# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Charles II

1904 Errata appended.
​CHARLES II (1630–1686), king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, second son of Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, was born at St. James's Palace, London, 29 May 1630, and baptised by Laud, bishop of London, 7 July 1630, Louis XIII of France being one of his godfathers. In 1161 he was entrusted to the care of the Countess of Dorset (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1660–1, 341); the married name of his nurse, who according to Clarendon exercised a baleful influence upon him, was Wyndham (Rebellion, v. 153; cf. Cal. 1661–2, pp. 552-3). As a child he seems to have had vivacity and a will of his own (see his letters in Ellis, 1st series, iii. 286, 287). About 1635 an establishment was provided for him as Prince of Wales, with William Cavendish (1592–1676), earl of Newcastle [q. v.], as governor, and Dr. Brian Duppa [q. v.] as tutor. In 1639 he broke his arm and passed through a serious illness. In the following year, when a design is said to have been temporarily entertained of committing the charge of him to ​Hampden (Whitelocke ap. Harris, i. 10 n.), he took his seat in the House of Lords, and his first public act is said to have been that of carrying to the peers his father's letter in favour of Strafford (Cook, 8-9 ; Monarchy Revived, 9). Early in 1642 Newcastle generously resided his post of governor to the prince, which, on his recommendation, was bestowed upon the Marquis of Hertford, a personage in favour with the popular party, and probably by his amiability very acceptable to the prince. In February 1642 the House of Commons failed, however, to prevent Hertford from obeying the king's orders to take the prince to meet him at Greenwich, whence both moved to Theobalds and Newmarket, reaching York by 9 March. Here he was appointed to the nominal command of the troop of lifeguards formed of northern noblemen and gentlemen who had offered their services to the king. At Edgehill, he and his brother James, duke of York, narrowly escaped being taken prisoners. He accompanied the king in his November march upon London, but on the retreat to Oxford he fell sick of the measles at Reading. At Oxford the government of the 'hopeful and excellent prince,' as Clarendon calls him, was placed in the hands of the Earl of Berkshire, a nobleman of very slight reputation. The prince of course sat in the Oxford parliament, and his name was among those subscribed to the letter in favour of a pacification addressed to Essex 29 Jan. 1644. During his residence at Oxford negotiations seem to have been set on foot by Queen Henrietta Maria for a match between him and Louisa Henrietta, eldest daughter of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange; but in the end (April 1646) that project was dropped, like the one started about 1645 of a marriage with the infanta Joanna of Portugal. Soon after the breakdown of the Uxbridge negotiations Charles I at last resolved to separate from his son by sending him into the west. A council was at the same time named to be about the prince, consisting of the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Southampton, Lords Capel, Hopton, and Colepepper, Sir Edward Hyde, and probably Berkshire, whose governorship now came to an end (Clarendon, v. 155). At the same time the prince received a commission as general of the association of the four western counties, and anotlier to be general of all the king's forces in England, although he was in truth intended for the present to remain quiet in Bristol. The final parting between father and son took place 4 March 1645, when with Hyde and three hundred horse the prince left Oxford (Whitblocke, i. 404; for the prince's itinerary see Clarendon, Life, i. 230-1). In Bristol, and in the west in general, things were in a most unsatisfactory state, and much confusion and complaint had been caused by the royalist general Gdring and his troops. Clarendon states (v. 153) that at first the prince frequently attended the sittings of his council, where he accustomed himself 'to a habit of speaking and judging upon what was said ; ' but at Bridgewater, whither he went 23 April, and where an attempt was made to reorganise the defence of the western counties, he fell under evil influences and began to adopt a disrespectful tone towards the council, using. his position to promote a general feeling of irreverence towards his advisers. His recall by the king to Bristol was therefore a judicious step, but on account of its unhealthy state he soon again quitted it for Barnstaple, where he received the news of Naseby. After this he was much harassed by contradictory orders from the king, and by the proceedings of Goring and Sir Richard Greenville, whom the king had appointed commander-in-chief and major-general of the army in the west. In July Fairfax victoriously advanced into Somersetshire, and a visit from Prince Rupert apprised his cousin of the condition of the king, now a fugitive in Wales, and of the royal cause. Nothing remained for the prince but to withdraw into Cornwall ; and at Launceston he received an autograph letter from his father, dated Brecknock, 5 Aug. 1645, in which he was ordered whenever he found himself in personal danger to proceed to France, there to be under the care of his mother, who is to have the absolute full power of your education in all things except religion.' The prince was commanded in carrying out this order to require the assistance of his council ; but both inside and outride of it the feeling was strong against his departure for France. Among the Devonshire gentry a desire had arisen that he should interpose with the parliament in favour of peace ; and to quiet the prevailing agitation he paid a visit to Exeter. He accordingly sent a letter to Fairfax, requesting a pass for Colepepper and Hopton to go to the king and advise a pacific policy. Fairfax communicated the letter to both houses of parliament (Whitelock, i. 517-18). Even after the surrender of Bristol (10 Sept.) and the defeat of Montrose (13 Sept.) the prince's council seems to have not despaired of holding part of the west for the king if the prince remained; and, in view of the rivalry between Goring and Greenville, obedience was delayed to an explicit command from the king that the prince should immediately remove to France. One more overture to Fairfax was respectfully declined ​though the prince was assured that on disbanding his army Fairfax himself would safely convey him to the parliament (ib. i. 537); and while Goring betook himself to France, the prince, though orders continued to reach him from the king for his departure to the continent, continued to move about in the west, with the hope of heading a force for this relief of Exeter. After the arrest of Greenville and the rout of Hoptori at Torrington, the prince moved by way of Truro to Pendennis Castle at Falmouth (February 1616). Here he received information of a design, known to many persons of consideration in Cornwall, for seizing his person. Though the time had now obviously arrived for obeying the king'a positive and repeated command, it was not till the beginning of March that the council resolved that the prince should remove to Jersey or the Scilly Isles, the latter being announced as the goal of his voyage. Fairfax was within twenty miles of Falmouth, while Jermyn's promise of reinforcements from France remained unfulfilled. Accordingly 2 March 1645-6 the prince sailed in a frigate that had been kept in readiness, and reached Scilly 4 March. The army under Hopton, already completely demoralised, was speedily dissolved. (For further details of these tmnsactions see Clarendon's coloured narrative, v. 187-322; Sir Richard Greenville wrote his own account; Lord Hopton's is in the Ormonde Papers, ed. by Carte and cited by Harris, i. 21 n.)
Charles was in the Scilly Isles from 4 March to 16 April 1646 with Hyde. Colepepper, who was with him on his arrival, speedily left for France, while Hopton and Capel only reached him a few days before his departure. During his stay he received a message from both houses of parliament, dated 30 March, and inviting him, ‘in a loving and tender way,’ to ‘come in’ to them. In his answer he asked to he enabled to consult the king before assenting (Whitelocke, i. 587-8, ii. 12, cf. Harris, i. 24 n.) According to Clarendon (v. 360), the islands were on 12 April surrounded by a fleet of twenty-seven or twenty-eight sail, which was, however, dispersed by a two days’ storm. The opportunity was not to be lost; and the resolution to leave Scilly, in which, with the exception of Berkshire, the council was unanimous, was determined by letter written by Charles I to his son from Hereford soon after Naseby, but hitherto, in accordance with the king‘s wishes, kept secret by the prince (Clarendon, v. 361). A fair wind brought the fugitives to Jersey 17 April, where entreaties reached Charles from Queen Henrietta Maria to pursue his flight to Paris. His council urged objections to this plan; while Digby, who had arrived with two frigates from Ireland, proposed to carry the thither. In Paris both Colepepper and Digby were converted to the queen's views; Jermyn supported them, and the news of the king having placed himself in the hands of the Scots at Newark (5 May 1616) clinched the prince's resolution. But though the perceived further resistance to be useless, Hyde, Capel, Hopton, and Berkshire declined to accompany the prince to France, where he arrived about July. Hyde and his friends declared their commission at an end (ib. v. 387-407). Thus closes what may be called the first chapter of Charles’s public career.
Cardinal Mazarin had encouraged the removal to France of the heir to the English throne. But he hesitated under the circumstances to identify himself with his interests. The prince was therefore at first treated with something like studied neglect by the French court. His mother annexed to her allowance his own slender pittance, and kept him as dependent upon herself as possible (ib. v. 413-415, 554-5). After, it is said, being baulked in his desire of taking service in the French army under the Duke of Orleans, he was prostrated by a long attack of aguish fever (Cook, 21-2; Monarchy Revived, 28). He remained at Paris for rather more than two years, being there, as Burnet (i. 184) asserts, introduced to the vices and impieties of the age by the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Percy, without being grounded in the principles of religion by his mathematical tutor, Thomas Hobbes. (After the Restoration a pension was granted to Hobbes by Charles II: see Vitæ Hobbianæ Auctarium, xxxiii., in vol. xii. of Works, 1839). In 1648 the prince was to have played a prominent part in the so-called second civil war, but the scheme of placing him at the head of an invading Scottish army came to nothing. In July, however, he arrived at Helvoetsluys, and sailed thence with nineteen English ships faithful to the king, and a reputed force of twenty thousand men. He reached the Thames, where he took some prizes, issued a proclamation specially intended to conciliate the Scots and the Londoners, and then returned to Holland (Harris, i. 82 n.; Whitelocke, ii. 367-8; or his letter to the lords, ib. 376-6; for his offer to give up his prizes to the merchant adventurers on payment of 20,000l., ib. 872).
In Holland, notwithstanding some hesitation, Charles was courteously received and liberally treated (Whitelocke, ii. 399, 408), but he cannot have spent many gloomier months than these. He was attacked by the small-pox (ib. 436), and while his fleet ​dissolved by slow degrees (ib. 440), the news from England after the defeats of the Scots at Preston (17 Aug. 1648), Wigan, and Warrington, became worse and worse. Though in his later years little piety was observable in Charles towards the memory of his father, no effort was spared by him to avert the catastrophe of January 1649; he induced the States-General to attempt intercession; he appealed to Fairfax and the council of war, who laid his letter aside (Clarendon, vi. 211–13, 227–9); it is even supposed that he forwarded to the parliament a blank sheet, with his signature, in which they were to insert the terms on which they could 'save his father's head' (Harris, i. 37–41 n.) But all was of no avail, and Charles I was beheaded on 30 Jan. 1648–9. In Edinburgh Charles II was proclaimed king on 5 Feb. 1648–9, and public opinion in Scotland was with him. The commissioners of the Scottish parliament appear to have reached Holland towards the end of March, but it was not till just a year later that they were admitted to an interview with Charles (Köcher, 13). He was likewise proclaimed by Ormonde in the parts of Ireland under his control, by the Scots in Ulster, and in Guernsey. In England he was only proclaimed in one or two places, but assurances of sympathy as well as pecuniary support were received by him from Lincolnshire and the west. Nor were his relations with foreign powers altogether unpromising. France at least maintained no diplomatic intercourse with the Commonwealth government, and the States-General were at first disposed to be friendly towards the guest and kinsman of the house of Orange (Whitelocke, iii. 4, 30). The young queen Christina of Sweden was likewise friendly (Cal. 1649, preface). It was not till some months after his mother had urged him to return to France that Charles found his way to St. Germain (Whitelocke, iii. 3, 60, 63; Clarendon, vi. 307 et seqq.) His own inclinations lay, not towards Scotland and the covenant, but rather towards Ireland; this design, however, collapsed for want of money even before Cromwell's arrival in Ireland. From France, where as usual he felt ill at ease, Charles in September 1649 crossed to Jersey, whence 31 Oct. he issued a declaration asserting his rights. But the presence of the parliamentary fleet at Portsmouth caused him to set sail again 13 Feb. 1650, and once more to take refuge in the United Netherlands at Breda. Here he now felt obliged to listen to the Scotch parliamentary commissioners, who were all along supported by Hamilton and Lauderdale. Meanwhile Montrose, who had pressed upon Charles a scheme of his own, set up the royal standard in Scotland (January). A curious picture of the needy and frivolous but agreeable prince in this period of suspense remains from the hand of the Princess Sophia, whose mother the queen of Bohemia, then resident at the Hague, wished to marry her to her cousin while the Dowager Princess of Orange meant to secure him for one of her own daughters, and favoured the presbyterian offers (Köcher, 41–2; cf. Lord Byron to Ormonde in Ormonde Papers, and Cal. 1650, 85, and 1651–2, 135). Before the news of Montrose's overthrow reached Charles he had accepted the commissioner's terms, which imposed the covenant on himself and the entire Scottish nation, and stipulated that all civil affairs should be determined by the parliament. Soon afterwards he embarked at Terheyden in a frigate commanded by young Van Tromp, and provided, together with two other men-of-war, by the Prince of Orange. The prince's applications to Spain and other powers had proved in vain; some moneys raised in Poland and Muscovy seem to have come too late (Clarendon, v. 405 seq. vi. 569–70: Whitelocke, iii. 116, 179).
