in the days before the Commonwealth, assembled at Westminster. On the 1st of May, a letter from Charles was presented to this body, who, after a few hours, voted a 1660. loyal answer to the absent prince. All the slumbering feelings of loyalty seemed suddenly to awaken, and the nation which had brought his royal father to the block, now rent the air with shouts of "Long live King Charles II.!" The new monarch, with his brother, the Duke of York, landed at Dover on the 25th of the same month. QUESTIONS.-Repeat Cromwell's remarks upon the Rump Parliament. Relate his proceedings towards this assembly.—What followed its dissolution?-Name and describe the next parliament.What office was conferred upon Cromwell in 1653?-By whom?— By whom was the government to be administered?-Describe the protector's conduct with regard to Spain.-Relate the advantages gained. Describe his further achievements among foreign states. State some of the dangers and difficulties to which Cromwell was exposed in England.-What is remarked of the court of the protector? What domestic affliction befell Cromwell?-When did he die?-Repeat some of his last words.-Relate briefly the career of his successor.-Describe the conduct of General Monk.-In what did it result?-Describe the popular feeling at this time. CHAPTER XLVI. CHARLES II. ACTS OF PARLIAMENT THE REGICIDES-INGRATITUDE OF THE KINGSCOTLAND-FOREIGN RELATIONS-PLOTS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES. On the 29th of May, 1660, the exiled Stuart was restored to the throne of England. He entered London through streets hung with tapestry and garlands, flowers strewn in his path, and shouts of rejoicing rending the air. The returning tide of loyalty overflowed the nation with a force which threatened utter destruction to every landmark of constitutional right which the last thirty years had set up. Charles II. was restored to the throne of his father with scarce a limit (save the word of a Stuart) to the royal prerogative. The duty of tonnage and poundage was granted to the king for life, and the proposition was made to increase the royal income to over a million pounds a year: The 29th of May, the anniversary alike of his birth and of his restoration, was made a religious festival. All who had taken part in the death of the late king were called regicides, and their lives were in danger. Many fled to other lands, and the colonies of New England received not a few of the fugitives of the Restoration. About twenty-nine were put to death in the most cruel manner, and even the dead bodies of the leading Puritans were not allowed to rest in their graves. 1661. On the 30th of January, the anniversary of the execution of King Charles I., the remains of Cromwell, Ireton, and the brave naval hero, Admiral Blake, were taken from their honored tombs in Westminster Abbey. The mouldering bodies were hung upon a gibbet, and when taken down, were thrown with every mark of indignity into unconsecrated ground. 1662. The Presbyterians, who had been active in recalling the exiled monarch, trusting that his gratitude would secure their influence in the state, soon found cause to repent their confidence. The church of England was restored, and all dissenting clergymen, Presbyterians and Puritans alike, were obliged to subscribe to an "Act of Conformity" to the Established Church, or to be turned out of their livings. Two years later, a " Conventicle Act" was passed, forbidding the assembling for religious worship, anywhere but in the churches of the Establishment. In the same session of parliament in which this act was passed, the law obliging the king to summon parliament once in three years was repealed. In Scotland, Charles II. forgot the gratitude he owed to those Presbyterians who had been the first to espouse his cause in his contest with Cromwell. "I placed the crown upon his brow, and this is my reward," said the Duke of Argyle, when sentence of death was passed against him. Argyle was a leading Covenanter, but had ever been a steady friend to the restored Stuart. These were unhappy days for the kirk of Scotland: "The assembled people dared in face of day no more To worship God, or even at the dead Of night, save when the wintry storm raved fierce, Often these little congregations of Covenanters and Cameronians would be surprised, even in their wild hiding-places, by a party of dragoons, headed by the fierce and cruel Claverhouse. Many were led forth to death; others were subjected to torture, or languished in prison-houses. Many became exiles to a land of religious liberty, and the infant colonies of America received valuable additions in the persecuted Covenanters of Scotland. The cruelty exercised in Scotland by Archbishop Sharp excited the hatred of the people, and, instead of establishing Episcopacy, they clung with almost fanatical ardor to the Covenant. At the end of many years of tyranny, the archbishop, whilst riding