Then there was Sidney Godolphin, in his early thirties, another Lord of the Treasury appointed in March. Since 1668 he had been an MP, first for Helston and later for St Mawes, and he had included a variety of royal appointments in his career: page of honour (when Charles described him as never in the way and never out of it), groom of the bedchamber and finally in 1678, Master of the Robes.2 But he also had close Dutch contacts and disliked the Duke of York. The junior member of the group was the Earl of Mulgrave, barely thirty. One of the Wits and Dryden’s noble patron, Mulgrave had also been a naval commander; he was now colonel of the ‘Old Holland’ regiment of foot. Mulgrave preferred the Duke of York to Monmouth, for whom he had felt a military jealousy.
From their youth, these men were to be known as ‘the Chits’. A mark of this generation in 1679 was a capacity to remain on friendly terms with Shaftesbury and his associates, as well as with the Court, where their natural interests lay, unless there was some specific and dangerous issue. Indeed, there is a fluidity about the stance of men like Sunderland and Godolphin which echoes the generally confused political alliances of this period.
The new Treasury commission after Danby’s fall was however headed by a figure of greater maturity: the Earl of Essex, recently returned from his spell as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. At the new Treasury it was felt that Essex’s ‘clear, though slow sense’ would make him ‘very acceptable to the King’.3 Indeed, Essex’s instinctive moderation was illustrated only a few months later, when he advised the King to disband his newly raised Guards, as being unnecessarily provocative.
Later Essex favoured Exclusion. And even the wise Essex would lose his head, believing in such a far-fetched notion as the guilt of the aged Lord Stafford, and involving himself in the Rye House Plot. But at the time when the King’s experimental Council was formed, the employment of a man like Essex, coupled with Shaftesbury, Halifax and the younger men, represented a positive decision to try and break the deadlock which existed between King and Parliament: a deadlock which had virtually brought government to a halt. The plan was that this Council should transact all business, and for reasons of convenience it was therefore divided into committees for Intelligence, Ireland, Tangier and Trade and Plantations.
It is true that as this perturbed spring turned into a still more hectic summer, the King tended to lean more and more on those members of this Council who were sound on the subject of the royal prerogative. But this was inevitable, given that the prerogative was under renewed attack, and given the King’s anxieties on the subject. The rise of the influence of Essex, Hyde and Godolphin was not implicit in the constitution of the Council when it was first formed; nor is it necessary to suppose that Charles II formed the Council in a derisive mood, as a kind of blind to his real activities. The formation of the Council was an intelligent move in its own right, because it stood to bring strident members of the opposition within the nullifying orbit of the government. As a pragmatic operator, the King would have been perfectly content had the Council succeeded. In any case, the burning issue of Exclusion, filling Parliament with both smoke and fire, was occupying all his positive energies.
On 29 April, as an effort against Exclusion, the King agreed to considerable limitations on the powers of any ‘Popish’ successor. These included lack of control over judicial or ecclesiastical appointments (a limitation which would put this Popish sovereign in a very weak position indeed, compared with his predecessors). Parliament was also to assemble immediately on the death of the sovereign, as of right – another important sacrifice of the royal prerogative. It was not enough. Shaftesbury and his clique continued to demand the sacrifice of James. Thus the Exclusion Bill was given its first reading and carried.
On 21 May it was also carried on the second of its three necessary readings, before going to the Lords. The majority was large, without being overwhelming (207 to 128, and there were over 170 people who did not vote). The Commons was not however likely to be in great haste to accord the Bill its third reading, since relations with the House of Lords were still in that state of nagging discord which is an important political feature of this period. Once they had passed the Bill finally, the Lords would probably reject it. The King therefore, as an experienced general, fell back on the tried weapon of prorogation. On 27 May he prorogued Parliament until 14 August.
