Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/492

478 Land, parliament could not so vehemently suspect the tendency of measures which had first the approbation of their own popular leaders. The house of commons had now driven three successive ministries from office—Clarendon, the Cabal, and Danby, and was still bent on a career violently opposed to the crown. If Temple had calculated that the effect would be to neutralise or convert the democratic members, he would have been right; but that such a council could ever work any other way was impossible. The king would never long submit measures, intended to maintain his prerogative, to a council which was not likely to carry his views at once to both houses; but he might, and undoubtedly would, in many cases, succeed in bringing over the opposition orators to his interest. This was the immediate effect on most of them. Shaftesbury, lord Russell, Saville, viscount Halifax, Powie, and Seymour, the late speaker, were included in it. But Temple soon found that men of such contrary views and parties could not draw well together, and was compelled to break his chief condition, and compose a sort of inner council, of himself, Capel, Halifax, Essex, and Sunderland, who prepared and really managed everything. Halifax was a man of the most brilliant talents, ambitious, yet not thinking himself so, but so little swayed by mere party, that he was called a trimmer, and gloried in the title. For the rest—Capel, Cavendish, and Powle lost the confidence of the commons, which looked on the institution with natural distrust; Russell and Shaftesbury alone spoke out as boldly as ever, and retained more influence in the two houses than they gained in the council. In fact, the opposition members soon found that they might propose, but the king would not be outvoted in his own council. The very first measure proposed, was that all persons of popish tendencies should be weeded out of office, out of the posts of lord-lieutenants, the magistracy, and the courts of law; but Charles, perceiving that the object was to remove all the stanchest supporters of the crown, quickly put an end to it. He called for the rolls, and wherever he saw a name marked for removal, gave some such ludicrous and absurd reason for his retention, that there was no gravely answering it. One objected to, he said, was a good cocker, another an expert huntsman, kept good foxhounds, or a good house, had always excellent chimes of beef, and the like. Arguments were thrown away on the king, and the matter came to nothing.

On the other hand, Shaftesbury, who had been made president of the council by Charles himself, undiverted by this from his great object, pursued his popery alarms out of doors, where the king could not checkmate him. A fire broke out in a printing-house in Fetter Lane, and the servant girl was induced to confess that one Stubbs had promised her five pounds to do it, who again said Gifford, bis confessor, had set him on, saying it was no sin; and he added that London was to be set on fire again by French papists. The absurd story soon grew into a rumour that the duke of York was coming with a French army to claim the throne and re-establish popery with all its horrors. Shaftesbury declared in the lords that popery must be rooted out if there were to be any liberty left. That popery and slavery, like two sisters, went ever hand in hand. That one might now go first, now the other; but wherever one was seen, the other was certainly not far off. The commons eagerly seizing on the temper of the nation, voted unanimously a bill of exclusion against the duke of York, and that a protestant successor should be appointed, as though the duke wore actually dead. Sir William Temple attempted to weaken this movement by attributing it to Monmouth and Shaftesbury, betwixt whom, it was asserted, there was a secret understanding that if Monmouth's scheme of proving his legitimacy succeeded, Shaftesbury should be his prime minister; and, probably, by the advice of Temple, Charles proposed a plan for a compromise. That in case a popish prince succeeded, every power of altering the law should be taken out of his hands. That no judges, justices, lord-lieutenants, privy councillors, or officers of the navy should be appointed without consent of parliament, and that no livings or dignities in the church should be at the option of the king, but of a board of the most pious and protestant divines. Shaftesbury, however, ridiculed all these precautions, as attempting to bind Samson with green withes, which he could snap with the greatest ease. The commons were fully of that mind, and on the 21st of May passed their exclusion bill, by a majority of two hundred and seven against one hundred and twenty. The commons followed up this act by proceeding in a body to the house of lords, and demanding judgment against Danby. They also demanded that the prelates should not vote on Danby's case, fearing that their numbers might give the crown a majority; but to this the lords were opposed, and though the bishops offered to concede the point, the king forbade them, as the matter involved his prerogative. The commons persisting in their demand, now instituted a strict inquiry into the cases of bribery by the late minister of members of parliament, and ordered one of his agents, Fox, the treasurer of the navy, to proceed to Whitehall in company of three members, and bring his books and papers for examination. The king resented the searching of his house as a gross insult, and the books and papers were refused; but Fox was compelled to state how many members he had paid money to, and he named twenty-seven individuals. This was on the 24th of May, and Charles, to cut the inquiry short, suddenly sent for the commons, and prorogued parliament for ten weeks. Shaftesbury was so enraged at this unexpected obstruction to his plans, that he vowed in the house of lords that it should cost the king's advisers of this measure their heads.

This prorogation was, on other accounts, one of the most remarkable eras in our parliamentary annals, for before pronouncing the parliament prorogued, the king gave his consent to the habeas corpus act, and allowed the act establishing the censorship of the press to expire. The carrying of the habeas corpus act was owing mainly to the influence of Shaftesbury, and was a benefit of that magnitude, that it might cover a multitude of the sins of that extraordinary man, who, with all his faults, had a genuine substratum of patriotism in him. The press had hitherto never been free. Elizabeth cut off the hands of puritans who offended her, and her successors dragged them into their Star-chamber. Even the Long Parliament, when they abolished the Star-chamber, declined to liberate the press, notwithstanding Milton's eloquent appeal for the liberty of unlicensed