Chapter XXXV - England Under Charles the Second, Called the Merry Monarch

by Charles Dickens

　　There never were such profligate times in England as under Charlesthe Second. Whenever you see his portrait, with his swarthy, ill-looking face and great nose, you may fancy him in his Court atWhitehall, surrounded by some of the very worst vagabonds in thekingdom (though they were lords and ladies), drinking, gambling,indulging in vicious conversation, and committing every kind ofprofligate excess. It has been a fashion to call Charles theSecond 'The Merry Monarch.' Let me try to give you a general ideaof some of the merry things that were done, in the merry days whenthis merry gentleman sat upon his merry throne, in merry England.

　　The first merry proceeding was - of course - to declare that he wasone of the greatest, the wisest, and the noblest kings that evershone, like the blessed sun itself, on this benighted earth. Thenext merry and pleasant piece of business was, for the Parliament,in the humblest manner, to give him one million two hundredthousand pounds a year, and to settle upon him for life that olddisputed tonnage and poundage which had been so bravely fought for.Then, General Monk being made Earl of Albemarle, and a few otherRoyalists similarly rewarded, the law went to work to see what wasto be done to those persons (they were called Regicides) who hadbeen concerned in making a martyr of the late King. Ten of thesewere merrily executed; that is to say, six of the judges, one ofthe council, Colonel Hacker and another officer who had commandedthe Guards, and Hugh Peters, a preacher who had preached againstthe martyr with all his heart. These executions were so extremelymerry, that every horrible circumstance which Cromwell hadabandoned was revived with appalling cruelty. The hearts of thesufferers were torn out of their living bodies; their bowels wereburned before their faces; the executioner cut jokes to the nextvictim, as he rubbed his filthy hands together, that were reekingwith the blood of the last; and the heads of the dead were drawn onsledges with the living to the place of suffering. Still, even somerry a monarch could not force one of these dying men to say thathe was sorry for what he had done. Nay, the most memorable thingsaid among them was, that if the thing were to do again they woulddo 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 thescaffold on Tower Hill, after conducting his own defence with greatpower, his notes of what he had meant to say to the people weretorn away from him, and the drums and trumpets were ordered tosound lustily and drown his voice; for, the people had been so muchimpressed by what the Regicides had calmly said with their lastbreath, that it was the custom now, to have the drums and trumpetsalways under the scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane said no morethan this: 'It is a bad cause which cannot bear the words of adying 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 OliverCromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were torn out of their graves inWestminster Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows allday long, and then beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwellset upon a pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whomwould have dared to look the living Oliver in the face for half amoment! Think, after you have read this reign, what England wasunder Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his grave, and what itwas under this merry monarch who sold it, like a merry Judas, overand over again.

　　Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter were not to bespared either, though they had been most excellent women. The baseclergy of that time gave up their bodies, which had been buried inthe Abbey, and - to the eternal disgrace of England - they werethrown into a pit, together with the mouldering bones of Pym and ofthe brave and bold old Admiral Blake.

　　The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped to getthe nonconformists, or dissenters, thoroughly put down in thisreign, and to have but one prayer-book and one service for allkinds of people, no matter what their private opinions were. Thiswas pretty well, I think, for a Protestant Church, which haddisplaced the Romish Church because people had a right to their ownopinions in religious matters. However, they carried it with ahigh hand, and a prayer-book was agreed upon, in which theextremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were not forgotten. An Actwas passed, too, preventing any dissenter from holding any officeunder any corporation. So, the regular clergy in their triumphwere soon as merry as the King. The army being by this timedisbanded, and the King crowned, everything was to go on easily forevermore.

　　I must say a word here about the King's family. He had not beenlong upon the throne when his brother the Duke of Gloucester, andhis sister the Princess of Orange, died within a few months of eachother, 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 HighAdmiral, and by-and-by became a Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen,bilious sort of man, with a remarkable partiality for the ugliestwomen in the country. He married, under very discreditablecircumstances, Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord Clarendon, then theKing's principal Minister - not at all a delicate minister either,but doing much of the dirty work of a very dirty palace. It becameimportant now that the King himself should be married; and diversforeign Monarchs, not very particular about the character of theirson-in-law, proposed their daughters to him. The King of Portugaloffered his daughter, Catherine oF Braganza, and fifty thousandpounds: in addition to which, the French King, who was favourableto that match, offered a loan of another fifty thousand. The Kingof Spain, on the other hand, offered any one out of a dozen ofPrincesses, and other hopes of gain. But the ready money carriedthe day, and Catherine came over in state to her merry marriage.

　　The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of debauched men andshameless women; and Catherine's merry husband insulted andoutraged her in every possible way, until she consented to receivethose worthless creatures as her very good friends, and to degradeherself by their companionship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom the King madeLady Castlemaine, and afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, was one ofthe most powerful of the bad women about the Court, and had greatinfluence with the King nearly all through his reign. Anothermerry lady named Moll Davies, a dancer at the theatre, wasafterwards her rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange girl andthen an actress, who really had good in her, and of whom one of theworst things I know is, that actually she does seem to have beenfond of the King. The first Duke of St. Albans was this orangegirl's child. In like manner the son of a merry waiting-lady, whomthe King created Duchess of Portsmouth, became the Duke ofRichmond. Upon the whole it is not so bad a thing to be acommoner.