After a tempestuous voyage of twenty-two days, an attempt to intercept him having failed, Charles arrived in the frith of Cromarty 16 June (Heath, Chronicle, 268 ; Cal. 1650, 188). For three days he stayed in the bay of Gicht, in a house belonging to the Marquis of Huntly, but garrisoned by Argyll, who was in fact as well as in name 'president of the committee for ordering his majesty's journey and gists' (ib. 234; for his itinerary, see ib. 265-9). On the ninth day he reached 'his own house' of Falkland. Here or hereabouts he delayed for some weeks, as there were divided counsels at Edinburgh, and he still hesitated about his position (Whitelocke, iii. 210). No sooner had he arrived in Scotland than the parliament, with which Argyll was all-powerful, bade him dismiss Hamilton and Lauderdale. Buckingham, on the other hand, notwithstanding his scandalous life, was allowed to remain about the king. During the first part of Charles's stay in Scotland he heard many prayers and sermons, 'some of great length, and underwent severe rebukes for the meagre gaieties he permitted at his court. The former friends of the royal cause were carefully kept at a distance; even the loyalty of the common people was warned off. In the words of Hobbes (Behemoth, pt. iv.), 'the sum of all is, the prince was then a prisoner.' It was these things which made Charles afterwards assure Lauderdale that 'presbytery was not a religion for gentlemen;' but he understood the situation, paid attention to Argyll, and, ​according to Burnet (i. 105), even talked of marrying his daughter. Finally, a declaration was laid before him, in which, in addition to his previous consessions, he was made to anknowledge not only the sinfulness of his own dealings with the Irish, but his father's blood-guiltiness and his mother's idolatry. This declaration after some hesitation, ‘the Scots threatening to cast him off,' he signed for the declaration, dated Dunfermline, 18 Aug. 1650, see Whitelocke, iii. 233-4; cf. Harris, i. 82-93 n.) Yet about this time he was extending liberal promises to the catholics in England (Cal. 1650, 88-9), and it was affirmed that letters were presented in his name to Pope Innocent X, expressing his good-will to the church of Rome, and appealing for pecuniary and pecuniary and diplomatic assistance (Whitelocke, iii. 234-5). The settlement between the Scots and Charles had been hastened by the approach of Cromwell, but it was not, till 3 Sept. that the battle of Dunbar was fought. In England and France the rumour spread that Charles was sick or dead (Clarendon, vi. 476): but in Scotland the effects of the defeat, followed by the surrender of Edinburgrh, were not wholly unfavourable to him. It was felt that the reins had been drawn too tight, and a resolution of the general assembly at once relaxed the rigour of the Act of Classes. Meanwhile Charles had tried to escape from St. Johnstone's, hoping in the company of four horsemen to make his way to the north, where Huntly, the Athole men, and others were ready to receive him. He was, however, overtaken in the northern counties of Fife, and induced to return (Monarchy revived, 95-98), 'The start,' as it was called, rather improved his treatment at St. Johnstone's, where a chance record discovers him in a congenial company, commissioning pictures for which he ommitted to pay (Treasury Papers, 1556-1696, xviii. vi). But at his coronation at Scone, 1 Jan. 1651, he had to swear both to the covenant, and to the solemn league and covenant of 1643, whereby he would have become a presbyterian king on both sides of the Tweed (for the coronation, see Monarchy revived, 101-3; cf. as to the anti-absolutist sermon on the occasion, Harris, i. 97 n.) After setting up his standard at Aberdeen, he, about April 1651, moved his court to Stirling. About midsummer Cromwell set his army in motion. While Lambert placed himself in the king's rear, Cromwell advanced upon Perth; but just before taking it he learned that Charles had (31 July) started with his army for England. It was a desperate resolution, but no other course remained, and Argyll alone had opposed the march, from whose orders Charles thus at last liberated himself. His expectations that his forces would increase as he went on, and that a thousand armed men would join him in Lancashire (Cal. 1061-2, 2), were disappointed, while the measures nf resistance taken by the council of state at Westminster were prompt and extensive. The army with which Charles entered England numbered about ten thousand men: it was commanded by David Lesley; according to Clarenden, the committee of ministers in it did much mischief. At Carlisle and elsewhere Charles was on his arrival proclaimed king; from the general pardon which he offered in his declaration, only Cromwell, Bradshaw, and a third regicide were excepted. In Lancashire he was joined hy the Earl of Derby; thence he continued his march through Cheshire, where the attempt of Lambert and Harrison to throw themself across his path had been defeated by Massey at Warrington, passed through Shropshire, where Shrewsbury shut its gates against him, and 22 Aug. entered Worcester. His fnrces, now about thirteen thousand in number, were but slightly increased by the gentlemen who had answered a general summons issued by him 26 Aug. Meanwhile Cromwell had reached the neighbourhood with an army of between thirty thousand and forty thousand men, and was preparing to surround the royalist forces. After two preliminary encounters (28 and 29 Aug.) the battle of Worcester was fought 3 Sept., which virtually annihilated Charles's army. He afterwards spoke with great bitterness of the conduct of Lesley, Middleton, and the greater part of the Scots; but there seems no cause for suspecting treason (Cal. 1651-2. 2. As to the king's march, we Heath, Chronicle, and Monarchy revived; as to the battle, Cal. 1651, preface x, and 474-7). Charles had borne himself with conspicuous bravery during the day, charging the enemy in person and with temporary success, and even at the last mounting a fresh horse within the wulls, with the intent of renewing the struggle. About six in the evening he was, however, obliged to quit the town with the main body of the horse. While Lesley and the Scots took the direct road northwards, Charles, attended by Buckingham. Derby, Lauderdale. Wilmot, and others—about sixty horse in all—pressed on towards Kidderminster, near which they lost their way. Derby then suggested that Boscobel House, about twenty-five miles from Worchester, on the borders of Shropshire and Staffordshire, might afford to the king the shelter which he had himself found there a few nights before; but it was afterwards agreed that the king should first proceed to White Ladies, another seat of the Giffard ​family, half a mile further on. Here at daybreak on 4 Sept. Charles took leave of all his companions, except Wilmot, who alone was privy to his design of escaping not to Scotland, but to London, and who remained concealed in the neighbourhood. Charles wandered from Worcester to Boscobel [see Carlos, William]; thence to Mr. Whitgreave’s seat of Moseley, and Colonel Lane's at Bentley; thence again, as Miss Jane Lane's attendant to Leigh, near Bristol, and to Colonel Wyndham’s house at Trent, near Sherbourne; and finally to the George Inn at Brighton, a journey extending over forty-one days. During this period he was recognised, according to various calculations, by from forty to fifty men and women, and a reward of 1,000l. had been set on his head, and a penalty of death attached to any act aiding his concealment. His own part was well played throughout in the way of endurance and sang-froid, and after the Restoration he gave substantial proofs of his gratitude to many of those who had contributed to his preservation. (The best account of the adventures of Charles after Worcester is in Thomas Blount's relation entitled Boscobel (1660), which, however, it is curious to find declared inaccurate by royal order; see the quotation from The Kingdom's Intelligencer, January 1661, in A Cavalier's Notebook, 139–40. The king dictated his own narrative to Pepys, October 1680; Clarendon's account, vi. 513–45, is also derived from the accounts of the king and of Wilmot. Whitgreave likewise drew up a narrative.)
Charles landed in safety at Fécamp in Normandy on 16 Oct. 1651. His expressions now and four years later, when he was urged to make another attempt in the same quarter, showed that he had had enough, and more than enough, of Scotland (Cal. 1651, xxi; cf. Clarendon, vi. 111); and never were his prospects gloomier than during his sojourn at Paris and St. Germain, which lasted till June 1654. He was at first well received by the Duke of Orleans and several of the great nobles; it is even stated that there was a notion of his making the duke’s daughter (Clarke, Life of James II, i. 55). His pecuniary difficulties pressed hard on him; the pension of six thousand livres a month now assigned to him by the French court was more regularly anticipated than paid (Clarendon, vi. 568), and his share of the profits from Prince Rupert's sea brigandage was only occasional (Pythouse Papers, 34). Unable, like his brother James, to take service under the French colours, he had to remain the nominal head of a factious court, where his mother and her favourites, ‘the Louvrians,’ as they were called, deplored his anger against the Scots, and in vain sought to induce him to attend the presbyterian services at Charenton; while his weightiest advisers, Hyde and Ormonde, who with Jermyn and Wilmot formed his new council, could offer him no better advice than to remain quiescent,and he was observed to lapse into taciturnity (Cal. 1651–2, 2). But from France, torn by internal conflicts, there was nothing to he hoped (cf. Whitelocke, iv. 54). He lost a good friend by the death of his brother-in-law, William II, prince of Orange. When the States-General had declared war against England, they declined his offer to take the command of any English ships which might come over to their side, and when peace was made in April 1654 the exclusion of the English royal family from the United Provinces was one of its conditions. No result followed from the diplomatic tour of the Earl of Norwich in 1652 (Cal. 1651–2, xi), and the mission of Rochester (Wilmot) to the diet of Ratisbon in 1655 produced only a small subsidy, proposed like a charitable subscription by the Elector of Mainz (Clarendon, vi. 51, 105). Yet even in these years his followers' demands for commissions and places, mostly, no doubt, prospective, continued. At home Cromwell, in November 1652, rejected Whitelocke's advice to arrive at an understanding with the king of Scots (Whitelocke, iii. 468-74), whose subjects were on 12 April 1654 declared discharged from their allegiance to him. About the same time Vowell's plot for the murder of the Protector and the proclamation of Charles, who was beyond doubt cognisant. of the scheme, was discovered (Cal. 1654, xvii–xviii). Early in the same year regular diplomatic relations were opened between England and France, and a treat of alliance between these powers projected, of which the expulsion of Charles from France would inevitably form a proviso.
