Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/369

Rh BfcUGN OF CHAKLES II. J ENGLAND 349 lie first Hitch ar. iaCora- onsaini control /er ex- jjiuli- ire. Danger from France. meat on the cooperation between king and parliament, without defining to themselves what was to be done if the king s conduct became insufferable. Openly, indeed, Charles II. did not force them to reconsider their position. He did not thrust members of the Commons into prison, or issue writs for ship-money. He laid no claim to taxa tion which had not been granted by parliament. But he was extravagant and self-indulgent, and he wanted more money than they were willing to supply. A war with the Dutch broke out, and there were strong suspicions that Charles applied money voted for the fleet to the main tenance ot a vicious and luxurious court. Against the vice and luxury, indeed, little objection was likely to be brought. The over-haste of the Puritans to drill England into ways of morality and virtue had thrown at least the upper classes into a slough of revelry and baseness. But if the vice did not appear objectionable the expense did, and a new chapter in the financial history of the Government was opened when the Commons, having previously gained control over taxation, proceeded to vindicate their right to control expenditure. As far, indeed, as taxation was concerned, the Long Parliament had not left its successor much to do. The abolition of feudal tenures and purveyance had long been demanded, and the conclusion of an arrangement which had been mooted in the reign of James I. is only notable as affording one instance out of many of the tendency of a single class to shift burdens off its own shoulders. The predominant landowners preferred the grant of an excise which would be taken out of all pockets to a laud-tax which would exclusively be felt by those who were relieved by the abolition of the tenures. The question of expenditure was constantly tolling on the relations between the king and the House of Commons. After the Puritan army had. been disbanded, the king resolved to keep on foot a petty force of 5000 men, and he had much difficulty in provid ing for it out of a revenue which had not been intended by those who voted it to be used for such a purpose. Then came the Dutch war, bringing with it a suspicion that some at least of the money given for paying sailors and fitting out ships was employed by Charles on very different objects. The Commons accordingly, in 1665, succeeded in enforcing, on precedents derived from the reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV., the right of appropriating the supplies granted to special objects; and with more difficulty they obtained, in 166G, the appointment of a commission em powered to investigate irregularities in the issue of moneys. Such measures were the complement of the control over taxation which they had previously gained, and as far as their power of supervision went, it constituted them and not the king the directors of the course of government. If this result was not immediately felt, it was because the king had a large certain revenue voted to him for life, so that, for the present at least, it was only Lis extraordinary expenses which could be brought under parliamentary control. Nor did even the renewal of parliamentary impeachment, which ended in the banishment of Lord Chancellor Clarendon (1667), bring on any direct collision with the king. If the Commons wished to be rid of him because he upheld the prerogative, the king was equally desirous to be rid of him because he looked coldly on the looseness of the royal morals. The great motive power of the later politics of the reign was to be found beyond the channel. To the men of the days of Charles II. Lewis XIV. of France was what Philip II. of Spain had been to the men of the days of Elizabeth. Gradually, in foreign policy, the commercial emulation with the Dutch, which found vent in one war in the time of the Commonwealth, and in two wars in the time of Charles II., gave way to a dread, rising into hatred, of Indul gence of the arrogant potentate who, at the head of the mightiest army in Europe, treated with contempt all rights which came into collision with his own wishes. Nor was Lewis XIV. merely to be feared as a military or political opponent. Even when he was on bad terms with the pope he was a warm upholder of the Papal Church, and Protestants began to ask whether their religion would long be safe if other states succumbed to his arms. Soon, too, suspicions arose that there were those in England who might be glad to use his assistance for the overthrow of Protestantism at home. In fact, the danger was to the full as great as it was imagined to be. The king was as much a Human Catholic as he was anything at all, and in his annoyance at the inter ference of the Commons with his expenditure he thought it a fine thing to lead an easy uncontrolled existence as the pensioner of the great king. In 1670 the secret treaty of Dover was signed. Charles was to receive from Louis 200,000 a year, and the aid of 6000 French troops, to enable him to declare hha.self a convert, and to obtain special advantages for his religion, whilst he was also to place the forces of England at Lewis s disposal for his purposes of aggression on the Continent. Charles had no difficulty in stirring up the commercial Second jealousy of England so as to bring about a second Dutch Dlitcl1 war (1672). The next year, unwilling to face the dangers Declara- of his larger plan, he issued a Declaration of Indulgence tion of In- (1673). By a single act of the prerogative the king dulgence. suspended all penal laws against Homan Catholics and dissenters alike. The cavalier parliament had been gradually drifting The De- into opposition to the crown. But to the end it was true claration to its resolution to retain the political predominance of the English Church. It dreaded the Homan Catholics, It hated and despised the dissenters. Under any circum- drawn, stances an indulgence would have been most distasteful to it. But the growing belief that the whole scheme was merely intended to serve the purposes of the Homan Catholics converted its dislike into deadly opposition. Yet it resolved to base its opposition upon constitu tional grounds. The right claimed by the king to suspend the laws was questioned, and his claim to special authority in ecclesiastical matters was treated with contempt. The king gave way, and withdrew his declaration. But no solemn Act of Parliament declared it to be illegal, and in due course of time it would be heard of again. The Commons followed up their blow by passing the The Test Test Act, making the reception of the sacrament accord- Act - ing to the forms of the Church of England, and the renunciation of the doctrine of transubstautiation, a neces sary qualification for office. At once it appeared what a hold the members of the obnoxious church had had upon the administration of the state. The lord high admiral, the lord treasurer, and a secretary of state refused to take the test. The lord high admiral was the heir to the throne, the king s brother, the duke of York. Charles, as usual, bent before the storm. In Dan by he Danby s found a minister whose views answered precisely to the ministry, views of the existing House of Commons. Like the Com mons, Dauby wished to silence both Homan Catholics and dissenters. Like the Commons, too, he wished to embark on a foreign policy hostile to France. But he served a master who regarded Lewis less as a possible adversary than as a possible paymaster. Sometimes Danby was allowed to do as he liked, and the marriage of the duke of York s eldest daughter Mary to her cousin the prince of Orange was the most lasting result of his admin istration. More often he was obliged to follow where Charles led, and Charles was constantly ready to sell the neutrality of England for large sums of French gold. At