　　The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among these merryladies, and some equally merry (and equally infamous) lords andgentlemen, that he soon got through his hundred thousand pounds,and then, by way of raising a little pocket-money, made a merrybargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French King for five millions oflivres. When I think of the dignity to which Oliver Cromwellraised England in the eyes of foreign powers, and when I think ofthe manner in which he gained for England this very Dunkirk, I ammuch inclined to consider that if the Merry Monarch had been madeto follow his father for this action, he would have received hisjust deserts.

　　Though he was like his father in none of that father's greaterqualities, he was like him in being worthy of no trust. When hesent that letter to the Parliament, from Breda, he did expresslypromise that all sincere religious opinions should be respected.Yet he was no sooner firm in his power than he consented to one ofthe worst Acts of Parliament ever passed. Under this law, everyminister who should not give his solemn assent to the Prayer-Bookby a certain day, was declared to be a minister no longer, and tobe deprived of his church. The consequence of this was that sometwo thousand honest men were taken from their congregations, andreduced to dire poverty and distress. It was followed by anotheroutrageous law, called the Conventicle Act, by which any personabove the age of sixteen who was present at any religious servicenot according to the Prayer-Book, was to be imprisoned three monthsfor the first offence, six for the second, and to be transportedfor the third. This Act alone filled the prisons, which were thenmost dreadful dungeons, to overflowing.

　　The Covenanters in Scotland had already fared no better. A baseParliament, usually known as the Drunken Parliament, in consequenceof its principal members being seldom sober, had been got togetherto make laws against the Covenanters, and to force all men to be ofone mind in religious matters. The Marquis of Argyle, relying onthe King's honour, had given himself up to him; but, he waswealthy, and his enemies wanted his wealth. He was tried fortreason, on the evidence of some private letters in which he hadexpressed opinions - as well he might - more favourable to thegovernment of the late Lord Protector than of the present merry andreligious King. He was executed, as were two men of mark among theCovenanters; and Sharp, a traitor who had once been the friend ofthe Presbyterians and betrayed them, was made Archbishop of St.Andrew's, to teach the Scotch how to like bishops.

　　Things being in this merry state at home, the Merry Monarchundertook a war with the Dutch; principally because they interferedwith an African company, established with the two objects of buyinggold-dust and slaves, of which the Duke of York was a leadingmember. After some preliminary hostilities, the said Duke sailedto the coast of Holland with a fleet of ninety-eight vessels ofwar, and four fire-ships. This engaged with the Dutch fleet, of nofewer than one hundred and thirteen ships. In the great battlebetween the two forces, the Dutch lost eighteen ships, fouradmirals, and seven thousand men. But, the English on shore werein no mood of exultation when they heard the news.

　　For, this was the year and the time of the Great Plague in London.During the winter of one thousand six hundred and sixty-four it hadbeen whispered about, that some few people had died here and thereof the disease called the Plague, in some of the unwholesomesuburbs around London. News was not published at that time as itis now, and some people believed these rumours, and somedisbelieved them, and they were soon forgotten. But, in the monthof May, one thousand six hundred and sixty-five, it began to besaid all over the town that the disease had burst out with greatviolence in St. Giles's, and that the people were dying in greatnumbers. This soon turned out to be awfully true. The roads outof London were choked up by people endeavouring to escape from theinfected city, and large sums were paid for any kind of conveyance.The disease soon spread so fast, that it was necessary to shut upthe houses in which sick people were, and to cut them off fromcommunication with the living. Every one of these houses wasmarked on the outside of the door with a red cross, and the words,Lord, have mercy upon us! The streets were all deserted, grassgrew in the public ways, and there was a dreadful silence in theair. When night came on, dismal rumblings used to be heard, andthese were the wheels of the death-carts, attended by men withveiled faces and holding cloths to their mouths, who rang dolefulbells and cried in a loud and solemn voice, 'Bring out your dead!'The corpses put into these carts were buried by torchlight in greatpits; no service being performed over them; all men being afraid tostay for a moment on the brink of the ghastly graves. In thegeneral fear, children ran away from their parents, and parentsfrom their children. Some who were taken ill, died alone, andwithout any help. Some were stabbed or strangled by hired nurseswho robbed them of all their money, and stole the very beds onwhich they lay. Some went mad, dropped from the windows, ranthrough the streets, and in their pain and frenzy flung themselvesinto the river.

