CHAPTER XXXV--ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE SECOND, CALLED THE MERRY MONARCH
There never were such profligate times in England as under Charles theSecond. Whenever you see his portrait, with his swarthy, ill-lookingface and great nose, you may fancy him in his Court at Whitehall,surrounded by some of the very worst vagabonds in the kingdom (thoughthey were lords and ladies), drinking, gambling, indulging in viciousconversation, and committing every kind of profligate excess. It hasbeen a fashion to call Charles the Second 'The Merry Monarch.' Let metry to give you a general idea of some of the merry things that weredone, in the merry days when this merry gentleman sat upon his merrythrone, in merry England.
The first merry proceeding was--of course--to declare that he was one ofthe greatest, the wisest, and the noblest kings that ever shone, like theblessed sun itself, on this benighted earth. The next merry and pleasantpiece of business was, for the Parliament, in the humblest manner, togive him one million two hundred thousand pounds a year, and to settleupon him for life that old disputed tonnage and poundage which had beenso bravely fought for. Then, General Monk being made EARL OF ALBEMARLE,and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded, the law went to work to seewhat was to be done to those persons (they were called Regicides) who hadbeen concerned in making a martyr of the late King. Ten of these weremerrily executed; that is to say, six of the judges, one of the council,Colonel Hacker and another officer who had commanded the Guards, and HUGHPETERS, a preacher who had preached against the martyr with all hisheart. These executions were so extremely merry, that every horriblecircumstance which Cromwell had abandoned was revived with appallingcruelty. The hearts of the sufferers were torn out of their livingbodies; their bowels were burned before their faces; the executioner cutjokes to the next victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands together, thatwere reeking with the blood of the last; and the heads of the dead weredrawn on sledges with the living to the place of suffering. Still, evenso merry a monarch could not force one of these dying men to say that hewas sorry for what he had done. Nay, the most memorable thing said amongthem was, that if the thing were to do again they would do it.
Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence against Strafford, and wasone of the most staunch of the Republicans, was also tried, found guilty,and ordered for execution. When he came upon the scaffold on Tower Hill,after conducting his own defence with great power, his notes of what hehad meant to say to the people were torn away from him, and the drums andtrumpets were ordered to sound lustily and drown his voice; for, thepeople had been so much impressed by what the Regicides had calmly saidwith their last breath, that it was the custom now, to have the drums andtrumpets always under the scaffold, ready to strike up. Vane said nomore than this: 'It is a bad cause which cannot bear the words of a dyingman:' and bravely died.
These merry scenes were succeeded by another, perhaps even merrier. Onthe anniversary of the late King's death, the bodies of Oliver Cromwell,Ireton, and Bradshaw, were torn out of their graves in Westminster Abbey,dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day long, and thenbeheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a pole to bestared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whom would have dared to look theliving Oliver in the face for half a moment! Think, after you have readthis reign, what England was under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out ofhis grave, and what it was under this merry monarch who sold it, like amerry Judas, over and over again.
Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter were not to bespared either, though they had been most excellent women. The baseclergy of that time gave up their bodies, which had been buried in theAbbey, and--to the eternal disgrace of England--they were thrown into apit, together with the mouldering bones of Pym and of the brave and boldold Admiral Blake.
The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped to get thenonconformists, or dissenters, thoroughly put down in this reign, and tohave but one prayer-book and one service for all kinds of people, nomatter what their private opinions were. This was pretty well, I think,for a Protestant Church, which had displaced the Romish Church becausepeople had a right to their own opinions in religious matters. However,they carried it with a high hand, and a prayer-book was agreed upon, inwhich the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were not forgotten. AnAct was passed, too, preventing any dissenter from holding any officeunder any corporation. So, the regular clergy in their triumph were soonas merry as the King. The army being by this time disbanded, and theKing crowned, everything was to go on easily for evermore.
I must say a word here about the King's family. He had not been longupon the throne when his brother the Duke of Gloucester, and his sisterthe PRINCESS OF ORANGE, died within a few months of each other, of small-pox. His remaining sister, the PRINCESS HENRIETTA, married the DUKE OFORLEANS, the brother of LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH, King of France. Hisbrother JAMES, DUKE OF YORK, was made High Admiral, and by-and-by becamea Catholic. He was a gloomy, sullen, bilious sort of man, with aremarkable partiality for the ugliest women in the country. He married,under very discreditable circumstances, ANNE HYDE, the daughter of LORDCLARENDON, then the King's principal Minister--not at all a delicateminister either, but doing much of the dirty work of a very dirty palace.It became important now that the King himself should be married; anddivers foreign Monarchs, not very particular about the character of theirson-in-law, proposed their daughters to him. The KING OF PORTUGALoffered his daughter, CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA, and fifty thousand pounds:in addition to which, the French King, who was favourable to that match,offered a loan of another fifty thousand. The King of Spain, on theother hand, offered any one out of a dozen of Princesses, and other hopesof gain. But the ready money carried the day, and Catherine came over instate to her merry marriage.