In the end Charles resolved to go to Germany. The royalists in England contrived to send him a few thousand pounds, Mazarin paid him all the arrears of his pension, and Charles took the opportunity of appointing a treasurer, Stephen Fox, so efficient that, according to Clarendon (vii. 107), from this date to just before the Restoration the king's expenses never exceeded 240l. a year. ‘Good old secretary’ Nicholas shortly afterwards returned to the royal service. Early in June 1654 Charles passed unregarded through Flanders, in order to spend several weeks with his sister, the widowed Princess of Orange, at Spa, and afterwards at Aix-le-Chapelle, where he had at first thought of fixing his residence. He, however, proceeded to Cologne, where he was received with much solemnity both by ​the magistrates of the city and the College of Jesuits (Jesse, iii. 286–7, from Thurloe), and there he established himself for about two years. He afterwards described the people of Cologne as the most kind and worthy he ever met with (Evelyn, Diary, 6 July 1660); and, according to Clarendon, his own life there was exemplary, divided between reading in his closet and walks on the city walls, for he was too poor to keep a coach (vii. 119). He seems, however, to have been fond of hunting and other amusements (Ellis, Orig. Letters, 2nd ser. iii. 376). He affected attachment to the church of England, and a wish to guard his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, from conversion to the church of Rome. He could afford little other encouragement to his supporters in England, though he travelled to Middelburg to be in readiness for the Salisbury rising in March 1655, for the failure of which he and the factions at his court had to bear their share of blame (Cal. 1655, 245–6). His incognito visit with his sister to Frankfort fair in September 1655, when he met Queen Christina of Sweden, was not a political manœuvre. After the Protector had concluded his alliance with France (24 Oct.), Charles naturally became anxious for the support of Spain. In March 1656 he proceeded incognito to the neighbourhood of Brussels, where he negotiated a treaty with the Archduke Leopold William, and after the latter had been superseded in the government of the Spanish Netherlands by Don John of Austria, Charles moved his court from Cologne to Bruges. But he found the new governor-general, notwithstanding the good offices of the Princess of Orange, extremely coy, and his own resources ran very low (Cal. 1656–7, xiii. 258). Yet, if report spoke true (Jesse, iv. 292, from Thurloe), shameless debauchery ran riot at Bruges, so as to justify in the eyes of puritan England the act of November 1656, which absolutely extinguished any supposed title to the throne on the part of the sons of Charles I (Cal. 1656–7, 173). At last, accompanied by a profusion of mutual compliments ({{sc|Somers Tracts, vii. 410–12), the authorisation arrived from Spain. Charles was politely received at Brussels by Don John, and the treaty was signed in its final form. Charles engaged to collect all his subjects now serving in France under his own command in Flanders, and was promised a monthly allowance, which was, however, paid as irregularly as the French had been, which Charles had now resigned (Harris, ii. 128 n., from the Ormonde Papers, and Carte's Life of Ormonde). But though he commenced the levy of four English regiments, and made a spirited offer of taking the field to the Spanish council at Brussels, he could not move it to action. The Protector's government was kept well informed by its secret agents — one of them, Sir Richard Willis, actually engaged in a plot for inveigling over to England the king whom he had long faithfully served (Clarendon, vii. 324 seq.) — and their reports give a striking picture of the sanguine supplications and sorry shifts of Charles's court at this time, and of his own gaiety in the midst of indigence (Cal. 1657–8; in the preface is a list of his officers of state). In the winter of 1657–8 he contrived to be present at the attempt upon Mardyke (Clarendon, vii. 277; cf. Pepys, 2 Jan. 1688), and at the end of February 1658 he was allowed to remove his court to Brussels. But the project of arising in the south of England for which he was holding himself in readiness was betrayed (Heath, 403); on 17 June Dunkirk fell, and Flanders was overrun by the French and English. In August Charles withdrew to Hoogstraten, near Breda, whence, on receiving news of the death of Oliver Cromwell, he in the middle of September returned to Brussels.
In the troubles which ensued in England the cry for the king's restoration was soon raised, and the royalists eagerly watched an opportunity for a rising. On receiving through John Mordaunt (afterwards Lord Avalon) a report that nearly every county in England was ready to rise in his favour, Charles, accompanied by Ormonde and Bristol, repaired to Calais, and thence to the coast of Brittany, where, however, he received the news of the frustration of his hopes by the defeat of Booth and Middleton at Nantwich (19 Aug.) Charles had done his best to make success possible, and it was probably about this time that Fox was sent with a letter to Monck in Scotland, begging him to march against the Rump (Guizot, Monck, E. Tr. 106 a.) Instead of returning to Brussels, he now resolved to carry out a former plan of his, and proceed to Fuentarabia in the Spanish Pyrenees, where Mazarin and Luis de Haro were arranging a pacification between France and Spain. Under a mistaken impression Charles penetrated as far as Saragossa, together with Ormonde and Bristol, but ultimately reached his destination. His hope was to induce the French crown to take up his cause in conjunction with the Spanish, and perhaps to send Condé with his army across the Channel. But the failure of the rising in England had its effect. Mazarin refused him an interview, though it is said Charles offered to marry the cardinal's niece, Hortensia Mancini (Macpherson, Original Papers, i. 21; her hand is said to have been ​offered in vain to Charles sfier the Restoration-she afterwards married the Duke de Mazarin, and lived in England as the kings pensioner and mistress), and the Spaniards ad strong reasons for not wishing to exasperate the actual English government (Ranke, iv. 40-4). Towards the end of December Charles, who on his return journey paid a conciliatory visit to his mother at Paris (Clarendon, vii. 362) was back in Brussels. here remained only a very faint hope that Monck's march into England might produce some change for the better, and only gradually the significance of his proceedings ame clear at Brussels (ib. 420). When the elections for the ‘free’ convention parliament were at hand, Charles is stated to have communicated with some leading men, who in retuni signified their desire to ‘revert to their duty’ (Sir Philip Warwick, Memoires), and this may have been the origin of the private conferences held by Warwick, Manchester,and others with Bridgman and other royalists. But Monck was still unapproachable by the royalist agents, till at last Sir John Greenville ventured to place in the genera1's hands the credentials with which he had been furnished by the king. About the beginning of April Greenville returned to Brussels, followed by a message from the presbyterians informing the king that they had induced Monck to acknowledge him on the basis of the treaty of Newport (Hallam, ii. 290-1; cf. Christie, i. 220) It came too late, for the king and his advisers already had under consideration conditions not very different from the subsequent terms of the Declaration of Breda (as to Broghill's Irish scheme, which he says was only frustrated ‘by the prosperous accounts from England, see Orrery State Letters, i. 63-5). Monck was anxious that Charles should quit the Spanish Netherlands, and, against the will of the Spanish government, who had actually issued orders for detaining him, he crossed the frontier to Breda. The famous declaration, and the letters addressed to the council of state, the officers of the army, the two houses of parliament, and the authorities of the city, were dated 4 April 1660 from Breda, but were really handed by the king immediately after he had crossed the frontier to Greenville, who, with Mordaunt, carried them to London (for their text see Clarendon, vii. 454-76; also Somers Tracts, vii. 394-7; on the significance of the concessions made in the declaration by Charles, see J. S. Wortley's note to Guizot's Monck, 253; and Hallam, ii. 288-302; for the proceedings which followed in London, Whitelocke, iv. 409-13). On 8 May Charles II was solemnly proclaimed in Westminster Hall in the presence of the two houses, in the city before the lord mayor, and elsewhere. At Breda he was of course besieged with congratulations and applications of every kind, and urgently invited back to Brussels by Don John's minister, and to Paris by Queen Henrietta Maria, according to Clarendon, at Mazarin's instigation. But he preferred an invitation to the Hague, accompanied by the opportune gift of 6,000l. He could now allow himself full play as the ‘fountain of honour, and made a large number of knights. Then the English fleet under Montague (soon afterwards earl of Sandwich) hove in sight, and lay off the coast till about the middle of May. Shortly afterwards came the deputations of lords, commons, and city, who, together with ‘eight or ten' presbyterian divines accompanying them, were very graciously received by the king, though these last could not, according to Clarendon (vii. 501-3), extract from him certain promises concerning the services in the Chapel Royal which they had at heart. On 22 May he followed his brothers on board the Naseby, which, was hereupon rechristened the Royal Charles (Pepys). On the 24th he set sail, and on the 20th he landed at Dover. Here he was welcomed by Monck, whom he kissed and called father; by the mayor of the town, from whom he received a very rich bible, saying it was the thing he loved above all things in the world (Pepys), and by a large multitude ‘of all sorts.’ His progress was by Barham Down to Canterbury, where he heard sermons Whitelocke, and thence by Rochester and Blackheath, where Moncks army was drawn up, to St. George's Fields in Southwark where he was received by the lord mayor and aldermen. After passing through the city and by Charing Cross, the procession reached Whiteha1l, where the two houses of parliament were awaiting the king, at seven in the evening of 29 May (see the tract England's Joy, 1660, reprinted in Somers Tracts, vii. 419-22; cf. Whitelocke, iv. 414-16). As to his restoration in Scotland, he had expressly refrained from giving any directions himself (see his letter to Lauderdale, 12 April 1060, in Lauderdale Papers, i. 13; cf. ib. 17, 18) It was easily accompanied by the parliament which met in Edinburgh on 1 Jan. 1061, and repealed all acts passed since 1639, besides renouncing the covenant. In Ireland, where after the fall of the protectorate a convention of officers of the army had entered into an understanding with Charles, there was great confusion, which showed itself in the conflicting addresses presented to the king in London (Clarendon, Lafe, i. 442-60); nor did the declaration issued by him (30 Nov. 1660) for the settlement of Ireland, which had not been ​mentioned in the Breda document, advance matters far (see Clarendon, Life, ii. 18–97; cf. Memoirs of Orrery).
The first period of the reign of Charles II is that of the ascendency of Clarendon, from the Restoration to the autumn of 1667. Applications for offices had pursued the king all the way from the Hague to London; in at Canterbury there had been a slight fencing-match between him, Clarendon, and Monck's confidential friend Morrice, concerning a list of high officials drawn up by Monck (Guizot, Monck, 273, 278–80). Finally the privy council was formed of thirty members, of whom twelve had not been royalists, and within it, according to a practice already in use under Charles I, was selected a committee, commonly called a ‘cabinet’ or ‘cabal,’ but technically known as the committee for foreign affairs, which in the first instance consisted of Lord-chancellor Clarendon, together with Albemarle (Monck), Southampton, Ormonde, Colepepper, and the two secretaries of state, Nicholas and Morrice. The Duke of York and the Bishop of London (Sheldon) were afterwards included (Christie, i. 231–8; cf. Clarendon, Life, i. 315–16). Unfortunately, however, the king's initial difficulties were not confined to the need of establishing a kind of balance between the leaders of the parties which had supported his restoration. Long-standing dissensions among the king's friends required his attention. Clarendon was openly opposed by Bristol, who as a Roman catholic was excluded from the privy council; Buckingham, who was sworn of it in 1662, always had the king's ear; and with him Bennet (Arlington), who became secretary of state in the place of Nicholas in the same year, and Berkeley (Falmouth) operated against the chancellor. But the real focus of these intrigues was the apartment of the king's mistress, Mrs. Palmer, whose husband in 1662 was created Earl of Castlemaine, and to whom Clarendon and Southampton alone refused to pay homage. On the discovery, however, in October 1662, of the secret marriage of Clarendon's daughter to the Duke of York, the king behaved with great kindness to the chancellor (Life, i. 371–406). Possibly he was not unwilling to prove his independence of the influence of his mother, who had come over purposely from France to prevent the match (Ranke, iv. 166, 168).
On 27 July Charles urged upon the lords in the Convention the speedy passing of the long-delayed Act of Indemnity with the excepted names, and 29 Aug. it was passed (see Somers Tracts, vii. 462–4). It would be wholly unjust to impute to Charles the want of generosity shown by parliament in this matter; in the case of Vane, however, whom the king had promised the houses to spare in the event of his being judicially condemned, his conduct hardly admits of condonation (cf. Hallam, ii. 827, and Vaughan, ii. 291 n.) The proclamations issued by the king before the passing of the act had partly been intended to prepare the public mind for it; another was directed against vicious and debauched persons who sought to make the Restoration the starting-point of a reign of license (Somers Tracts, vii. 423). Together with the Indemnity Bill the king gave his assent to several others. including one for a perpetual anniversary thanksgiving on 29 May, and the extremely important bill for disbanding and paying off the military and naval forces of the realm. Charles, however, contrived to retain three regiments in his service, under the name of guards, and thus to form the nucleus of a standing army at the very moment when the nation thought itself freed at last from the hated military incubus (Hallam), ii. 315; see his conversations with the Spanish general Marsin ap. Ranke, iv. 159–60). More difficult than either the amnesty or this army question was that turning on the passage in the declaration of Breda which many interpreted as a promise of liberty of conscience, but which in truth ‘was but a profession of the king’s readiness to consent to any act which the parliament should offer him to that end’ (Reliquæ Baxterianæ, 217). Charles was prepared for concessions in the way of a reorganisation of the church; and the declaration issued by him 25 Oct. before the closing of the Convention parliament (Harris, i. 401–14, and note) excited strong hopes in this direction. In the negotiations which ensued the king was brought into personal contact with Baxter and his other presbyterian ‘chaplains in ordinary,’ and at first seemed to smile upon the plan of bringing about an agreement on the basis of Ussher's model. But even the more sanguine of the divines must have been shaken by his wish to add to his declaration a clause implying toleration of papists and sectaries, and though he consented to the offer of high church preferments to a few presbyterian ministers, his supposed good-will to the scheme of union proved a broken reed (Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, esp, 231–2, 257). The friends of the court voted in the majority which rejected a bill to give effect to the royal declaration. After the Savoy conference the presbyterian ministers were admitted to a final audience, at which he had nothing to offer them but the query, with reference to certain disputed points, ‘Who shall be judge?’ (ib. 365). Yet though he did nothing to bring about a ​settlement on tolerant principles, the policy of the Act of Uniformity (1662), which contradicted his two declarations, was not his own policy.
