In 1680 and 1681, Shaftesbury led an increasingly shrill and effective campaign, asppeling to popular opinion to force Charles into calling a new parliament. There he could be forced to learn about the power of the exlusionist movement which could be brought to bear. But Charles would learn a different lesson, and at Oxford in 1681, would start his own campaign.

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Transcript

Now then, last time we heard about how the likes and fables of Titus Oates and his Popish plot, combined with the conversion to Catholicism of the heir to the throne, and a deep mistrust of the Court had pushed England into what might be described as hysteria. There’s no evidence that he or his supporters made up or created the Popish plot, but on the waves, or indeed flames of that hysteria rode the diminutive Silver Surfer the Earl of Shaftesbury, pursuing his cause of English liberty from the threat of tyranny and absolutism, to win an elective monarchy by excluding James from the throne. We are now, ladies, gentlemen and people of all other persuasions, in the grips of what has been called the Exclusion Crisis. Though there are objections by some historians to the assumption that this was a real crisis, that Charles was never really threatened by it – though it seems to qualify for the word to me, but in deference to those souls, I shall call it the Exclusion Brouhaha – partly because the word is sadly under used and I would urge it’s rehabilitation and wider adoption.

We heard how Shaftesbury’s first political victim had been Danby, but how the trial of George Wakeman had suggested the tide might just be turning, and a new election might bring a more compliant, less hysterical parliament.

A wondrous tale I will relate

The like was never told you

Of Englishmen that England hate

The town of Bucks hath sold you….

Thus Buckingham hath led the way

To Popery and Sorrow

Those seven knaves who made us Slaves

Would sell their God to-morrow.[1]

This ballad came from the town of Buckingham, during the elections across England in August and September 1679. It’s a bit of a hoot. The ‘seven knaves’ were the electors who voted for the Courtier Richard Temple – beating the 6 who voted against. So…that’s an electorate of 13 then. Not for Suart England the rationality of Lambert’s constitution, the Instruments of Government of 1653. To give you a flavour their professions 2 drapers, 1 apothecary, 1 ironmonger, 1 laceman, 1 tanner, 2 maltsters, 1 farmer, 1 baker, and one ‘ Knight of the Post and Shaver’ – that’s a barber to thee and me, and 1 Gentleman. I’d like to draw attention to the virulence of the language of the ballad, which would grace any of today’s social media. Another disappointed whig of the town wrote of his fury at watching the Victorious courtier Temple on the hustings

Standing in the forefront of the Infernal Regiment of Pensioners selling his Country to the Court, Liberty to prerogative

You might notice in there the suspicion of Court by the country whigs – and although I am here to now talk to you about Whig and Tory, there is a 3^rd dimension always – suspicion of the Court, the centre, always out to deprive us good, ordinary, fun-loving and pretty much perfect and blameless locals. I am always super wary of drawing parallels between the past and present, because the past is always a foreign country but it might remind you of the modern hysterical distrust of Westminster.

During elections the English were very often like ferrets in a sack, and electoral bribery Was rife. Richard Temple for example, was christened Sir Timber…because during the election he’d bequeathed the burgesses with enough wood to build a town hall. There were pamphlets everywhere with wild language; Lady Russell called them ‘the intelligence of lies’, which is a fair comment on their commitment to a balanced, evidence based opinion. At some elections there were cries of ‘No Popish Clergy’…and ‘No Courtier, No Pensioner’ – the themes of what was becoming a grass roots opposition.

So, during the election of September 1679, we are arriving at the matter and anti matter of modern politics, at the age of Whig and Tory, and if you want cheering up about our modern divisions, go and look at some of the rhetoric of this time. The terms Whig and Tory were the invention of the great Tory apologist, the public censor Roger L’Estrange. He rifted on the radical Protestant rebels at Bothwell Bridge, who themselves reminded everyone of the Whiggamore raid by the Covenanters during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in 1648. Tory on the other hand was an anglicisation of the Irish word for the rebels tóraidhe [Tore-ah], an outlaw or bandit, originally from the guerilla fighters of the later years of the Irish civil wars. It seems an odd word for L’Estrange to adopt for his own team, but he was using the word Tory ironically to pour scorn on an Irish Plot confected by Shaftesbury – but the name stuck, and it stuck because of L’Estrange’s pamphlets after about 1681, where he used made up conversations between Whigs and Tories to make his points.

