Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/626

 614: ENGLAND was it possible to revive. The nation had gone forward, and could not go backward, even under the reaction which caused sensible men to welcome back the profligate king. Had Charles been ambitious, he might have accom- plished what his grandfather, his father, and after him his brother were unable to. do ; he might have established despotism in England, at least for a time. But, though one of the ablest members of his family, he was singularly destitute of those feelings which ordinarily are found in monarchs. He loved his ease above all things, and if he could get pleasantly through the 24 hours, he was quite willing that other men should do so. He had many of those qualities which are popularly attributed to his grandfather, Henry IV. of France ; but he prob- ably laughed at his ancestor's daring in the field. His vices were of the popular kind, and such as men are ready to forgive in kings. From the llth to the 30th year of his age his life had been passed amid civil disputes, wars, wanderings, and intrigues, and in poverty ; and he had contracted from this experience a hor- ror of everything like danger or business. Happen what might, he is reported to have said, he would not again go on his travels. From the personal selfishness of this easy voluptuary England derived almost as much good as from the tyranny of John or the cow- ardice of James I. He was content to rule as much through parliament as could be expected from a monarch under such little restraint. Several times, when persuaded to venture upon some despotic act, he was ready to give way when he found the opposition resolute. He retreated from the ground assumed in his dec- laration of indulgence, and so weakened the royal power. His popularity soon declined, mainly on account of his foreign policy. Eng- land's honor, it may be said, was gibbeted with Cromwell's body at Tyburn. An unnecessary war with the Dutch produced much disgrace. The triple alliance with Sweden and Holland for a brief interval stayed the course of Louis XIV., but this was the solitary act of the kind that reflects honor on this reign. The king soon became the tool and pensioner of France. His forces assisted in the war on Holland made by Louis XIV. The unpopularity of this course, and the internal misgovernment of the cabal ministry, created a great change in English opinion, and finally assistance was sent to the Dutch. The peace of 1678 was followed by the excitement caused by the alleged popish plot, and for a time the king was almost as unpopular as his father had been in 1640. Parliament after parliament was elected, met, set itself in decided opposition to the government, and was dissolved. The leading object of the op- position was the exclusion of the duke of York, Charles's brother, from the line of succession ; and even to this the king would finally have consented rather than fight. But a reaction set in and saved him from the last disgrace ; and when the Oxford parliament was dissolved, in 1681, the king found himself hardly less pow- erful than he had been in 1660. He never called another parliament, but was able to govern without one. The conspiracies that were formed by the wings (the names of whig and tory had their definite political commence- ment in 1680) were detected, and many of the conspirators were punished. Others, men of whom the government wished to be rid, such as Kussell and Sidney, were executed. Few kings have been more powerful than Charles II. was during the last three years of his reign, yet some marked advantages had been obtained by the constitutionalists, which have endured. The habeas corpus act of 1679 was among the greatest triumphs of the liberal party, not only in itself, but because it furnished a point of union between whigs and tories ; for in the next reign it was found that the tories, even when most servilely loyal, could not be pre- vailed upon to repeal that act. Charles II. died suddenly in February, 1685. His brother James II. came to the throne without oppo- sition, and for a brief period was popular. Though an open and avowed Catholic, he was beloved by the priesthood of the church of England, which indeed had saved his inheri- tance in the days of the exclusion bill. Had he been content with persecuting the dissenters and whigs, and with destroying much of the civil liberty of his subjects, it is not unlikely that he would have made himself as powerful as Henry VIII. had been ; but he wished to reestablish the ascendancy of his own church, which could not be done without overthrowing- the Anglican church, and despoiling the aris- tocracy of much of their property ; and thus he united church, aristocracy, and all the intelli- gent part of the people against him. The par- liament which he summoned was most servile, but it could not satisfy the king. He was bent on the establishment of a despotism, and the destruction of the constitution in church and state. He punished Monmouth's rebellion with a vindictiveness to which there are few paral- lels in history. The king prorogued parliament in November, 1685, and that body never met again. For three years he governed despotically, and a perpetual contest was waged between him and his people; and the vigor displayed on the popular side shows how well established was the English constitution. The king at first sought the aid of the church against the dissenters, and received it until the church found he meant its own destruction, together with that of all other forms of Protestantism, when it revolted, in spite of its passive obe- dience doctrines. He then sought an alliance with the dissenters against the church, and though some of them were ready to aid him, the great majority remained true to the con- stitution. By the autumn of 1688 the king was opposed by almost all classes of his sub- jects, and could not procure the services of even third-rate lawyers in an age proverbial for the baseness of its legal men. "William,