The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of debauched men andshameless women; and Catherine's merry husband insulted and outraged herin every possible way, until she consented to receive those worthlesscreatures as her very good friends, and to degrade herself by theircompanionship. A MRS. PALMER, whom the King made LADY CASTLEMAINE, andafterwards DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND, was one of the most powerful of the badwomen about the Court, and had great influence with the King nearly allthrough his reign. Another merry lady named MOLL DAVIES, a dancer at thetheatre, was afterwards her rival. So was NELL GWYN, first an orangegirl and then an actress, who really had good in her, and of whom one ofthe worst things I know is, that actually she does seem to have been fondof the King. The first DUKE OF ST. ALBANS was this orange girl's child.In like manner the son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the King createdDUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH, became the DUKE OF RICHMOND. Upon the whole it isnot so bad a thing to be a commoner.
The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among these merry ladies, andsome equally merry (and equally infamous) lords and gentlemen, that hesoon got through his hundred thousand pounds, and then, by way of raisinga little pocket-money, made a merry bargain. He sold Dunkirk to theFrench King for five millions of livres. When I think of the dignity towhich Oliver Cromwell raised England in the eyes of foreign powers, andwhen I think of the manner in which he gained for England this veryDunkirk, I am much inclined to consider that if the Merry Monarch hadbeen made to follow his father for this action, he would have receivedhis just deserts.
Though he was like his father in none of that father's greater qualities,he was like him in being worthy of no trust. When he sent that letter tothe Parliament, from Breda, he did expressly promise that all sincerereligious opinions should be respected. Yet he was no sooner firm in hispower than he consented to one of the worst Acts of Parliament everpassed. Under this law, every minister who should not give his solemnassent to the Prayer-Book by a certain day, was declared to be a ministerno longer, and to be deprived of his church. The consequence of this wasthat some two thousand honest men were taken from their congregations,and reduced to dire poverty and distress. It was followed by anotheroutrageous law, called the Conventicle Act, by which any person above theage of sixteen who was present at any religious service not according tothe Prayer-Book, was to be imprisoned three months for the first offence,six for the second, and to be transported for the third. This Act alonefilled the prisons, which were then most dreadful dungeons, tooverflowing.
The Covenanters in Scotland had already fared no better. A baseParliament, usually known as the Drunken Parliament, in consequence ofits principal members being seldom sober, had been got together to makelaws against the Covenanters, and to force all men to be of one mind inreligious matters. The MARQUIS OF ARGYLE, relying on the King's honour,had given himself up to him; but, he was wealthy, and his enemies wantedhis wealth. He was tried for treason, on the evidence of some privateletters in which he had expressed opinions--as well he might--morefavourable to the government of the late Lord Protector than of thepresent merry and religious King. He was executed, as were two men ofmark among the Covenanters; and SHARP, a traitor who had once been thefriend of the Presbyterians and betrayed them, was made Archbishop of St.Andrew's, to teach the Scotch how to like bishops.
Things being in this merry state at home, the Merry Monarch undertook awar with the Dutch; principally because they interfered with an Africancompany, established with the two objects of buying gold-dust and slaves,of which the Duke of York was a leading member. After some preliminaryhostilities, the said Duke sailed to the coast of Holland with a fleet ofninety-eight vessels of war, and four fire-ships. This engaged with theDutch fleet, of no fewer than one hundred and thirteen ships. In thegreat battle between the two forces, the Dutch lost eighteen ships, fouradmirals, and seven thousand men. But, the English on shore were in nomood of exultation when they heard the news.
For, this was the year and the time of the Great Plague in London. Duringthe winter of one thousand six hundred and sixty-four it had beenwhispered about, that some few people had died here and there of thedisease called the Plague, in some of the unwholesome suburbs aroundLondon. News was not published at that time as it is now, and somepeople believed these rumours, and some disbelieved them, and they weresoon forgotten. But, in the month of May, one thousand six hundred andsixty-five, it began to be said all over the town that the disease hadburst out with great violence in St. Giles's, and that the people weredying in great numbers. This soon turned out to be awfully true. Theroads out of London were choked up by people endeavouring to escape fromthe infected city, and large sums were paid for any kind of conveyance.The disease soon spread so fast, that it was necessary to shut up thehouses in which sick people were, and to cut them off from communicationwith the living. Every one of these houses was marked on the outside ofthe door with a red cross, and the words, Lord, have mercy upon us! Thestreets were all deserted, grass grew in the public ways, and there was adreadful silence in the air. When night came on, dismal rumblings usedto be heard, and these were the wheels of the death-carts, attended bymen with veiled faces and holding cloths to their mouths, who rangdoleful bells and cried in a loud and solemn voice, 'Bring out yourdead!' The corpses put into these carts were buried by torchlight ingreat pits; no service being performed over them; all men being afraid tostay for a moment on the brink of the ghastly graves. In the generalfear, children ran away from their parents, and parents from theirchildren. Some who were taken ill, died alone, and without any help.Some were stabbed or strangled by hired nurses who robbed them of alltheir money, and stole the very beds on which they lay. Some went mad,dropped from the windows, ran through the streets, and in their pain andfrenzy flung themselves into the river.