What did these two parties believe then that got them all so hot under the collar? The Whigs believed in all those good things that had been at the base of the English Revolution – frequent, free parliaments, and protections against royal absolutism and tyranny – such as an independent judiciary, parliamentary control over the armed forces. Interestingly, John Locke’s most famous work Two Treatises of Government were written at this very time, 1679-1680, although they would not be published until after the Glorious Revolution in 1689. I expect we’ll find time to talk about them more in 1689, but at the heart of what has been called a foundational text of liberalism is the idea that kingship is underpinned not by divine right, but by a social contract between King and people. That’s any people, btw, even the rabble. And both he and his patron Shaftesbury came to believe that Charles II had broken that contract, and that their obligation of obedience had thereby been dissolved.

That’s the secular bit; but of course there’s a powerful religious angle, in principle of the idea of Protestant unity against the fear of Catholic and papal tyranny. Protestant unity therefore came to mean the inclusion of all branches of Protestantism – which meant support and toleration for Dissenters. Obviously Protestant union meant support for the Church of England, but the church had proved remarkably repressive itself, and so there was a growing distrust of Anglican clergy, too, of the High Anglican variety – like Roger L’estrange. In so much of this, there are echoes of the divisions of the English Revolution all over again, and High Anglican, anti Exclusionist churchmen were viewed as being well on the way to Rome, with their love of ritual, grandeur and display. Whigs labelled them Tantivies – tantivy meaning to gallop, to gallop off to Rome; even less politely during this 1679 election you might hear in some small, idyllic town hall somewhere the cry of ‘Baal’s Priests’, or the local vicar being questioned over his membership of  ‘the black regiment of hell’. High churchmen they claimed

Were for the persecution, tyranny and debauchery of the Church of England.[2]

So that’s nice then.

The Tory message emerged in response to this Whig assault during the Exclusion Brouhaha, and might be summarised, as does historian George Owers, as

The traditional subordination in church and state on the basis of notions of divine right, as well as legal precedent

The source of authority for Tories was God, not the people, and the King therefore was

God’s servant, not the peoples’ slave[3]

The idea of a social contract was deeply dangerous to the Tory mind; subject to the vicissitudes of human mood and therefore changeable, a society built on the shifting sands and whims of the mob. The Book of Common Prayer was their creed with its command

To do my duty in life, unto which it shall please God to call me

The monarch was chosen by God, they ruled by hereditary right, that was sacrosanct, and anything else was chaos and sedition.

That gave them a rather uneasy relationship with the idea of absolutism, but your Tory would fiercely, possibly angrily, object to the very idea they supported a concept do foreign to the true blooded Englishman. No No, no, perish the thought, the king was to work within the framework of custom and law, and listen to the advice of counsellors representing the full community of the realm. Where it became a bit murky was with the question of what happens when the chips were down and the king doesn’t abide by such advice and does become a tyrant – the Whig accuse the Tories of ultimately accepting subordination in such a case. But it was by no means clear how people would react in such an instance, should it happen again though the massive popularity of the cult of King Charles the Martyr might suggest an uncomfortable answer. Buit the kicker was – what would happen if King and church were not in union? What was would such people jump if there was a forced choice not between King and whig or dissenter – but between King and the beloved Church of England.

Meanwhile, the Tories were no less foul mouthed than the Whigs…or the

Demure, conscientious prick-eared vermin

As one pamphleteer called them. Tories described themselves as ‘the loyal party’, whigs were the ‘fanatics’ or ‘the mutineers.

Personal abuse was definitely in and a particular target was the hated Shaftesbury. His disability, the permanent tube or tap he had to use to drain fluid from his liver, was not an object of sympathy, oh dear me no, of political correctness or indeed shame, there was none. Tapski they called him. One celebration written on his death sort of sums it up

Ye Mortal Whigs for death prepare

For mighty Tapski’s guts lie here

Will his great name keep sweet d’you think?

