King Charles II (66 page)

James was not unnaturally offended and alarmed by Danby’s Anglican policies. The shifting nature of political alliances in this period was once more underlined when the Duke of York moved away from Danby’s so-called Court party towards the arms of the Protestants Buckingham and Shaftesbury.

All the same, Danby laboured hard at building up his
Parliamentary base: a conglomerate of well disposed MPs has been traced, based on his home ground of the West Riding of Yorkshire.
³⁹
The lop-sided representation of certain areas in Parliament also helped because in general it favoured the Royalist cause. There was another theoretical advantage accruing to the King: the appointment of the Lords Lieutenant, who in turn were responsible for local patronage (although this had to be used with care). Then there was that method of building up a Court party, or any other party for that matter – bribery. Accusations of bribery against Danby were part of the stock-in-trade of his opponents. In fact, some of Danby’s payments were disbursements to genuine office-holders. Where did these legitimate payments end and bribery begin? In a situation where office-holding was much complicated by the relics of the pre-war structure on which the post-Restoration structure had been imposed, this is difficult to establish. The important point was that Danby earnestly strove to put together governmental support. It was not easy in an age when party politics as such, to say nothing of the parties themselves, were still in an embryonic state.

The third plank in Danby’s platform, after pursuing economic and political solidity, was the strengthening of ties with the Dutch. It was essential to this particular policy that the King should secure sufficient supplies from Parliament to uphold his beloved Navy. Otherwise it was easy to see that the King would have little motive to wrench himself from the lucrative embrace of Louis
XIV
. When Parliament met again in April 1675 for Danby to secure supplies, the King was all honey to its members. He told them that he wanted to have a better understanding with them and ‘to know what you think may yet be wanting to the securing of religion and property’. This was a far cry from his claims of ‘supreme power’ in ecclesiastical matters. But he did not fail to dwell on the theme of the Navy. ‘I must needs recommend to you the condition of the Fleet,’ he said, ‘which I am not able to put into that state it ought to be, and which will require so much time to repair and build, that I should be sorry to see this summer (and consequently a whole year) lost without providing for it.’
⁴⁰

It was all the more important that Danby should succeed in managing Parliament to good financial effect, since his policy of positive Anglicanism went against the King’s natural inclinations as well. On 1 May the King signed a declaration expelling Jesuits and other ‘Romish priests’ from the realm. Already in February, an Order in Council had been made for the strict enforcement of the penal laws against the Catholics, and for the restricting of Catholic chapels to those of the Queen and the ambassadors.

But this session of Parliament proved to be a contest between two equally handicapped opponents. The Commons continued to cry out against the French involvement, demanding that the English troops which had been sent to back up Louis
XIV
should now be withdrawn under the terms of the Treaty of Westminster. The King promised that further recruitment would be forbidden (in fact, he turned a blind eye to its continuance), but declined to withdraw troops already serving under Louis before the Treaty. The Commons responded by showing intractability over the supplies he wanted for the Navy. They linked them to the Excise – a source of supply he already possessed.

There was even a move to impeach Danby, as the King’s minister, for his pro-French attitudes – which would have been a wry turn of events, considering Danby’s own attitude to France. Luckily the impulse behind it was feeble and the motion easily defeated. Besides, Danby had his own notion of dealing with possible Parliamentary opposition, by introducing a new type of Test Act promoting ‘Non-Resistance’. All office-holders were supposed to take a new oath declaring that resistance to the King was unlawful, and promising to abstain from all efforts to alter the constitution of the Church and State.

The bill had a long and wearisome passage in the House of Lords; at one point the King himself stayed till midnight, following the proceedings. Nevertheless, it might well have become law had not a quite unrelated quarrel broken out at this point between the two Houses of Parliament. The case of Shirley
v
. Fagg rested on the right of the House of Lords to hear appeals from the Court of Chancery, when one of the appellants was a member of the Commons. The Commons considered that by summoning Sir John Fagg, an MP, the Lords had acted
in breach of their privileges. The quarrel grew. All parliamentary business was suspended.

The King was aware that at the bottom of ‘this most malicious design’, as he called the fomented row, was the intention to procure a dissolution of Parliament. Whereas a mere prorogation helped the King, it was the increasing conviction of certain MPs that a dissolution – followed by a fresh election – would produce a House of Commons more favourable to their cause. The King saw through this ploy. And he said so. He appealed to the disputants to patch up their differences and not allow a body of ‘ill [that is, wicked] men’ to sway them. He also observed, ‘But I must let you know, that whilst you are in debate about your privileges, I will not suffer my own to be invaded….’
⁴¹

The disputants were however obdurate. On 9 June the King saw no alternative but wearily to prorogue Parliament. The ‘unhappy differences’ between the two Houses were, he said, too great. And he spoke bitterly of ‘the ill designs of our enemies [that] have been too prevalent against those good ones I proposed to myself in behalf of my people’.
⁴²

The King and Court went to his delightful new abode at Windsor. When Parliament met again in the autumn, Danby returned with new vigour to the task of carrying through the government’s policies. Nor had he wasted his time in the intervening months. Over a hundred MPs had been lobbied by the Secretaries of State, to ensure their attendance. The number of Excise pensioners was increased. Despite these sanguine, if not salutary, precautions, Danby found himself once more desperately bogged down. The
cause célèbre
of Shirley
v
. Fagg still dominated relations between the two Houses; and Danby found himself quite unable to secure the King’s financial needs, while the demand for the dissolution of Parliament grew.