with his daughter, was, waylaid and barbarously murdered by a party of Covenanters, headed by an enthusiast named John Balfour. Troops were sent into Scotland. The Covenanters were defeated in battle,-were hunted and dragged from their hiding-places, and put to death without mercy. Horrible tales are told of their sufferings within the remote and gloomy prisons of Bass Rock and Dunbarton Castle. Το The military and political history of this reign discloses little else than treachery on the part of King Charles. obtain money for his own extravagant and vicious pleasures, seems to have been the sole object of this king's government. He sold to the French king, Dunkirk, an important possession on the coast of Flanders, which Cromwell had taken from the Spaniards. This measure greatly exasperated the nation. In the year 1664, Charles, hoping to secure for his own pleasures the money raised for the expenses of the army, declared war against the Dutch. Scarcely had this war begun, ere a dreadful plague, the most fearful which had ever visited England, spread over the land. In London alone, one hundred thousand inhabitants were carried off in the space of five months. The following year, 1666, an equally terrible fire, known as the great fire of London, broke out in the capital, and burned more than two-thirds of the city. The sailors, unpaid and starving, were dying in the streets, and the glory of the English navy was fast disappearing. The Dutch, under their admiral, De Ruyter, sailed up the Medway, destroyed the fortifications at Sheerness, burned some of the finest English ships, and threatened the city of London. Charles was now glad to end a war which had been productive of little good to the country. When peace was made, the people clamored against 1667. the Earl of Clarendon, who was accused of having advised this now unpopular war. The chancellor, to escape the fate of Strafford, fled to France, and the government fell into the hands of a set of men, known as the Cabal, from the initial letters of their names: Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. In 1669, Charles pretended to become a party to what was known as the Triple Alliance; a union of England, Holland, and Sweden, against the ambitious monarch of France, Louis XIV. Whilst the English ambassador was negotiating this alliance at the Hague, the king was entering into a 1670. secret treaty with the French monarch, promising, for an annual pension of two hundred thousand pounds, to keep true to the interests of that despot, and to aid him in conquering Holland. Two years later, relying on the money of the French king, Charles, without his parliament's consent, began a war against the Dutch. The whole power of France, aided by England, was now turned against the republic of Holland. But the Dutch were 1672. 1674. not to be destroyed. They opened their dikes; the ocean flowed in and washed over their villages and farms, so that no enemy could get to Amsterdam. Under the young Prince of Orange (a nephew of Charles II., afterwards William III. of England), they maintained a long and obstinate struggle. Their famous admirals, De Ruyter and De Witt, gained several important victories over the combined fleets of France and England; and, in less than two years, Charles II., in spite of his promises to Louis, was forced to make peace with the brave republic. In the year 1677, the Prince of Orange was married to his cousin Mary, eldest child of James, Duke of York, the brother of the English king. The reign of Charles was disturbed, at different times, by plots, or suspicions of plots, attributed both to Roman Catholics and Dissenters, who were equally oppressed by the severe laws passed against them. One of these plots was devised by an infamous man named Titus Oates. He pretended that whilst in a Jesuit college on the continent, he had found out a plan laid by the Romanists to murder the king, and give the government of England into the hands of the Jesuits. 1678. Although there was not the slightest evidence that any such conspiracy existed, the feeling against Popery was so strong, that the nation became greatly excited. A bill was passed preventing Roman Catholics from sitting as members of either house; nor did they regain their seats in the English parliament until the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, in 1829. Shortly after the above enactment, the parliament, which had lasted seventeen years, was dissolved. 1679. Two other parliaments were called during this reign. The first of these passed the celebrated act of Habeas Corpus, which provides against unjust detention in prison without trial. A bill was introduced to exclude James, Duke of York, who was a Roman Catholic, from the throne. Charles, fearing lest this bill should be carried, took advantage of the repeal of the Triennial Act, and suddenly dissolved parliament, in January, 1681. A new one was |