　　These were not all the horrors of the time. The wicked anddissolute, in wild desperation, sat in the taverns singing roaringsongs, and were stricken as they drank, and went out and died. Thefearful and superstitious persuaded themselves that they sawsupernatural sights - burning swords in the sky, gigantic arms anddarts. Others pretended that at nights vast crowds of ghostswalked round and round the dismal pits. One madman, naked, andcarrying a brazier full of burning coals upon his head, stalkedthrough the streets, crying out that he was a Prophet, commissionedto denounce the vengeance of the Lord on wicked London. Anotheralways went to and fro, exclaiming, 'Yet forty days, and Londonshall be destroyed!' A third awoke the echoes in the dismalstreets, by night and by day, and made the blood of the sick runcold, by calling out incessantly, in a deep hoarse voice, 'O, thegreat and dreadful God!'

　　Through the months of July and August and September, the GreatPlague raged more and more. Great fires were lighted in thestreets, in the hope of stopping the infection; but there was aplague of rain too, and it beat the fires out. At last, the windswhich usually arise at that time of the year which is called theequinox, when day and night are of equal length all over the world,began to blow, and to purify the wretched town. The deaths beganto decrease, the red crosses slowly to disappear, the fugitives toreturn, the shops to open, pale frightened faces to be seen in thestreets. The Plague had been in every part of England, but inclose and unwholesome London it had killed one hundred thousandpeople.

　　All this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as ever, and asworthless as ever. All this time, the debauched lords andgentlemen and the shameless ladies danced and gamed and drank, andloved and hated one another, according to their merry ways.

　　So little humanity did the government learn from the lateaffliction, that one of the first things the Parliament did when itmet at Oxford (being as yet afraid to come to London), was to makea law, called the Five Mile Act, expressly directed against thosepoor ministers who, in the time of the Plague, had manfully comeback to comfort the unhappy people. This infamous law, byforbidding them to teach in any school, or to come within fivemiles of any city, town, or village, doomed them to starvation anddeath.

　　The fleet had been at sea, and healthy. The King of France was nowin alliance with the Dutch, though his navy was chiefly employed inlooking on while the English and Dutch fought. The Dutch gainedone victory; and the English gained another and a greater; andPrince Rupert, one of the English admirals, was out in the Channelone windy night, looking for the French Admiral, with the intentionof giving him something more to do than he had had yet, when thegale increased to a storm, and blew him into Saint Helen's. Thatnight was the third of September, one thousand six hundred andsixty-six, and that wind fanned the Great Fire of London.

　　It broke out at a baker's shop near London Bridge, on the spot onwhich the Monument now stands as a remembrance of those ragingflames. It spread and spread, and burned and burned, for threedays. The nights were lighter than the days; in the daytime therewas an immense cloud of smoke, and in the night-time there was agreat tower of fire mounting up into the sky, which lighted thewhole country landscape for ten miles round. Showers of hot ashesrose into the air and fell on distant places; flying sparks carriedthe conflagration to great distances, and kindled it in twenty newspots at a time; church steeples fell down with tremendous crashes;houses crumbled into cinders by the hundred and the thousand. Thesummer had been intensely hot and dry, the streets were verynarrow, and the houses mostly built of wood and plaster. Nothingcould stop the tremendous fire, but the want of more houses toburn; nor did it stop until the whole way from the Tower to TempleBar was a desert, composed of the ashes of thirteen thousand housesand eighty-nine churches.

　　This was a terrible visitation at the time, and occasioned greatloss and suffering to the two hundred thousand burnt-out people,who were obliged to lie in the fields under the open night sky, orin hastily-made huts of mud and straw, while the lanes and roadswere rendered impassable by carts which had broken down as theytried to save their goods. But the Fire was a great blessing tothe City afterwards, for it arose from its ruins very much improved- built more regularly, more widely, more cleanly and carefully,and therefore much more healthily. It might be far more healthythan it is, but there are some people in it still - even now, atthis time, nearly two hundred years later - so selfish, so pig-headed, and so ignorant, that I doubt if even another Great Firewould warm them up to do their duty.

　　The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set London in flames;one poor Frenchman, who had been mad for years, even accusedhimself of having with his own hand fired the first house. Thereis no reasonable doubt, however, that the fire was accidental. Aninscription on the Monument long attributed it to the Catholics;but it is removed now, and was always a malicious and stupiduntruth.

　　SECOND PART

　　That the Merry Monarch might be very merry indeed, in the merrytimes when his people were suffering under pestilence and fire, hedrank and gambled and flung away among his favourites the moneywhich the Parliament had voted for the war. The consequence ofthis was that the stout-hearted English sailors were merrilystarving of want, and dying in the streets; while the Dutch, undertheir admirals de Witt and de Ruyter, came into the River Thames,and up the River Medway as far as Upnor, burned the guard-ships,silenced the weak batteries, and did what they would to the Englishcoast for six whole weeks. Most of the English ships that couldhave prevented them had neither powder nor shot on board; in thismerry reign, public officers made themselves as merry as the Kingdid with the public money; and when it was entrusted to them tospend in national defences or preparations, they put it into theirown pockets with the merriest grace in the world.

