CHARLES II. (1030-1685), king of England, bora in 1630, though the second son of Charles I., was Prince of Wales from his birth. In the earlier and mure important campaigns of the Civil War he held a nominal command in the west, but he was too young to take any real part in the conflict. After the battle of Naseby he passed by way of Scilly and Jersey to join his mother at St Germain Till 1649 he spent his time either at Paris or at the Hague, with out interfering in public affairs, except when he attempted to save his father s life by forwarding a signed carte blancht to the Parliament to be filled up with any terms which they would accept as the price of his safety. On the execution of Charles I., he immediately assumed the title of king. The Scotch Government offered to place him on the throne by force, and sent a deputation to the Hague. For a time Charles protracted the negociations, meanwhile urging Montrose to make him independent of the Presbyterians. But when the rising was crushed, and Montrose himself executed, he accepted their invitation. In June 1650 he landed in Scotland ; and he was crowned at Scone on the 1st January 1651. But as he had been obliged to sign the Covenant, and conform to the austere manners of the Covenanters, he soon began to feel the price of their assist ance intolerably heavy. The secret efforts which, during the whole time he was treating with the Presbyterians, he had been making to bring together a sufficient force of Highlanders proved unsuccessful ; and, on the defeat of Leslie at Dunbar, he was glad to march south, with the hope of arousing the loyalty of the English. The appeal failed ; and the royalist forces were again routed by Cromwell at Worcester (1651). Thanks to his own great coolness and address, and the fidelity of those in whom he confided, Charles contrived to reach France. Here he remained till 1654, when, having received a pension from the French king, he retired to Cologne. Thence he removed to Bruges, where he principally resided till the death of Cromwell. For the most part, notwithstanding the small- ness of his means and the wretchedness of his circumstances, he passed his time in careless dissipation, surrounded by a little court in which the few old cavaliers, like Clarendon, who maintained the dignified manners which had adorn ad the court of Charles I., were lost in a crowd of gay young libertines and sprightly women of disreputable character. His applications for assistance to France and Home were all unheeded ; and he was equally unsuccessful in his attempts to contract an advantageous marriage. At length, through the contrivance of General Monk, but still more through the open and enthusiastic wish of a large portion of the people, he was recalled to England ; his coQciliatory declaration from Breda was well received ; and he entered London amid sincere public rejoicings on his thirtieth birthday, May 29, 1660.
Charles s course was at first attended by no difficulty. The loyalty of the Convention summoned by Monk was sufficient for the time. It sympathized in the one desire for vengeance in which he was earnest ; it was resolved on the punishment of the regicides. Thirteen were executed, some in direct opposition to the apparent intention of the king s declaration of oblivion ; the bodies of Cromwell and Iretun were hung in chains ; and even the coffin which con tained the ashes of Blake was cast out of Westminster Abbey, and thrown into a common churchyard. And, finally, though some of the measures of the Convention prove that it had not lost all the spirit of the Long Parlia ment which preceded it, it showed its enthusiastic loyalty in a manner very agreeable to Charles, viz., by granting him the dangerous gift of 1,200,000 a year for life. But if the Convention was sufficiently loyal, the royalism of the first regular Parliament of the reign was extravagant. It insisted on the prerogative of the sovereign, and abased itself before him. At his express request it repealed the Triennial Act ; and it allowed him to declare that he would not be forced by that Act to summon frequent parliaments, if he believed that they would be disadvantageous to the Crown. It showed much reluctance to confirm the Act of Indemnity. It assisted him to complete his revenge by the sacrifice of Vane and Lambert, whom he had pledged his word to spare. But its royalism was equalled by its attachment to tho Church of England ; and thus commenced its opposition to the sovereign it professed to worship. Charles desired to tolerate the Catholics, and accordingly issued a General Declaration of Indulgence. Its illegality, however, raised so much opposition, even among the Protestant dissenters whom it benefited, that he prudently recalled it, and even published a proclamation banishing all Eoman Catholic priests.
It was, indeed, the Protestant temper of the nation which was the most powerful influence against which Charles s policy had to contend. Fortunately for himself he was able to estimate its strength. Himself a Roman Catholic, he made several attempts to grant toleration to his co religionists ; but he always gave way when the anti-popish passion seized the people. Twice he yielded to a degree which more than any other of his acts displays the utter selfishness of his character. In order to blind the people, and prepare the way for the trial of Shaftesbury, he sacrificed the Catholic Archbishop Plunkett, the accusation against whom was supported only by the most worthless witnesses. But the basest compliance of which he was guilty was in the case of the pretended Popish plot. He did nothing to allay the popular frenzy ; he allowed Gates to be handsomely pensioned, and located at Whitehall; the only case in which he is reported to have interfered was thct of his wife, who was not, indeed, seriously threatened ; and he calmly signed the death-warrants of men whom he must have regarded as martyrs.
It is remarkable that the matter in regard to which Charles most firmly withstood opposition was one in which he was not personally concerned the exclusion of his brother, the duke of York, from the succession. This is the more remarkable as there is good reason to believe that his affection was much stronger for the duke of Monmouth, his own son by Lucy Walters. He treated him like a legitimate prince, and permitted him to wear the royal arms without the bar sinister, and to make progresses through the kingdom, on which he was received as if he had been heir to the throne. Towards the end of his life (in 1682), however, he was so seriously displeased with one of these progresses as to banish the duke to Holland ; pos sibly the licence which Monmouth assumed was only per mitted by the king ; and we may, perhaps, give him credit for having all along unselfishly desired that his brother and a Catholic king should succeed him.
general agreement. His selfishness, which was of the sensual, indolent, good-humoured type, was such that he was incapable of understanding motives different from his own. His chief aim was to support, without trouble or censure, his own gay and dissipated life, and his troop of mistresses. This was no easy matter; his mistresses were numerous, and he was fond of indulging them to the utmost of his power. One was raised to the rank of duchess of Portsmouth, another to that of duchess of Cleveland ; six of the sons they brought him were created dukes;[1] and means were supplied to maintain their lofty dignity. They occupied a recognized position at court ; and the queen was
obliged to humiliate herself, and to treat them without
- ↑ The dukes of Mouraouth (by Lucy Walters), St Albans (by Nell Gwyiin), Richmond (by Louise de Querouailie), and Cleveland, Grafton,. and Northumberland (by Barbara Villiera).