In the adjustment of questions concerning the ownership of estates, the honour of the king was hardly less involved than the security of the state. But the course adopted was unsatisfactory; the king's estates and those of the queen dowager, of noblemen who had served the royal cause, and of the church, were restored by enactment (Harris, i. 370 n.), but other claims were dealt with at haphazard. In general the petitions of aggrieved cavaliers became a never-ending trouble to Charles and his government; and the sum of 60,000l., voted as late as 1681, for distribution among the more needy of these claimants, fell far short of their demands (Vaughan, ii. 305). In Ireland, the large grants of forfeited lands to the Duke of York and others aggravated the dissatisfaction. Charles's difficulties on this head were extraordinary; but there was no subject on which it would have better become him to take pains (cf. Cal. 1660–1, 217, and Somers Tracts, vii. 516 seq.) The king's revenue was settled by the Convention parliament at 1,200,000l., of which one-third was from the customs, tonnage and poundage having been granted to him lor life from 24 June 1660, and 100,000l. was derived from an excise on beer, &c., granted in return for his consent to the abolition of various feudal tenures and rights. Burnet (i. 287) states that he afterwards suspected his income to have been kept lower by the chancellor than parliament would have thought requisite, and James II subsequently thought that this might be accounted for by Clarendon's suspicions of the king's catholic sympathies (Clarke, i. 393). it is due to Charles to state that it is doubtful whether the income of the crown proved at all equal to the sum at which parliament estimated it (see, however, Harris, i. 365 n.)
The interval between the dissolution of the Convention parliament (29 Dec. 1660) and the meeting of its successor was marked, among other events, by the outbreak of Venner's plot, and by the coronation of the king, which had been deferred to St George's day (23 April) 1661 possibly on account of the death in England of Charles's sister, the Princess of Orange, who had so actively exerted herself in favour of his restoration (24 Dec. 1660). Not long before (13 Sept.) he had also lost his brother the Duke of Gloucester, whom, according to Burnet (i. 308), he loved much better than the Duke of York. Of the coronation solemnities and festivities, and of the thunderstorm which burst overthem, ample accounts are preserved (see Cook, 200–81; Heath, Chronicle, 474–496, with lists of honours and dignities conferred from restoration to coronation; Somers Tracts, vii. 514–15; cf. Cal. 1660–1, 584–6). The first parliament summoned by Charles II met 8 May 1661. It immediately passed an act for the preservation of the king and government, providing among other things for the exclusion from office of any one who called the king a heretic or a papist, vested the command of the militia in the crown, and authorised a benevolence. In Ireland, where a parliament met about the same time as the English, the church was re-established. In Scotland an act rescissory began a complete reaction; Argyll suffered death; and the covenant was burnt by the common hangman. When opening the English parliament the king announced his approaching marriage with Catherine of Braganza [q. v.], daughter of John IV of Portugal, determined after protracted negotiations. His foreign policy at the beginning of his reign had been naturally tentative. First he had turned to the States-General, from whom he would have much liked a loan; but parliament crossed his plans in this quarter by renewing the Navigation Act. Then he tried Spain, ready to listen to a sovereign who had Jamaica and Dunkirk to restore; and schemes were formed for his marriage with Margaret Theresa, second daughter of Philip IV, and again with Eleonora, widow of the Emperor Ferdinand III. In such a matter France could not look on inactive, and not long before Henrietta Maria had succeeded in negotiating the marriage of her daughter and namesake with Philip, duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV (31 March 1661). The objection taken by Clarendon and others to a French marriage for the king himself must have rested on their fear of any increase of the queen dowager's influence. Portugal, on the other hand, more than ever menaced by Spain, was ready to purchase the alliance of England by very considerable concessions; and thus the marriage was determined upon, though it appears that Charles would himself have preferred a Spanish infanta, while Bristol was at the eleventh hour searching for eligible Italian princesses (Ranke, iv. 157–74; the rumour of the king's previous secret marriage with a niece of the Prince de Ligne, mentioned by Pepys, 18 Feb. 1661, was an unfounded scandal). The announcement of the marriage was very enthusiastically received in England, more especially as the Duchess of York had quite recently given birth to a son; it was not foreseen how costly a gift Tangier, which Portugal ceded on the occasion, would prove, nor how ​long it would be before Bombay proved a better investment. The wedding of Charles, who, after proroguing parliament (see his speech in Somers Tracts, vii. 54–-7), had escorted the infanta from Portsmouth, was celebrated, amid great demonstrations of joy at Winchester 20 May, according to both the English and Roman ritual (Burnet, i. 315). This bride, however, failed to attract the king, and he not only adhered to Lady Castlemaine, but forced her upon the queen as one of the ladies of her bedchamber. A passing quarrel was the result, in the course of which nearly the whole of Queen Catherine's household was dismissed, but in the end she had the good sense to acquiesce. During their long childless union Catherine was treated with respect at court [see Catherine of Braganza]. In 1663, 1668, 1673, and 1679 rumours of a divorce were rife, and in 1668, when Buckingham pressed the king to own a marriage with Monmouth’s mother, Burnet was consulted on the relative permissibility of divorce and polygamy (ib. i. 479–80). On the other hand, Charles seems to have felt occasional remorse on account of his treatment of his wife (ib. i. 482–3); he would not allow the brazen lies of the inventors of the popish plot to touch her, and in the most critical period of the agitation she thought herself safest at his side (Prideaux Letters, 82). The French government very speedily made up its mind to treat the Portuguese marriage as a proof of an entente cordiale between itself and the English court. No sooner had Charles II begun to arm in favour of Portugal in 1681, than, without the knowledge of his parliament, the first of the long succession of secret payments—in this instance one of 80,000l.—was made to him from France. The English armaments early in 1602 were undertaken in distinct reliance upon French support. A foretaste of the concessions which this dependence was to involve was given by the sale to France of Dunkirk and Mardyke, accomplished in the last two months of 1662. The transaction, reasonable in itself was looked upon as a proof of weakness both at home and abroad; and Louis XIV was himself astonished at the easiness of his success (Ranke, Franz. Geschichte, iii. 281; Engl. Gesch. iii. 222–32). The English public laid the blame on Clarendon.
At this very time (December 1662), when Charles II had first involved himself in dangerous political intimacy with his powerful catholic neighbour, he made his earliest direct attempt to remedy the grievances of his catholic subjects. His effort to expand for their benefit his declaration of October 1660 had failed, and his promise to suspend the Act of Uniformity for three months had proved futile (Clarendon, Life, ii. 149). On 26 Dec. 1662 he issued his first Declaration of Indulgence, in which he undertook, with the concurrence of parliament, to exercise on behalf of religious dissidents the dipensing power which he conceived to be inherent on the crown. The bill founded on this declaration, opposed by Clarendon and Southampton, but supported hy Ashley, was shelved in committee by the lords, while an address from the commons insisted on the maintenance of the Act of Uniformity. Though the attempt of Bristol, the nominal originator of the unfortunate declaration, to impeach Clarendon was discountenanced by the king, yet his vexation with the chancellor and the bishops contributed to his readiness for ministerial changes. The Declaration of Indulgence only led to the Conventicle Act (1664) and the Five Miles Act (1605). Before parliament reassembled in March 1664 the king’s popularity was revived by a royal progress in the west, followed, however, by a futile republican attempt in the north (summer 1683). He contrived in this seasion to supsrsede the Triennial Act of the Long parliament by a much less stringent measure; but the burning question was already that of war with the Dutch, for which the parliament was eager, and the king, angered by the exclusion of the house of Orange from the stadholdership, well inclined. In the speech on the reassembling of parliament in November, and in which he rebutted the ‘vile jealousy’ that the war was on his part only a pretence for obtaining large supplies (Cal. 1664–5, 89), he showed himself at one with public opinion. He had recently recovered from a troublesome indisposition, and was in vigorous health (Hatton Correspondence, i. 34); so that he could constantly encourage by inspections the naval preparations for which parliament had made an enormous grant (Clarendon, Life, ii. 333; for the reverse of the medal see Wheatley, 147–9). On 22 Feb. 1665 war was declared, and soon it, proved that, though long foreseen, the conflict had been rashly entered into. The campaign of 1665 led to no definite results; and there was no prospect of peace to cheer the winter of 1664–5, in which London was afflicted by a fearful visitation of the plague. The pestilence was referred to in the speech in which the king prorogued parliament from April to September 1665, and in July he was forced to remove from Whitehall to Hampton Court and Sion House. Soon afterwards he transferred his court to Salisbury (see Pepys, 27 July 1665). About the same time thequeen-mother quitted England; one of the last and most doubtful services she had ren​dered to the king had been to bring over to England his illegitimate son, known under the name of James Crofts, whom Charles II, against Clarendon's advice, soon afterwards created Duke of Monmouth (Clarendon, Life, ii. 384, 252–6). The plague followed the court to Salisbury, the air of which moreover disagreed with the king (Cal. 1664–5, 11 Sept.), and in September he moved to Oxford, where parliament had been summoned to meet 10 Oct. It passed a patriotic address and a painfully significant act attainting all Englishmen in the Dutch service, as well as a large additional supply, to be strictly applied to the purposes of the war—a proviso introduced by collusion between the king and the astute Sir George Downing, so as to defeat the claims of the few London bankers to whom Charles II had been in the habit of resorting for ready money. Clarendon's opposition was in vain; his power was sinking, though he was able to prevent the king from carrying out his wish to dismiss Southampton (Life, iii. 1–33). Albemarle, whom Clarendon hated, was appointed with Prince Rupert to the command of the fleet in Sandwich's place. The king's return to Whitehall early in 1666 restored confidence to London, where the plague rapidly decreased; but the war reopened in this year anything but hopefully. In January France, Denmark, and the great elector of Brandenburg allied themselves with the United Provinces; our only ally, 'Munster's prelate,' had made his peace with the Dutch; Sweden had been pacified by France; the negotiations for a league with Spain had proved sterile. The isolation of England was absolute (Ranke, iv. 284–6). Nor was the campaign successful. A public thanksgiving was ordered for the four days' battle in the Downs (1–4 June), because it had not ended in the destruction of the English armada. The great fire of London raged from 2–6 Sept., and destroyed two-thirds of the capital. The court (Cal. 1666–7, xii.) and the king himself (Burnet, i. 458), Jews hired by French money, the presbyterians, other nonconformists, and pre-eminently the catholics, were all suspected of its authorship. The king, who had of late been subjected to many pasquils and libels on the score of Lady Castlemaine and other grievances {Cal. 1665–66, xxxviii.), showed great zeal on the occasion, sitting constantly in council, ordering measures of relief (ib. 1666–7, 107 et al.; Somers Tracts, vii. 659), and otherwise exerting himself (cf. Pepys, 2–7 Sept.) Charles was less successful in his attempt, by an inquiry before the privy council, to expose the baselessness of the rumours concerning the origin of the fire (Clarendon, Life, iii. 92–3). He is said by a courtly pen to have likewise shown a warm interest in the rebuilding of London, and a pious care for the restoration of the churches (Cook, 331–2). Though parliament had with much spirit voted a further supply for the purposes of the war, there was arising a widespread desire for peace, and Charles was growing weary of the war since it had ceased to be popular. Moreover, he was galled by the strict control which parliament was inclined to exert over the public expenditure. In May 1667 peace negotiations were opened at Breda, and the English government, hampered in addition by the defects of the naval administration, restricted its action to the defensive. The Dutch resolved to put pressure upon the English government such as might bring the negotiations to a point, and prevent an understanding between England and France. On 10 June De Ruyter appeared at the Nore, on the 11th he sailed up the river, and on the 13th, forcing the chain at the mouth of the Medway, burnt several men-of-war, including the Royal Charles, lying at Chatham. In the panic which ensued, the report spread that the King had abdicated and escaped, no one knew whither (Cal. 1667, xxvii.) Burnet (i. 458) mentions a different rumour, that on the fatal night he was very cheerful at supper with his mistresses. On the 21st he sent a circular letter to Clarendon and other authorities, urging a general subscription, on the part of the nobility, gentry, and professions, to a voluntary loan (Cal. 1667, xl.); but on the 29th the Dutch, who had advanced nearly as far as Gravesend, took their departure. Their exploit undoubtedly hastened the peace concluded 21 July, though it was essentially due to fear of France. To appease the indignation of the English public Clarendon was sacrificed. For a long time intrigues against the chancellor had been in progress in Lady Castlemaine's clique; in May his staunchest supporter, Southampton, died, and the treasury had been put into commission. Beyond a doubt Charles had grown tired of his mentor, and had been annoyed by advice concerning his private life honourable to the giver. In his own narrative of the circumstances of his fall (Life, iii. 282–376; cf. Burnet; Reresby, 170–1; and the letter of Charles II in Ellis, 2nd ser. iv. 39) Clarendon pretends that it was only the decisive command of the king which induced him to quit England (29 Nov.)