　　Lord Clarendon had, by this time, run as long a course as isusually allotted to the unscrupulous ministers of bad kings. Hewas impeached by his political opponents, but unsuccessfully. TheKing then commanded him to withdraw from England and retire toFrance, which he did, after defending himself in writing. He wasno great loss at home, and died abroad some seven years afterwards.

　　There then came into power a ministry called the Cabal Ministry,because it was composed of Lord Clifford, the Earl of Arlington,the Duke oF Buckingham (a great rascal, and the King's mostpowerful favourite), Lord Ashley, and the Duke of Lauderdale, C. A.B. A. L. As the French were making conquests in Flanders, thefirst Cabal proceeding was to make a treaty with the Dutch, foruniting with Spain to oppose the French. It was no sooner madethan the Merry Monarch, who always wanted to get money withoutbeing accountable to a Parliament for his expenditure, apologisedto the King of France for having had anything to do with it, andconcluded a secret treaty with him, making himself his infamouspensioner to the amount of two millions of livres down, and threemillions more a year; and engaging to desert that very Spain, tomake war against those very Dutch, and to declare himself aCatholic when a convenient time should arrive. This religious kinghad lately been crying to his Catholic brother on the subject ofhis strong desire to be a Catholic; and now he merrily concludedthis treasonable conspiracy against the country he governed, byundertaking to become one as soon as he safely could. For all ofwhich, though he had had ten merry heads instead of one, he richlydeserved to lose them by the headsman's axe.

　　As his one merry head might have been far from safe, if thesethings had been known, they were kept very quiet, and war wasdeclared by France and England against the Dutch. But, a veryuncommon man, afterwards most important to English history and tothe religion and liberty of this land, arose among them, and formany long years defeated the whole projects of France. This wasWilliam of Nassau, Prince of Orange, son of the last Prince ofOrange of the same name, who married the daughter of Charles theFirst of England. He was a young man at this time, only just ofage; but he was brave, cool, intrepid, and wise. His father hadbeen so detested that, upon his death, the Dutch had abolished theauthority to which this son would have otherwise succeeded(Stadtholder it was called), and placed the chief power in thehands of John de Witt, who educated this young prince. Now, thePrince became very popular, and John de Witt's brother Corneliuswas sentenced to banishment on a false accusation of conspiring tokill him. John went to the prison where he was, to take him awayto exile, in his coach; and a great mob who collected on theoccasion, then and there cruelly murdered both the brothers. Thisleft the government in the hands of the Prince, who was really thechoice of the nation; and from this time he exercised it with thegreatest vigour, against the whole power of France, under itsfamous generals Conde and Turenne, and in support of the Protestantreligion. It was full seven years before this war ended in atreaty of peace made at Nimeguen, and its details would occupy avery considerable space. It is enough to say that William ofOrange established a famous character with the whole world; andthat the Merry Monarch, adding to and improving on his formerbaseness, bound himself to do everything the King of France liked,and nothing the King of France did not like, for a pension of onehundred thousand pounds a year, which was afterwards doubled.Besides this, the King of France, by means of his corruptambassador - who wrote accounts of his proceedings in England,which are not always to be believed, I think - bought our Englishmembers of Parliament, as he wanted them. So, in point of fact,during a considerable portion of this merry reign, the King ofFrance was the real King of this country.

　　But there was a better time to come, and it was to come (though hisroyal uncle little thought so) through that very William, Prince ofOrange. He came over to England, saw Mary, the elder daughter ofthe Duke of York, and married her. We shall see by-and-by whatcame of that marriage, and why it is never to be forgotten.

　　This daughter was a Protestant, but her mother died a Catholic.She and her sister Anne, also a Protestant, were the only survivorsof eight children. Anne afterwards married George, Prince ofDenmark, brother to the King of that country.

　　Lest you should do the Merry Monarch the injustice of supposingthat he was even good humoured (except when he had everything hisown way), or that he was high spirited and honourable, I willmention here what was done to a member of the House of Commons, SirJohn Coventry. He made a remark in a debate about taxing thetheatres, which gave the King offence. The King agreed with hisillegitimate son, who had been born abroad, and whom he had madeDuke of Monmouth, to take the following merry vengeance. To waylayhim at night, fifteen armed men to one, and to slit his nose with apenknife. Like master, like man. The King's favourite, the Dukeof Buckingham, was strongly suspected of setting on an assassin tomurder the Duke of Ormond as he was returning home from a dinner;and that Duke's spirited son, Lord Ossory, was so persuaded of hisguilt, that he said to him at Court, even as he stood beside theKing, 'My lord, I know very well that you are at the bottom of thislate attempt upon my father. But I give you warning, if he evercome to a violent end, his blood shall be upon you, and wherever Imeet you I will pistol you! I will do so, though I find youstanding behind the King's chair; and I tell you this in hisMajesty's presence, that you may be quite sure of my doing what Ithreaten.' Those were merry times indeed.

