King Charles II (50 page)

Affluent, pompous, by his very virtues reminding everyone uncomfortably of an earlier age, Clarendon had no widespread popularity to counteract the loss of the royal favour. Two marriages were further held against him – the alien Portuguese match to Catharine was laid as his door; while the fact that his own daughter was likely to be Queen, if Charles died without issue, only increased Clarendon’s unpopularity, exacerbated by the failure of the Dutch War.

In the meantime, the King was discovering for himself the advantages of younger, more accommodating servants. Besides Arlington, now married to a rich Dutchwoman, and Thomas Clifford, there was Buckingham’s Yorkshire protégé Thomas Osborne, two years younger than the King. Osborne was a handsome fellow who probably joined the anti-Clarendon group when Clarendon slighted him over the profitable Yorkshire Excise. The King himself understood his worth: for example, Osborne’s name was inserted in the King’s own handwriting into the list of commissioners appointed to examine the Irish accounts.
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One mark of Buckingham’s Yorkshire-based group, in Clarendon’s prejudiced opinion, was exhibitionism. They were, he wrote, ‘all bold speakers, and meant to make themselves considerable by saying upon all occasions what wiser men would not, whatever they thought’.
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As a matter of fact, Osborne had diligence as well as boldness, as his subsequent career in the King’s service would demonstrate. Nevertheless, the sport of Chancellor-baiting was an easy one for these younger men to
propose in the embittered atmosphere of that autumn of 1667.

There was a temporary reverse in Buckingham’s fortunes in the summer, a silly matter of the King’s horoscope being cast. By September however the ebullient Duke, his good looks becoming puffy with age, but his spirits in no way weighted down, was back in favour. Nor was Buckingham the only one to see in the fall of Clarendon a convenient solution to the expensive fiasco of the Dutch War. Arlington was joined with Buckingham in the cause. Barbara Castlemaine, who hated Clarendon – the feeling was mutual – joined with her cousin Buckingham and exerted what was literally petticoat influence: after Clarendon’s disgrace she was spotted in her aviary at Whitehall, wearing a smock and ‘joying herself at the old man’s going away’.
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Under different circumstances, Clarendon might have survived these animosities. In the spring of 1667 he wrote to his old friend Nicholas that he intended to lodge peaceably in his own (newly built and magnificent) house and enjoy his sustained good health, ‘which is worth a great deal of money’.
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But the violent Parliamentary attacks coincided with the King’s own feeling that the Chancellor had outlasted his usefulness, and that he needed to evolve a different method of handling the government, if the monarchical role was to be played as he wished. New advisers raised in him hopes of new and better parliamentary management.

The public move against Clarendon came from Arlington and Sir William Coventry combined. Coventry, another of the new men who was roughly the same age as the King, was an attractive character, possessing both wit and courage, as his career in the Civil War as a very young soldier had demonstrated; his work at the Admiralty, under the Duke of York, was devoted and intelligent, and in the summer of 1667 he was made a Joint Commissioner of the Treasury. Now Coventry turned to the attack on Clarendon with zest.

Parliament bayed for blood. The Chancellor’s windows in Piccadilly were broken; it was the fate of another old servant of the State, the Duke of Wellington, whose windows at Apsley House were broken two centuries later by the mob. At some
point, flight was suggested to the elderly Chancellor to avoid the penalties of impeachment. Lady Clarendon in her anguish was ‘given over for dead’. The Chancellor duly went, his departure witnessed by Arlington, amongst others, ‘with great gaiety and triumph’ from Barbara’s windows. Clarendon looked up. ‘Pray remember that, if you live, you will grow old,’ he said to the radiant favourite.
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So the ageing Earl of Clarendon took up his residence at Montpellier, to enjoy the health of which he had boasted only six months before to Nicholas. Only he employed it not to contemplate the aggregate of his worldly possessions with serenity, his pastures, his mansions and his apple-trees, but to write, with measured anger but also with sonorous recall, the history of his own times.