For certainly his entrails stink

More effectively, L’Estrange, the Tories, and increasingly the king, now put aside the idea of oblivion, the shared fiction of 1660 that the revolution had never happened. For the republican whigs like Algernon Sidney the cry ‘the 41 shall come again’ was an aspiration, a call to a glorious future. But for the Tories, it was a dire warning that the Whigs threatened a return to chaos and destruction, because they were

Nonconformists, factious, king killers, mob rousers, tyrants and hostile to the church of England

And they would lead England to a repeat of the 1650s when, Tories argued, rebels had

Taxed, assessed, decimated, fined, imprisoned, sequestered, plundered, banished

the people. The language of Roundhead and Cavalier was once more a standard feature of political fury. And as Dryden, an arch Tory wrote

He who draws the pen for one party must expect to make enemies of the other, for wit and fool are consequents of whig and tory and every man is a knave or ass to the contrary side[4].

OK, battle lines drawn, I hope I have given you a flavour, and you are all now feeling a little more relaxed about contemporary political language. The elections went on in a fever of excitement – the turnout and brouhaha around it was unusually exuberant, if that be the word, and Charles had his own, significant domestic troubles at the same time.  It started when James re-appeared by his bedside, absconding from his exile in Brussels, and disguised in a black wig. This would be good practice for Jimmy York for a later occasion it must be said – watch this space. It  was a rather touching occasion, both brothers apparently fell to their knees and wept for joy to be re-united.

This worried the Chits. The Chits, I hear you ask? What’s that all about then? Well, the Chits were the young parvenus who were now promoted to high ministerial rank rather from nowhere by Charles as he re-organised his ministerial deck chairs on the departure of Danners.

[start music here]

 

John Dryden would write any angry poem about them, On the Young Statesmen, including the stanza

But Sunderland, Godolphin, Lory,

These will appear such chits in story,

‘Twill turn all politics to jests,

To be repeated like John Dory,

When fiddlers sing at feasts.

Protect us, mighty Providence!

What would these madmen have?

First, they would bribe us without pence,

Deceive us without common sense,

And without power enslave.

As you can see, although a thorough going Tory, Dryden was not keen on these new political right arms of the king – the Ministry of the Chits as they become known. I’m sure we’ll have occasion to talk about them a bit more, they are Robert Spencer the  Earl of Sunderland, and very, very interesting and important, a Cornishman called Sidney Godolphin. Then there was Clarendon’s son, so that family is back, Lawrence Hyde, the Earl of Rochester, who is the Lory in the poem.

John Dory, by the way was the popular ballad written in the 16^th century which has been playing in the background. It tells the story of a villainous sea captain named John Dory who tries to capture Cornish sailors for the King of France, But he is defeated and crashes and burns. So popular was it, that a fish was apparently named after it. Fab fact for you all. This version was by the English singer, John Renbourne.

Anway, for Monmouth the appearance of Jimmy York would be bitter-sweet. Well, mainly bitter actually, because The Chits advised Charles that having both of these Dukes around was not helping matters, Catholic Duke, Protestant Duke head to head and all that, and James would not leave unless Monmouth did. So, Monmouth was simply sent away to exile, in Utrecht. Charles and the Chits were increasingly worried about Monmouth, seen to be more and more in cahoots with Shaftesbury, and was being talked up in both the popular and unpopular press, as a potential successor to the throne – rather than James. Monmouth wrote one, was increasingly seen by

‘all the phanaticks and malecontents … as the great confessor for the protestant religion’

Charles said he still loved him, and he’d keep all his offices for him while he was exiled. But in this he lied, he actually removed him from most of them as soon as he’d left. This is a decision which will bring bum biting with them.

For James though, the solution was different, and would have a significant pay back in a few years’ time. He was sent to Scotland, and would take over government there. In two stints, he did quite a good job. He made quite a few friends, particularly in the Highlands as it happens.

So with both royal dukes out of the way – what then of the election result?

Well although Charles had set out with hope in his heart following the encouraging judgement in the Wakeman trial, he was to be disappointed. The elections of 1679, in August and September delivered a parliament that was as whig in orientation as the first one, including, incidentally, the election of John Wildman the old leveller.

To make it all worse, two weeks before it was due to meet, the Meal Tub plot broke – a farcical counterpoint to the tragedy of the Popist Plot. Elizabeth Cellier was a midwife, who had converted to Catholicism out of loyalty to the crown, after her father and brother died on the same day during the civil war. She visited and supported imprisoned Catholics on behalf of the Countess of Powys. There she met Thomas Dangerfield, a thorough going villain who claimed to be Catholic and claimed to have knowledge and evidence that the Popish plot was a False Flag operation. Yes. It was actually a plot by Presbyterians to kill the king!