　　There was a fellow named Blood, who was seized for making, with twocompanions, an audacious attempt to steal the crown, the globe, andsceptre, from the place where the jewels were kept in the Tower.This robber, who was a swaggering ruffian, being taken, declaredthat he was the man who had endeavoured to kill the Duke of Ormond,and that he had meant to kill the King too, but was overawed by themajesty of his appearance, when he might otherwise have done it, ashe was bathing at Battersea. The King being but an ill-lookingfellow, I don't believe a word of this. Whether he was flattered,or whether he knew that Buckingham had really set Blood on tomurder the Duke, is uncertain. But it is quite certain that hepardoned this thief, gave him an estate of five hundred a year inIreland (which had had the honour of giving him birth), andpresented him at Court to the debauched lords and the shamelessladies, who made a great deal of him - as I have no doubt theywould have made of the Devil himself, if the King had introducedhim.

　　Infamously pensioned as he was, the King still wanted money, andconsequently was obliged to call Parliaments. In these, the greatobject of the Protestants was to thwart the Catholic Duke of York,who married a second time; his new wife being a young lady onlyfifteen years old, the Catholic sister of the Duke of Modena. Inthis they were seconded by the Protestant Dissenters, though totheir own disadvantage: since, to exclude Catholics from power,they were even willing to exclude themselves. The King's objectwas to pretend to be a Protestant, while he was really a Catholic;to swear to the bishops that he was devoutly attached to theEnglish Church, while he knew he had bargained it away to the Kingof France; and by cheating and deceiving them, and all who wereattached to royalty, to become despotic and be powerful enough toconfess what a rascal he was. Meantime, the King of France,knowing his merry pensioner well, intrigued with the King'sopponents in Parliament, as well as with the King and his friends.

　　The fears that the country had of the Catholic religion beingrestored, if the Duke of York should come to the throne, and thelow cunning of the King in pretending to share their alarms, led tosome very terrible results. A certain Dr. Tonge, a dull clergymanin the City, fell into the hands of a certain Titus Oates, a mostinfamous character, who pretended to have acquired among theJesuits abroad a knowledge of a great plot for the murder of theKing, and the re-establishment if the Catholic religion. TitusOates, being produced by this unlucky Dr. Tonge and solemnlyexamined before the council, contradicted himself in a thousandways, told the most ridiculous and improbable stories, andimplicated Coleman, the Secretary of the Duchess of York. Now,although what he charged against Coleman was not true, and althoughyou and I know very well that the real dangerous Catholic plot wasthat one with the King of France of which the Merry Monarch washimself the head, there happened to be found among Coleman'spapers, some letters, in which he did praise the days of BloodyQueen Mary, and abuse the Protestant religion. This was great goodfortune for Titus, as it seemed to confirm him; but better stillwas in store. Sir Edmundbury Godfrey, the magistrate who had firstexamined him, being unexpectedly found dead near Primrose Hill, wasconfidently believed to have been killed by the Catholics. I thinkthere is no doubt that he had been melancholy mad, and that hekilled himself; but he had a great Protestant funeral, and Tituswas called the Saver of the Nation, and received a pension oftwelve hundred pounds a year.

　　As soon as Oates's wickedness had met with this success, up startedanother villain, named William Bedloe, who, attracted by a rewardof five hundred pounds offered for the apprehension of themurderers of Godfrey, came forward and charged two Jesuits and someother persons with having committed it at the Queen's desire.Oates, going into partnership with this new informer, had theaudacity to accuse the poor Queen herself of high treason. Thenappeared a third informer, as bad as either of the two, and accuseda Catholic banker named Stayley of having said that the King wasthe greatest rogue in the world (which would not have been far fromthe truth), and that he would kill him with his own hand. Thisbanker, being at once tried and executed, Coleman and two otherswere tried and executed. Then, a miserable wretch named Prance, aCatholic silversmith, being accused by Bedloe, was tortured intoconfessing that he had taken part in Godfrey's murder, and intoaccusing three other men of having committed it. Then, fiveJesuits were accused by Oates, Bedloe, and Prance together, andwere all found guilty, and executed on the same kind ofcontradictory and absurd evidence. The Queen's physician and threemonks were next put on their trial; but Oates and Bedloe had forthe time gone far enough and these four were acquitted. The publicmind, however, was so full of a Catholic plot, and so strongagainst the Duke of York, that James consented to obey a writtenorder from his brother, and to go with his family to Brussels,provided that his rights should never be sacrificed in his absenceto the Duke of Monmouth. The House of Commons, not satisfied withthis as the King hoped, passed a bill to exclude the Duke from eversucceeding to the throne. In return, the King dissolved theParliament. He had deserted his old favourite, the Duke ofBuckingham, who was now in the opposition.

