1660]

Monck's overtures to the King

555

hands of Monck and the Council of State. That Council, elected on February 23, was almost entirely composed of Presbyterians; and it now took up again in earnest the projected treaty with the King. Outside the Council the dozen Presbyterian peers who had adhered to the parliamentary cause up to the moment of the late King's trial worked for the same object. Both sought to impose upon Charles II the acceptance of the terms offered his father at the Treaty of Newport in 1648, or of even more stringent conditions. An Act of indemnity; the confirmation of the sales of Church and Crown lands; the control of the militia; the permanent establishment of Presbyterianism—such were their demands. "They did intend to have brought him in," said Admiral Mountagu to Pepys, "with such conditions as if he had been in chains." Monck prevented this. When the leaders of the Council applied to him to consent to the propositions they wished to send to the King, he absolutely refused, saying that "he would leave all to a free Parliament, as he had promised the nation." His refusal was wise, for a public treaty with the King would probably have caused a much more formidable revolt in the army than the rising which actually took place. Moreover neither the Council of State, nor the little clique of Lords associated with them, had any moral or legal authority to bind the nation.

Nevertheless, either to secure himself, or to facilitate the good understanding between King and Parliament which the nation plainly desired, Monck did not scruple to enter into communication with Charles behind the backs of his colleagues. Two or three days after the dissolution he sent for his cousin, Sir John Greenville, and accepted at last the letter which the King had written to him in the previous summer. "If you once resolve to take my interest to heart," wrote Charles, "I will leave the way and manner of declaring it entirely to your own judgment, and will comply with the advice you shall give me." Monck answered that at heart he had been ever faithful to the King, though till now never able to do him service; and then set forth the policy which he wished the King to adopt. Charles was to promise a general amnesty from which not more than four persons should be excepted; he was to confirm the possessors of confiscated property in their acquisitions, whether obtained by gift or purchase, and whether the lands in question were Crown lands, Church lands, or the forfeited estates of Royalist delinquents; he was to grant liberty of conscience to all his subjects. Finally, since England was still at war with Spain, he urged the King for the sake of his own security to remove at once from Spanish to Dutch territory, and recommended Breda as a suitable resting-place.

Armed with these verbal instructions (which Monck was too wary to commit to writing) Greenville reached Brussels about March 26. The King submitted Monck's proposals to Hyde, Ormande, and Nicholas. The principle upon which they were based, that the King's concessions

556

Milton and the elections

[1660

should be acts of free grace rather than the results of a bargain, was readily accepted. Apart from its political expediency, it obviated several constitutional difficulties which a formal treaty would have involved. As to the extent of the concessions suggested there was more hesitation. Neither the King nor his counsellors were willing to grant so universal an amnesty, to accept so sweeping a transference of property, or to guarantee such unlimited freedom of religion to all sects. therefore resolved to adopt the expedient which Hyde had recommended in earlier negotiations with the Presbyterians and the Levellers, and, while granting in general terms what Monck demanded, to refer to the wisdom of Parliament the precise limits of the King's concessions, and the responsibility for carrying them into effect. Charles felt confident that the coming Parliament would not exact more from him than he was willing to concede. Accordingly a declaration was drawn up on these lines, and dated from Breda, whither the King removed on April 4, 1660. Bearing this declaration, Greenville returned to England.

Meanwhile in England the elections were in full swing. Never had there been such competition for a seat in Parliament. "The meanest place," wrote a Royalist," hath five or six importunate pretenders, many fifteen, sixteen, or twenty." In the little boroughs, where the electors were few, some Republicans managed to get chosen. Scot was elected at Wycombe; Ludlow persuaded 19 out of the 26 electors of Hindon to give him their votes. In the counties, where the electors numbered thousands, the King's friends carried all before them. The torrent of reviving loyalty was irresistible.

Among the few who opposed it to the last was Milton. About the end of February he had published his Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. His scheme for the organisation of the Republic was more practicable than Harrington's, which he condemned as too intricate and too rigid, rejecting altogether the scheme of rotation. The governing body of the State was to be a permanent Grand Council, renewable, if it were thought well, by degrees, and combined with this an extended system of local self-government, so that each county would become a sort of little commonwealth, with council, schools, and lawcourts of its own. Yet England was not to be a loose federation of sovereign States like the United Provinces, but "many commonwealths under one united sovereignty." Wise or unwise, such schemes were now idle fancies which had ceased to attract even a moment's attention. It was rather as the last word of expiring Republicanism that it forced a hearing. Milton sought to stay "the epidemic madness" which was driving the misguided multitude back to the thraldom of kingship. To him a Free Commonwealth seemed "the noblest, the manliest, the equalest, the justest government, the most agreeable to all due liberty and proportioned equality both human, civil, and Christian, most cherishing to virtue and true religion." He cared little that most

1660]

Lambert's rising

557

Englishmen sincerely preferred monarchy. Freedom was a natural right of which the greater number could not justly deprive the less and a minority might forcibly compel a majority to remain free.