Cellier used the Countess’s good offices to give Dangerfield direct access to the king, whereupon he changed his pleas and claimed that Cellier was actually leading a real Catholic plot – and lo! and behold, when the officers called on her house, incriminating documents were indeed found hidden in in her meal tub. She was hauled away tried for treason, but Dangerfield was the only witness and was soon a exposed as a villain. Cellier was released in 1680, published a book, Malice Defeated, but she’d be implicated in a plot later to burn the Chatham dockyards, and this time be convicted fined, an stuck in the pillories. In James reign, she proposed in 1687 that the king establish a college of Midwives. So, you know, she had a full and varied life.

However, the point here is that this panic washed over England at a crucial time, just before parliament was to meet, and frankly Charles was at the end of this tether with it all, stormed into the PC and over the objections of all of them prorogued parliament immediately til January before it had even met. And then he’d prorogue it again.

Shaftesbury and the Whigs would attempt to force Charles to reconvene parliament, and they left no stone unturned, no rocket unlit, no effigy unburned in their efforts to make this happen. Charles on the other hand remained a man who seemed remarkably cheerful and in control and had a high old time at court, loving not having a parliament to ruin his digestion. And he was able to draw on some expressions of public support of his own. When he returned to London in September after an illness, London went potty with bonfires and celebrations. Though there’s a suspicion that it was at the thought that the Protestant Duke would return with him. Nonetheless, at a trip to the Guildhall by both Charles and James, cries were heard for the Catholic Duke. Never forget that however effective Shaftesbury and the Whigs would be in mobilising their supporters, and causing a storm, there was a silent majority with a deep, deep well of loyalty for the monarch – and fear of a re-run of the revolution.

At the heart of the whig protest were clubs, which sprang up all around the country. In London of course they were legion – 29 clubs including the Green Ribbon Club, and many met in coffeehouses. The Merrie Monarch had banned coffeehouses in 1676, but that had crashed and burned. As we’ve heard, he had re-introduced censorship through the office of Roger L’Estrange, but although the number of publications fell in comparison to the days of the Commonwealth, it was impossible to completely turn the tap off. As ever, London would play the leading role, but this was a country wide movement – Whig clubs sprang up in many places, including Bristol, Newport, Norwich, Oxford, Taunton and York.

There is always a debate about whether public opinion really made a difference in a time before extensive voting rights. If Charles did doubt that, and it’s probable he did, then he was about to change his view. Because Shaftesbury and the Whigs ramped up the expression of public opinion – big time. On November 17^th 1679 in London there was a massive pope burning procession through London, blazing torches and the pope accompanied by two boys with bloody daggers. There were similar events all over the country – Abergavenny in Wales, Salisbury and Lewes in England for example; and in Scotland too there cries of ‘No Pope in Scotland’ in a march in Edinburgh. Mobilising grass roots opinion, ‘politics out of doors’ as historians of this period tend to call it, was supported by newsletters, public meetings, even playing cards with favourite themes, and of course they used the good old traditional method of the public petition, aiming for signatures and petitions from all corners, demanding that the King allow parliament to sit.

In this the Green Ribbon club was massively ambitious and organised. Local agents were recruited or sent out to the provinces, advice and promotional sheets with agreed wording were printed – though as the agents went round they might amend them to add in big local gripes. As the campaign gathered pace, on 7^th December, 16 Peers publicly delivered a petition personally to Charles calling for parliament to be reconvened. Charles wasn’t too worried about that, but then they printed it, and set up a subscription to a newsletter, so Charles saw red and in response, issued a proclamation in December condemning this ancient process of petitioning. That probably did have an impact on the number and extent of signatures. But on 18^th January 1680, a ‘Monster Petition’ as it was called,  was delivered from the City of London with 16,000 names. Charles’ response was contemptuous. He condemned the petitions, called a PC and ignoring their universal protests, in an icy rage he told them he was proroguing parliament yet again.

