The King and the Parties

The year 1674 marks a turning-point in the relations between king and parliament. Charles had been checkmated in his attempts to carry out his own policy of alliance with France and indulgence for Roman Catholics, a policy not to be taken up again until the duke of York came to the throne as James II. The king was too good a politician not to yield at so dangerous a crisis ; and for the next few years he was content to play off one party in parliament against the other. Shaftesbury, after his dismissal from office, had become the leader of the opposition, consisting chiefly of Dissenters, who believed it was lawful for parliament to compel the kill, to do as they and the people thought right. Opposed to Shaftesbury was the mail whom Charles selected as his adviser, the earl of Danby, who belonged to the school of Clarendon. Danby supported the king and the established church, and believed that the king's power was from God alone.

In the struggle that followed, Shaftesbury and his party were at first successful, for they had the support of the nation. The English people had become alarmed by the victories of Louis XIV in Holland and the discovery that a great many Roman Catholics had held office in the government. Moreover, they were displeased that the duke of York should have married, in 1673, as his second wife a Catholic princess, Mary of Modena, and, in fact, were in a state of mind to be easily influenced by Shaftesbury's inflammatory speeches.

Again Charles yielded. In 1677 he consented to the marriage of his niece, Mary, daughter of the duke of York by his first wife, to William of Orange, who was now stadtholder of Orange and the leader of the opposition to Louis XIV in Europe. Charles was even himself persuaded to take up arms against Louis, all act which angered the French king. In order to bring about the fall of Danby, who, he believed, was the chief cause of the king's change of mind, Louis sent to parliament a letter that Danby had written to the French court, asking for new subsidies. The plan succeeded. Though Danby was opposed to the French alliance and declared that he had written only at the king's bidding, parliament impeached him. In so doing it demonstrated the fact that a minister, no matter what private views he may hold, could be held responsible for the king's policy. Charles, however, saved Danby for the moment by dissolving parliament, a body which had sat continuously from 1661 to 1679.

Shaftesbury and the Roman Catholics: The Exclusion Bill

Shaftesbury's success was to prove his ruin. The period from 1679 to 1681 was one of great uneasiness and unrest. Almost a panic was caused by the stories of one Titus Oates, who at this time came forward with a carefully prepared tale that a great Roman Catholic conspiracy was on foot to murder the king and make England a Catholic kingdom' Many Roman Catholics were executed on the flimsiest of pretexts; Protestants became hysterical; and the nation began to fear a union of the Stuarts with Catholic France for the purpose of overthrowing the liberties of England.

Charles, attempting to allay the excitement, summoned a new parliament (March, 1679). But that body at once renewed its impeachment of Danby; and, despite his plea of a pardon from the king, sent him to the Tower. Then the opposition, led by Lord William Russell in the House of Commons and Shaftesbury in the Lords, directed the attack against the duke of York, an avowed Roman Catholic, in order to prevent his succession to the throne. To this end, an exclusion bill was drafted, but Charles prevented its passage by dissolving parliament. Another parliament was elected (October, 1679), but the king refused to summon it. The nation was dividing into two great parties, whose struggles were to constitute party history in later times. Those who wished to exclude the duke of York from the succession and petitioned the king to summon parliament that an exclusion bill might be passed, were called the petitioners, or Whigs; those who believed in the doctrine of the divine right of kings and the right of the duke of York to succeed, were the Abhorrers, because they expressed their abhorrence of the attempt to coerce the king and to exclude the duke, and they, were nicknamed Tories. Shaftesbury, the leader of the Whigs, weakened his cause by bringing forward the duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles, as the king's successor, and by denying the claims of Mary, the daughter of James, who, as a Protestant and the wife of William of Orange, was popular with the nation.

