Charles II of England

Charles II was intelligent and concerned with his duties, but he also believed in fun. He became known as the merry monarch. He was relaxed and good natured. He felt no need to posture, but he was well mannered and courteous. Charles promised to abide by the laws of Parliament. The king was to have his powers and the Parliament its powers. The House of Lords had been re-established, giving Parliament two houses again, and it would be the Parliament that would govern economic policy and try to resolve differences between rival economic groups. Parliament was to exercise power by granting money to the king only for those specific purposes that it approved. The king would be chief executive of his government, but restrained from making laws by proclamation. He would be the head of state, without the power to absorb local governments. And Parliament declared its recognition that the king of England ruled by Divine Right.

Charles created a council of five men, known as the CABAL (the first letter in each man's surname) who were to be his ministers and a liaison with Parliament. They were members of Parliament and the beginning of what would eventually become the cabinet of parliamentary government -- that portion of the government that would perform government functions in the place of the monarch.

Charles was also head of the Church of England, which was falling away from the religious zeal of the Puritans, and this suited him temperamentally. Charles was interested in science. He had his own laboratory, encouraged applied science and gave his support to the founding of the Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge -- in addition to patronizing the theater.

Charles was the head of an army of no significant size. Public opinion did not allow him an army large enough to defend his interests. The English did not want another civil war, and without an army with which to force his will upon the English people, Charles had to be careful to avoid angering people to the extent that they would rise en masse against him.

Charles was sympathetic toward Catholicism, traditionally closer to the Divine Right of kings than was Protestantism. And Charles was more liberal on the issue of religion than most other Englishmen. He wished for liberty of worship, and he was genuinely tolerant. In 1662 he issued a declaration granting toleration to Catholics and those Protestants known as Dissenters. But Parliament refused to ratify Charles' declaration, leaving Catholics and "Dissenters" less than equal politically, including prohibition from occupying any political office.

Charles was free to marry whomever he wished, and he married a Portuguese princess, Catherine of Gragnza, and Tangier and Bombay were transferred to British rule as a part of Catherine's dowry. She was Roman Catholic, and so too was France's Duke of Orleans, who married Charles's sister, Henrietta Anne, which was accompanied by the transfer of Dunkirk to French rule. This was standard doings for European royalty and impacted Charles' foreign policy.

Another War with the Dutch, and a Great Fire

England remained at peace with Catholic Spain, but against the Protestant Dutch another war erupted. This was inspired largely by people who recalled the glory days of the First Dutch War and wanted to take trade away from the Dutch. In 1664, English in the Americas take power at New Amsterdam (soon to be known as New York). A propaganda campaign in England included descriptions of the Dutch as fat and greedy, as hog-like in their love of getting down in the dirt and as drinking too much. A group of merchants based in London presented a petition to the House of Commons, protesting that the Dutch were obstructing foreign trade, inciting tribal communities overseas against them, destroying their warehouses and proclaiming themselves masters of the Southern Seas. The House of Commons voted Charles 2.5 million pounds for war, believing that victory against the Dutch would be easy, and Charles went along with a war against the Protestant Dutch.

War was declared in February 1665, and that same year England was weakened by plague. The following year London burned to the ground. London was a city of wood, with straw on the floors of homes and with second or third stories hanging over narrow streets, and fire used for cooking and heat. At one in the morning on September 2, 1666, fire broke out in a bakery, and wind spread the fire to contiguous buildings and to the wharves on the river front. The usual procedure was to demolish homes in front of the fire to keep the fire from spreading, but this was not done at daylight on the first day of the fire. A few houses were demolished, but mostly people were fleeing rather than fighting the fire. The fire lasted days and left the city in ruin. Huts sprang up on destroyed property. New brick and mortar homes went up in London's suburbs and the more affluent moved there, while poorer people were moved into the cheaper eastern and southern neighborhoods. Seeing a possible connection between the fire and God's displeasure, authorities began an official investigation into atheism in London, and the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, burned some of his writings to hide evidence that could be used against him.

As usual, the war against the Dutch did not go as well as had been expected. The Dutch had learned lessons from their previous war with England. Their ships were now heavier and stronger, better manned and better armed, and the Dutch inflicted much damage on England's fleet.

France was also a concern. France was growing as a power and the greatest power in Europe. King Louis XIV of France was married to the daughter of king Philip IV of Spain, and after Philip's death in 1665, Louis laid claim to the "Spanish Netherlands." France was a threat to the Dutch, and Englishmen who feared France, and Catholicism, feared also that defeat of their fellow Protestants, the Dutch, would give too much power to France. Among the English a grudging respect for the Dutch as combatants had risen, and some saw advantage in having the Dutch rather than the French as friends. Charles remained hostile to the Dutch, but the war was costing too much money and he went along with the negotiated end to the war, which came in 1667 -- the Treaty of Breda. Then the English joined Swedes and the Dutch against Louis' move into the Netherlands, and Louis ended his move in 1668, content with having added Flanders to his domains.

