King Charles II (86 page)

The judges did free Danby. The supposition is that the King had a private word in the ear of Holloway and Wallcott. Certainly Charles swore to Danby’s son, as the latter duly reported back to his father, ‘If the judges would not bail you … by god he
would free you himself.’
³
But it did not come to that. The judges, including Jeffreys, satisfied their consciences and Danby was bailed against an enormous surety of £20,000 to appear in the House of Lords in the next session to answer the charges against him. Four peers put up £5,000 each. The very day of his release Danby appeared before the King and, on kissing hands, bewailed his long imprisonment. The King shrugged off the complaint: he replied that it was against his will and left it at that. At least Danby was free to commence his ascent back into public service and would, it seems, have formed part of a new administration in 1685 had not such a development been cut off by the King’s death.
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The question of Parliament was equally resolved, but negatively. Within the King’s own councils, Halifax at least believed that the spirit of the Triennial Act should be respected. But in March the King told Barrillon that he had ‘no thought’ of summoning a Parliament. In case the point should be missed by those further from the centre of power than the Byzantine Barrillon, Sunderland sent a circular letter on the King’s behalf to the Lords Lieutenant and others. There were rumours that there was to be a new Parliament: but his subjects were to be disabused immediately of the notion, ‘he [the King] having as yet no such intention’. As to the idea that there were or might be tumultuous petitions from the country for a Parliament (remember those odious Whiggish petitions which had made the time of the Popish Plot additionally uncomfortable): the King ‘cannot but utterly dislike and condemn any such attempt’. He regarded such petitions as ‘seditious practices inconsistent with the peace and quiet of the kingdom’.
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By October, as a result, the Whigs were reported to be quite cowed: ‘I never knew the Whigs in London so wary of managing their discourse and of their company. If three or four be together on the Exchange talking of news or what each has to communicate, if two or more of their own party join them, part of the rest walk away….’
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In May 1684 the Duke of York took his place in the Privy Council once more. It was the final step in his restoration. He had been absent for eleven years. Now the King was confident
enough to introduce him without fear of trouble. At about the same time Titus Oates was arrested at a coffee-house in London on a charge of
scandalum magnatum
against the Duke of York for calling him a traitor. Tried briefly by Jeffreys, he was sentenced to a token fine of £100,000 – token because of course there was no question of his paying it; thus Oates was consigned to prison and irons were put upon him. This preliminary fall of Oates (far worse things were to happen to him once James ascended the throne) marked a reaction against him which had begun just about the time that James’ own star began to rise. From 1681 onwards Oates was no longer the secure and boastful rascal he had once been; in August 1682 he had lost his government pension.

James, triumphant, was restored to his former post as Lord High Admiral in all but name: the King continued to sign documents since the provisions of the Test Act were still officially in force, but the moving spirit was that of James.

It was a fortunate restoration for the Navy itself. The Navy, once a favourite child, had suffered signally not only from the departure of James in 1673 but also from that of Samuel Pepys in 1679. Pepys, that mastermind of creative organization, had acted as secretary to the Lord Commissioners after the fall of James, when the Admiralty was put to commission. He was driven from office and into the Tower of London – repository for the unlucky as well as the damned in this period – by intrigues based on his connection with the Catholic Duke of York.

Thereafter the King had been both too poor and too busy to remedy the situation. Those sums of money which were voted by Parliament were inefficiently administered. Matters drifted downwards until only twenty-four ships were actually at sea, and some of the new ships had never managed to leave the harbour.
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Now the brothers were united to invigorate the Navy as it deserved: and Pepys, rescued, drew up a scheme for its reformation (put into commission in 1685 and finished in 1688).

Appropriately enough, to the last year of Charles’ reign also belongs his support of Captain Grenville Collins, the royal hydrographer. A survey of the coasts of Great Britain was to
be undertaken, for which the King recommended subscriptions and practical help, especially from naval officers and traders. The result, which the King predicted correctly would be ‘of great use for the safety of navigation’, was printed in 1693, and emerged as Collins’
Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot
.
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It was good that, where the Navy and navigation were concerned, the reign ended as it had begun, on a high note of investment for the future.

