The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 - Thomas Babington Macaulay (novel books to read TXT) 📗

them a pure body. They then

became supreme in the state. No man could hope to rise to

eminence and command but by their favour. Their favour was to be

gained only by exchanging with them the signs and passwords of

spiritual fraternity. One of the first resolutions adopted by

Barebone's Parliament, the most intensely Puritanical of all our

political assemblies, was that no person should be admitted into

the public service till the House should be satisfied of his real

godliness. What were then considered as the signs of real

godliness, the sadcoloured dress, the sour look, the straight

hair, the nasal whine, the speech interspersed with quaint texts,

the Sunday, gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath, were easily imitated

by men to whom all religions were the same. The sincere Puritans

soon found themselves lost in a multitude, not merely of men of

the world, but of the very worst sort of men of the world. For

the most notorious libertine who had fought under the royal

standard might justly be thought virtuous when compared with some

of those who, while they talked about sweet experiences and

comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practice of fraud,

rapacity, and secret debauchery. The people, with a rashness

which we may justly lament, but at which we cannot wonder, formed

their estimate of the whole body from these hypocrites. The

theology, the manners, the dialect of the Puritan were thus

associated in the public mind with the darkest and meanest vices.

As soon as the Restoration had made it safe to avow enmity to the

party which had so long been predominant, a general outcry

against Puritanism rose from every corner of the kingdom, and was

often swollen by the voices of those very dissemblers whose

villany had brought disgrace on the Puritan name.


Thus the two great parties, which, after a long contest, had for

a moment concurred in restoring monarchy, were, both in politics

and in religion, again opposed to each other. The great body of

the nation leaned to the Royalists. The crimes of Strafford and

Laud, the excesses of the Star Chamber and of the High

Commission, the great services which the Long Parliament had,

during the first year of its existence, rendered to the state,

had faded from the minds of men. The execution of Charles the

First, the sullen tyranny of the Rump, the violence of the army,

were remembered with loathing; and the multitude was inclined to

hold all who had withstood the late King responsible for his

death and for the subsequent disasters.


The House of Commons, having been elected while the Presbyterians

were dominant, by no means represented the general sense of the

people. Most of the members, while execrating Cromwell and

Bradshaw, reverenced the memory of Essex and of Pym. One sturdy

Cavalier, who ventured to declare that all who had drawn the

sword against Charles the First were as much traitors as those

who kind cut off his head, was called to order, placed at the

bar, and reprimanded by the Speaker. The general wish of the

House undoubtedly was to settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a

manner satisfactory to the moderate Puritans. But to such a

settlement both the court and the nation were averse.


The restored King was at this time more loved by the people than

any of his predecessors had ever been. The calamities of his

house, the heroic death of his father, his own long sufferings

and romantic adventures, made him an object of tender interest.

His return had delivered the country from an intolerable bondage.

Recalled by the voice of both the contending factions, he was in

a position which enabled him to arbitrate between them; and in

some respects he was well qualified for the task. He had received

from nature excellent parts and a happy temper. His education had

been such as might have been expected to develope his

understanding, and to form him to the practice of every public

and private virtue. He had passed through all varieties of

fortune, and had seen both sides of human nature. He had, while

very young, been driven forth from a palace to a life of exile.

penury, and danger. He had, at the age when the mind and body are

in their highest perfection, and when the first effervescence of

boyish passions should have subsided, been recalled from his

wanderings to wear a crown. He had been taught by bitter

experience how much baseness, perfidy, and ingratitude may lie

hid under the obsequious demeanor of courtiers. He had found, on

the other hand, in the huts of the poorest, true nobility of

soul. When wealth was offered to any who would betray him, when

death was denounced against all who should shelter him, cottagers

and serving men had kept his secret truly, and had kissed his

hand under his mean disguises with as much reverence as if he had

been seated on his ancestral throne. From such a school it might

have been expected that a young man who wanted neither abilities

nor amiable qualities would have come forth a great and good

King. Charles came forth from that school with social habits,

with polite and engaging manners, and with some talent for lively

conversation, addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond

of sauntering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of

selfdenial and of exertion, without faith in human virtue or in

human attachment without desire of renown, and without

sensibility to reproach. According to him, every person was to be

bought: but some people haggled more about their price than

others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and very

skilful it was called by some fine name. The chief trick by which

clever men kept up the price of their abilities was called

integrity. The chief trick by which handsome women kept up the

price of their beauty was called modesty. The love of God, the

love of country, the love of family, the love of friends, were

phrases of the same sort, delicate and convenient synonymes for

the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind, Charles naturally

cared very little what they thought of him. Honour and shame were

scarcely more to him than light and darkness to the blind. His

contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems, when

viewed in connection with the rest of his character, to deserve

no commendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well as

above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One

who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.


It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of

his species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in men

but what was hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so

far humane that it was highly disagreeable to him to see their

sufferings or to hear their complaints. This, however, is a sort

of humanity which, though amiable and laudable in a private man

whose power to help or hurt is bounded by a narrow circle, has in

princes often been rather a vice than a virtue. More than one

well disposed ruler has given up whole provinces to rapine and

oppression, merely from a wish to see none but happy faces round

his own board and in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great

societies who hesitates about disobliging the few who have access

to him, for the sake of the many whom he will never see. The

facility of Charles was such as has perhaps never been found in

any man of equal sense. He was a slave without being a dupe.

Worthless men and women, to the very bottom of whose hearts he

saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of affection for him and

undeserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him out of

titles, places, domains, state secrets and pardons. He bestowed

much; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the fame

of beneficence. He never gave spontaneously; but it was painful

to him to refuse. The consequence was that his bounty generally

went, not to those who deserved it best, nor even to those whom

he liked best, but to the most shameless and importunate suitor

who could obtain an audience.


The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles the

Second differed widely from those by which his predecessor and

his successor were actuated. He was not a man to be imposed upon

by the patriarchal theory of government and the doctrine of

divine right. He was utterly without ambition. He detested

business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have

undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.

Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance of affairs,

that the very clerks who attended him when he sate in council

could not refrain from sneering at his frivolous remarks, and at

his childish impatience. Neither gratitude nor revenge had any

share in determining his course; for never was there a mind on

which both services and injuries left such faint and transitory

impressions. He wished merely to be a King such as Lewis the

Fifteenth of France afterwards was; a King who could draw without

limit on the treasury for the gratification of his private

tastes, who could hire with wealth and honours persons capable of

assisting him to kill the time, and who, even when the state was

brought by maladministration to the depths of humiliation and to

the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcome truth from the

purlieus of his own seraglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever

might disturb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for these

ends alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be

obtained without risk or trouble. In the religious disputes which

divided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at all

interested. For his opinions oscillated in contented suspense

between infidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience was

neutral in the quarrel between the Episcopalians and the

Presbyterians, his taste was by no means so. His favourite vices

were precisely those to which the Puritans were least indulgent.

He could not get through one day without the help of diversions

which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a man eminently well

bred, and keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he was moved to

contemptuous mirth by the Puritan oddities. He had indeed some

reason to dislike the rigid sect. He had, at the age when the

passions are most impetuous and when levity is most pardonable,

spent some months in Scotland, a King in name, but in fact a

state prisoner in the hands of austere Presbyterians. Not content

with requiring him to conform to their worship and to subscribe

their Covenant, they had watched all his motions, and lectured

him on all his youthful follies.