careful structure of the kingdom altogether.

  It was easier to prorogue Parliament yet again. Charles II’s so-called Long Parliament was adjourned on 15 July. Perhaps peace in Europe would after all be matched by the return of ‘tranquillity’ at home.

  1 There are many versions of this epigram, which has been transformed into an epitaph in the best known version of all, beginning ‘Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King …’. But since Rochester predeceased Charles II, it could hardly have originated in this form. The epigram does not appear in the early editions of Rochester’s works. The version above, with the circumstances which led up to it, was first given by Thomas Hearne in his Remarks and Collections (notes for his historical works) in his entry for 17 November 1706.

  2 The King, as usual, was more generous on paper than in fact. He was a long time paying the various bills, including that of Anne’s wedding dress; but this was due to financial necessity. The ceremony, and the King’s official acknowledgement of Anne’s paternity, certainly made it improbable that she was actually Roger Palmer’s child (see here).

  3 The other children of James and Mary Beatrice – all daughters – died young during the reign of Charles II. It was the birth of a son in June 1688 then called James Edward, known to history as the Old Pretender, which provoked the crisis which led to the departure of James II from the throne.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Against Exclusion

  ‘On the other hand, some argued against the exclusion that it was unlawful in itself, and against the unalterable law of succession (which came to be the common phrase).’

  Bishop Burnet on Parliament, 1679

  The August of 1678 was fiercely hot: a surprise which even the English summer can sometimes spring. Charles II, revelling in all the varied enchantments of Windsor, went fishing and tried to let his cares run softly by the waters of the sweet Thames.

  One of his minor cares was the danger of assassination. It was a seventeenth- as well as a sixteenth-century weapon (the first Duke of Buckingham had fallen to an assassin’s dagger; the Royalist conspirators had aimed frequently, if unsuccessfully, at the death of Cromwell). There had been various plots against Charles’ own life, from the Fifth Monarchists of 1661 onwards. Given the King’s temperament, both courageous and fatalistic, it is unlikely that it represented more than just that – a minor care. A man who had the habit of an early morning walk represented an easy target; a man who regularly promenaded among his subjects in St James’s Park obviously counted on his popularity rather than his guards to protect him.

  Nevertheless, having survived so far, Charles II did not intend to fall victim either to clamorous opposition in Parliament or to armed attack elsewhere. As a plotter himself, he believed in keeping a casual eye on such tendencies in others. He also appreciated instinctively, better than we can today, just what his contemporaries might hope to achieve by the death of a king. He had seen the devastation brought upon the monarchy by the execution of his father. The substitution of one monarch for another, be that monarch any one of his assorted relatives, might be plausibly expected to bring about a great alteration in affairs: religious, political, or both.

  Shortly before the King left London, a man named Christopher Kirkby warned him about a plot against his life. Kirkby was known to the King because he shared his interest in chemical experiments.1 With some difficulty Kirkby managed to deliver the first part of his warning just as Charles was entering St James’s Park on his morning saunter. Although Kirkby suggested that the assassination might be carried out imminently in the park itself, the King still proceeded on his way. It was only in the evening, still unassassinated, that he hearkened further to Kirkby’s dramatic tale. This story was subsequently supported by one Israel Tonge, a slightly dotty Anglican clergyman who had allegedly uncovered the plot.

  The plot’s substance was however quite incredible: it involved the Catholics in England, notably the Jesuits, and Louis XIV ganging up together to kill the King; then they would all take up arms together to prevent the accession of the Duke of York; the end result would be the conquest of England for France. The assassination complex of the time had taken Charles as far as listening to Kirkby and Tonge – at his leisure – but it could take him no further, given the ludicrous nature of their revelations. It was therefore probably because the accused Catholics included a member of the Queen’s household, Sir George Wakeman, that Charles handed the matter over to Danby.2 Then he went to Windsor.

  In Danby, Tonge found a more susceptible audience. Danby did not love France, to put it mildly, and had a prejudiced Anglican view of the Papists. Besides, it was Danby’s duty to ensure the safety of the King. Tonge produced papers which Danby found sufficiently convincing to proceed to a further examination of the subject. It was in this way that another character was summoned onto the stage, one whose sheer roguery should, if there had been any justice, have shown it up at once and for ever for what it was. This was a man named Titus Oates.

  Titus Oates had been born in the year of the execution of Charles I and was thus nearly thirty at the time of the egregious events for which he was later remembered. Westminster School and Merchant Taylor’s, Gonville and Caius College and St John’s: all these could claim the honour of his education. Despite these advantages, up till 1678 Oates had had a generally disreputable career. Betrayal was its keynote. He was himself a practising homosexual but had chosen to bring this charge against another man (it was dismissed). From being in Anglican Orders, Oates was converted to Catholicism; instructed as a Jesuit, he abandoned his new faith in 1677. His curriculum vitae was certainly not one which should have inspired any confidence in his testimony.

  Contemporary descriptions of Titus Oates are almost universally unfavourable. His low forehead, little nose, tiny deep-set eyes, fat cheeks and vast wobbling chins make him sound more like a pig than a man. Once he had achieved fame, or infamy, Oates also showed a taste for playing the dandy which must have made him still more grotesque. But such descriptions also dwell on his voice. It was the ‘speech of the gutter’ wrote a Jesuit hist
orian: in a tone both ‘strident and sing-song’ he ‘wailed rather than spoke’.3 One suspects that, like many others whose true impact has perished with them, including Rasputin, Oates was a bit of a mesmerist. Otherwise he could hardly have maintained his remarkable career, even allowing for anti-Popery, over three reigns.

  First examined by the Council, at Tonge’s suggestion, on 28 September, Oates produced a fusillade of fantastic accusations. Some of his rounds were fired across the water at the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Peter Talbot, amongst others. Most of his charges constituted a tarradiddle of lies, easily contradicted. It was only when Oates pointed his weapon wildly but enthusiastically in the direction of the personal servants of the royal family that he met with a piece of undeserved luck. Oates named Sir George Wakeman, Queen Catharine’s physician, and Edward Coleman, secretary to the Duchess of York.4 Using Wakeman’s medical expertise, they were supposed to have plotted the death of the King by poison. And very soon the Council did bring to light some highly unwise correspondence between Coleman and the confessor to Louis XIV.

  The trouble was that these royal Catholic households presented a sitting target for the charges of the malicious, such as Oates, and had done so since the days of Henrietta Maria. At best, they were tolerated, their existence guaranteed in theory by a marriage treaty, but their numbers were heavily circumscribed and subjected to disgruntled questioning from time to time by the House of Commons. At worst, they were harried and suspected. At all times such Papist enclaves were highly unpopular. As a result, these worlds within a world were Byzantine in character. The men concerned were often cut off from the ordinary life of England for years, even if they had been born there; they were thus quite ignorant of it. And where Catharine of Braganza and Mary Beatrice of Modena were modest, pious, charming women, their servants did not always have the same standards of behaviour. Coleman, the son of an Anglican clergyman, was full of the traditional zeal of the convert. No doubt, on his arrival in the household of the Duke of York in 1675, he did see intriguing with France as part of the work he should do to restore the true Faith to England (although that of course was a far cry from planning the assassination of Charles II). The King had several times asked his brother to dismiss Coleman (but that again hardly gave Coleman a motive for a daring murder).