By this time even the army had abandoned the Miltonic theory of the rights of minorities. On April 10 the officers of the regiments about London presented Monck with an address in which they declared their willingness to submit to whatever settlement the coming Parlia ment's consultation should bring forth, "knowing that Parliaments only can secure us in our religious and civil rights." On the same day Lambert escaped from the Tower, and set to work to raise an insurrection. But the officers remained faithful to their pledge; and the soldiers obeyed their officers. Three colonels and a few captains joined Lambert; a troop mutinied at Nottingham; and some deserters tried to surprise York; but the anticipated military revolt did not take place. The parliamentary Republicans did not stir. Heselrige was too dejected, Scot was in hiding, Ludlow, like many others, distrusted the sincerity of Lambert's republicanism. Those who took up arms represented no definite principle, except aversion from monarchy. Ludlow asked one of Lambert's agents what his general declared for; he was answered that "It was not now a time to declare what we would be for, but what we would be against, which was that torrent of tyranny and popery that was ready to break in upon us." A purely negative programme was a bad rallying-cry; and Lambert got together less than a thousand men. Colonel Ingoldsby, with a force of about the same strength, met them near Daventry on Easter Sunday; Lambert's men would not fight, and the insurrection collapsed without a blow. Lambert, taken by Ingoldsby as he fled, was brought prisoner to London on April 24. So ended the rising of the "fanatics," which for some months all men had dreaded. "Their whole design is broken," wrote Pepys, "and things now very open and plain, and every man begins to be merry and full of hopes."

Next day the newly elected members of the Commons met at Westminster. One of the last acts of the Long Parliament had been a vote for restoring the ancient rights of the peerage, and thirteen peers met also. The leaders of the Presbyterian party in the Council of State had planned to set on foot at once a treaty with Charles II. They hoped to secure a majority by enforcing the restrictions against the election of Cavaliers in the Lower House, and by limiting the numbers of the Upper. According to their theory only those peers who had remained faithful to the parliamentary cause during the war had a right to sit. The lords who had sided with the King, those created by him during the war and the exile, and even the young lords who had inherited peerages or grown up to manhood during the interregnum, were to be shut out; Manchester, Northumberland, and about fifteen others would thus have controlled the action of Parliament. But the

558

The Convention and the King

[1660 reign of "the lordly Rump" ended in a couple of days. On April 27 eight of "the young lords" took their places; and by May 1 the House numbered forty-two peers. In the Lower House a similar defeat awaited the Presbyterians. It was calculated that a hundred, or a hundred and sixty members would be excluded, if the qualifications prescribed in the Act of the late Parliament were strictly observed. Monck's unexpected opposition frustrated this last attempt to limit the powers of Parliament in order to impose conditions on the King.

Some days before the two Houses met, Sir John Greenville reached England bearing the King's declaration, and letters to Monck, to the Speakers of the Lords and Commons, and to the City of London. On April 27 Greenville waited on Monck; as the letter to the General was to be communicated to the Council of State, Monck did not open it, but told Greenville to hand it to the Council. The Council refused to open it without the directions of Parliament, and bound Greenville over to attend the next sitting of the House. On Tuesday, May 1, the letters and declaration were read in both Houses. Charles granted a free pardon to all who should claim its benefit within forty days; "excepting only such persons as shall be hereafter excepted by Parliament." "We declare," he added, "a liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom; and we shall be ready to consent to such an Act of Parliament as upon mature deliberation shall be offered to us for the full granting that indulgence." He concluded by promising that all differences relating to sales and purchases of confiscated lands should be determined in Parliament, and that the soldiers of the army under Monck should receive full satisfaction for their arrears of pay. This reference of all disputed questions to Parliament was accompanied by a panegyric of the parliamentary system which Hyde placed in the mouth of the King. "We do assure you upon our royal word that none of our predecessors have had a greater esteem of Parliaments than we have... We do believe them to be so vital a part of the constitution of the kingdom, and so necessary for the government of it, that we well know neither prince nor people can be in any tolerable degree happy without them we shall always look upon their counsels as the best we can receive, and shall be as tender of their privileges, and as careful to preserve and protect them as of that which is most near to ourself and most necessary for our own preservation."

Both Houses received the King's declaration with enthusiasm. reception," wrote Clarendon, "was beyond what even the King could expect or hope." A joint vote for the restoration of the ancient government was passed, and a joint committee appointed to answer the declaration. On May 8 King Charles was publicly proclaimed; and the proclamation emphasised the fact that his Majesty's title to the

1660]

Return of the King

559

Crown dated from the moment of his father's death, and that the throne was his not in virtue of any parliamentary recognition, but "by inherent birthright." Though there was some show of drawing up Bills for presentation to the King, any attempt to make his restoration conditional was abandoned; and on May 29 Charles entered London.

The restoration of the monarchy was the inevitable consequence of the rupture between the civil and military sections of the Republican party which occurred in October, 1659, and of the division between the two which dated from April, 1653. In the confusion which followed every imaginable form of republic was proposed, with the result that the feeling in favour of the old constitution became irresistible. It seemed the only form which offered an escape from the two alternatives. of military rule or anarchy. Monck perceived this feeling, and by using first one party, then another, enabled the national will to find expression through the constitutional channel. It was not without dissimulation and falsehood that he achieved his purpose. Doubtless he regarded them as weapons which it was justifiable to use, in politics as well as war, in order to secure success. "Victor sine sanguine" ran the words of the patent which made him Duke of Albemarle. "Monck has done his business, but with some baseness," was the verdict of one of his helpers. The generation Monck served condoned the baseness because he effected without bloodshed a settlement which closed eighteen years of revolution. The question which perplexed contemporaries was not the morality of his conduct, but the precise date when he resolved. to work for the King. Was it by accident or design that Monck became the instrument of his restoration? Gumble and Price, Monck's biographers, assert that he was a Royalist from August, 1659; Clarendon, that he was converted to loyalty about March, 1660. Despite his panegyrists it is impossible to accept the view that he projected a restoration in August, 1659, and certain that he intended it when he readmitted the secluded members in February, 1660. While the Restoration was the result of a general movement of opinion too strong to be withstood, the shape it actually took was due in the main to Monck. His determination to reserve the settlement for a free Parliament coincided with the resolve adopted by Charles under Hyde's influence to leave the details to the same body. Owing to this coincidence the Restoration was from the first a restoration of parliamentary monarchy rather than of personal government.