The second period of the reign of Charles II (1667–74) may be described as that of the Cabal ministry, though that administration was not fully formed till 1672. This period exhibits a marked progress on the king's part in dissimulation, and in a daring readiness to ​enter upon engagements very difficult of fulfilment. Buckingham. who had been restored in his offices after a serious disgrace, now acted the part of prime minister without a portfolio, and it can hardly be doubted that of pander to the vices of the king. Ashley is likewise charged by Barnet with having sought to secure the royal favour by similar means. He retained the office of chancellor of the exchequer, but his influence in the king's councils was not well established till 1670 (Christie, ii. 4). The great seal was given to Sir Orlando Bridgeman [q. v.] Arlington [see Bennet, Henry], managed foreign affairs. Lauderdale continued to attend to the business of Scotland. This was the heyday of courtiers of the stamp of Rochester, still very far from the season of his conversion; a time when the new Duchess of Cleveland (Lady Castlemaine) had many less ambitious rivals, and when the English court was given up to ways of life painted by Grammont in far too flattering colours, but more faithfullly reflected by the comic drama of the age. Such an incident as the mutilation of Sir John Coventry [q. v.] speaks for itself (Burnet, i. 495–6). The period of Buckingham's ascendency was, however, by no means wanting in signs of a political intelligence, which may in part be placed to the credit of the king. The financial retrenchments which came into effect in 1668 were indeed originated before Clarendon's downfall, and the so-called Brookhouse committee which recommended them was appointed in opposition to the court (ib. i. 490; cf. Cal. Dom. 1667, lxi.) On the other hand, the king favoured the church comprehension scheme proposed by Bridgeman and others in 1668, to which the House of Commons would not listen (Burnet, i. 476–8), and approved the unlucky ‘indulgence' to presbyterian ministers in Scotland (see Lauderdale Papers, ii. xx–xxi, 184–6; Burnet; Story, William Carstares, 32–5). It was about this time that the proposal for a union between England and Scotland was renewed, and taken up by the king with some warmth. Commissioners were actually named in 1670, but the project dropped (Burnet i. 512–15: but. cf. Lauderdale Papers, ii. 155 n.)
Without wishing either to neglect the interests or to ignore the pride of the nation, Charles aspired above all to that which at last he secured during this period, viz. the power of power of governing without having to depend upon parliament for supplies. He therefore sought French subsidies in return for promises made at different times to support the policy of France. He also desired to relieve his catholic subjects, and, should the project prove feasible, to reconcile England to Rome. In 1668 the conversion of the Duke of York became known to him; on 25 Jan. 1669 ensued the consultation in the duke’s chamber between the king and his brother in the presence of Arlington, Arundel of Wardour, and Sir Thomas Clifford, at which it was resolved to communicate the intended conversion of king and realm to Louis XIV. The French ambassador, Colbert de Croissy, was taken into confidence (Clarke, Life of James II, i. 440–2, but the temper of the people made secrecy for the time imperative.
And Charles's foreign policy was much more tortuous than these considerations implied. De Witt on the part of Holland, and Sir William Temple, whom Charles hated, on the part of England, formed with Sweden the triple alliance on 23 Jan. 1668, at the very moment that Buckingham and Arlington were, by the instructions of Charles II, carrying on negotiations with France in a directly opposite sense; while, to complete the complications, other negotiations with Spain, the arch-enemy of France, were being managed by Sandwich at Madrid. It was the refusal of France to accede to all his demands and the hesitation of Spain which induced Charles II, even at the cost of throwing over the interest of the house of Orange, to close with the Dutch proposals and sanction the triple alliance. Louis XIV consequently concluded with Spain the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (2 May 1668), and, in his own words, dissolved the alliance against him at its very outset (Ranke, iv. 322–41; cf. Onno Klopp, i. 223). But before this Spain had recognised the independence of Portugal, and in 1670 she renounced all her claims to English possessions in the new world, including Jamaica. The policy of the triple alliance seemed so far successful; but Charles II hated a permanent league with the States-General, and he knew that the mercantile jealousy of his subjects still continued against the Dutch. who in the East Indies in particular were virtually strangling our commerce. Towards France, on the other hand, he was, as before, impelled by the mixture of powerful motives indicated above.
Louis XIV assiduously kept the door open. By way of calming English susceptibilities Colbert de Croissy was sent to England in July 1668 to conclude a commercial treaty advantageous to this country, and soon afterwards a curious attempt was made to influence Charles by an emissary of a different description, an Italian monk and dabbler in magic named Pregnani (Forneron, i. 17–19). Then came early in 1669 the opening of the secret negotiations concerning the catholic religion. Thus the reconciliation of England to the church of Rome and the overthrow of the ​Dutch republic became the two hinges of rthe proposed alliance. More remote in its consequences was the promise of Charles to co-operate in the ulterior designs of Louis upon the Spanish monarchy at large, in which event England was to obtain South America with Minorca and Ostende. It was not settled whether the proclamation of catholicism in England was or was not to precede the joint declaration of war against the United Provinces ; but the date of the latter was left to France. In return Louis promised to Charles a payment of 80,000l. to meet the cost of the disturbances which might occur in England when the plan was ma& known, and an annual subsidy of 120,000l. during the war, for which England was to fiimish six thousand soldiers and fifty ships, and France thirty ships and the rest of the land forces. The final compact concluded on these bases was the notorious treaty of Dover (20 May 1670) signed by Arlington, Arundel, Clifford and Bellings, and by Colbert de Croissy on the part of France, and negotiated in its final stages by Charles in person and his sister, the Duchess of Orleans. She had been permitted to travel to England, in order to urge the view of Louis, according to which the war against the United Provinces was to have precedence among the objects of the treaty, and she seems to have succeeded in impressing this on Charles, who was in no immediate haste about the conversion scheme. With the latter Buckingham, Lauderdale, and Ashley remained unacquainted; but they appended their signatures to a second treaty (31 Dec. 1670), which fixed the beginning of the Dutch war for April or May following, and which dealt with the payment in consideration of England's conversion as an additional subsidy for military purposes (Christie, ii. 26). The conclusion of the first treaty of Dover had been followed by the death, immediately on her return to France, of the Duchess of Orleans under circumstances deemed deeply suspicious. After her death a Breton lady, who had accompanied her to Dover and attracted the notice of Charles II, settled in England as the king's mistress, This was Louise de Kéroualle, called 'Madam Carwell' in the country of her adoption, where she was afterwards created Duchess of Portsmouth, and became both the agent and the symbol of French infiuence in the royal counsels (see Forneron, L. de K., in Revue Historigue, vol. xxviii. (1885) ; cf. Evelyn, 9 Oct. 1671). It was not long before the resuits of the new alliance began to show themselves. Parliament, where a dispute had conveniently arisen between the two houses, was prorogued in April 1671, after voting a supply by way of a demonBtration against France, and did not meet again till February 1673. In the meantime the conversion money and the first instalment of the annual war subsidy had been paid, and another treaty similar to the last had been concluded with France, probably intended to obscure the length of time since which an understanding had been arrived at (2 Feb. 1672, see Christie, ii. 28 and n.) Charles had, however, notwithstanding the urgency of his new mistress and of his wife's almoner, the Abbé Patrice, delayed his profession of Catholicism, which might have deprived him of lus crown with results more enduring than had attended the attempt of Colonel Blood (9 May 1671 ; see Blood, Thomas). But on 16 March 1671 he issued another Declaration of Indulgence,, announcing his determination to suspend all penal laws against nonconformists and recusants. Great endeavours were made to obtain addresses of thanks from the protestant nonconformists, but with only partial success; in November the great seal was transferred from Bridgeman, who had been in doubts about the declaration, to Shaftesbury (Ashley). Meanwhile the preparations for a Dutch war continued. In the autumn of 1671 the king made a 'sea-progress' from Portsmouth for inspecting the western ports (Heath, Chronicle, 581 ; cf. Hatton Correspondence, i. 62) ; but a more important preliminary step was the notorious ' stop of the exchequer ' (2 Jan. 1672), by which the chief bankers in London, from whom the king had borrowed 1,300,000l., were made bankrupt, and a great multitude of people ruined. All payments from the exchequer were prohibited for a twelvemonth but a day or two afterwards the bankers were promised half the usual interest on the capital and interest due to them (Christie, ii. 56 seq. ; cf. Reresby, 175 ; Wheatley, 123-4).
The reconstruction of the government by the close of 1672 established in the chief conduct of afiairs the five politicians whose names had been subscribed to the treaties with France of December 1670 and February 1672. But the so-called Cabal never alone constituted the committee of foreign afiairs, which the Duke of York, Bridgeman till his dismissal, and Sir John Trevor, who had replaced Morrice as one of the secretaries of state (the other was Henry Coventry), likewise attended. Moreover, Buckingham, Shaftesbury, and Lauderdale cannot be said to have been privy to the conversion scheme (Christie, ii. 53-5). The Dutch war, declared 17 March, 1672, was of course supported by them all. and most notably by Shaftesbury. It was on the whole unpopular, yet there is truth in the ​observation of Dalrymple (Memoirs, i. 39-42) that from the era of the second Dutch war of Charles II is to be dated the superiority in commerce and in naval power which England established upon the ruins of French and Dutch maritime trade. No sooner had William of Orange come to the head of affairs than he would gladly have made terms with his uncle, Charles II; but the latter declined these overtures just as two months before he had told the Dutch envoys that he could resolve on nothing without consulting his brother of France (Hatton Correspondence, i. 90-1; cf. Burnet, i. 595). Thus when parliament at last met again, 4 Feb. 1678, Charles II in his speech insisted both upon the necessity of the war and upon the beneficent results of the Declaration of Indulgence, he was vehemently supported by Shaftesbury, and the commons promised an adequate supply; but only a minority of 116 could be brought to vote against an address pronouncing the Declaration of Indulgence illegal, which was followed by the bringing in of the Test Act. The king hereupon appealed to the lords, but with no success, and in order to avoid further conflict and to obtain his supply he on 7 March cancelled the declaration (Christie, ii. 123-34, correcting Burnet). The Test Act was then passed and the supply granted. On 29 March parliament adjourned, Clifford resigned his treasurer's staff, and the Duke of York his office as lord high admiral. When parliament reassembled in October, the Cabal was virtually at an end. Clifford's office was filled by Sir Thomas Osborne, who was created Viscount Latimer (from June 1674 Earl of Danby). But the more popular side of the cabinet now consisted of Shaftesbury and Arlington with Ormonde, and it was supposed Prince Rupert and Coventry. Popular feeling was stronger than ever against any concession to the catholics, especially among the presbyterians (Letters to Williamson, i. 151 ), and the prevailing apprehensions were increased by the project of a marriage between the Duke of York and the Princess Mary of Modena (Christie, ii. 147; cf. Letters to Williamson, ii. 27). Two protesting addresses from the House of Commons were followed by two prorogations, and immediately after the second Shaftesbury was dismissed from the lord-chancellorship (9 Nov.) It is true that the king for a moment wished to have him back, but the net was spread in vain. The parliament which reassembled 7 Jan. 1674 was determined on peace with the United Provinces and on the overthrow of the ministers who had shown themselves subservient to France.