The rebirth of the Duke of York as a public (as opposed to private) figure of influence was also at the bottom of the government changes which occurred in August 1684. Slightly mysterious because their effects were so soon blighted by the King’s death, these changes were clear in one thing: they worked to James’ advantage by diminishing the power of Rochester and enhancing that of James’ ally Sunderland.
⁹

Having left Scotland with some feeling of accomplishment, James now turned his attention to Ireland. The plain truth was that Ireland had prospered under Charles
II
– if only its riches had not been drained out of the country to meet the needs of the King and Court. Some of its riches, although siphoned off, had not even got that far. Lord Ranelagh, the Lord Treasurer, was finally dismissed for peculation and the collection of taxes handed over to Revenue Commissioners under Lord Longford, a talented financier. James’ aim, a laudable one by the standards of Ireland today, if not of England then, was to introduce more Catholics into the administration there.

The palace revolution at Whitehall could be made to fit into the overall Irish plan. Rochester was kicked upstairs, losing his post as First Lord of the Treasury for that of the Lord President of the Council. ‘The King hath given me a great deal of ease and a great deal of honour,’ commented Rochester wryly. Charles himself was careful to note that ‘he did not make these Alterations out of any Dissatisfaction’.
¹⁰
But the hand of Rochester’s open critic, Halifax, can be detected. Halifax, while his attitude to such major topics as Parliament and foreign policy was ignored, could still be made useful. It was however Sunderland, not Halifax, who ultimately benefited. The coveted post at the Treasury went to Sunderland’s ally Godolphin.

Rochester was also promised a more lucrative position, that of the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, occupied over a long period of time, if intermittently, by the great Ormonde. There Rochester had the prospect of making himself both rich and secure. Once again Sunderland stepped in, and, acting in alliance with the Duke of York, saw to it that Rochester would not enjoy the independent viceregal style of an Ormonde. As Ormonde’s son reported, matters were to be very differently organized in Ireland and therefore Rochester, ‘who fears no odium’, had been selected for that purpose. Ormonde himself had no great regrets at losing the Lord Lieutenancy under the new deal: for now the power of making army appointments was to be stripped away from the Lord Lieutenant. All such decisions and appointments were to be made in London. ‘From this difficulty, I thank God and the King I am delivered,’ commented Ormonde vigorously.
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Rochester never took up his emasculated appointment, the King’s death bringing about yet another revolution in the political situation. But the whole handling of affairs both in London and Dublin demonstrated the new control of the York–Sunderland axis. It is unlikely that Halifax himself would have survived long at the centre and the King’s reign been further extended.
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Where the succession was concerned, neither Monmouth nor William of Orange had now the muscle to bar the smooth ascent of the Duke of York towards his legitimate goal. In the autumn the King felt particular indignation all over again at the news of William’s ‘extraordinary caressing’ of Monmouth in Holland. Charles forbade his own envoy to visit William for the time being; furthermore, the royal anger was to be conveyed both to the Dutch States and to William’s ministers. In vain William’s own ambassador in London protested his master’s innocence of any conspiracy. The King’s response was forthright.

‘It is as if a man going to a brothel should ask me to believe and accept the excuse that he had done no wrong because he had only gone in to convert people …,’ exclaimed Charles in derision. The Ambassador was left rather feebly responding that although anyone entering a brothel must be ‘suspect’, yet his general character should also be taken into account, and if he
was a man of ‘probity and honour’, the King should be prepared to listen to his explanation.
¹³
The Ambassador should perhaps have realized that where the English succession and the Whig opposition were concerned, Charles considered neither his nephew nor his son men of probity or honour.