Parliament was not the only front where the royal authority was directly threatened. In Scotland, the murder of Archbishop Sharp on 13 May meant that the precarious peace there could no longer be maintained. Archbishop Sharp had gratuitously attacked the Covenanters for what were undoubtedly sincere religious beliefs, but, as with all acts of terrorism, the shocking nature of the deed shifted the balance: the Archbishop was dragged from his coach and hacked to pieces in front of his daughter’s eyes. In June the government’s forces, under John Graham of Claverhouse, were defeated by the Covenanters, and had the rebels now not indulged in the eternal sport of Scottish dissidents, internal bickering, their cause might well have flourished outwardly, as it did in the hearts of the Scottish people. As it was, the main outcome of the Scottish insurrection, from the English point of view, was a change in the position of Monmouth.
The dashing young ‘Protestant Duke’ was presented with a nice opportunity to shine when he was despatched north to command the loyal militia. He was appointed Captain General. It was Monmouth’s finest hour. Not only was he officially responsible for the government’s triumph at Bothwell Brig on 22 June, but he also issued instructions for mercy thereafter, understanding the essentially harmless nature of most Conventiclers. As the ‘clement victor’ in Scotland, Monmouth acquired a kudos which his actions at the English Court had not brought him.
Meanwhile, the English Parliament had passed one Act which should have been enough to immortalize it – had anyone at the time realized the consequences of what they were doing.4 This was the Act since known as Habeas Corpus, and widely regarded as one of the cornerstones of English civil liberty. At the time it was loosely known as ‘Shaftesbury’s Act’, but that did not mean that Shaftesbury alone understood what was involved: the Act caused little stir with anyone at the time when it was passed, slipping on to the Statute Book, rather than marching on to it in glory.
Previously, a writ of Habeas Corpus, as the Latin indicates, had required the body of a person to be brought by his jailer before a judge or into court; its advantage lay in the fact that, once the aforesaid person was produced, the nature of his custody – lawful or otherwise – could be investigated. So far, so good. But recently there had been extraordinary difficulties made over the granting of writs. Once granted, the difficulties were not over: as many as three writs had on occasion been needed for the prisoner to be produced. Nor was bail necessarily granted thereafter. Political detainees were not the only ones to suffer: those on criminal charges were subject to the same ordeal.
One of the questions asked was whether any court other than the Court of the King’s Bench had the right to issue such a writ. Then there was the whole issue of imprisonment at the King’s command – that is, by royal warrant. To suggest the abolition of this was a clear attack on one aspect of the royal prerogative. But by the end of the debate MPs were merely demanding the abolition of various abuses to do with this type of imprisonment. Equally, the Act of 1679 simply specified that there were to be no delays in granting the writ, without touching on the question of the courts involved. In effect, all parties had shied away from the issue of the royal warrant, which was really at the centre of the abuse.
It showed how little the significance of the Act was understood that the King himself was mildly favourable towards it. He saw it as a useful means of protecting Danby and the imprisoned Catholic lords – the latter, at least, the victims of a tyrannical incarceration quite as arbitrary as anything a Stuart monarch could provide. There is also a persistent story that the Act only passed through the House of Lords as a result of a piece of impudence on the part of the teller, who boldly counted one exception
ally stout peer as ten. Be that as it may, 31 Chas II was duly entered on the Statute Book.
Then Parliament was duly prorogued. The King was under no illusions on the subject of Exclusion. He was aware that the reassembly of Parliament would be rapidly followed by a return – probably successful – to the painful subject of the Bill. Having granted himself a breathing-space, he cast his thoughts, as before, towards means of ruling without this tiresome assembly.
Renewed negotiations – or intrigues, as the opposition would have termed them – with France was one answer. Charles II had never yet turned to Louis XIV totally in vain. The reopening of discussions on the subject of a French subsidy was planned in the summer. Throughout the autumn these deliberations with the French Ambassador, Barrillon, would continue.
