King Charles II (80 page)

Gradually Oxford became quiet again. Parliament never met again during the lifetime of King Charles
II
.

It is logical to suppose that the King arrived in Oxford with a rough plan of action already in his head. It was time to take on the Whigs. Given that he was prepared to act with decision, it was in fact an uneven match – not so much because the King was inordinately strong as because the Whigs were extremely weak. Nothing so far had gone right for them. In the House of Commons they had not succeeded in acquiring control of the Militia, for example, but had both alarmed and alerted the King by demanding it. Their battles with the House of Lords, also not yet conclusively won, occupied much of their attention, and had distracted them at several crucial moments. In terms of Whig policy, they concentrated their minds wonderfully on the question of the King’s Papist successor; yet the King was not a Papist himself and no one (
pace
Fitzharris) seriously supposed that he was.

All this loaded the dice in favour of a sovereign with very wide theoretical powers at his command, who was also able to demonstrate the sheer intransigence of the Whigs by appearing to offer compromise. Above all, the Whigs had not made up their minds about the practical possibilities of resistance to the Crown, if any. It was scarcely likely that they would succeed against the sovereign until they did.

Nevertheless, the nerve demanded from the King by the dissolution was considerable. There were troops present – on both sides. Armed clashes in the streets of Oxford, and the further nightmare of civil strife, were to be dreaded, whatever their outcome. Oxford University was Royalist, but the city itself was known to be Whig. The feeling that revolution – some new
violent turnabout – was pending was not confined to the King. Men could read the signs, or thought they could. A correspondent wrote to Pepys in January, ‘I cannot but pray God to preserve us from the tumults, confusions and rebellions of 1641 and 1642, which seem to threaten us on one hand as much as Popery on the other.’
²⁰
No-one wanted a return to unsettled times; the man who risked plunging his country once more into such ‘tumults, confusions and rebellions’ bore a heavy responsibility if his plan went awry. It was therefore relevant that on 8 April, the day on which a long Declaration from the King on the subject of the recent Parliament was ordered to be read throughout the country, he also received the first payment of a new subsidy from Louis
XIV
. The two events were closely connected.

This fresh agreement had been negotiated by word of mouth between Barrillon and Laurence Hyde. About the same time Hyde also spoke comfortingly to Barrillon on the subject of England’s tiresome involvement with Spain, that treaty negotiated by Sunderland a year back: Charles
II
would gradually divest himself of this obligation, which of course cut quite across French interests. Hyde, shortly to become Viscount Hyde and then Earl of Rochester after the death of Charles
II
’s sardonic friend, certainly deserved Dryden’s sobriquet of Hushai: ‘the friend of David in distress’. For without this agreement, it is doubtful that the English King – in the character of David – could have grappled so successfully with his ‘Goliath’ of a Parliament.

The confidence that Charles
II
needed to organize his abrupt dissolution came from France. Even though the Whigs had not made up their minds to anything except to press raucously and childishly for the Exclusion of the Duke of York, this mental disarray might not prevail for ever. It was not even a question of the money which Charles
II
would now receive from Louis
XIV
– about 4,300,000
livres
or over £300,000 spread over the next four years; although it was true that that would enable the King to jog along comfortably without Parliament for the time being.
^fn4
Once more, as in the 1660s, Charles
II
drew strength
from the notion that Louis
XIV
was on his side and would help him, if need be, to uphold his ‘legitimate authority’.
²¹

Armed with this knowledge, the English King was able to display those qualities of attack and surprise which constituted one side of his nature; the other side, which craved ease and knew that delay often brings its own solution to difficulties, had enjoyed a long run. Fortune, which traditionally favours the bold, smiled upon the new determination of Charles
II
.

