King Charles II (92 page)

It was perfectly appropriate that he lived in an age when political theories were so chaotic. It left him free to follow his natural bent, which was to ignore such matters. He wished to
incarnate that kind of monarch described by Dryden, ‘who is just and moderate in his nature’, and provides ‘a government which has all the advantages of a liberty beyond a commonwealth, and all the marks of kingly sovereignty, without the danger of a tyranny’.
¹⁴
To many people who remembered the Commonwealth, it was a republic which ‘gave that mock appearance of a liberty where all who have no part in government are slaves’. As these memories faded, so the unifying and unrestrained role of the King was no longer necessary. No-one, including the King, yet knew what was to be put in its place.

It was not that Charles
II
was ill served. In their different ways men such as Clarendon, Arlington and Danby, and on a lower level Williamson – and Pepys – were highly talented at home; in Scotland Lauderdale displayed strength and some national feeling; in Ireland one can go much further in praise of Ormonde and even Essex. Talented as they were, these men were, like their King, floundering in an age of change. The role of Parliament? The role of the
people
? Because the era of the Civil War ha ended in such a complete theoretical ‘Restoration’, such questions were still unresolved.

There is one charge which is constantly levelled against Charles
II
– lack of patriotism, based on his acceptance of secret French subsidies. But it is a charge which must lead directly to a question: what
was
the nature of patriotism then? No one can deny that Charles himself loved England (and things English) with a passion. He also equated the happiness of England with stable monarchical government. In a memorable phrase he told Lord Bruce: ‘I would have everyone live under his own vine and fig-tree. Give me my just prerogative and I will never ask for more.’ That was very far from being an outrageous view at the time: most of his subjects shared it for most of his reign and in 1660 virtually all of them did.

The next step, the employment of the French funds in order to do without the boa-constrictor’s embrace of Parliament, is more controversial. The acceptance of such subsidies then was not of course the national scandal it would be today: let us remember not only the bribes administered by William of Orange to English MPs but also the guileful manner in which
the Whig leaders, those showy enemies of absolutism, allowed themselves to receive similar payments from the absolute Louis
XIV
. Nevertheless, had Charles
II
intended to use these funds to change the religion of the country to Catholicism against its will it would be impossible to defend him as a patriot. But Charles
II
never even changed his own religion until it was too late to matter, let alone took any step to change that of the country as a whole.

His conception of the French money was as a support in his struggles with his Parliamentary enemies; without this support he feared, rightly or wrongly, that he would go the way of his father. And that, he sincerely believed, would lead to the perdition of his country once again. The receipt of foreign subsidies, far from being in contrast to such overtly (by our standards) patriotic actions as the maintenance of the Navy, the extension of the Empire, was part of the same process. One may therefore criticize Charles
II
for his Machiavellian policies, but not for lack of patriotism.

There is a comparison to be made with another popular charge: that Charles
II
was the political plaything of his mistresses. In fact, their opinions tended to echo his own predilections of the time rather than the other way round. One may criticize him for extravagance towards these ladies, or indeed for having mistresses in the first place – but not for succumbing to their political influence.

There must be ‘condescensions from the throne, like kind showers from heaven’, wrote Halifax. Of these condescensions, not to be confused with stiffer formalities, Charles
II
was a master. Dryden spoke of him awakening the English from the ‘natural reservedness’ of their dull and heavy spirits on his Restoration.
¹⁵
The enthusiasm with which his presence galvanized so many sides of English life was not assumed.

Both sport and the arts brought him towards his people. It was easy for him to discern the human being behind the office. He dined with the jockeys not only because of his passion for racing, but because he found jockeys good company. In the same way actors, and of course actresses, were for the first time treated with proper respect in English society during his reign,
because of the King’s love of the theatre. His love of a pretty face extended to a general respect for women: the position of women in the second half of the seventeenth century was in many ways preferable to their position in the nineteenth. Was it a complete coincidence that the climate of the Restoration led to a remarkable flowering of female playwrights not paralleled till our own day? Charles
II
was fascinated by science and patronized the Royal Society. Delight in his Navy and his Army extended to care for the welfare of his sailors and soldiers. His connection with Purcell has been mentioned, spreading out from his love of the new instrumental music brought from France which flourished during his era. Gardens and paths sprang up, as the King laid out and sauntered through his own.

Witty and kind, grateful, generous, tolerant, and essentially lovable, he was rightly mourned by his people, walking in the streets ‘like ghosts’ after his death, their faces suffused with tears. He had been their spirited young prince, their Black Boy, ‘born the divided world to reconcile’, in Waller’s phrase, whose restoration brought about the return of ease. As a father to them in later years, he had incarnated so much of what they pined for in a ruler. Cynical and dissimulating, it can be argued that Charles
II
was not a king for all seasons. But he was the right king for that strange, demanding season in which he lived.

He was not a Merry Monarch – never has a popular catch-phrase been so deceiving. The age itself might be merry in many of its jollier public aspects: but the man who presided over it was in contrast marked by melancholy at the very heart. More important to his people was the fact that he understood one deep need of their nature. ‘If he loved too much to lie upon his own down bed of ease,’ wrote Halifax, ‘his subjects had the pleasure during his reign of lolling and stretching upon theirs.’ Many a monarch has had a worse epitaph than giving back peace to a torn nation.