There was a wistful notion entertained by Monmouth’s admirers after the King’s death – still occasionally resurrected even now – that some time during the last autumn Monmouth was actually promised the succession.
¹⁴
Monmouth himself spoke wildly on the subject after his father’s death, when there was no-one to contradict him. It is true that the forbidden favourite did slip into England from Holland at the end of November. He was accompanied by Henrietta Wentworth. The Duke of York, for one, when he got wind of the foray, comforted himself with the thought that Monmouth was after a settlement of his mistress’s estates upon himself. As for a reconciliation, ‘there is no real danger of it,’ James wrote firmly up to Scotland, ‘H.M. having no inclination to receive his [Monmouth’s] deceiving submissions again….’
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In one sense, the Duke of York was wrong. There was probably some kind of limited reconciliation, although the King in his secretive way left no record of the encounter and did not even confirm to his brother that it had taken place. An enthusiastic letter written to Monmouth from Halifax on 3 February spoke of his ‘business’, which he had heard was ‘almost as well as done’ but must be ‘so sudden as not to leave room for 39 [code for the Duke of York]’s party to counterplot’.
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Yet given the King’s knowledge of Monmouth’s character and given what had only just transpired in Holland, it is unlikely that this reconciliation amounted to more than the mere prospect of Monmouth returning to England. The conditions would probably have been stringent and, as after the Rye House Plot, humiliating. The Duke of York was therefore right in his further assumption that no ‘real danger’ to his own cause was presented by Monmouth’s clandestine journey. Had the reconciliation genuinely produced a violent change in the King’s feelings he would hardly have kept his mouth shut on the subject. As we shall see, he maintained this silence even on his death-bed. Once
again in his enthusiasm Monmouth was the victim of his own over-optimistic and self-deceiving nature. The tranquillity of the King’s public life was not disturbed at last by the maverick sortie of his erstwhile favourite son.

So far as we can tell, the interior man was tranquil too. Of all people in the world, King Charles
II
was in a position to test the truth of Dryden’s dictum on the subject of old age:

No one would live past years again,

Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remains,

And from the dregs of life think to receive

What the first spritely running could not give….

Much of Charles’ ‘spritely running’ had been spent literally eluding his own and his father’s enemies in the crippling period of exile: no one could have wished to relive those bitter years again. The more recent past, including the long war of attrition with Parliament, brought its own memories of danger and suffering. Yet from the ‘dregs’ of his own life it was true that there were pleasures still to be tasted.

This was no Henry
VIII
, a monstrous figure bloated with disease. The King’s upright appearance impressed observers. A portrait of him as Founder of the Royal Society, commissioned by Christ’s Hospital, was painted by M. Laroon in 1684. With a background of ships, and an appropriate foreground of a globe and other aids to navigation, it shows a strong man unbowed. His energy continued to startle and confound even those who had known it to their cost for years. It is true that he was having trouble with a sore on his leg as well as painful gout; the long walks were reluctantly cut down. His keenness was now channelled into his laboratory, where he would devote himself to his experiments for hours at a time in the same obsessional manner. Besides, the King believed the delay in the walks was only temporary. Soon he would be striding out once more, outdistancing courtiers and subjects alike, pausing only for the demands of the ducks. In the last winter of his life, he was described by Bishop Burnet as looking ‘better than he had done for many years’.
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Unlike that of Henry
VIII
, the character of Charles
II
was not permanently marred by savagery, even if he had displayed something verging on it, in recent years. One effect of England’s public calm was to enable Charles
II
to regain that unruffled air with which he preferred to confront the world at large. The plotting was over; the trials were through; Shaftesbury was dead; the Whigs were cowed. His ministers were there to conduct the country along the guide-lines he had evolved; his brother was there to provide the vim and vigour of the policy and if necessary to take the brunt of the unpopularity. A typical anecdote was related by the playwright John Crowne, who was in negotiation with the King over that adaptation of a Spanish play referred to in
Chapter 18
. Crowne swore that he overheard the King say to the Duke of York, ‘Brother, you may travel, if you will, I am resolved to make myself easy for the rest of my life.’ There are other variants of the same story: we must accept that the King harped upon the theme as his life drew to its close. To Sir Richard Bulstrode, the English Resident in Brussels, he spoke warmly of the people of Flanders, but as for himself: ‘I am weary of travelling, and am resolved to go abroad no more. But when I am dead and gone, I know what my brother may do: I am much afraid that when he comes to wear the crown he will be obliged to travel again. And yet I will take care to leave my kingdoms to him in peace….’
¹⁸
Part of the King’s ‘easiness’ consisted in radiating a fatherly benevolence, now that he had brought about peace at home by defeating those who had sought to defeat him.