More Conflict and Discontent

The honeymoon between the monarchy and parliament had ended, each side with its own interpretation of what powers had been given it by the Constitution. Conflict existed too between landowners, who tended to belong to the Church of England, and the city merchants and financiers. Dissenters, especially Quakers and Baptists, were unhappy over pressure from the Anglicans (the Church of England) to conform to their ways. Members of Parliament continued to believe that a nation should be united by one religion, and Parliament was enacting laws strengthening the position of the Church of England, laws that held that those who refused to receive the sacrament of the Church of England could not vote, hold public office, preach, teach, attend a university or assemble for meetings. Dissenting Protestants were also bothered by the appearance of Catholicism among the royals: the mother of Charles II and his wife, brother James and mistresses were Catholics. England's Protestants saw frivolity and debauchery in the court of Charles II. An outburst against immorality occurred in March 1668 with the Bawdy House Riots, when crowds of young men, many of them sailors recently demobilized from the war against the Dutch, demolished houses of prostitution in London. Leaders of the riots were indicted for treason, and hostility toward Charles among the Londoners reached a new high. Again in London, republican pamphlets began to circulate.

In 1670, Charles II began receiving money from Louis XIV in secret, in exchange for Charles making an effort to ease laws against Catholics, to gradually return Britain to Catholicism and to support the French against the Dutch -- money, it was agreed, that Charles would receive annually. The French were hostile toward competitive Dutch trade, and Louis XIV wished to expand farther in the Netherlands. Also, some conservative regimes of Europe, including that of Louis XIV, believed that ideas spreading from Holland were "poisonous" -- a danger to order and to them. In 1672, Charles joined the French in another war against the Dutch -- the Dutch with one-half the population of England and one-sixth the population of France. That same year, Charles declared laws against Dissenters and Roman Catholics suspended -- a move of dubious legality in that the Constitution provided the king with such power only during an emergency.

The bargain between Charles and Louis XIV included Charles providing naval operations against the Dutch, and Charles had plans to invade the Dutch republic. Parliament, however, was unenthusiastic about the war and about fighting on the same side as the great defender of Catholicism -- Louis XIV. The Scots, who had been trading with the Dutch, preferred peace with their fellow Protestants. The Dutch flooded their country in front of the advancing French, preventing a French victory, and the Dutch organized another coalition of European nations against France.

In 1673, Parliament voted Charles the money he needed to pursue war against the Dutch, but on condition that he reinstate the laws against Dissenters and Catholics. By 1675, the economic burdens of the war and rising opposition to the war by Protestants and Parliament resulted in Charles agreeing to a negotiated settlement with the Dutch. The invasion that Charles had planned never materialized.

Hostility toward Catholicism continued and in 1678 rose to hysteria. Two adventurers announced that they had uncovered a plot to murder Protestants, to bring a Catholic army to England from across the English Channel and to burn London again. The plot was said to include the invading army placing Charles' Catholic brother, James, the Duke of York, on the throne. The magistrate before whom information on the plot had been laid died, and many assumed that his death was a part of the Papist plot -- a move to suppress evidence of the plot. Also, news spread that James' secretary had been corresponding with Catholic leaders in France on political matters. Fear and certainty about the conspiracy spread. Some Catholics were arrested on suspicion of being participants in the plot. False witnesses appeared, and thirty-five Catholics were executed. Parliament passed a unanimous resolution declaring that the "damnable and hellish" plot existed, for the purpose of murdering the king, subverting the government and destroying Protestantism. To protect the nation from Catholicism, Parliament offered the Exclusion Act. Catholics were to be excluded as heirs to the crown.

Charles believed that it had been his right to chose whomever he wanted as his heir. He counted the Exclusion Act with a Limitations Bill, which merely put restrictions on the powers of any Catholic king. Public unrest created fear of another civil war among conservatives in Parliament, and Parliament divided into separate political organizations: Tories and Whigs. The Tories were largely members of the Church of England. They believed that the Exclusion Act was a defiance of monarchical power and the making of another civil war. "Forty-one" (the revolution of 1641) was here again, they claimed. They favored law and order above all else. The Tories allied themselves with Charles, who was still the head of the Church of England, and they believed that the Church of England was the teacher of the one true religion and an effective shield against both Catholic absolutism and Dissenter rebellion. By now Charles had been trying to force the Presbyterians of Scotland to accept bishops in conformity with the Church of England. Scots resisted and blood was shed.

The Whigs favored parliamentary power over the power of kings, and they were willing to offer Dissenters more participation in government than were the Tories. Tory and Whig were names originating in insults. Tory was an Irish word for a Papist outlaw. Whig was a name for Scottish Presbyterians and cattle and horse thieves. The Tories saw the Whigs as dangerous plotters. Among the Whigs arose a description of a Tory as a monster with an English face, a French heart, an Irish conscience and a creature with a prodigious mouth and no brains.

The Tory power base was more rural, the Whig power base more urban. The Whigs wanted the Exclusion Act at the expense of monarchical power. The Whigs believed that Catholicism and arbitrary power were inseparable. Charles and the Tories prevailed against the Whigs.

It was an organizer of the Whigs, Lord Anthony Shaftesbury, who was largely responsible for passage of the Act of Habeas Corpus, enacted in 1679 following public pressure on Parliament. The Habeas Corpus -- assented to by King Charles -- strengthened existing law protecting people from abuse from officials. It forbade imprisonment without trial and required government to explain why a prisoner was being held. The act made officials responsible for the welfare of prisoners in their care. It provided for a trial without undue delay, and it held that no one could be tried twice for the same crime.