The petitions just kept coming; within hours of the news, 6,000 signatures were collected in Warwickshire.[5] Some Whig petitions reached huge numbers – 30,000 in Wiltshire for example. But the Tories were now also mobilising, calling on the king to ‘abhor’ the petitions, and so for a while the world divided into ‘Petitioners’ and ‘Abhorers’. And Charles though, held firm, he neither weebled, nor wobbled, nor fell down. And he abhorred for England –  he behaved with magisterial rudeness at the presentation of the Wiltshire petition, dismissed it as illegal since it came from private people not institutions supposed to be representing them. And continued on with his life with remarkable, apparently untroubled cheerfulness.

Still despite that, the waters were rising around him, and one of the problems was his son, the Protestant Duke, was now outwardly co-operating with the whigs, and increasingly estranged from his dad. Outraged that James had broken the rules returned, and been apparently rewarded with the Scotland appointment, he now also returned. This time there were no tears, and no falling to knees with hugs and kiss, oh dear me no. Charles told him to go back, Monmouth refused, Chares stripped him of any remaining public offices and banned him from court. This was a Godsend to Shaftesbury – cries for the Protestant Duke grew louder, and the attacks on James more overt.

In June 1680, Shaftesbury tried to force the issue, by going to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, in a glare of publicity, and accused James Duke of York as a recusant, and Louise de Keroualle as a prostitute. Charles was at Windsor when he heard, and rushed back to London, nobbled a judge and got them to dispense with the Jury on the grounds of a public insult to the government. That worked, but in demonstrated a real block to the power of the crown in London; all the major judicial and administrative officials were whig not just the mayor, but crucially the two sheriffs who amongst their other duties, were the people who appointed juries. So any whig rebels could be confident of a sympathetic jury. Charles publicly snubbed the sheriffs by refusing them the customary knighthoods, but revenge would have to wait for the moment.

Monmouth also forced the pace. Instead of laying low and pining over his father’s anger he went on a grand and very public summer tour, looking up all the whig gentry as he went in Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, and Sussex; as he went there were cheers of

‘ God bless the Protestant Duke’

Rumours were spreading, and being encouraged, that Charles had actually secretly married Monmouth’s mum, Lucy Walters, and that there was a box somewhere, which contained the marriage certificate, which proved was legitimate, and therefore with or without Charle’s agreement, was the proper, and protestant heir to the throne. If only that box could be found…if only…meanwhile, Monmouth played up to this – even touching for the King’s Evil as Charles loved to do, which was a very public way of announcing his own, divinely enriched blue blood.

All of this was inducing a serious sense of panic in the PC and among the Chits. A growing number of Charles’ courtiers were now suggesting to their king that abandoning James might be the best alternative, and at a stroke restore his partnership with the nation. Maybe he could force James to reconvert? Maybe Charles could renounce his wife and marry again and produce a proper heir – after all, Henry VIII had done so, and look how well that went. Charles did put pressure in his brother to  reconvert – and received a straight no. He called in Monmouth and had a heart to heart and suggested he might stop meeting with the Whigs – and again, received a straight no. The pressure for a new parliament then, was growing; the attempt to just ignore the outcry and manoeuvre it away had failed – Parliament could not be denies. It would have to meet.

In October 1680, Charles opened parliament by trying to put all the exclusion idea behind them all, by putting forward a positive story about government policy, that all was well; he had signed an alliance with Spain who were fighting the French in the Netherlands; he called on the house to investigate the popish plot further, let’s root ‘em all out, you and I together in harmony, go us! brother and sisters.

Nice try, but no cigar. The Commons started instead to immediately debate excluding James from the throne. Charles was livid. He assured one Tory MP opposing the attempt at this second Exclusion Bill that

I will stick by you and my old friends; for if I do not, I shall have nobody to stick by me

It was beginning to dawn on Charles, that reconciling the Whigs in the name of unity might be a mistake. Maybe the history of the Revolution held a different message – that his father had actually been at his best when not being a king of the whole nation, but building a party from part of it, the part which could help him beat down those that refused to accept royal policy. Obviously, that had resulted in a civil war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, but it had enabled  him to fight parliament. Hmm, something to think about. But for the moment, he tried again to placate the whigs – promising that he would pass any bill they asked against popery – anything – except an exclusion bill. After carefully considering this…thinking hard…looking at all the angles…the Commons passed an exclusion bill, without even needing to take a vote. Up it went to the Lords – which would be an altogether tougher proposition.