　　To give any sufficient idea of the miseries of Scotland in thismerry reign, would occupy a hundred pages. Because the peoplewould not have bishops, and were resolved to stand by their solemnLeague and Covenant, such cruelties were inflicted upon them asmake the blood run cold. Ferocious dragoons galloped through thecountry to punish the peasants for deserting the churches; sonswere hanged up at their fathers' doors for refusing to disclosewhere their fathers were concealed; wives were tortured to deathfor not betraying their husbands; people were taken out of theirfields and gardens, and shot on the public roads without trial;lighted matches were tied to the fingers of prisoners, and a mosthorrible torment called the Boot was invented, and constantlyapplied, which ground and mashed the victims' legs with ironwedges. Witnesses were tortured as well as prisoners. All theprisons were full; all the gibbets were heavy with bodies; murderand plunder devastated the whole country. In spite of all, theCovenanters were by no means to be dragged into the churches, andpersisted in worshipping God as they thought right. A body offerocious Highlanders, turned upon them from the mountains of theirown country, had no greater effect than the English dragoons underGrahame of Claverhouse, the most cruel and rapacious of all theirenemies, whose name will ever be cursed through the length andbreadth of Scotland. Archbishop Sharp had ever aided and abettedall these outrages. But he fell at last; for, when the injuries ofthe Scottish people were at their height, he was seen, in hiscoach-and-six coming across a moor, by a body of men, headed by oneJohn Balfour, who were waiting for another of their oppressors.Upon this they cried out that Heaven had delivered him into theirhands, and killed him with many wounds. If ever a man deservedsuch a death, I think Archbishop Sharp did.

　　It made a great noise directly, and the Merry Monarch - stronglysuspected of having goaded the Scottish people on, that he mighthave an excuse for a greater army than the Parliament were willingto give him - sent down his son, the Duke of Monmouth, ascommander-in-chief, with instructions to attack the Scottishrebels, or Whigs as they were called, whenever he came up withthem. Marching with ten thousand men from Edinburgh, he foundthem, in number four or five thousand, drawn up at Bothwell Bridge,by the Clyde. They were soon dispersed; and Monmouth showed a morehumane character towards them, than he had shown towards thatMember of Parliament whose nose he had caused to be slit with apenknife. But the Duke of Lauderdale was their bitter foe, andsent Claverhouse to finish them.

　　As the Duke of York became more and more unpopular, the Duke ofMonmouth became more and more popular. It would have been decentin the latter not to have voted in favour of the renewed bill forthe exclusion of James from the throne; but he did so, much to theKing's amusement, who used to sit in the House of Lords by thefire, hearing the debates, which he said were as good as a play.The House of Commons passed the bill by a large majority, and itwas carried up to the House of Lords by Lord Russell, one of thebest of the leaders on the Protestant side. It was rejected there,chiefly because the bishops helped the King to get rid of it; andthe fear of Catholic plots revived again. There had been anothergot up, by a fellow out of Newgate, named Dangerfield, which ismore famous than it deserves to be, under the name of the Meal-TubPlot. This jail-bird having been got out of Newgate by a Mrs.Cellier, a Catholic nurse, had turned Catholic himself, andpretended that he knew of a plot among the Presbyterians againstthe King's life. This was very pleasant to the Duke of York, whohated the Presbyterians, who returned the compliment. He gaveDangerfield twenty guineas, and sent him to the King his brother.But Dangerfield, breaking down altogether in his charge, and beingsent back to Newgate, almost astonished the Duke out of his fivesenses by suddenly swearing that the Catholic nurse had put thatfalse design into his head, and that what he really knew about,was, a Catholic plot against the King; the evidence of which wouldbe found in some papers, concealed in a meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier'shouse. There they were, of course - for he had put them therehimself - and so the tub gave the name to the plot. But, the nursewas acquitted on her trial, and it came to nothing.

　　Lord Ashley, of the Cabal, was now Lord Shaftesbury, and was strongagainst the succession of the Duke of York. The House of Commons,aggravated to the utmost extent, as we may well suppose, bysuspicions of the King's conspiracy with the King of France, made adesperate point of the exclusion, still, and were bitter againstthe Catholics generally. So unjustly bitter were they, I grieve tosay, that they impeached the venerable Lord Stafford, a Catholicnobleman seventy years old, of a design to kill the King. Thewitnesses were that atrocious Oates and two other birds of the samefeather. He was found guilty, on evidence quite as foolish as itwas false, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. The people were opposedto him when he first appeared upon the scaffold; but, when he hadaddressed them and shown them how innocent he was and how wickedlyhe was sent there, their better nature was aroused, and they said,'We believe you, my Lord. God bless you, my Lord!'

　　The House of Commons refused to let the King have any money untilhe should consent to the Exclusion Bill; but, as he could get itand did get it from his master the King of France, he could affordto hold them very cheap. He called a Parliament at Oxford, towhich he went down with a great show of being armed and protectedas if he were in danger of his life, and to which the oppositionmembers also went armed and protected, alleging that they were infear of the Papists, who were numerous among the King's guards.However, they went on with the Exclusion Bill, and were so earnestupon it that they would have carried it again, if the King had notpopped his crown and state robes into a sedan-chair, bundledhimself into it along with them, hurried down to the chamber wherethe House of Lords met, and dissolved the Parliament. After whichhe scampered home, and the members of Parliament scampered hometoo, as fast as their legs could carry them.