The peace of Westminster (9 Feb. 1674) closes the period of offensive alliance between England and France. During the remainder of the reign of Charles II England played a passive part in European politics. Though, according to Burnet (ii. 40-2), he had concluded peace sorely against his will, he at all events put a merry face upon the matter (Letters to Williamson, ii. 168); and when the peace congress at Cologne was broken up, he had the satisfaction of being appointed mediator by all the remaining belligerents (Schwerin, 7 and n.) But his mediation had no rapid effect. At home the cabal was at an end. Buckingham was driven from office; Arlington became lord chamberlain, and the head of a court faction of secondary importance; and an address was voted against Lauderdale, who, however, retained office till 1675, and influence for some time longer. From 1674 Danby [see Osborne, Sir Thomas] was at the head or affairs. He cared little for popular liberties, and practised widespread corruption; but it was his ambition to reconcile the crown with the country party, whose attachment to the church and whose dislike of dependence upon a foreign power he shared, He found no difficulty in 1676 in persuading Charles to publish a proclamation for enforcing the laws against the nonconformists, and still less in obtaining his approval of a non-resistance test, which, however, parliament rejected; but the king would not enter into a foreign policy which in this year made war with France seem highly probable. He made a 'sea-progress' round the south coast in July (Heath, Chronicle, 602), but he was determined to keep the peace. Before proroguing parliament in November, which did not meet again till February 1677, he informed it that he was four millions in debt, exclusive of the large sum he owed the goldsmiths; but he could obtain no grant except for the building of ships (Reresby, 179-80; cf. Burnet, ii. 78 seq.) A few weeks later he had to stop the salaries and maintenance money of his household, and soon adopted a reduced scale of expenditure (Schwerin, 43, 47). On 17 Feb. 1676 Charles II concluded another secret treaty with Louis XIV, which he copied and sealed with his own hand. It bound him, in return for an annual subsidy of 100,000l., to enter into no engagements with any other power without the consent of his ally. (The story of a secret compact for the subjection of England to France, and for her conversion to Rome, detailed in Relation de l'Accroissemnt de la Papauté, has no evidence to support it. A great part is played in it by the three English regiments in the service of France, as to which see Burnet, ii. 116-17.) Soon after this Charles is found affecting ​sympathy with the anti-French feeling of his subjects (see Schwerin, 57-8). Danby, who though aware of the French treaty had not signed it, had meanwhile been working in a contrary direction. To him were due the negotiations for a marriage between the Princess Mary and the Prince of Orange, berun in 1674. When parliament reassembled in February 1677, Charles II souuht to appease the continued anti-French feeling by declaring that he had entered into a close alliance with the United Provinces against France (Reresby, i. 199). Shaftesbury, Buckingham, Salisbury, and Wharton, who supported a resolution declaring the long prorogation illegal, were sent to the Tower (cf. Sohwerin, 105). Popular excitement ran high against France, and the king prorogued parliament in an angry speech, blaming it for meddling in questions of foreign policy. Yet, notwithstanding a splendid special French embassy sent over in the spring, he gave way to public feeling, and the Orange marriage was celebrated on 4 Nov., the king himself giving away the bride (Schwerin, 163; cf. Burnet, ii. 120-4). Louis XIV forthwith took his revenge by beginning a series of intrigues with the opposition leaders; and on 26 Jan. 1678 Charles II retorted by withdrawing the English regiments from France and sending part of them to Flanders. To patch up matters another secret treaty was concluded on 17 May, when, in return for three annual payments of 300,000l., Charles II undertook to disband his troops and dissolve his parliament. But the English troops brought from Flanders to England were maintained there on the pretext of want of money for paying them off (Burnet, ii. 146), and to put pressure upon France at Nymwegen an Anglo-Dutch treaty was concluded on 26 July. The treaty with France thus remained unexecuted. On 10 Aug. the peace of Nymwegen was signed (Ranke, v. 61-8).
Charles II involved himself as little as possible in the shameful transactions which followed the alleged discovery of a popish plot (August 1678). At first he betook himself to Newmarket, thereby arousing censure of his levity (Burnet, ii. l53). He protected the queen (ib. 165-7). But otherwise, though he had shrewdly found out the mendacity of Oates (ib. 152) and the crass ignorance of of Bedloe (ib. 160-1), and believed the former to be acting under Shaftesbury's instructions (ib. 171), he adhered to the plan of, as he phrased it, 'giving them line enough.' On 9 Nov. he thanked parliament for their care of his person, and assured it of his readiness to maintain the protestant religion, and very possibly he has at first some fears for his own safety, in consequence of his failure to effect anything for the catholics. In no case — not even in Stafford's — did he venture to exercise the prerogative of mercy on behalf of the victims of popular frenzy, though he expressed his displeasure at the condemnation of the five Jesuits in June 1679 (H. Sidney, i. 7-8), and is said to have told Essex that he 'dared not' pardon Archbishop Plunket (Lingard, x. 15). The parliament, which had passed an act excluding all catholics except the Duke of York from parliament, and all except him and some of the queen's ladies from court, proceeded on 21 Dec 1678 to impeach Danby. This step, contemplated as early as 1675, was now forced on by the revengeful disclosures of Louis XIV. Charles saw no way of saving his minister except by the prorogation of the parliament (30 Dec.), followed by its dissolution (24 Jan. 1679). Thus the 'Long,' or 'Pensioners' parliament' came to an end (Evelyn, 25 Jan. 1679).
Shaftesbury and his party had fostered the popish plot panic to effect the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession. Charles saw this, and contrived to excite the advocates of the exclusion to a pitch of violence which gradually brought round the preponderance of opinion to his brother's and his own side. A few days after 28 Feb. 1679, when he had ordered the Duke of York to go abroad so as to avoid the meeting of the new parliament, he sanctioned the attempt of the primate and the Bishop of Winchester to persuade the duke to return to the protestant religion (Dalrymple, ii. 260-4). In view of the agitation in favour of Monmouth, the Duke of York, before leaving the country, induced the king to declare in council, and to have his declaration placed on record, that he had never been married to any person but Queen Catherine. (He appears to have made two such declarations, on 6 Jan. and 3 March 1679; see Somers Tracts, viii. 187-9; cf. Hatton Correspondence, i. 177, and Burnet, ii. 198.)
In the new House of Commons the court party was reduced to insignificance, and a bill of attainder was passed against Danby, who in vain pleaded the kings pardon, and was committed to the Tower. Charles now resolved upon the novel experiment recommended by Temple of carrying on the government by means of an understanding with the majority (see Macaulay, chap, ii., and his Essay on Sir William Temple). The old council was dismissed, and an enlarged and partly representative council named in it place, with Shaftesbury at its head. But he was not one of the four out of the thirty ​members of the council who formed the real directory of affairs, and who, led by Halifax, upheld the succession of the Duke of York, though advocating the limitation of his powers as king. And even this directory occasionally, as in the matter of Lauderdale, found itself overruled by Charles's arbitrary will (H. Sidney, i. 5). Very soon Shaftesbury was working on behalf of the Exclusion Bill; but its progres was arrested by the prorogation (26 May), followed by the dissolution (July) of the new parliament, which the king and Halifax had pressed against the majority of the council (H. Sidney, i. 5; cf. Burnet, ii. 228–9). The excitement which prevailed is illustrated by the rumour, spread early in July, that an attempt had been made upon the king's life (Pythouse Papers, 72–3). In August following he was taken with a series of fits, which were cured by quinine; but suspicions of poison were rife (H. Sunset, i. 97 et al.; Luttrell, i. 20; Hatton Correspondence, i. 189–92; Burnet, ii. 237–8). The general election which followed resulted in the return of another House of Commons favourable to the bill; and the new parliament was at once prorogued from October 1679 to the January following, the king having, as he assured Sidney, made up his mind ‘to wait till this violence should wear off, and meanwhile live upon his revenues, and do all he could to satisfy his people' (i. 188–9). A loud cry arose for the assembling of parliament, and numerous addresses to the king poured in urging it (Addressers not its Abhorrers). At the same time the purpose of Shaftesbury and his party to substitute the Duke of Monmouth in the succession for the Duke of York more and more openly declared itself. The first notion of such a scheme seems to have been Buckingham's, when as far back as 1667 he had projected a divorce between the king and queen, and Shaftesbury was rumoured to have taken part in that plan (Christie, ii. 8–9). The Duke of York had taken his departure for Scotland in the autumn; but the king had no intention of even passively countenancing the designs in favour of his son. During the popish plot agitation in 1678 he told Burnet that he would rather see Monmouth hanged than legitimate him; but he seemed then to be under the delusion that he could in the last resort keep him under his control. In 1679 Monmouth fell more and more under Shaftesbury's influence, and his quasi-royal progresses through different parts of England deeply offended the king, who in September deprived him of his general's commission, notwithstanding his recent services in Scotland (Luttrell, i. 21, 22). This makes it the more curious that after, in October, Shaftesbury had been abruptly dismissed from the chancellorship—about at the time of Dangerfield's pretended revelation of the so-called Meal-tub plot—overtures should have been made to him in November to return to other as first commissioner of the treasury. He replied that the king must be advised to part with both the queen and the Duke of York (Christie, ii. 352), and at the close of the month this post, vacated by Essex, was filled by Laurence Hyde (Rochester). About this time the intrigues of the promoters of the Monmouth scheme took a bolder turn. In November Sidney, (i. 85) reports that endeavours were being made to get witnesses to swear that the king had been married to Monmouth's mother, and in December Monmouth returned to England amid great popular rejoicings, but was forbidden to come near the court (Luttrell, i. 29). About the beginning of 1680 rumours were circulated as to the existence of a black box containing a document importing marriage, or contract of marriage, between the king and Monmouth's mother, and it was then that, after instituting inquiries into the origin of the report, Charles put forth his declarations in council mentioned above (Somers Tracts, viii. 187 seq.; Luttrell, i. 48, s. d. 8 June). Libels on the subject, however, continued to he published (ib. i. 50; Somers Tracts, u. s.) But though there was no thought of yielding to the demand for the 'protestant duke,’ and though the Duke of York was present in England early in 1680, the feeling of king and court about this time was strong for a compromise. It was urged by Halifax; and in foreign affairs there was at least a possibility that the king, who had of late been on excellent terms with the Prince of Orange, might fall in with his scheme of an alliance against France, which had been made the pretext for proroguing the new parliament (H. Sidney, i. 26, 172, 292; Burnet, ii. 246–9). A scheme seems to have been formed for encouraging this humour in the king by means of a new mistress, who favoured Monmouth (H. Sidney, i. 298): but the Duchess of Portsmouth was found by no means averse to fall in for the moment with a policy of conciliation towards the opposition and of politeness towards the Prince of Orange (Forneron, ii. 40; cf. Burnet, ii. 260). The king—who was generally in good health, though in May 1680 his seizure by another fit of ague created a passing alarm (Savile Correspondence, 153 n.)— made himself popular on a visit to the lord mayor (H. Sidney, i. 301–2); but when parliament actually assembled, in October 1680, all the finessing proved to have been in ​vain. The Exclusion Bill, though opposed on behalf of the court by Sir Leoline Jenkins (in favour of whom Coventry had resigned in April), was passed by the commons. But through the influence of Halifax it was rejected by the lords. Hereupon the king—who found himself in danger of being protected by a protestant association, with which he had no sympathy, against the papists, with whom he had no quarrel—dissolved parliament on 18 Jan. 1681. Even now he had not despaired of a parliamentary settlement. But, offended by the zeal of the city, and unmoved by a petition from Essex and fifteen other peers deprecating the calling of a parliament out of Westminster (Somers Tracts, viii. 282–3), Charles proceeded in March to Oxford, and summoned parliament to meet there. The king took up his residence at Christ Church, and the queen at Merton. The Duchess of Portsmouth and ‘Mrs. Gwyn' appear to have lodged out of college (Luttrell, i. 70–1). The king found time before the opening of parliament to attend a horse-race and to visit Lord Cornbury (Prideaux Letters, 82). According to Burnet (ii. 276), he about this time gave ear to a scheme for combining with the titular succession of the Duke of York a regency in the person of the Prince of Orange. On the other hand, he was rumoured to have safeguarded himself against the tenacity of the commons by a large sum of money from France (Savile Correspondence, 181). At the Oxford parliament, which met on 21 March 1681, the elders of the country party and Shaftesbury himself appeared numerously attended by armed followers. The parliament, addressed by the king in a speech reproduced, it is said by his own orders, in his poet-laureate's great satire (see Scott and Saintsbury's Dryden, ix. 310), proved wholly intractable; Shaftesbury, in a paper communicated by him to the king, insisted upon his naming Monmouth as his successor; and nobody but Sir Leoline Jenkins was found to speak against the bill. The parliament was therefore dissolved by the king on 28 March, and its dissolution was followed by the issue of a royal declaration, which was published in the churches, and reckoned up the misdoings of the last three parliaments, but protested the king's affection to the protestant religion and his resolution still to have frequent parliaments. A multitude of addresses in different shades of loyalty followed, but the greater number of them condemned the Exclusion Bill (Burnet, ii. 282–5). Manifestly the tide had begun to turn in favour of the court, which was not slow to take advantage of it. In the course of this year Shaftesbury became a prisoner in the Tower, the king having himself come suddenly to town to decide upon the step (Hatton Correspondence, ii. 1); but he recovered his liberty on the rejection of the indictment of high treason against him by the Middlesex grand jury (November). A humbler offender, Stephen College [q. v.], had however previously suffered death (August). In Scotland a régime of great severity was established by the Duke of York, and Argyll was convicted but escaped (Decemher). A visit of the Prince of Orange to the king (July) resulted only in an increase of illwill and jealously towards him on the part of Charles, as well as of James (H. Saville, ii. 220 n.; see, however, Burnet's story, ii. 415, that Charles prophesied the fat of James to William). Though in October England joined with the United Provinces and Spain in a Joint diplomatic memorial (Savile Correspondence, 217), a secret agreement been negotiated by Barillon and Hyde in London, whereby, in return for a payment of 200,000l. within the next three years, Charles II engaged to detach himself from the Spanish alliance, and remain independent of parliament. In consequence, Louis XIV laid siege to Luxemburg in November; but he raised it again when he perceived that he might be driving his bargain too hard (Ranke, v. 178–9, 202; cf. Clarke, Life of Jones II, i. 664–5). In 1682 Louis XIV offered to Charles the arbitration of his claims upon the Spanish Netherlands. Spain not unnaturally demurred, and nothing came of the offer.