The Declaration on the subject of the recent Parliament, ordered to be read aloud in all churches on 8 April, was as long as the message of dissolution had been short.
²²
It was also hypocritical. No-one should be persuaded that he was not going to use Parliament in the future, declared the King: this was merely ‘the restless malice of ill men who are labouring to poison our people, some out of fondness for their old beloved Commonwealth principles, and some out of anger at being disappointed in their own ambitions’. He repeated his familiar theme: no ‘irregularities’ would make him out of love with Parliaments. The King showed more of himself in disdaining responsibility for what had happened: ‘Having done our part … it cannot be justly imputed to us that the success hath not answered our expectations.’

Charles
II
had done with dealing with five hundred Kings. In future he would deal with one French King and rest master of his own fate.

The summer of 1681 bore a very different air from that of the previous year. Then there had been some dawnings of loyalty to the Crown visible to a discerning eye. Now the reactionary sun’s rays could be felt in a variety of ways. 13 April 1681 saw the first issue of Roger L’Estrange’s newspaper
The Observator
. Nahum Tate wrote of L’Estrange’s energies in attacking the Whigs, playing on his paper’s name: ‘He with watchfull eye/Observes and shoots their treasons as they fly….’ When the King and Queen went to dine at the Guildhall, the people’s rejoicing as they entered and left the City was considered to be in marked contrast to the coolness of previous years. As Henry Sidney wrote in his
Diary
at the end of June, ‘But which is most
extraordinary is the favour the Queen is in.’
²³
She had emerged unscathed from the crucible of the bad years. It would take further time for the Duke of York (still in Scotland) to recover his lost popular prestige: nevertheless, the rehabilitation of the Catholics was part of the overall popular shift away from Whig influences.

It was true that the summer of 1681 witnessed the dissection of yet another Pumpkin Plot at the trial of Edward Fitzharris. But Charles
II
’s cool and vigorous attitude towards this episode demonstrated as much as anything else how far he had moved from the worried stance of 1678. Optimists among plot-watchers expected, as usual, great things from Fitzharris’ revelations, and a connection with the household of the Duchess of Portsmouth was deemed encouraging.
²⁴
In the event, the King made it quite clear that he expected to see this petty informer condemned and executed. And executed he duly was, on 1 July. Justice was certainly done, since Fitzharris had sought to bring about the execution of a great many more. All the same, it was a public blow to the repute of the Whigs, notably Shaftesbury; it demonstrated how far their vicious control of these events had slipped. The condemnation and execution of another informer, an anti-Papist joiner named Stephen College (amongst whose alleged crimes was the singing of the gross ballad ‘The Raree Show’ at Oxford),
²⁵
continued the trend.

About the same time quite a different trial, that of Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, showed up both English justice and the royal character in a less attractive light. Plunkett’s trial on a charge of high treason was a travesty. Dragged to England and kept in prolonged imprisonment there, he was unable to secure satisfactory Irish witnesses because of the expense and difficulty of travel. Those that did manage to arrive presented an alien spectacle, with their thick, often incomprehensible Irish accents, and were correspondingly badly treated in court. The witnesses produced on the other side, for this conspiracy that never was, puffed up with their own perjury, received a gentler welcome.

Thus Oliver Plunkett was found guilty and on 1 July went
presumably to his heavenly reward.
^fn5
As Sir Charles Lyttleton wrote, he was ‘generally pitied and believed to die very innocent of what he was condemned’.
²⁶
Yet no one cared to save him, not the Earl of Essex, who, as former Lord Lieutenant, knowing the Irish scene, might have protested effectively against his condemnation – nor, for that matter, the King. Charles
II
could see the significance of condemning Fitzharris, but, in common with most Englishmen, no matter how liberal, could not see that there was much to be gained from saving this Irish archbishop.

The royal eye was fixed elsewhere. The newly piercing glance of the King was focused on Shaftesbury. On 2 July, the day after the executions, Shaftesbury was arrested. The King’s move was not unexpected. Shaftesbury had wagered his strength against the King’s in a series of provocative actions, including the attacks on Louise and James as prostitute and recusant, as well as the sallies at Oxford. Shaftesbury was also on excellent terms with those the King considered his enemies, such as the arch-informer Titus Oates, still at large, if not quite the popular hero of yester-year.

