Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/487

] revenge, that nothing but blood could satiate; every supposed criminal was precondemned.

These victims having suffered, the drama of plots now produced a new act. It was one of the great objects, as we have said, not only to damage the succession of the duke of York and to alarm the king, but to ruin the prime minister, Danby, who had superseded the cabal. Intrigues were entered into with Montague, the ambassador at Paris, for this purpose. Montague was, of course, in the secret of the money transactions betwixt the English and French courts, and could, if it were his interest, produce enough to destroy Danby, without letting too much light in upon the whole foul business; for not only the king on one side, but the patriots and the opposition on the other, were equally implicated. A fortunate incident facilitated their plans, Montague and Danby were at feud, and Danby only wanted a fair pretext to remove Montague from his post at Paris. In this position of things Montague furnished ample ground for his recall. He had made love to Charles's famous mistress, the duchess of Cleveland, now superseded by the duchess of Portsmouth. Cleveland was living in Paris a life as little creditable as her life had been in England. But Montague deserted her for her daughter, and on her resenting this, Montague threatened if she continued to annoy him, to expose her intrigues in the French court, for she was became a great political tool of Louis in his practices on England. But Cleveland was not a woman to submit to be snubbed and menaced even by a king, much less by a minister: she wrote at once to Charles a furious letter against Montague, for she had still great influence with him. She alleged that Montague, who had been employed by Charles to find out a certain astrologer, who Had foretold accurately Charles's restoration and entry of London on the 29th of May, 1660, had bribed this man to give such answers to the king as suited his own purposes. That he had often told her that both the king and the duke were fools—one a dull, governable fool, and the other a wilful fool. That he wished the parliament would send them both on their travels again; that the king always chose a greater beast than himself to govern him, and much of the like kind.

Montague did not wait for the blow which was sure to follow this missive, but suddenly, without notice or permission, left Paris and appeared in England. He directly put himself in communication with Shaftesbury and his party, and also with Barillon, the French ambassador, who would be only too glad to get Danby dismissed from office. Danby watched the motions of Montague with anxiety, knowing that he had the power to make fatal disclosures. To secure himself from the attack of the government, and at the same time to enable him to effect his purpose, he offered himself as a candidate for parliament at Grinstead, but was defeated by the influence of Danby; at Southampton he was returned by the mayor. Sir William Temple,—the government nominee, by the sheriff; but the popular party defended his election, and he gained his seat. It was agreed with the opposition that he should lay a charge against Danby of treasonable correspondence with France and other offences, and that they should move for his impeachment on those grounds. Besides this, Montague, who was a man thoroughly corrupt and despicable, had made a bargain with Barillon, that one hundred thousand livres should be paid to the most powerful of the opposition, for their endeavours to crush Danby, and one hundred thousand livres to Montague himself, or forty thousand livres of rentes on the Hotel de Ville, or a pension of fifty thousand livres—according to the decision of the king—if Danby were excluded from office.

Danby was not ignorant of the storm brewing, and it was thought best not to wait for its bursting; but the king sent and seized Montague's papers, on pretence that he had been intriguing with the pope's nuncio in Paris; and Erneley, the chancellor of the exchequer, announced this fact to the house. It was a very adroit proceeding, but Montague soon discovered that the precious casket containing the most important papers had been overlooked in the search. Montague stated to the house that Danby had missed his aim, that the papers were safe, and a deputation was despatched to fetch them. They returned with a small despatch box, and from this Montague produced two letters of Danby, one of them the letter in which Danby solicited a pension of six million livres, on condition that he procured a peace from the allies, and to which Charles had added the words, "This is writ by my order.—C. R."

On the reading of this letter the house was thrown into a violent agitation. The secret dealings of the king were partly brought to light. It was now seen that Charles's zeal for the war was only a pretence to extract money from the nation, and that obtained, ha was ready to sell the honour and independence of the country to France; and the minister was consenting to the infamous transaction. They immediately voted Danby's impeachment by a majority of sixty-three, and appointed a committee—of which Montague was one—to draw up the articles. There was a danger that Danby would retort on Montague by producing letters of his own, proving that he was mixed up with these transactions from the beginning, and had indeed been made the medium of their proposal; but he trusted to the impossibility of detaching their evidence from such as would have thrown the country into a flame against the king. He was right; yet two of his letters were sent by Danby to the house, one giving information that Ruvigny was sent to London to treat through lord Russell with the opposition, and the other containing a proposal from Montague of a grant of money to Charles on the conclusion of peace. These, at another time, would have produced a wonderful sensation, but they were now cast aside to pursue the higher game, and the next day, December 21st, the impeachment of Danby was sent up to the lords.

On the 23rd Danby replied to the charges by pleading that he had written the letter from the dictation of the king, who had certified the fact by his own hand in the postscript. That it was well known that he was neither a papist nor a friend to French alliance, but that he had reason to believe that his accuser, a man who, from his perfidy and breach of the most sacred trust, all men must abhor, had been assisted by French counsel in getting up this impeachment. He denied any guilty practices, and demanded only a fair trial. There was a motion made to commit him to the Tower, but this was overruled, and a day was fixed on which the lord treasurer should make his defence. But to defeat this,