During all this time the popularity of Charles at home seems to have been on the increase. He spent September 1681 at Newmarket, whence, on the 27th, he paid a visit with the queen to Cambridge; on 12 Oct. they returned to London, and the bells were rung and bonfires lit. On the 29th they dined at the Guildhall, and were received with popular acclamations both on entering and leaving the city (Luttrell, i. 128, 30–1, 134, 139–40); on 19 Feb. 1681–2 the king laid the first stone of the Chelsea Hospital for disabled soldiers; in May his birth and restoration day was kept with unusual strictness (ib. 190). The government was thus encouraged to persist in the path of reaction. Contemporary wit well named it the ministry of the Chits, on account of the comparative youth of its must prominent members, Rochester, Sunderland, and Godolphin, The last-named, much liked by the king for being ‘never in the way and never out of the way' (Dartmouth's note to Burnet, ii. 246), became one of the secretaries of state on the retirement of Jenkins in 1684, and soon moved to the first commissionship of the treasury, Middleton taking his secretaryship. The lord chancellorship was held by ​ford (North). The spirit of the government was shown in the enforcement the penal laws against the protestant dissenters, and more especially in the proceedings intended to secure the surrender of the city and borough charters, culminating in the declaration (12 June 1683) of the forfeiture of the charter of the city, of London. Thus it was hoped to insure manageable parliaments and servile juries, while a judicial bench presided over by chief justices like Jeffreys would do the rest. Hide first hints of the system caused anxiety to the leaders of the late agitation. Early in September 1682 the king is found saying that he would willingly receive Monmouth (Hatton Correspondence, ii, 19) A fortnight afterwards Monmouth was arrested in the west, but soon liberated on bail: and on 19 Oct. Shaftesbury, who had been scheming to the last, took his departure for Holland. In the spring of 1683 ensued the discovery of the so-called Rye House plot, of which the purpose was said to have been the murder of the king and the Duke of York on their way from Newmarket to London, at a lonely house on the high road near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire. Whatever may have been the truth as to the confessions concerning the projected assassination at the Rye House, there can be no doubt that among certain fanatics of the whig party a scheme for 'lopping' the king and his brother had been discussed, and that some of these fanatics had been in contact with several of the opposition lenders, among them Monmouth, William, lord Russell, Essex, Howard, and Algernon Sidney, upon whom Shaftesbury had urged the plan of a rising. The king came up to town so soon as any important names had been brought before the council. He displayed much concern on account of Monmouth, who contrived to escape for the time, but showed no hesitation with regard to the rest of the accused. In the case of Russell he is said to have repelled the pressure put upon him by the characteristic argument that unless he took Russell's life Russell would soon take his (Dartmouth's note to Burnet, ii. 280 n. As to the plot, see Lord (John) Russell's Life of William, Lord Russell, ii. 148–74, and Fox, History of James II (1808), 50–5. For a list of the conspirators see Somers Tracts, viii. 405 seq.) Of course loyal addresses followed in profusion, and on 9 Sept. a thanksgiving day was celebrated (Luttrell, i. 276, 279, 282; Somers Tracts, viii. 420, S.T.C. ii. 153 sq.) Not long afterwards Monmouth submitted himself to the king's grace; but he soon repented of his submission, was again banished the court, and repaired to the Hague. It is, however, doubtful whether Charles II had completely cast him off, or merely wished the Prince of Orange to suppose so (cf. Burnet, ii. 416).
With the year 1684 the question presented itself whether the Triennial Act should he boldly violated, in compliance with the last secret agreement with Louis XIV, who was again at war with Spain and on the point of renewing the siege of Luxemburg. Halifax was for a parliament, but his influence had greatly paled before that of the Duke of York. Moreover Charles II, whose mediation remained prospective, and who still had considerable pecuniary claims on France, showed no wish to interfere with the proceedings of his debtor, and congratulated him on his capture of Luxemburg (June 1684). The reaction therefore continued, as the statue erected to the king in the Royal Exchange in this year remains to show. Danby and the noblemen imprisoned on popish plot charges were bailed, and Titus Oates was sentenced to a fine which meant perpetual imprisonment. The system of governing without parliament, however, made it necessary to reduce public expenditure. Tangier was abandoned (1683), and less defensible operations seem to have been at times resorted to with the king’ connivance to obtain money (see the case of Sir H. St. John, ib. ii. 457 ).
As the reign of Charles II approached its close, the clouds gathered. Rumours, fed by court gossip, went to and fro between London and Paris as to the king's intention of joining the church of Rome, and gave additional significance to a project for taking the nomination of the officers of the Irish army from the new lord-lieutenant, Rochester, and placing it and the control of that army in the hands of the king (Burnet, ii. 459–64; Dalrymple, i. 115, referring to the correspondence in Carte's ‘Life of Ormonde'). About the same time the king revoked a commission by which he had three years before delegated to the primate and others the disposal of ecclasiastical preferments within his immediate patronage (Cook, 482). In May 1684 the last admiralty commission was revoked, and the office of lord high admiral again conferred upon the Duke of York, the king evading the Test Act by signing the most important documents appertaining to the office (Evelyn, 12 May 1684). The duke had in 1882 returned from Scotland amidst royalist acclamations, but just before the close of the reign the relations between the brothers seem to have lost something of their old cordiality. Whatever might be his brother's plans, Charles was heard to remark, he was too old to go on his travels again. To meet the king' dissatisfaction the Duchess of ​Portsmouth, for whom the king's infatuation had become stronger than ever, is said to have proposed a strange scheme. The Duke of York was to be sent back to Scotland, and Monmouth brought over to England, a reconciliation being thus effected with the Prince of Orange at the cost of a change of policy towards France. But the precise history of this design remains obscure, and the part said to have been assigned to the Duchess of Portsmouth is highly improbable (Burnet, ii. 464–6; Dalrymple, i. 116–17; Secret History of Whitehall, letter lxxii.) It seems certain that Monmouth came over on a short visit, though statements differ as to whether he actually saw his father. Whatever speculations may have been rife as to the possibility of a change of policy both at home and abroad, they were cut short by the death of Charles II. Since his serious illness in 1679 the care which he took of his health had helped to prevent a relapse, though Luttrell, in May 1682, notes his having suffered at Windsor from a serious distemper (i. 190). On the night of 1 Feb. 1685 he had been supping with the Duchess of Portsmouth; next morning he was seized by an apoplectic fit. At first his malady seemed to give way to remedies, and the news of his recovery spread through the country, where it was received with demonstrations of joy (Cook, 471–2). But on the night of the 4th he grew worse, and shortly before noon on the 6th he died (Luttrell, i. 327). The narratives differ as to the question whether the queen attended his deathbed, at which the Duchess of Portsmouth seems certainly to have been present. An edifying account of the last words consciously spoken by Charles II was composed by his brother (Clarke, Life of James II, i. 749); the pathetic 'Let not poor Nelly starve !' has the authority of Burnet (ii. 478). The rumours which attributed his death to poison seem to have had no foundation (see Hatton Correspondence, ii. 61–4 ; Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd series, iv. 74–6 ; Harris, ii. 376 n.; Burnet, ii. 473–8, and note to 476 on the opinion of the Duchess of Portsmouth; North's Examen and his Life of Lord Guilford, ii. 107. The whole evidence is well reviewed by Jesse, iii. 371–80). The remains of the king, which seem to have been exposed to unwarrantable neglect, were interred on 17 Feb. in Henry VII's chapel with solemnities that were thought inadequate (Luttrell, i. 330 ; Cook, 475–7). Doubtless not a few Englishmen moralised, after the fashion of Evelyn, over the end of Charles II in the midst, of such a court as his.
Charles II died a professed catholic. What there was of reverence in him — and it was little even in his boyhood (cf. Lake, Diary, 26) — had been driven out by the experiences of his earlier days. While he cared nothing for the church of England (Burnet, ii. 296) he hated presbyterianism (ib. i. 197); and notwithstanding his declarations of indulgence there is no sign that the persecutions of protestant nonconformity in his reign disturbed his peace of mind. Thus it is probable that he would have contented himself with 'a religion all of his own' had it not been for the repeated efforts made during his exile to lead him over to the church of Rome. There were rumours of communications from him to the pope when in Scotland in 1650, and again in 1662, which latter Whitelocke was said to have originally inserted in his 'Memoirs' and then torn out (Secret History of the Reigns of Charles II and James II, ii, 18); and Burnet asserts (i. 135) that in 1655 he was actually converted by Cardinal Retz, Lord Aubigny likewise having much to do with the matter (cf. Clarendon, vii. 62–4). It would also seem that during his residence at Paris Olier, a zealous propagandist, had intercourse with Charles on the subject of religion (Vie de M. Olier, cit. in Gent. Mag. u. i.); and he was stated to have declared himself in private to be a catholic some time before the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 (Carte, Life of Ormonde, cit. in Harris, ii. 61 n.; cf. Somers Tracts, viii. 225). There can be little doubt that when Charles came back to England he was virtually a catholic, but there is no satisfactory evidence that he had ever actually been received into the church of Rome. His hesitation to declare himself after his restoration requires no explanation; of his strong catholic sympathies during the whole of its course there can be no doubt whatever. His two declarations of indulgence were passed for the benefit of his catholic subjects (Vaughan, ii. 331), and his undertaking to France in the treaty of Dover was in consonance with his personal wishes. Shortly after his marriage he sent Sir Richard Bellings [q. v.] to Rome, one of whose commissions was to propose to Pope Alexander VII terms upon which the king and the nation should be reconciled to Rome. The negotiation was afterwards laid aside, but in August 1668, about the time when the Duke of York's conversion became known to him, Charles II corresponded with Oliva, the general of the jesuits at Rome, who sent to London a novice of his order. The instructions of this agent are unknown, but the transaction is all the more significant inasmuch as the young novice in question, who was known in Rome under the name of James La Cloche, was a natural son of Charles II, born to him ​in his youth by a lady at Jersey (Gent. Mag. January 1866, based on G. Bobro, Storia della Conversione di Carlo II, published at Rome from the Jesuit archives; cf. Christie, ii. 17, with Colbert's memoir in Appendix, ib.; Mignet, Négociations rel, à la Succession d'Espagne, iii.; and Ranke, iv. 23). Yet eyen these discoveries prove nothing as to Charles having made any profession of the catholic faith before he lay on his deathbed. That he made it admits of no doubt. Barillon states that at the suggestion of the Duchess of Portsmouth he prevailed upon the Duke of York to obtain the king's permission to bring a priest to him, and that from this priest, Father Hudlestone, who had helped to save the king's life in his wanderings, Charles, after declaring himself a catholic and expressing contrition for having so long delayed nis reconciliation, received absolution, the communion, and extreme unction (see the father's narrative, Ellis, 2nd series, iv. 78- 81; cf. Dalrymple, ii. Appendix, 110-21). James II asserts that his brother refused the communion according to the rites of the church of England proffered by Bishop Ken, who, however, pronounced the absolution on the king's expressing regret for his sins (Clarke, i. 747; cf. A True Relation, &c., in Somers Tracts, viii. 429). There are some minor discrepancies between the various accounts, which include Burnet's (ii. 468-72), but as to the main fact of the king's profession their agreement leaves no room for doubt. The controversial papers in support of the doctrines of the church of Rome found in his strong box after his death, and afterwards communicated by James II without effect to his daughter, the Princess of Orange (see her Lettres et Mémoires, 1880, 61), may, as Halifax shrewdly observes, have been written all by Charles II himself, 'and yet not one word his own.'
