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

to those of Lewis

for the purpose of destroying the power of the United Provinces,

and to employ the whole strength of England, by land and sea, in

support of the rights of the House of Bourbon to the vast

monarchy of Spain. Lewis, on the other hand, engaged to pay a

large subsidy, and promised that, if any insurrection should

break out in England, he would send an army at his own charge to

support his ally.


This compact was made with gloomy auspices. Six weeks after it

had been signed and sealed, the charming princess, whose

influence over her brother and brother in law had been so

pernicious to her country, was no more. Her death gave rise to

horrible suspicions which, for a moment, seemed likely to

interrupt the newly formed friendship between the Houses of

Stuart and Bourbon: but in a short time fresh assurances of

undiminished good will were exchanged between the confederates.


The Duke of York, too dull to apprehend danger, or too fanatical

to care about it, was impatient to see the article touching the

Roman Catholic religion carried into immediate execution: but

Lewis had the wisdom to perceive that, if this course were taken,

there would be such an explosion in England as would probably

frustrate those parts of the plan which he had most at heart. It

was therefore determined that Charles should still call himself a

Protestant, and should still, at high festivals, receive the

sacrament according to the ritual of the Church of England. His

more scrupulous brother ceased to appear in the royal chapel.


About this time died the Duchess of York, daughter of the

banished Earl of Clarendon. She had been, during some years, a

concealed Roman Catholic. She left two daughters, Mary and Anne,

afterwards successively Queens of Great Britain. They were bred

Protestants by the positive command of the King, who knew that it

would be vain for him to profess himself a member of the Church

of England, if children who seemed likely to inherit his throne

were, by his permission, brought up as members of the Church of

Rome.


The principal servants of the crown at this time were men whose

names have justly acquired an unenviable notoriety. We must take

heed, however, that we do not load their memory with infamy which

of right belongs to their master. For the treaty of Dover the

King himself is chiefly answerable. He held conferences on it

with the French agents: he wrote many letters concerning it with

his own hand: he was the person who first suggested the most

disgraceful articles which it contained; and he carefully

concealed some of those articles from the majority of his

Cabinet.


Few things in our history are more curious than the origin and

growth of the power now possessed by the Cabinet. From an early

period the Kings of England had been assisted by a Privy Council

to which the law assigned many important functions and duties.

During several centuries this body deliberated on the gravest and

most delicate affairs. But by degrees its character changed. It

became too large for despatch and secrecy. The rank of Privy

Councillor was often bestowed as an honorary distinction on

persons to whom nothing was confided, and whose opinion was never

asked. The sovereign, on the most important occasions, resorted

for advice to a small knot of leading ministers. The advantages

and disadvantages of this course were early pointed out by Bacon,

with his usual judgment and sagacity: but it was not till after

the Restoration that the interior council began to attract

general notice. During many years old fashioned politicians

continued to regard the Cabinet as an unconstitutional and

dangerous board. Nevertheless, it constantly became more and more

important. It at length drew to itself the chief executive power,

and has now been regarded, during several generations as an

essential part of our polity. Yet, strange to say, it still

continues to be altogether unknown to the law: the names of the

noblemen and gentlemen who compose it are never officially

announced to the public: no record is kept of its meetings and

resolutions; nor has its existence ever been recognised by any

Act of Parliament.


During some years the word Cabal was popularly used as synonymous

with Cabinet. But it happened by a whimsical coincidence that, in

1671, the Cabinet consisted of five persons the initial letters

of whose names made up the word Cabal; Clifford, Arlington,

Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. These ministers were

therefore emphatically called the Cabal; and they soon made that

appellation so infamous that it has never since their time been

used except as a term of reproach.


Sir Thomas Clifford was a Commissioner of the Treasury, and had

greatly distinguished himself in the House of Commons. Of the

members of the Cabal he was the most respectable. For, with a

fiery and imperious temper, he had a strong though a lamentably

perverted sense of duty and honour.


Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, then Secretary of State, had since

he came to manhood, resided principally on the Continent, and had

learned that cosmopolitan indifference to constitutions and

religions which is often observable in persons whose life has

been passed in vagrant diplomacy. If there was any form of

government which he liked it was that of France. If there was any

Church for which he felt a preference, it was that of Rome. He

had some talent for conversation, and some talent also for

transacting the ordinary business of office. He had learned,

during a life passed in travelling and negotiating, the art of

accommodating his language and deportment to the society in which

he found himself. His vivacity in the closet amused the King: his

gravity in debates and conferences imposed on the public; and he

had succeeded in attaching to himself, partly by services and

partly by hopes, a considerable number of personal retainers.


Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were men in whom the

immorality which was epidemic among the politicians of that age

appeared in its most malignant type, but variously modified by

greet diversities of temper and understanding. Buckingham was a

sated man of pleasure, who had turned to ambition as to a

pastime. As he had tried to amuse himself with architecture and

music, with writing farces and with seeking for the philosopher's

stone, so he now tried to amuse himself with a secret negotiation

and a Dutch war. He had already, rather from fickleness and love

of novelty than from any deep design, been faithless to every

party. At one time he had ranked among the Cavaliers. At another

time warrants had been out against him for maintaining a

treasonable correspondence with the remains of the Republican

party in the city. He was now again a courtier, and was eager to

win the favour of the King by services from which the most

illustrious of those who had fought and suffered for the royal

house would have recoiled with horror.


Ashley, with a far stronger head, and with a far fiercer and more

earnest ambition, had been equally versatile. But Ashley's

versatility was the effect, not of levity, but of deliberate

selfishness. He had served and betrayed a succession of

governments. But he had timed all his treacheries so well that

through all revolutions, his fortunes had constantly been rising.

The multitude, struck with admiration by a prosperity which,

while everything else was constantly changing, remained

unchangeable, attributed to him a prescience almost miraculous,

and likened him to the Hebrew statesman of whom it is written

that his counsel was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of

God.


Lauderdale, loud and coarse both in mirth and anger, was,

perhaps, under the outward show of boisterous frankness, the most

dishonest man in the whole Cabal. He had made himself conspicuous

among the Scotch insurgents of 1638 by his zeal for the Covenant.

He was accused of having been deeply concerned in the sale of

Charles the First to the English Parliament, and was therefore,

in the estimation of good Cavaliers, a traitor, if possible, of a

worse description than those who had sate in the High Court of

Justice. He often talked with a noisy jocularity of the days when

he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chief instrument

employed by the court in the work of forcing episcopacy on his

reluctant countrymen; nor did he in that cause shrink from the

unsparing use of the sword, the halter, and the boot. Yet those

who knew him knew that thirty years had made no change in his

real sentiments, that he still hated the memory of Charles the

First, and that he still preferred the Presbyterian form of

church government to every other.


Unscrupulous as Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were, it was

not thought safe to intrust to them the King's intention of

declaring himself a Roman Catholic. A false treaty, in which the

article concerning religion was omitted, was shown to them. The

names and seals of Clifford and Arlington are affixed to the

genuine treaty. Both these statesmen had a partiality for the old

Church, a partiality which the brave and vehement Clifford in no

long time manfully avowed, but which the colder and meaner

Arlington concealed, till the near approach of death scared him

into sincerity. The three other cabinet ministers, however, were

not men to be kept easily in the dark, and probably suspected

more than was distinctly avowed to them. They were certainly

privy to all the political engagements contracted with France,

and were not ashamed to receive large gratifications from Lewis.


The first object of Charles was to obtain from the Commons

supplies which might be employed in executing the secret treaty.

The Cabal, holding power at a time when our government was in a

state of transition, united in itself two different kinds of

vices belonging to two different ages and to two different

systems. As those five evil counsellors were among the last

English statesmen who seriously thought of destroying the

Parliament, so they were the first English statesmen who

attempted extensively to corrupt it. We find in their policy at

once the latest trace of the Thorough of Strafford, and the

earliest trace of that methodical bribery which was afterwards

practiced by Walpole. They soon perceived, however, that, though

the House of Commons was chiefly composed of Cavaliers, and

though places and French gold had been lavished on the members,

there was no chance that even the least odious parts of the

scheme arranged at Dover would be supported by a majority. It was

necessary to have recourse to fraud. The King professed great

zeal for the principles of the Triple Alliance, and pretended

that, in order to hold the ambition of France in check, it