Reaction in Favor of the King

Shaftesbury and his party had gone too far. Just as, two years before, the people had feared a Catholic conspiracy, so now they began to fear a return to the anarchy of the Puritan revolution. In 1680 the House of Lords rejected the Exclusion Bill and the Whig leaders became desperate. They came to the parliament of 1681, armed, and in so doing were guilty of a breach of the law. By dissension among themselves and by their extreme measures they weakened their cause. Charles saw his opportunity and quickly took advantage of it. He upheld the cause of his brother, the duke of York, refused to consider for a moment the claims of the duke of Monmouth, and when the opposition became violent, dissolved his parliament and refused to call another.

The king was supported by all Roman Catholics, all upholders of the Anglican church, and great numbers of fair-minded men who disliked Shaftesbury's methods. Aided by powerful allies and subsidized by gold from France, the king and his advisers were able to take their revenge. Shaftesbury was driven from England; the city of London, which had been his stronghold, was deprived of its charter ; and other centres of the Dissenters and Whigs were similarly punished. In 1683, when a body of desperate men formed the Rye House plot' to assassinate the king and his brother, the government meted out a heavy penalty. Sir William Russell and Lord Algernon Sydney were seized, tried, and executed for high treason, on the ground that they had conspired to assassinate the king and to raise a rebellion within the kingdom.

Thus a clever manipulation of parties, together with the violent measures and dissensions of his opponents, gave the victory to the king. Meanwhile, however, England had learned some lessons from the shrewd and tactful Charles, by which all profited in the next reign. In 1685 Charles died, and was succeeded by his brother as James II.

The Colonies under Charles II

While this matter of government and parties was being worked out at home, England was making great strides in the world of commerce abroad. The Stuarts, whatever may have been their views on government, had definite ideas regarding the growth of England's colonies and commerce; for they saw in both of these an opportunity to increase the revenues of the crown. By his marriage with Catherine of Braganza, Charles had gained both Tangier and Bombay. The former acquisition was England's first vantage point in Africa; the latter her first foothold in India. In 1663, by the grant of Carolina to Clarendon and others, he had established a new colony in America. In 1662 and 1663 he had transformed the colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island into corporations, by charters that gave these colonies legal recognition and a true land title. In 1664 he had granted to his brother the province of New Netherland, the region between New England and Maryland, and at the conclusion of the war with the Dutch, had obtained a confirmation of England's title to the territory. In the same year the duke of York granted to Berkeley and Carteret that portion later known as New Jersey. Finally, in 1681, almost at the close of the reign, Charles completed a splendid work of colonial expansion by granting to William Penn the province of Pennsylvania. This territory was given to Penn in honor of his father, Admiral Penn, and in recognition of a loan of L11,000 which the admiral had made to the king and the latter had been compelled to repudiate in the Stop of the Exchequer.

Thus before the close of the reign of Charles II there existed mine colonial settlements on the continent of America, forming a continuous seaboard along the Atlantic coast. Barbadoes, Jamaica, Bahamas, and a number of smaller islands in the West Indies were already in English hands. In Africa a few places were controlled by the English, while in India a beginning of occupation had been made at Bombay.

Trade and Commerce

Hitherto few attempts had been made to deal adequately with questions of plantations and trade. James I had appointed a committee for the purpose, and Cromwell had done the same. But it was left for Charles and Clarendon to inaugurate a more efficient policy, on the ground that commerce increased the customs revenues of the crown. Under Clarendon's influence, parliament in 1660 and 1663 passed what are known as the first and second navigation acts. It was the purpose of these acts (1) to promote English shipping by taking from the Dutch their monopoly of the carrying trade, a policy which had already been adopted in Cromwell's navigation act of 1651; and (2) to increase England's customs revenues and to benefit her merchants by requiring that certain commodities from the colonies must first be brought to England before being carried elsewhere, and that all goods taken from other countries to the colonies must first pass through English ports. A third act, in 1672, extended these provisions somewhat. At the same time various commissions and committees were appointed for the purpose of dealing with all questions of trade and the colonies.

By these means England entered upon a new career as a commercial and colonial power. Her revenues increased, her shipping was extended, her colonies became her source of supply for those raw materials that she could not produce at home. Her manufactures, notably of woollen cloth, increased rapidly, and were sent over to her colonies in exchange for the raw materials that the colonies were encouraged to send to her.