Halifax, the author of the best character ever drawn of Charles II, observed (Burnet, ii. 840) that God had made him of a particular composition; and though his fortunes were certainly more extraordmary than his qualities, he was not altogether a common type of man. The vicissitudes of his fortunes may be held in part accountable for some of his weaknesses and his vices; for his fickleness (Reresby, 221); for his dissimulation, which at times imposed upon the unworldly (Reliquiæ Baxtertanæ, 231); even perhaps in some measure for his immorality. These were hardly counterbalanced by the gifts which help to account for his undeniable popularity. He was good-natured, or, in Evelyn's words, 'debonnaire and easy of access,' grateful to those who had rendered him personal service in misfortune, kind to all, down to the spaniels who dwelt in his bedchamber. He had it not in his nature, as is told by a cast-off mistress, to do cruel things to anything living (Harris, ii. 396), and Evelyn calls him 'not bloody nor cruel.' Burnet, however, demurs to this praise (ii. 481), and without dwelling on an exceptional instance of brutal revengefulness such as the mutilation of Sir John Coventry, we may well believe that Charles II had 'no tenderness in his nature.' He was, however, blessed with an excellent temper, which only broke down when a courtier, such as Henry Savile, ventured to use his vote and interest against the royal wish (Lauderdale Papers, iii. 139-40; cf Burnet, i. 501). At the root of his character lay a selfishness which showed itself in innumerable ways, but above all in an indomitable hatred of taking trouble. It was this which, when he could not get rid of petitioners by fast walking or by taking sanctuary with one of his mistresses (Halifax, 23-5), made him give pleasant words to everybody, careless whether he or his ministers for him afterwards broke his promises (Schwerin, 176; cf. Burnet, ii. 480). It was this too which made him shrink from wise counsellors, in accordance, as Clarendon writes (iii. 63), with the unfortunate disposition of his line to follow the counsel of intellectual inferiors. Yet he was by no means always inattentive to business. Whatever really interested him, beginning with his health, he generally thought worth trouble. The records of courtiers and diplomatists (Henry Sidney, Schwerin, Savile Correspondence) alike convey the impression that he frequently applied iiimself to matters of state, both in council and in parliament, although his habit of standing by the fire with a circle of peers round him during the sittings of the House of Lords, which he thought as diverting as a play, did not tend to expedite affairs (Dalrymple, i. 21; cf. Jesse, iii. 343-4).
The sensualism of Charles was another phase of his utter selfishness. Among his favourite vices drinking had no place. Again, though high play was fashionable at court, he never became a gambler. Except in one direction, he cannot be charged with great personal extravagance, although, as Evelyn says, he loved planting and building, and in general brought in a politer style of living which led to luxury. The extraordinary superfluity of offices in his court and household (see especially Cal. 1661-4, and Chamberlayne) can hardly be laid at his door; nor did he only preach economy in dress, &c. to parliament (May 1662; see Somers Tracts, ​vii. 547), but sought an occasion to practise what he preached (Evelyn, 18 Oct.; Pepys , 15 Oct. and 22 Nov. 1666). The passion which in him swallowed up all others was a love for women, in which, as Halifax says, he had as little of the seraphic part as ever man had. The palliation which he once attempted for his wantonness (Rebesby, 165) is contemptible; better is Halifax's half excuse, that 'sauntering' is a stronger temptation to princes than to others (see (Cunningham, 16). It would be an error to suppose that the public was indifferent to the king's proceedings, or regarded them as matter of course. The task would be too arduous to endeavour to give an accurate list of his mistresses. The names of Lucy Walters (or Waters or Barlow), Catharine Peg (afterwards Green), Lady Shannon (Elizabeth Killigrew), and Lady Byron (Eleanor Needham) belong to the period of his exile after his restoration, Mrs. Palmer, successively Countess of Castlemaine and (from 1670) Duchess of Cleveland, was mistress en titre till she was succeeded by Louise de Kéroualle, duchess of Portsmouth (1673), who was, like her predecessor, named a lady of the bedchamber to the queen. The king's futile passion for 'la belle Stewart,' who married the Duke of Richmond, at one time aroused the jealousy of Lady Castlemaine but the position of the Duchess of Portsmouth was never seriously threatened, though a rumour to that effect arose in 1680 (((sc|H. Savile}}, i. 298). In rank and notoriety, but not in political power, the Duchess of Mazarin (Hortensia Mancini) was her foremost rival (Evelyn, ll June 1699 et al.) But she had to submit to endless other infidelities on the king's part, among which his attachment to Nell Gwynne (from the beginning of 1668) had preceded the opening of 'Madame Carwells' own reign, and endured throughout it (see Forneron, ii.) Other actresses in the list were Margaret Davis and Margaret Hughes; and further names are those of Winifred Wells, Mary Knight, and Jane Roberts, the daughter of a clergyman. By these and others Charles II had a numerous progeny, of which may be mentioned his children by Lucy Walters, James, duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch (born 1649), and a daughter Mary (?); by Catharine Peg, Charles Fitzcharles, earl of Plymouth (born 1657); by Lady Shannon, Charlotte, countess of Yarmouth; by Lady Castlemaine, Charles Fitzroy, duke of Southampton and Cleveland (born 1682), Henry Fitzroy, duke of Grafton (born 1663), George Fitzroy, duke of Northumberland (born 1665), Anne, countess of Sussex, Charlotte, countess of Lichfield, and Barbara Fitzroy (?), who became a nun in France; by Margaret Davis, Mary Tudor, countess of Derwentwater; by Nell Qwynne, Charles Beauclerk, duke of St. Albans (born 1670), and James Beauclerk born 1671); by the Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles Lennox, duke of Richmond, born 1678 Hübner, Genealogische Tabellen, i. 78; Cunningham; Jesse; Forneron).
In his relations to the government of the country Charles II was under the influence of motives not very different from those which swayed his private life. His desire to be free from the control of parliament, and yet provided with the means which he could not honourably obtain elsewhere, brought about his corrupt dependence upon France. His own council (at the time when it had been put on a broader basis) would not trust him to have private interviews with the foreign ambassadors, and though he contrived such with Barillon, it was with many signs, on the king's part, of the fear of detection (Dalrymple, ii. 280). He even owned to having taken a bribe to help a colonial job through the council itself (Burnet, ii. 105). Of course he expected others to be equally venal, and he rarely resorted to threats (for an instance see Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson (1885), ii. 266 n.) Charles II may be excused for not having loved parliamentary government as he pretended to do (see Somera Tracts, vii. 553 ; cf. Clarendon, Life, ii. 225-6), and for having failed to combine the system of cabinet government, which was not his invention, with the principle of a collective ministerial responsibility to parliament, for which the times were not yet ripe. But it was his fault that throughout his reign the system of backstairs influence prevailed. He can hardly be said to have had favourites proper; neither Rochester nor Buckingham, neither Arlington nor Falmouth, actually had an ascendency over him. But he was surrounded by courtiers of the menial type, and the real centre of government lay in the apartments of the reigning sultana. Among the chief potentates of the backstairs were Baptist May, keeper of the privy purse; Thomas Chiffinch [q. v.], keeper of his private or cabinet closet, succeeded on his death in 1666 by his brother William, who enjoyed still greater favour; lastly, Edward Progers, who, after attending Charles in Jersey, and being banished from his presence in Gotland, afterwards became, in Grammont's words, 'the confidant of the king's intrigues,' and M.P. for Breconshire (cf. Wheatley, 181-2). There was the same disorder in the accounts of the court as in those of the state, and in truth parts of both were hopelessly mixed up under the head of ​secret services; if the navy office was in chronic disorder in the earlier part, of the reign (Wheatley, 128–58; Dalrymple, ii. 1, 103–110), neither were the salaries of the royal household paid with regularity, but are found on occasion all in arrear, at periods varying from one to three years (Secret Services of Charles II, vi–viii.)
Charles II was endowed by nature with an excellent intellect. Halifax praises his admirable memory and his strong power of observation, and says that whenever one of his ministers fell, the king was always at hand with a full inventory of his faults. His quickness of apprehension was extraordinary, and was the chief source of his wit. Many of his witticisms were seasoned with a very gross salt which, even in a court whose conversation was indescribably coarse, struck the critical as not reconcilable with his usual good breeding. His ordinary courtiers found fault rather with his inveterate habit of telling stories, especially concerning his adventures after Worcester; he wearied even Pepys (2 Jan. 1668), but probably unconsciously, for Burnet (i. 170) calls him an everlasting talker. He understood both French and Italian, though he does not appear to have written the former very idiomatically (Clarendon, vii. 64); Latin he seems not to have read with ease (Schwerin, 314). He is asserted (by Cook, 500–1) to have been well versed in historical and political literature, as well as in English law and divinity. He had a liking for polite literature, and for the drama more especially. His literary judgments show much discernment, and he encouraged the stage. He was a buyer of pictures, and had a strong taste for architecture; in the history of which art, even more than in that of portrait painting, in England his reign forms a memorable epoch. But, curiously enough, the bent of his intellect was rather in the direction of physical science, nor is it inappropriate that the Royal Society should have been founded, though not projected, in his reign. He knew, says Evelyn, of many empirical medicines, and the easier mechanical mathematics. With his interest in the former his anxiety for his health may have had much to do, and with the latter his love of ships and shipbuilding, for he was constantly it Sheerness and on the fleet, and took great pleasure in his yachts (Cal. 1660–1661). But Pepys tells us that he was fond of seeing dissections (11 May 1669), and describes his celebrated chemical laboratory as a pretty place (15 Jan. 1669). His liking for chemistry, which he had shared with his cousin Prince Rupert, was longlived; in the very month of his death he was engaged in experiments in the production of mercury (Wheatley, 167; cf. Burnet, i. 169). He had, too, a fondness for curiosities, which he caused to be collected for his cabinet at foreign courts (Cal. 1660–1, 499; cf. ib. 390). His favourite bodily exercise was walking; in his youth he was a good dancer, and even after the Restoration he excelled at tennis (Wheatley, 229; cf. Hatton Correspondence, i. 189). Both before and after his return he liked hunting, and it was for this pastime, but more especially for the horse-races, that Newmarket was his favourite resort (see Savile Correspondence, 271, and note; cf. Reresby, 288).
When after the battle of Worcester a reward of 1,000l. was offered for the capture of Charles Stuart, he was described as 'a tall man, above two yards high, his hair a deep brown, near to black' (Cal. 1651, 476). This corresponds to Marvell's famous description of him (Grosart's Marvell, i. 343) as 'of a tall stature and of sable hue.' In 'A Cavalier's Note-book,' 90, there is a curious anecdote of his measuring his height in the cabin of the Naseby on his return to England, and of its exceeding that of any other person on board (cf. Pepys, 26 May 1660; Cunningham, 74, however, states him to have measured five feet ten inches only). The king's swarthy complexion (Evelyn speaks of his 'fierce countenance'), with its effect heightened by the dark periwig, is the most distinctive feature of all his portraits. Of these the National Portrait Gallery contains three, of which one is by John Greenhill, another by Mrs. Beale, while a third, an allegorical piece, is attributed to Sir Peter Lely.
death of Charles. An invaluable commentary on what it professes to condense is H. B. Wheatley's Samuel Pepys and the World he lived in (2nd ed. 1880). A. Hamilton's French Memoirs of the Court of Charles II by Count Grammont, which owe much to their real author, only cover
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Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.62 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 97 | ii | 9 f.e. | Charles II.: after state insert and was himself superseded by Henry Coventry |
| | | 8 f.e. | for was Henry Coventry read secretary throughout the period being Lord Arlington |
| 100 | i | l.l. | omit after in |
| | ii | 1-4 | omit from October . . . . Meal-tub plot |
| | | 5 | for him read Shaftesbury |