Let his royal ashes lie soft upon King Charles
II
.

1
According to Dean Stanley, that great Victorian guardian of the Abbey, the vault was accidentally disclosed in 1867 in the process of laying down the apparatus for warming the Chapel. The lead coffin was very much corroded and had collapsed; the King’s remains were visible. In 1977, when the vault was again opened, the remains, as described by Dean Stanley, were still visible.
³

2
The best introductions to it are J. P. Kenyon, ‘Review Article: The Reign of Charles
II
’,
Cambridge Historical Journal
, vol.
XIII
, 1957, and K. H. D. Haley,
Charles II
, Historical Association Pamphlet, 1966.

These have been kept to the minimum (except for M
SS
and where a point is controversial) on the grounds that the general reader will not want to know them, and the experts on the period already do. Authors and/or titles are given in the most convenient abbreviated form; full details will be found in the list of Reference Books alphabetically according to the first letter of the abbreviation used. ‘
Letters
’ indicates
The Letters of King Charles
II
, edited by Sir Arthur Bryant. ‘Burnet’ is a reference to the edition of O. Airy; ‘Evelyn’ to the edition of W. Bray, unless otherwise stated; ‘Halifax’ to the
Complete Works
, edited by J. P. Kenyon; ‘Pepys’ followed by a date is a reference to Pepys’
Diary
, edited by R. C. Latham and W. Matthews.

Chapter 1: Heaven was Liberal

1
Perrinchief, p. 8.

2
Horoscope cast by Julia Parker.

3
Cook,
Titus Britannicus
.

4
Strickland,
V
, p. 252.

5
Hartmann,
King My Brother
, p. 118; Hatton Correspondence,
I
, p. 44.

6
Kenyon,
Plot
, p. 55.

7
Burnet,
I
, p. 470.

8
Pepys, 25 May 1660.

9
Motteville
,
II
, p. 80.

10
Buckingham,
Works
,
II
, p. 64.

11
Hamilton,
Henrietta Maria
, p. 187; Pepys, 22 November 1660.

12
Hamilton,
Henrietta Maria
, p. 96.

13
Petrie,
Letters
, p. 240.

14
Oman, p. 69.

15
Harris,
I
, pp. 3–4.

16
Chapman,
Charles
II
, pp. 22–3; C. S. P. Domestic 1661–2, p. 221.

17
Wase,
Electra
.

18
Oman, p. 108.

19
Brett, p. 4.

20
Foxcroft,
Burnet
, p. 48.

21
Evelyn,
II
, p. 206; Hamilton,
Henrietta Maria
, p. 254.

22
Hutchinson
, p. 3.

23
Millar,
Stuart Pictures
, No. 152, No. 151.

24
Clarendon’s History
,
III
, p. 381.

25
Ellis, 1st series,
III
, p. 288.

26
Strickland,
V
, p. 266.

27
Letters
, p. 3.

28
Welwood, p. 90.

29
C. S. P. Domestic 1639, p. 509.

Chapter 2: ‘I Fear Them Not!
’

1
C. S. P. Clarendon,
II
, p. 254.

2
Hutchinson
, p. 68.

3
Rushworth, p. 743.

4
Petrie,
Letters
, p. 116.

5
Warwick, p. 242.

6
Ellis, 1st series,
IV
, p. 2.

7
Plumb,
Royal Heritage
, p. 126;
Armouries of the Tower
, p. 28.

8
Young,
Edgehill
, pp. 107–26.

9
Hinton,
Memoires
, cit. Young,
Edgehill
, p. 300.

10
Chapman,
Villiers
, p. 35.

11
Clarendon’s History
,
III
, p. 449.

12
Earle,
Microcosmography
, pp. 1–2.

Chapter 3: Present Miseries

1
Morrah, p. 176.

2
Pepys, 11 November 1667.

3
Clarendon’s History
,
IV
, p. 22.

4
Hughes,
Boscobel
, p. 341.

5
Clarendon’s History
,
IV
, p. 23.

6
Clarendon’s History
,
IV
, pp. 21–2.

7
Letters
, p. 4.

8
Bowle, p. 278.

9
Petrie,
Letters
, p. 174.

10
Halifax
, p. 153.

11
Fanshawe
, p. 74.

12
Strickland,
V
, p. 537.

13
Petrie,
Letters
, p. 175; Harris,
I
, p. 25.

14
Société Jersiaise
, Bulletin 3, pp. 15–21.

15
Hoskins,
I
, p. 364
et seq
.

16
Fanshawe
, p. 42.

17
Dasent, pp. 20–28; Balleine, p. 49, note; Ogg,
I
, p. 203, note 1.

18
Balleine, p. 47.

19
Petrie,
Letters
, p. 205.

20
Hoskins,
I
, p. 446
et seq
.

Chapter 4: Dependence

1
Sackville-West, p. 74;
Clarendon’s History
,
IV
, p. 208.

2
Motteville
,
II
, p. 85.

3
Halifax, p. 79.

4
Airy,
Charles
II
, p. 23.

5
Burnet,
I
, p. 67.

6
Motteville
,
II
, p. 80.

7
Montpensier
,
I
, p. 139.

8
Geyl, p. 44.

9
Airy,
Charles
II
, p. 29.