The irony of this demand – and irony is never far away from the politics of this period – was that Charles
II
himself was more or less committed to dissolving Parliament, but in secret, and in his latest negotiations with Louis
XIV
. It was proposed that Charles should dissolve the English Parliament if its attitude towards France grew too aggressive, or if it failed to vote the King the supplies he needed. In return, Louis
XIV
would give
Charles
II
a yearly subsidy of something like £100,000. Did Danby know of the bargain? It seems that he did. Even so, he still pressed on, doggedly trying to secure money for the King via Parliament, for much more than £100,000 was needed to float the Navy.
⁴³

When Danby failed, it was still open to Charles to dissolve Parliament – as Shaftesbury and his faction so much desired – and call on the French subsidy. Even the Duke of York now supported a dissolution, believing for his part that a new Parliament would not be so rabidly anti-Catholic. But Danby, by pulling out all the stops of his own organization, managed to defeat the motion in the House of Lords. And Charles deftly but determinedly proceeded to prorogue Parliament yet again.

What was more, by taking advantage of France’s military embroilment, he managed to secure the French subsidy all the same, while he had not satisfied its condition. The newest secret treaty with Louis
XIV
, that of February 1676, provided for an annual subsidy, payable in quarters. In vain Danby begged his master to commit himself to the Dutch – the old principle of the Triple Alliance. Charles
II
once more pursued his own bent, albeit secretly, and signed on with France again for a three-year period. Danby was aware of its existence, but only Lauderdale, ‘never more high in His Majesty’s favour’, and the Duke of York were privy to the actual treaty.

The winter of 1675/6 might be regarded as one of general discontent in England, both in and out of Parliament. The MPs were furious that their fox had eluded them; in addition, the hunt was postponed for an unprecedentedly long period (the prorogation was to last fifteen months). Danby’s Protestantism in foreign affairs was not prevailing. Only Charles
II
himself had managed to survive without any major defeat, ‘living from day to day’, in the words of the Venetian Ambassador. As for the knot in the comb, he had not forgotten it. But he was not yet ready to try and disentangle it.

1
Obviously the numbers of members of a proscribed religion are hard to estimate: they have been put as low as sixty thousand – just over one per cent of the population.
¹

2
Ashmole was consulted once more, in January 1674; he also continued to follow the King’s astrological progress in the future, although there is no proof that he did so with the King’s approval other than the fact that it was in theory treason to cast the sovereign’s horoscope without authorization.
¹⁸

3
More often known as the Lady Mary and the Lady Anne, according to the convention of the time, which was less lavish with the term ‘princess’ than our own: Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, for example, were generally termed the Ladies Mary and Elizabeth, despite the fact that they were the daughters of a reigning monarch, Henry
VIII
.

‘For he was not an active, busy or ambitious Prince … he seemed to be chiefly desirous of “Peace and Quiet for his own Time”.’

B
y 1676 it was the opinion of Sir John Reresby that King Charles
II
was ‘chiefly desirous of “Peace and Quiet for his own Time”’. But this was not necessarily the unambitious lethargy outlined by Reresby. ‘Peace and Quiet’ still had a wonderful resonance to those who remembered the troubles of the previous generation. It is notable that when Lord Halifax in his
Character of a Trimmer
wanted to sum up the effects of the two political extremes, Absolute Monarchy and Commonwealth, he conceded the ferment created by the latter: ‘[Absolute] Monarchy, a thing that leaveth men no liberty, and a Commonwealth, such a one as alloweth them no Quiet.’
¹
The views of Charles
II
on the monarchy remained at this point as amorphous as those of most of his contemporaries; but he would have profoundly agreed with Halifax on the subject of Commonwealths.

‘Peace and Quiet for his own Time’ had for him no ring of appeasement. It was a thoroughly laudable aim. Oddly enough, for a brief period between the prorogation of Parliament in the autumn of 1675 and its reconvening in 1677, it seemed possible that he might achieve it without a struggle.

It was true that a ‘Country’ – as opposed to ‘Court’ – opposition was being developed by the coalition of Shaftesbury
and Buckingham. Increasingly this group had to be reckoned with. Although we shall hear more of the Green Ribbon Club towards the end of the decade, its constitution was in existence by 1676, even if its meetings were not yet recorded. The Green Ribbon Club provided an important rallying point for those discontented with the government – particularly when Parliament was not sitting. ‘
Les mal intentionnés
’ was how Charles had described them to the French Ambassador when they persisted in voting against him. The King’s Head Tavern, at the junction of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane, proved a convenient rendezvous. For all the efforts of government spies to permeate the meetings, the Green Ribbon Club succeeded in linking together the various disparate elements – former Puritans, merchants, lawyers and so forth – which would go to make the future ‘Whig’ party. The first of the long line of English political clubs, it performed a function which even the most capacious private house could not fulfil.
²

From another angle, the Green Ribbon Club also survived the clampdown on the coffee-houses because it was a private association. It is interesting to consider that beverages like coffee, chocolate and even sherbert, seemingly innocuous to us (because they are non-alcoholic), began life in England as dangerous, expensive and exciting symbols of dissidence. At the new meeting-places, the eternal beer of the English was replaced by a heady combination of coffee – and political sympathy. As a result, the government came to identify the places with the politics. An Order was given in December 1675 to suppress the coffee-houses as once race meetings had been suppressed under the Protectorate.