The charge against Shaftesbury was frankly weak, as weak as some of the charges against the Catholic priests who had died (the fact has to be faced that Charles
II
did not regard the course of justice as imperturbable, any more than the Whigs had done). Shaftesbury was accused of treason because he had conspired to levy war against the King at Oxford; but the most cogent piece of evidence against him was a Bill of Association, a list of people who were to be invited to protect the King and prevent the Catholic succession.

The truth was that Shaftesbury’s arrest was an aggressive action which Charles
II
now felt himself strong enough to make. He was also animated by his strong personal dislike of the fair-haired villain. This dislike, like his rare outbursts of jealousy, stood out in contrast to his generally mild attitude to politicians. On the whole, Charles was content to be guided by their
usefulness. In this way he amiably agreed to a reconciliation with the ‘Judas’ Sunderland in the following summer after some pleading from Louise, Sunderland’s long-term ally.
²⁷
But Shaftesbury was different. He was the burr under the saddle of the King, as Charles’ obstinate pursuit of his trial and conviction this autumn proceeded to demonstrate.

It would have been wiser to have let Shaftesbury depart for the Carolinas, as he himself wished.
²⁸
Shaftesbury had business interests there. An absent Shaftesbury was all the King really required in terms of safety. Instead, carried away one must believe by an animosity founded on fear, the King demanded a trial. He was punished for deserting his own former policies of forgiveness and flexibility. The new Lord Chief Justice, Pemberton, made strenuous efforts to secure Shaftesbury’s condemnation. He quoted the Act of 1661 by which it was treasonable to try and interfere with the King’s liberty. This, it was claimed, Shaftesbury had done at Oxford, supported by the presence of armed men. The famous blue silk bows in their hats were quoted in evidence against him. But on 24 November a Grand Jury composed of resolute Whigs returned a verdict of
Ignoramus
and Shaftesbury went free.

In short, the King had struck too far too soon. He should have been more wary of the deeply Whig sympathies of the City: at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet a few weeks earlier ‘every little fellow’ was said to have censured both the King and ‘his proceedings at that time’.
²⁹
The acquittal of Shaftesbury was a personal blow. The Lord Mayor himself, on the King’s instructions, refused to allow the bonfires or rejoicing which the Whigs wished to mount. But neither King nor Lord Mayor could prevent the striking of a celebratory medal in honour of the event, adorned with the humiliating motto
Laetamur
– ‘Let us rejoice’. The obverse showed the sun emerging radiant from clouds over the Tower of London.
Laetamur
! No, the King did not rejoice.

There were however other causes of rejoicing. There is an interesting juxtaposition between public and private happiness in the lives of famous men. The presence of private happiness
can always atone for the lack of public fulfilment, if the man himself will suffer it to be so. The personal life of Charles
II
during the last years of his life was extremely happy, even serene. Queen Catharine, comforted by his championship, had settled into a role which suited her and did not conflict with the King’s other pleasures. She had, for example, protected Catholic Louise from the consequences of the Test Act of 1678 by including her name in the list of her own ladies who were not to be expelled. In explanation Catharine said that Louise had always behaved ‘decently’ towards her, unlike Barbara, who had been ‘cruel’.
³⁰
By now, the King’s mistresses resembled the great ships he also loved, floating grandly on the tide of the royal favour, their hulls weighed down with jewels and other riches. They flew their ducal titles like pennants, their ennobled offspring following in their wake like flotillas of lesser boats. Emotionally however the King had reverted to the ‘monogamy’ of the first decade of his reign, on which Pepys had commented.

While Nell Gwynn retained what Aphra Behn called her ‘eternal sweetness’, the solace of the King’s later years, Madame de Maintenon to his Louis
XIV
, was Louise. Relaxation, not religion, was however what Louise offered. Just as the King’s accord with his wife and her own popularity were the subject of comment, the domestic ascendancy of Louise was also remarked. She had grown plumper, more ‘fubbsy’ than ever, as her later portraits show; it only increased her air of luxurious cosiness.