　　The Duke of York, then residing in Scotland, had, under the lawwhich excluded Catholics from public trust, no right whatever topublic employment. Nevertheless, he was openly employed as theKing's representative in Scotland, and there gratified his sullenand cruel nature to his heart's content by directing the dreadfulcruelties against the Covenanters. There were two ministers namedCargill and Cameron who had escaped from the battle of BothwellBridge, and who returned to Scotland, and raised the miserable butstill brave and unsubdued Covenanters afresh, under the name ofCameronians. As Cameron publicly posted a declaration that theKing was a forsworn tyrant, no mercy was shown to his unhappyfollowers after he was slain in battle. The Duke of York, who wasparticularly fond of the Boot and derived great pleasure fromhaving it applied, offered their lives to some of these people, ifthey would cry on the scaffold 'God save the King!' But theirrelations, friends, and countrymen, had been so barbarouslytortured and murdered in this merry reign, that they preferred todie, and did die. The Duke then obtained his merry brother'spermission to hold a Parliament in Scotland, which first, with mostshameless deceit, confirmed the laws for securing the Protestantreligion against Popery, and then declared that nothing must orshould prevent the succession of the Popish Duke. After thisdouble-faced beginning, it established an oath which no human beingcould understand, but which everybody was to take, as a proof thathis religion was the lawful religion. The Earl of Argyle, takingit with the explanation that he did not consider it to prevent himfrom favouring any alteration either in the Church or State whichwas not inconsistent with the Protestant religion or with hisloyalty, was tried for high treason before a Scottish jury of whichthe Marquis of Montrose was foreman, and was found guilty. Heescaped the scaffold, for that time, by getting away, in thedisguise of a page, in the train of his daughter, Lady SophiaLindsay. It was absolutely proposed, by certain members of theScottish Council, that this lady should be whipped through thestreets of Edinburgh. But this was too much even for the Duke, whohad the manliness then (he had very little at most times) to remarkthat Englishmen were not accustomed to treat ladies in that manner.In those merry times nothing could equal the brutal servility ofthe Scottish fawners, but the conduct of similar degraded beings inEngland.

　　After the settlement of these little affairs, the Duke returned toEngland, and soon resumed his place at the Council, and his officeof High Admiral - all this by his brother's favour, and in opendefiance of the law. It would have been no loss to the country, ifhe had been drowned when his ship, in going to Scotland to fetchhis family, struck on a sand-bank, and was lost with two hundredsouls on board. But he escaped in a boat with some friends; andthe sailors were so brave and unselfish, that, when they saw himrowing away, they gave three cheers, while they themselves weregoing down for ever.

　　The Merry Monarch, having got rid of his Parliament, went to workto make himself despotic, with all speed. Having had the villainyto order the execution of Oliver Plunket, Bishop of Armagh, falselyaccused of a plot to establish Popery in that country by means of aFrench army - the very thing this royal traitor was himself tryingto do at home - and having tried to ruin Lord Shaftesbury, andfailed - he turned his hand to controlling the corporations allover the country; because, if he could only do that, he could getwhat juries he chose, to bring in perjured verdicts, and could getwhat members he chose returned to Parliament. These merry timesproduced, and made Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, adrunken ruffian of the name of Jeffreys; a red-faced, swollen,bloated, horrible creature, with a bullying, roaring voice, and amore savage nature perhaps than was ever lodged in any humanbreast. This monster was the Merry Monarch's especial favourite,and he testified his admiration of him by giving him a ring fromhis own finger, which the people used to call Judge Jeffreys'sBloodstone. Him the King employed to go about and bully thecorporations, beginning with London; or, as Jeffreys himselfelegantly called it, 'to give them a lick with the rough side ofhis tongue.' And he did it so thoroughly, that they soon becamethe basest and most sycophantic bodies in the kingdom - except theUniversity of Oxford, which, in that respect, was quite pre-eminentand unapproachable.

　　Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the King's failure againsthim), Lord William Russell, the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Howard, LordJersey, Algernon Sidney, John Hampden (grandson of the greatHampden), and some others, used to hold a council together afterthe dissolution of the Parliament, arranging what it might benecessary to do, if the King carried his Popish plot to the utmostheight. Lord Shaftesbury having been much the most violent of thisparty, brought two violent men into their secrets - Rumsey, who hadbeen a soldier in the Republican army; and West, a lawyer. Thesetwo knew an old officer of Cromwell's, called Rumbold, who hadmarried a maltster's widow, and so had come into possession of asolitary dwelling called the Rye House, near Hoddesdon, inHertfordshire. Rumbold said to them what a capital place thishouse of his would be from which to shoot at the King, who oftenpassed there going to and fro from Newmarket. They liked the idea,and entertained it. But, one of their body gave information; andthey, together with Shepherd a wine merchant, Lord Russell,Algernon Sidney, Lord Essex, Lord Howard, and Hampden, were allarrested.