There was another possibility – that expedient contemplated, if only for a moment, by Danby twelve months previously: the use of the King’s standing army to solder together the worn surface of his personal power. There were of course plenty of commentators who discerned this intention in the King’s slightest move. In particular, the raising of new royal guards in July (that measure condemned by the sensible Essex as being provocative) aroused the familiar suspicion that ‘governing by an army’ was on its way. The King however scoffed at the criticisms and raised his guards all the same. As far as he was concerned, all the reasons which had militated against a military solution in 1678 still obtained.
In June five Jesuit priests had been put to death. The King had no means of knowing that the impending Wakeman trial would represent the turning of the tide where reason and justice were concerned in London. The Scottish situation was hardly encouraging, and Monmouth’s success brought its own problems where Exclusion was concerned. The so-called Triumvirate of chief ministers in the King’s Council – Essex, Halifax and Sunderland – were now convinced that a proper dissolution of Parliament was essential. They feared that otherwise, when Parliament returned, Shaftesbury would introduce a newly triumphant Monmouth as his Exclusion candidate. It has been established that the Triumvirate were mistaken, and that Shaftesbury had no intention of supporting Monmouth at this juncture: but this is hindsight.5 On 3 July the King raised the question of dissolution in his Council, and after discussion it appeared that the majority were against it.
A week passed. Then, on 10 July, the King dissolved Parliament all the same. The thoughts of Charles II at this critical period can only be divined. He was careful to avoid committing them to paper. The written word had proved a dangerous medium where Danby was concerned and he had never much favoured it in the first place, either out of laziness or some profound need for self-concealment. The move to dissolution was the effective termination of his experiment with a new type of Council: he had ignored its decision. But then the Council’s decision would have interfered with his royal prerogative to prorogue or dissolve Parliament at will. Charles had not anticipated this particular confrontation when he set up the new Council. But where the prerogative was concerned, he knew where the royal interests lay.
A further week later, on 18 July, Wakeman, the Queen’s physician, was acquitted by a jury presided over by the Lord Chief Justice William Scroggs. At the time it was widely believed that Scroggs had been got at – bribed, for example, by the Portuguese Ambassador. Certainly he met a fair reward at the Court for presiding over such a welcome verdict: at Windsor thereafter it was noted that ‘the favourites of both sexes rejoiced’, and the soft white hands of the Duchess of Portsmouth were supposed to have patted the unwieldy form of the Lord Chief Justice in gratitude.6 But this was after the event. It has been pointed out by legal historians that Scroggs’ conduct of the case cannot be faulted by the conventions of his own age. He cast well-founded doubts on the testimony of Oates and Bedloe. Scroggs’ own language to the jury was also more impressive than the contemporary reaction might indicate. He told them, ‘Never care what the world says, follow your consciences.’ And of his own participation, Scroggs observed, ‘I would be loath to keep out popery by that way they would bring it in, that is, by blood and violence. I would fain have all things very fair.’7
There is in fact no evidence that Scroggs was influenced. Given that Wakeman was innocent, and given that his defence (unlike that of the Jesuits) was efficiently organized by some person of authority whose identity is unknown, Scroggs simply allowed justice to take its course.8 Afterwards a dead dog was thrown at his coach. The Popish issue was not yet equally dead – the trial of the Catholic lords was to come – but at least some progress had been made in killing it off.
The acquittal of Wakeman on the one hand, and the possibility of renewed Anglo-French manoeuvres on the other, meant that by August 1679 the King could at last hope for the ease which had been denied to him during the last horrendous twelve months. Virtually everything he held dear, both of a private and a public nature, had been under attack. But the essential sea wall had not yet been breached. It was at this point, by one of those strange flukes of personal misadventure from which the course of history is never wholly free, that the King fell violently ill.
