King Charles II (62 page)

Nevertheless, the murmurs against Popery in high places grew from the spring of 1672 onwards. Charles might in fact be immune from petticoat persuasion; but it was too much to expect his raucous popular critics to believe such a paradoxical fact about a King of such evident ‘amorous complexion’. The rise of Louise, for all the private ease it granted, coincidental with the conversion of the Duke of York, and the disappointing course of the war, increased the problems the King had to face by the autumn of 1672.

To the north, the outlook was not much brighter. Lauderdale had promised his sovereign a citadel in Scotland. But in June 1672 the Scottish Parliament demonstrated that its sympathies lay – perhaps not surprisingly – with the Protestant Dutch, with whom the Scots did a great deal of trade, rather than with the Catholic French. Lauderdale’s appeal to this body for much-needed money to prosecute the Dutch War was therefore not a
success. Moreover, the coarse and tactless streak in the man had been enhanced with age: Lauderdale no longer managed his Scottish opponents with the same wiliness that he had displayed in the 1660s, while his foul-mouthed manner gained him additional enemies.

Nevertheless, the old warhorse remained sufficiently canny to see the most obvious dangers of his situation. In England, Shaftesbury was his particular enemy. In Scotland, the Duke of Hamilton led a rising faction against his policies. Lauderdale could see for himself that the patronage of the King was vital to his survival. Therefore his management of Scotland was dedicated to giving Charles
II
what he wanted.

At least the King was quite clear what that was. He continued to regard Scotland as a useful reservoir of money and men, and that was about all. His letter to Lauderdale of August 1672, which he himself admitted to be both overdue and over-brief, concentrated on the needs for an invasion of the United Provinces. If the first attempt of the English to land were to succeed, he would want additional troops at hand to back them up: ‘therefore if it were possible to have two thousand men ready in Scotland upon such an occasion …’.
²³
In the event, there was no invasion, so that the crisis was not reached. All the same, the tide of revolt against Lauderdale’s vice-regal rule was rising in Scotland, with the King quite unaware of the danger.

It was as well for Charles
II
, concentrating on the needs of an ‘important necessary and expensive war’, as he would later call it to Parliament, that Ireland was in one of her rare periods of quiescence. The Irish Army was, like the country, poor, and not much reliance could be placed on reinforcements from that source.
^fn2
Sir William Petty analysed the situation in the island in 1672: 800,000 Papists, 200,000 English and 100,000 Scots. It was not a prescription for future happiness. Yet after the horrors of Cromwell’s campaign and the subsequent wave of settlement
(following on so many waves of settlement), Ireland in the 1670s temporarily resembled Gibbon’s description of Abyssinia: ‘the world forgetting by the world forgot’ – even if it would hardly be allowed to sleep for a thousand years. In November 1670 the
Dublin Gazette
actually ceased to appear on the wonderful – for Ireland – grounds that ‘there was no news’.
²⁴

The country’s condition was ameliorated still further when the Earl of Essex succeeded the corrupt Lords Berkeley and Robartes as Lord Lieutenant in 1672. Essex was much esteemed by his contemporaries for his upright character as well as his love of learning, and of libraries in particular. He was the son of a war hero – always a passport to respect. His father Arthur Capel, who had been in Cornwall with Charles
II
(when Prince of Wales), was executed in 1649 shortly after Charles
I
. Charles
II
, having the death of a beloved father in common, paid young Capel special attention; he was created Earl of Essex at the Restoration.

In Ireland, Essex’s determination to stamp out English corruption was symbolized by his fight against the rapacity of Barbara Duchess of Cleveland. Barbara may well have received £10,000 from Berkeley as the price of his office. She was certainly granted Phoenix Park in Dublin, as well as some deliciously fertile lands round it, by the King. He showed by the gift his total lack of knowledge of the geography of the town as well as his indifference to Irish affairs. Essex was furious. ‘I will not have the least concurrence with it,’ he announced.
²⁵
He was undeniably influenced by the fact that Phoenix Park was the only place where the Lord Lieutenant could walk or ride in comfort, Dublin Castle being hideously uncomfortable. Yet by Essex’s action Phoenix Park was saved for future generations (remaining to this day one of the largest public parks in the world).

The cancellation of the Declaration of Indulgence was a blow to Irish Catholics, as it had been to English: Essex was instructed to ‘suppress the insolency of the Irish Papists’, this insolency having among its component parts ‘convents, seminaries, friaries, nunneries and Popish schools’. But Essex, like all the wisest rulers of Ireland during this period (and like Charles
II
himself),
distinguished between Catholic gentlemen and Catholic rebels. He pointed out that there were several hundred thousand Catholics in the country and that to ‘suppress’ them – the word was frequently used – he would need an army of over fifteen thousand, regularly paid….
²⁶
As it was, not all the titular Catholic bishops left the country according to the new proclamation; the lesser clergy were often left in peace.

The existence of the ordinary people as a whole was not enviable; but the harsh choice of the next centuries, emigration or misery at home, had not yet reached them. Catholic laymen, although virtually excluded from Parliament, were able to practise most other professions. Essex’s main domestic problem was one he shared with the Irish people as a whole – the failure of law and order (the rise of those brigands known locally as Tories brought the word into the vocabulary of the English people).

Charles
II
, however, unfussed by Irish Tories, continued to regard Ireland as a fertile pasture to be milked. Now that his original generous desire to establish a state of indemnity in Ireland had lapsed with time and fierce pressures at home, revenues were treated as rewards (Barbara’s grant came into that category). His personal participation was limited to the odd occasions when he intervened over harsh treatment to an individual with regard to land.