Most likely it was the King who suggested his flight, promising in return that his estates and honours would be safe. It was no part of his plan that Clarendon should have an opportunity to justify himself against the accusations of his enemies. The general charge of high treason brought against Clarendon would never have been made to stick; but the episode might have had unpleasant ramifications. Besides, Charles avoided confrontations, by temperament, whenever possible. The King did not attempt to conceal that Clarendon’s disappearance from the political scene was a profound relief to him personally. He regretted of course that Clarendon would not allow the dismissal to be handled ‘privately’– he had asked James to get his father-in-law to resign. Beyond that, ‘the truth is, his behaviour and humour was grown so insupportable to myself, and to all the world also, that I could not longer endure it’. But the nub of the matter came in the next sentiment: ‘It was impossible for me to live with it,’ wrote Charles to Ormonde, ‘and do those things with Parliament that must be done or the government will be lost.’
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Long, long ago Charles
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had decided to run before the storm, whenever that storm, if faced, was likely to buffet the royal vessel beyond repair. The decision was not therefore the product of weakness, still less of cowardice: rather of his own particular brand of strength; one might even term it ruthlessness.
The point has been made that the members of Parliament – like intelligent, trained animals – learned a new trick from the Clarendon affair, which they subsequently turned against their master. The impeachment of the King’s minister could be the first road to office. The control of patronage rather than the mere removal of an unpopular minister was the ultimate result. Thus Arlington’s adherents would drive out Buckingham; Shaftesbury would drive out Danby. … It was in this sense that James long after referred to the impeachment as ‘the most fatal blow the King gave himself to his power and prerogative’.
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The remark illustrates a profound difference of character between the two brothers. James saw the royal prerogative as something which had to be seen to be wielded; Charles merely wished to wield it when absolutely necessary. In 1667 he saw his problem quite correctly as ruling
with
Parliament – his policies, their supplies – and this Clarendon had not enabled him to do. The King hoped to do better in the future. Referring to the recent ‘revolution’– the common seventeenth-century word to denote a change-round in affairs – Charles showed himself confident that it would bring about ‘a real and visible amendment’ to his affairs. Already it seemed to him ‘well liked in the world’.
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Indeed, in view of Clarendon’s failures, and the demands of Parliament, it is difficult to see that the King was politically wrong. The spectacle of a sovereign ‘dropping the pilot’ – the phrase applied to the dismissal of Bismarck by the Kaiser – is never an attractive one. But from 1660 onwards King Charles
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was not in business to charm by his actions. To rule, if possible with the approval of Parliament, struck him as being the first duty of the King.

Who now gained political power? Certainly the Buckingham faction benefited from Clarendon’s fall. Osborne became a Joint Treasurer of the Navy. Other supporters of Buckingham were preferred. But it was not simply a case of the rise of the Cabal – that acronym which, as every schoolboy knows (or tries desperately to remember), conveniently covers the names of Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale. For one thing, the Cabal was not nearly as united as the acronym
suggests, particularly in the late 1660s, and it would be several years before anything like a Cabal policy could be discerned. Nor did Buckingham assume that total leadership which Clarendon had once enjoyed. Arlington was popularly regarded as his rival for the King’s favour in the group.
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The most striking immediate effect of Clarendon’s fall was to divide the King and the Duke of York. The closeness which had existed between them earlier in the reign gave way to a ‘kind of inward distance’, in Pepys’ phrase.
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This change was in part engineered by Buckingham. With hindsight, we know that Clarendon was not to emerge from his exile (he died in 1674) and that Montpellier proved no Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. But Buckingham and his supporters lived in terror that matters might be suddenly reversed. And the Duke of York, as Clarendon’s son-in-law, they conceived would be the principal agent in such a reversal.