　　Lord Russell might have easily escaped, but scorned to do so, beinginnocent of any wrong; Lord Essex might have easily escaped, butscorned to do so, lest his flight should prejudice Lord Russell.But it weighed upon his mind that he had brought into theircouncil, Lord Howard - who now turned a miserable traitor - againsta great dislike Lord Russell had always had of him. He could notbear the reflection, and destroyed himself before Lord Russell wasbrought to trial at the Old Bailey.

　　He knew very well that he had nothing to hope, having always beenmanful in the Protestant cause against the two false brothers, theone on the throne, and the other standing next to it. He had awife, one of the noblest and best of women, who acted as hissecretary on his trial, who comforted him in his prison, who suppedwith him on the night before he died, and whose love and virtue anddevotion have made her name imperishable. Of course, he was foundguilty, and was sentenced to be beheaded in Lincoln's Inn-fields,not many yards from his own house. When he had parted from hischildren on the evening before his death, his wife still stayedwith him until ten o'clock at night; and when their finalseparation in this world was over, and he had kissed her manytimes, he still sat for a long while in his prison, talking of hergoodness. Hearing the rain fall fast at that time, he calmly said,'Such a rain to-morrow will spoil a great show, which is a dullthing on a rainy day.' At midnight he went to bed, and slept tillfour; even when his servant called him, he fell asleep again whilehis clothes were being made ready. He rode to the scaffold in hisown carriage, attended by two famous clergymen, Tillotson andBurnet, and sang a psalm to himself very softly, as he went along.He was as quiet and as steady as if he had been going out for anordinary ride. After saying that he was surprised to see so greata crowd, he laid down his head upon the block, as if upon thepillow of his bed, and had it struck off at the second blow. Hisnoble wife was busy for him even then; for that true-hearted ladyprinted and widely circulated his last words, of which he had givenher a copy. They made the blood of all the honest men in Englandboil.

　　The University of Oxford distinguished itself on the very same dayby pretending to believe that the accusation against Lord Russellwas true, and by calling the King, in a written paper, the Breathof their Nostrils and the Anointed of the Lord. This paper theParliament afterwards caused to be burned by the common hangman;which I am sorry for, as I wish it had been framed and glazed andhung up in some public place, as a monument of baseness for thescorn of mankind.

　　Next, came the trial of Algernon Sidney, at which Jeffreyspresided, like a great crimson toad, sweltering and swelling withrage. 'I pray God, Mr. Sidney,' said this Chief Justice of a merryreign, after passing sentence, 'to work in you a temper fit to goto the other world, for I see you are not fit for this.' 'Mylord,' said the prisoner, composedly holding out his arm, 'feel mypulse, and see if I be disordered. I thank Heaven I never was inbetter temper than I am now.' Algernon Sidney was executed onTower Hill, on the seventh of December, one thousand six hundredand eighty-three. He died a hero, and died, in his own words, 'Forthat good old cause in which he had been engaged from his youth,and for which God had so often and so wonderfully declaredhimself.'

　　The Duke of Monmouth had been making his uncle, the Duke of York,very jealous, by going about the country in a royal sort of way,playing at the people's games, becoming godfather to theirchildren, and even touching for the King's evil, or stroking thefaces of the sick to cure them - though, for the matter of that, Ishould say he did them about as much good as any crowned king couldhave done. His father had got him to write a letter, confessinghis having had a part in the conspiracy, for which Lord Russell hadbeen beheaded; but he was ever a weak man, and as soon as he hadwritten it, he was ashamed of it and got it back again. For this,he was banished to the Netherlands; but he soon returned and had aninterview with his father, unknown to his uncle. It would seemthat he was coming into the Merry Monarch's favour again, and thatthe Duke of York was sliding out of it, when Death appeared to themerry galleries at Whitehall, and astonished the debauched lordsand gentlemen, and the shameless ladies, very considerably.

　　On Monday, the second of February, one thousand six hundred andeighty-five, the merry pensioner and servant of the King of Francefell down in a fit of apoplexy. By the Wednesday his case washopeless, and on the Thursday he was told so. As he made adifficulty about taking the sacrament from the Protestant Bishop ofBath, the Duke of York got all who were present away from the bed,and asked his brother, in a whisper, if he should send for aCatholic priest? The King replied, 'For God's sake, brother, do!'The Duke smuggled in, up the back stairs, disguised in a wig andgown, a priest named Huddleston, who had saved the King's lifeafter the battle of Worcester: telling him that this worthy man inthe wig had once saved his body, and was now come to save his soul.

　　The Merry Monarch lived through that night, and died before noon onthe next day, which was Friday, the sixth. Two of the last thingshe said were of a human sort, and your remembrance will give himthe full benefit of them. When the Queen sent to say she was toounwell to attend him and to ask his pardon, he said, 'Alas! poorwoman, she beg my pardon! I beg hers with all my heart. Take backthat answer to her.' And he also said, in reference to Nell Gwyn,'Do not let poor Nelly starve.'

　　He died in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth ofhis reign.