If Ireland gave out little hard news, by the end of 1672 there was plenty of news in London. The
London Gazette
would shortly be reporting the recall of Parliament. Failing to secure his peace with William of Orange, Charles
II
was left with the impossibility of sailing his fleet the following spring without money to hand. The royal expenses display the nature of the preparations. Hay, two whole loads of it, was ordered for stuffing the seats, sacks and benches in the Parliamentary chambers. Two pairs of tongs – ‘handsome and serviceable’ – were acquired, as was a pillow of down for the Lord Chancellor. Candlesticks had to be got and that ever-present expense of the time, close-stools (nine of them). Green baize was to be employed in quantity, so that the seats in the House of Commons could be ‘new repaired’. More green baize was to be used for window curtains for ‘H.M.’s service’.
²⁷

The fact was that this session of February 1673 contained a crucial appeal by the King for money for his ‘important, necessary and expensive war’, and an equally crucial rejection of that appeal by both Commons and Lords. Where Charles spoke emotionally of his ships, and the contest into which he dared to say that he had been ‘forced’, the Commons clamoured furiously to have the Declaration of Indulgence of the previous year withdrawn. Only Parliament, they reiterated, could suspend the penal laws. The King first prevaricated; then equivocated. Referring to ‘his power in ecclesiastics’, he assured the Commons that he never had any thoughts of using it otherwise than as it had been ‘entrusted’ to him, for the peace and establishment of the Church of England, and ‘the ease of all his subjects in general’. He had no thought, he declared, of ‘avoiding or precluding the advice of Parliament’.
²⁸

Wriggle as the King might, he could not avoid the tight hold of the Parliamentary pincers in which the demands of his war had placed him. He tried in vain to appeal to the House of Lords, whose relations with the Commons were at the time sufficiently acrimonious for him to hope for better things from their assembly. He continued to put the most comforting gloss on what he had done: ‘My Lords and Gentlemen: if there be any scruple remaining with you concerning the suspension of penal laws, I here faithfully promise you that what hath been done in that particular shall not for the future be drawn either into consequence or example.’ But the Lords would not support him. In the end the King was obliged to withdraw the Declaration in return for an assessment of £70,000 a month for three years.

It was a galling defeat.

There was worse to come. Immediately after their triumph the Commons pressed through a Test Act. This measure was as divisive as Charles’ Declaration of Indulgence had been potentially healing. Every holder of office had to take public communion in the Church of England. Furthermore, various oaths of allegiance were framed, as well as a declaration concerning the doctrine of transubstantiation; together they formed a test, in the truest sense of the word, which it was impossible for an
sincere Catholic to pass. Once again, the King found himself in no position to combat the challenge.

Bowing his head before the storm, a familiar posture, he gave his assent to the Test Act on 29 March. The consequences were felt at once. The Duke of York and Thomas Clifford both failed to take Anglican communion at Easter. The Duke laid down his post as Lord High Admiral in June. Clifford also resigned as Lord Treasurer – to die shortly afterwards. The King took refuge in one of those pieces of ‘raillery’. He was heard to say that he would purge his Court of all Catholics except his barber ‘whom he meant to keep in despite of all their bills, for he was so well accustomed to his hand’. The joke was a pointed one: if a Catholic could be trusted with a razor so near the royal person, his co-religionists could hardly be the cut-throats of popular imagination.
²⁹

How prescient had proved the words of the Duke of York two years before! In the summer of 1673 it was even more difficult to see how a King and a Parliament could ‘subsist together’ for very long. Inevitably, the King prorogued Parliament once more. He was alleged to have observed that he would rather be a poor King than no King….
³⁰
But the long war of attrition between King and Parliament was in fact gathering new momentum.

1
In its original sense of harlot; the secondary meaning of rotten, revived in the present day, came later.

2
Although in some respects it was in advance of the English Army. Kilmainham Hospital provided the model for Chelsea Hospital for veteran and wounded soldiers.

‘This knot will again return to the teeth of the comb and never disentangle itself unless the King take courage to combat the licence of Parliament.’

I
t was the presumed connection of Catholicism with royal absolutism which dominated the politics of the next few years. The installation of a young French Catholic mistress might be shrugged off with a worldly air, although the rumour that Charles
II
and Louise were secretly married by a Catholic rite showed how far suspicion could desert sense – a Catholic rite was the last thing which could have united the King and his mistress during the lifetime of Catharine of Braganza. The genuine marriage plans of the Duke of York to a Catholic princess were quite a different matter. Anne Duchess of York died in March 1671 and thereafter James looked around for a new wife. These plans followed a joint venture with the French of increasing unpopularity. Meanwhile the absolutist French government across the water aroused fears that the King himself might be contemplating something similar.

Charles
II
strenuously denied the connection of Catholicism and absolutism, for the good reason that the two were not connected in his own mind. The rise of Catholicism in England was in fact a chimera. Like many popular scares, statistics show that it had no foundation. The numbers of Catholics in the country were actually declining, as they had been declining
throughout the century and would continue to do.
^fn1
They were a persecuted and depressed body, given an artificial appearance of strength and spirit by three factors. First, like immigrants in our own day, they tended to group together, so that they could share a priest without too much loss of security. Wolverhampton, for example, was termed ‘a little Rome’. Secondly, there was a link in the popular imagination between Catholicism and the Army. This had some basis in the original Royalist armies, where Catholics from Ireland and elsewhere found employment. And Catholics continued to serve in the Army (although officers were excluded by the Test Act), particularly in campaigns and outposts abroad. The standing army of Charles
II
was always subject to keen and worried scrutiny: the association of the Catholics and the Army made for a vicious circle of apprehension.
²