At this point it is worth taking a cool look both at the position and the character of the Duke of York towards the end of the first decade of Charles’ reign. For one thing, it is not conceivable that the seeds of discord could have been sown between the two brothers if Charles’ attitude towards James had not already been slightly ambiguous. On the surface, there was genuine camaraderie – not only the jolly, competitive yacht races, but also brother advancing brother, as Charles promoted James’ interests at the Admiralty. But Charles’ complicated feelings towards the presence of James at sea have also been noted. James had grown up to be an interesting character: he was brave, genuinely so, and not unintelligent. But he had a rigidity which sometimes goes with courage. Charles, on the other hand, had decided early on to bend, not break. This makes the political contrast between the two remaining brothers of the Stuart family peculiarly intriguing. Their experiences – many of them shared – had pointed them in totally different directions.

The same contrast can be discerned in their respective attitudes towards the Catholic religion. Unlike Charles, James had shown a propensity towards it during the later years of exile, as though its certainties appealed to that streak of the martinet in his own nature. At the Restoration he was described as ‘a professed
friend to the Catholics’. The inclinations of his first wife played their part. Anne Duchess of York died as a Catholic in March 1671, having leant in that direction for several years. James was increasingly unfaithful to her throughout their marriage: but, as a woman of strong character (and strong build – for she took refuge in eating), Anne continued to influence the more serious side of his life.
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The precise date of his own conversion is not known – it is given as 1669 in his Memoirs and it was probably at about that time, or slightly earlier, that he became convinced of Catholic truths. By July 1671 James was telling the French Ambassador that he felt extremely pressed by his conscience to declare himself publicly; he had not taken Communion at Easter that year. It seems that he was officially received into the Catholic Church early in 1672. However, he continued to attend Anglican services until 1676. After that his conversion was an open secret, although, at his brother’s request, he never declared it publicly. This proved a tactical advantage at the time of the Exclusion debates, when it was argued by some that it was not yet ‘legally’ certain that James was a Catholic.
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With Charles the whole process was very different. It was not that he had any temperamental aversion to changing his religion: many of his forebears had done so. The religion of princes – and people – was changeable for reasons of expediency in the seventeenth century to an extent that it is sometimes difficult for the twentieth century to conceive. But Charles drew a sharp distinction between a political standpoint and a private faith.
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With regard to the former, his fierce declarations of Protestantism in exile and at the Restoration gradually gave way to a more relaxed attitude. Then the notion of his own conversion, leading on to that of England herself, began to serve as a useful card in the tortuous negotiations with the Catholic King Louis
XIV
. Later still, the
furore
of the Popish Plot made royal Cath
olicism once again dangerous. All this remained in the domain of politics.

Where the King’s private faith was concerned, the most revealing description was that given by Bishop Burnet, who wrote in 1683 that the King had formed ‘rather an odd idea’ of the goodness of God in his mind. He thought that ‘to be wicked and to design mischief, is the only thing God hates …’. As a result, the King felt free to gratify his appetites if they did no harm.
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It was – and is – an attractive philosophy, if not precisely orthodox. Time and his own tastes, including, we must assume, that philosophy, led Charles inexorably towards Catholicism, a religion where the frailty of the flesh has always been understood. At all events, his devout proclivities grew with age, a development not confined to kings. A number of other factors were at work, including the docility of the English Catholics, the intolerance of the Anglicans, the Catholic timbre of his Court, even the Queen’s pious sweetness. At last, on his death-bed, the King allowed himself to be received. By then it was too late for any declaration to damage the position of the monarchy. The need for a political standpoint was over. He went to his royal grave a Catholic, and at peace.

Yet it is a wood so large that it has sometimes obscured the trees – the fact that Charles never did declare himself to be a Catholic during his active life. Not only did he tell Madame (in 1670) that he was not yet satisfied with the Catholic truth: in November of the same year he received a visit from the Papal Nuncio at which the subject of his hypothetical conversion was not mentioned – odd indeed if this tumultuous change had recently taken place. As late as 1675 he told the French Ambassador Barrillon that his brother James’ Catholicism endangered the throne – which was of course true. Even at the King’s death-bed, Louise Duchess of Portsmouth, the mistress who shared the intimacy of his later years and probably knew more of his private inclinations than anyone else, herself an ardent (if not pious) Catholic, could not say more to Barrillon than that the King had always been a Catholic at heart.
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It was a strange remark, if the King had been converted many years earlier.