These were not all the horrors of the time. The wicked and dissolute, inwild desperation, sat in the taverns singing roaring songs, and werestricken as they drank, and went out and died. The fearful andsuperstitious persuaded themselves that they saw supernaturalsights--burning swords in the sky, gigantic arms and darts. Otherspretended that at nights vast crowds of ghosts walked round and round thedismal pits. One madman, naked, and carrying a brazier full of burningcoals upon his head, stalked through the streets, crying out that he wasa Prophet, commissioned to denounce the vengeance of the Lord on wickedLondon. Another always went to and fro, exclaiming, 'Yet forty days, andLondon shall be destroyed!' A third awoke the echoes in the dismalstreets, by night and by day, and made the blood of the sick run cold, bycalling out incessantly, in a deep hoarse voice, 'O, the great anddreadful God!'
Through the months of July and August and September, the Great Plagueraged more and more. Great fires were lighted in the streets, in thehope of stopping the infection; but there was a plague of rain too, andit beat the fires out. At last, the winds which usually arise at thattime of the year which is called the equinox, when day and night are ofequal length all over the world, began to blow, and to purify thewretched town. The deaths began to decrease, the red crosses slowly todisappear, the fugitives to return, the shops to open, pale frightenedfaces to be seen in the streets. The Plague had been in every part ofEngland, but in close and unwholesome London it had killed one hundredthousand people.
All this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as ever, and as worthlessas ever. All this time, the debauched lords and gentlemen and theshameless ladies danced and gamed and drank, and loved and hated oneanother, according to their merry ways.
So little humanity did the government learn from the late affliction,that one of the first things the Parliament did when it met at Oxford(being as yet afraid to come to London), was to make a law, called theFive Mile Act, expressly directed against those poor ministers who, inthe time of the Plague, had manfully come back to comfort the unhappypeople. This infamous law, by forbidding them to teach in any school, orto come within five miles of any city, town, or village, doomed them tostarvation and death.
The fleet had been at sea, and healthy. The King of France was now inalliance with the Dutch, though his navy was chiefly employed in lookingon while the English and Dutch fought. The Dutch gained one victory; andthe English gained another and a greater; and Prince Rupert, one of theEnglish admirals, was out in the Channel one windy night, looking for theFrench Admiral, with the intention of giving him something more to dothan he had had yet, when the gale increased to a storm, and blew himinto Saint Helen's. That night was the third of September, one thousandsix hundred and sixty-six, and that wind fanned the Great Fire of London.
It broke out at a baker's shop near London Bridge, on the spot on whichthe Monument now stands as a remembrance of those raging flames. Itspread and spread, and burned and burned, for three days. The nightswere lighter than the days; in the daytime there was an immense cloud ofsmoke, and in the night-time there was a great tower of fire mounting upinto the sky, which lighted the whole country landscape for ten milesround. Showers of hot ashes rose into the air and fell on distantplaces; flying sparks carried the conflagration to great distances, andkindled it in twenty new spots at a time; church steeples fell down withtremendous crashes; houses crumbled into cinders by the hundred and thethousand. The summer had been intensely hot and dry, the streets werevery narrow, and the houses mostly built of wood and plaster. Nothingcould stop the tremendous fire, but the want of more houses to burn; nordid it stop until the whole way from the Tower to Temple Bar was adesert, composed of the ashes of thirteen thousand houses and eighty-ninechurches.
This was a terrible visitation at the time, and occasioned great loss andsuffering to the two hundred thousand burnt-out people, who were obligedto lie in the fields under the open night sky, or in hastily-made huts ofmud and straw, while the lanes and roads were rendered impassable bycarts which had broken down as they tried to save their goods. But theFire was a great blessing to the City afterwards, for it arose from itsruins very much improved--built more regularly, more widely, more cleanlyand carefully, and therefore much more healthily. It might be far morehealthy than it is, but there are some people in it still--even now, atthis time, nearly two hundred years later--so selfish, so pig-headed, andso ignorant, that I doubt if even another Great Fire would warm them upto do their duty.
The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set London in flames; onepoor Frenchman, who had been mad for years, even accused himself ofhaving with his own hand fired the first house. There is no reasonabledoubt, however, that the fire was accidental. An inscription on theMonument long attributed it to the Catholics; but it is removed now, andwas always a malicious and stupid untruth.