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Home Domestic Affairs, 1660-88, in England and Scotland England; Part 7 |
England; Part 7A reaction in favour of the king followed the Oxford Parliament. The execution of Lord Stafford, a blameless Roman Catholic peer of over seventy years of age, for alleged complicity in the Popish Plot, made people realize the wildness of the exaggerations which they had hitherto Delieved. It was felt that the Opposition had gone too far, and there was no desire for another Civil War. Consequently, for the last four years of his reign (1681-5) Charles, with the aid of a congenial ministry nicknamed " the Chits ", from their youth, was able to persecute his enemies, whilst lavish grants from Louis XIV enabled him to do without a Parliament. Shaftesbury had to flee to Holland and the Duke of Monmouth was banished. The Ryehouse Plot—a plot for murdering the king on his way from Newmarket—gave Charles an opportunity of executing, though quite unjustly, Russell and Sidney, both prominent Whigs (1683). The king, also, by means of a writ called Quo Warranto, "remodelled " the Charters of London and sixty-five provincial towns, the strongholds of the Whigs, and vested the right of electing Members of Parliament to represent these boroughs in governing bodies nominated by himself. Yet Charles had no wish to play the part of a tyrant; all he wanted was to get free from the control of any other authority, and in this apparently he had completely succeeded before his death, which occurred in February, 1685.James 11 succeeded without difficulty (February, 1685) on his brother's death. People felt that he had been treated hardly over the Exclusion Bill, and he had the support of all moderate people. Parliament, enthusiastically loyal, voted him a large income; and even when the fabricators of the Popish Plot were most barbarously treated—Oates received three thousand four hundred lashes in three days (Gates subsequently joined the sect of Baptists, and used often to preach from the pulpit of Wapping Chapel; but he was finally expelled by the sect "as a disorderly person and a hypocrite")—it was felt that they had only got what they deserved. Moreover, the successful crushing of two rebellions strengthened the king's position. Argyll in Scotland rose in support of Monmouth; but he could only get some of his own clan, the Campbells, to help him, and he was captured and beheaded. Monmouth himself landed in Dorset, and persuaded the country people of that county and of Somerset to join him in large numbers. He tried a night attack upon the king's forces at Sedgemoor, which might have been successful but for the fact that an unsuspected and impassable ditch stopped his advance. As it was, the attack failed, and Monmouth was subsequently captured and then executed (July, 1685). The Chief Justice, Jeffreys by name, accompanied by four other judges, was sent down to the West to try the rebels, and, in what is called "the Bloody Assize", hanged over three hundred and transported some eight hundred (These eight hundred were presented to various courtiers, who sold them to slavery in the West Indian plantations), thus bringing upon himself a reputation for cruelty which will last as long as history is read. |
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