СНАР.
VIII.

§ 4. Go

vernment of the Restora

tion.

§ 5. The Divine Right of Kings.

The government of the Restoration, as it formed itself under the influence of Hyde, who shortly became Lord Chancellor Clarendon, was an attempt to resuscitate the political theories of the minority of 1641. King and parliament were to work for ever in harmony together. The king, being entirely dependent upon parliament for his revenue, would never be able to strike out a separate line of action, whilst the parliament, solemnly declaring that in no possible case was resistance to the king allowed by the laws of God or man, seemed to have placed it out of its own power to strike out a line of action independent of the king. In point of fact, this excellent system of mechanical balance would remain in working order just as long as king and parliament were united in feeling and policy, and not a moment longer. The men of the Restoration forgot what Elizabeth and Charles I. on the one side, and the Commons of post-Revolutionary times on the other side did not forget-that the power of giving a final and irrevocable decision must be placed somewhere. The great advocate of this system was Clarendon, and Clarendon was never able to understand that when two men are on the same horse, both of them cannot ride in front at the same time.

For a time at least king and parliament were agreed. They had one common enemy in Puritanism, and one common resolve, that a Puritan minority should not again impose its will upon the nation by the instrument of an armed force. This was the real meaning of those sweeping enunciations of principles about nonresistance and the divine right of kings which astonish a later age. The latter doctrine, startling as it appears now, was little more than the form special to the age, in which respect for established institutions had clothed itself. In the medieval empire and in the England of the Tudors, it had meant no more than that the emperor or

king was independent of the Pope. In the days of the first two Stuarts it had been little more than a clerical appendage to the ordinary constitutional arguments against the growing inclination to claim sovereign authority for the House of Commons. After the execution of Charles I. it had associated itself with a new idea, that of indefeasible hereditary right, which seemed to be a barrier against the irruption of tumultuary violence to sweep away the ascertained foundations of government.

world. The court
Literature decked

CHAP.

VIII.

§ 6. Cha

racter of

Such a Restoration as this was sure to go deeper than to a mere replacement of the old external machinery the Resof government. The reaction against the attempt to toration. raise ordinary men to a standard of religion and morality above their reach made vice in its grossest forms welcome in the high places of the and high society wallowed in filth. itself in foulness. It was not only in this direction that the reaction made itself visible. The ideas of Chillingworth and Hales in religion, of Bacon and the founders of the Royal Society in science, acquired an unexpected preponderance with thinking men. The intellectual side of man's nature was cultivated to the neglect of spiritual inspiration and individual enthusiasm. The word zeal, which had once been used as the highest praise, now became a term of reproach. Christian precepts were enforced because they were eminently reasonable and conducive to happiness, not because they exalted the believer to a high-strung enthusiasm for a divine

cause.

Such a temper, though unfavourable at the time to morality and religion, would in the long run give to them a higher place than ever before. Charles and Cromwell had alternately extended their patronage to different systems with the result of making the system

СНАР.
VIII.

which each patronised contemptible. At first it seemed
as if the Parliament of the Restoration were about to
persist in the evil courses of its predecessors. It brought
back the Church system of Charles I. and it persecuted
the Puritans with unrelenting severity. But between the
persecutions of this Parliament and preceding persecutions
there was a great difference. In all former cases persecu-
tion arose more from fear than from intolerance. But
the fear of Charles and Cromwell was a permanent fear.
It arose from the fact that a minority was attempting to
coerce a majority without the slightest prospect that the
minority would ever be converted into a majority.
Under the Restoration a majority was persecuting a
minority. It is true that that minority was especially
formidable, partly from its activity and energy, but still
more from the fact that it numbered in its ranks the
dissolved Puritan army, As long as those soldiers were
alive, it would be difficult to persuade ordinary citizens
that it was safe to allow to the Dissenters an eccle-
siastical organisation which might easily be converted
into a military organisation. Such a danger however
would of necessity grow less every year. The risk was
diminished as each of Cromwell's soldiers passed into
the grave.
In twenty or thirty years the Dissenters
would only be known as a small minority of the popu-
lation, of whom a few old men had once borne arms in
a now unpopular cause. All that would then stand in
the way of the grant of the liberty of sectarian associa-
tion apart from the national church would be the
feeling of dislike which their ideas and principles aroused.
Now however they would not be without allies within
the national church itself. The men who measured
Christianity by its reasonableness rather than by its
traditionary authority were not without considerable
influence there, and though these men would have pre-

ferred that dissent should not exist, they were not likely to oppose much resistance to the recognition of its claims.

CHAP.

VIII.

tagonism

and the

Рарасу.

Other causes combined to accelerate the inevitable § 8. Anchange of feeling. During the years in which the fear to France of Puritanism was gradually diminishing, an alarm of another kind was gradually increasing. The Restoration was almost contemporaneous with the conclusion of the long struggle between France and Spain to the benefit of the former power, and with the assumption of personal authority by Lewis XIV. In his hands the French monarchy became aggressive and domineering. In organisation, in military strength, and in political ability, it held the first place amongst the nations of Europe. It became as dangerous to the independent development of other European States as the monarchy of Philip II. had been in the preceding century. As Lewis grew older, he showed an increasing disposition to stand before the world as the champion of the Roman Catholic religion, though he was by no means inclined to submit his own authority to the authority of the pope. In this way it came about that the fear of the predominance of a religion supported by armed force shifted its ground in England. Everyone who kept his head cool was perfectly aware that neither Puritans nor Catholics were sufficiently numerous in England to dictate the religion of the country by mere force of numbers. But just as a Puritan minority had dictated its will by the strength of its military organisation, so it might be with the Catholic minority. What difference there was, was in favour of the Puritans. Cromwell's Ironsides had at least been Englishmen, and even the heart of a Cavalier might swell with triumph as he heard how his countrymen had driven the choicest legions of Spain in rout before them.

CHAP.
VIII.

§ 9. The Exclusion Bill.

The troops who alone could put the English Catholics in power were the armies of a foreign king. Once more it was as it had been in the time of Elizabeth. The Catholic was looked upon as an alien from the national brotherhood. He was unlike the Puritan, a member of a society of which the higher organisation had no root on English soil, and he was now suspected of being in close connection with a foreign military power which was suspected of hostile intentions, if not against England itself, at least against the influence of England upon the Continent. It was evident that if ideas of toleration gained ascendancy, the Roman Catholics would be the last to obtain the benefit. If indeed that close union between the king and the nation which had been proclaimed at the Restoration had been maintained, this feeling against the Catholics might not have gathered head. But whilst Charles was luxurious and extravagant, the members even of the parliament which had been chosen in the first fervour of revived loyalty, soon grew parsimonious and suspicious. They believed that he spent upon his pleasures and his vices money which they had destined for the equipment of the fleet. If it was not known that he had taken pay from the king of France, and had declared his readiness at the proper moment to avow himself a Catholic, there was enough in his conduct to show that he was not heart and soul a sharer in the national aspirations and prejudices. He certainly did not keep a watchful eye upon the progress of French ambition abroad, and he did not show himself to be at all imbued with those Protestant ideas which entered more largely than in the time of Laud into the thoughts of English churchmen,

If however the position of the reigning monarch was doubtful, the position of the heir presumptive was perfectly plain. Charles had no legitimate children, and his