This dramatic twist to events – occurring at a moment of maximum uncertainty concerning the succession – was all the more startling because it was so unexpected. The King was famous for his superb health. Like many men who consider physical exercise the best panacea, he had a cheerful disregard for the medical profession, ‘ever laughing at physicians’, and ‘would not come under their hands’.9 No one at Court was foolish enough to suppose that their King, who had survived so much, would actually elude the ordinary laws of mortality as well. Charles II was now in his fiftieth year. The constant fuss over the succession, the care taken to guard the King’s person against assassination: all this illustrates a general preoccupation with the future. But his imminent death had never been contemplated.
It is relevant to Shaftesbury’s tortuous policies over Exclusion, for example, that he was working towards a future he never expected to see. Nearly ten years older than the King, with a sickly and twisted body, Shaftesbury could not legitimately hope to outlive the vigorous, athletic monarch. The Duke of York himself was only three years younger than his brother and Charles was always reckoned to be the healthier of the two. James thought it worth recording in his memoirs that he too had not expected to outlive Charles II.10
Now, from one moment to the next, all that was changed.
On 22 August at Windsor the King was struck down. He was seized with an acute fever, probably of the malarial origin which was so common in seventeenth-century Europe, since he was cured by ‘the Jesuit’s powder’, actually an early form of quinine imported from the South American bark cinchona. Appropriately enough, the King owed his cure to his own zest for scientific knowledge.11 Although the bark had been known in England since the time of Cromwell, the dosage was not yet fully understood and the established doctors regarded the new cure with baffled suspicion. But Charles, being ‘the most inquisitive King in the whole world who is also the greatest patron of empirics’, had looked favourably upon one Robert Talbor, an early expert on the subject. He had joined with him in experiments using the new powder, and chided the physicians for their lack of interest. Even so, they might have denied the King his own cure in 1679 had they been able to think up anything else to administer. Evelyn tells the story of Dr Lower’s continued childish reluctance to admit its efficacy; eventually, faced with the King’s undoubted recovery, he fell back on the formula that it was ‘a Remedy fit only for Kings’! The King, more gratefully, knighted Talbor and granted him a pension.
Returning to the royal sick-room at Windsor, here no such happy outcome was predicted at the time of the King’s collapse. According to the prevalent insanitary custom (when infection was not understood), the poor King had his chamber crowded with his councillors – anxious as much for themselves and their future as for his. The councillors, standing on their own right to be present, warded off still greater crowds, but the spectacle of their grim and enquiring visages lo
oming over him can only have added to the King’s fevered dreams. One unresolved question faced them. What was to be done about the Duke of York, lurking in unofficial exile at Brussels?
James’ legal position as heir presumptive was quite unaltered. Councillors could foresee an ugly situation arising if the King died, the Duke of York took over the throne which was his by right – and they had somehow neglected to acknowledge this fact. On the other hand, it was equally possible that the Duke of York, being absent, would fail to secure the throne: Monmouth, dominated by Shaftesbury and bolstered by his position as Captain General, might grab it; that spelt catastrophe for his former opponents. Presence often constituted right in a doubtful succession, as the weak Richard Cromwell gained over his stronger brother Henry, at the time of Oliver’s death, simply because Henry was absent in Ireland.
On 24 August Sunderland, faced with this dilemma, sent word to James that the King was ill. A day passed and it was suggested he should return. On 2 September James arrived back in England.
It was a decisive moment. Admittedly, by this date the King himself was recovering; he exchanged water-gruels and potions for the more robust fare of mutton and partridges. Soon he was demanding to go to Newmarket – no doubt to escape the claustrophobia of his closely watched sickroom. The doctors forbade it on the grounds that the season was too advanced and, as a result, ‘the Air too serene’ (meaning not so much calm as liable to a noxious twilight dew, from the Latin serus, ‘evening’). All the same, it was a decisive moment because James made it so. Such an ambiguous situation brought out the best in the military-trained Duke, accustomed to a lifetime of decision and command in the field and at sea. Suddenly his stalwart figure appeared as a bastion against contention and the worse evil of civil strife.