Charles made his feelings to the Lords absolutely, crystal clear. Obviously he couldn’t sit in the Commons, Black Rod, the Revolution and all that, but he could sit in the Lords. So He got himself set up there, attended every debate and had food brought to him in a portable cabinet to make sure he didn’t miss a beat. He was a personal variety show of nods, smiles, grimaces, scowls according to the tenor of the debate and the speaker, with loud side comments at key moments. A particular notable one being Monmouth’s speech, which he punctuated with expressing concern at his father’s heath. Charles muttered quietly so every one could hear

‘It is a Judas Kiss which he gives me’.

It worked. The Lords rejected the Exclusion bill and by a large majority at that. So Shaftesbury tried again, proposing to the house that the king remarry – Charles had that killed too. When another proposal was made to revive the idea of limiting any Catholic monarch’s power, Charles then supported that proposal – although both James, and William of Orange interestingly, were horrified at any official limitations on royal power. Shaftesbury would not take second best. So they killed the idea.

Which is interesting, and it’s worth noting that Shaftesbury and the whigs had a number of possible routes to meet their concerns about royal tyranny and a Catholic monarch. And yet Shaftesbury chose to focus on the full fat most radical solution, of exclusion, and the tacit admission thereby that the English monarchy was elective, a contract. Why, you have to ask?

Well Shaftesbury considered the pros and cons. They could promote a royal divorce and remarriage; but they calculated that a successful outcome was uncertain, even if they could force a king into it., when he had set his face against it; what if there was no child? They could promote the claims of the Duke of Monmouth – but they calculated that he was too dodgy a character to be trusted and gain enough support among the people that mattered. They could follow the idea of limitations on a future catholic monarch; but who knew if such a monarch, possibly bent on absolutism, would abide by them. Nope –  the idea of exclusion had a simple, straightforward message and the benefit of embedding a constitutional principle of a contractual monarchy. But it is worth noting it was a high risk strategy; and at no point did Shaftesbury try to offer Charles anything in return for such a concession – none of the compromises, no extra cash – nowt. It was all – or nothing.

Well, in the short term at least it was nothing. After weeks more angry tooing and froing, on January 4^th 1681, Charles prorogued parliament to allow tempers to cool. Before he did there’s an interesting little sub wrinkle-ette. The Parliament had passed a bill cancelling a draconian Elizabethan law against dissenters. Charles ordered a clerk to lose it so that it would not become law – he was not in favour of the idea of Dissenters seeing parliament as their saviours; if they were to have saviour, they must recognise and adore and obey the king. It gives the lie to the idea that Charles was a passionate advocate of religious liberty for its own sake.

When parliament was due to reconvene, Charles had a new idea; he would get the MPs away from the nasty radical air of London – maybe they’d be more amenable in the staunchly royalist atmosphere of Oxford. Also, it might be that the tide was turning against the sea of whigs. Judge William Scroggs had successfully conducted a campaign of legal prosecutions against a number of whig pamphleteers under the seditious libel acts, the whigs were convicted and forced to pay £500 and stand in the stocks to be pelted. With stuff. One Robert Filmer had published an influential Tory tract as the Tories began to gather and resist around their own view of the King as supreme under custom, law and the Church of England.

Charles duly entered Oxford on March 14^th to a satisfyingly riotous welcome. The bunting was hung out, the flags were waved, the sycophantic addresses from the university and dignitaries were predictably… well – sycophantic. But even more satisfying were the townspeople, which gave Charles a warm glow. People hung out of the windows, some ran along by the coach shouting

Let the king live and the devil hang all roundheads

Which is interesting, because this accorded with a Charles who came to Oxford parliament with him a practical backstop and weapon that would free his hand. And he came with a new philosophy.

The practical weapon first. Charles had money, so did not really need Parliament’s help for once – they had no financial lever. Partly this was because the public finances were buoyed by rising income from excise and customs, delivered by growing trade and economic activity. But secondly, because he had an assured income from Louis XIV, who was suddenly desperate for his help. A few days before parliament met, Charles signed a treaty agreeing to drop the anti French alliance with Spain that he had boasted about to parliament, and in return Louis would pay him £385,000 over 3 years. So – Charles had a free hand.

Then this new philosophy. He came with a new conviction, which had been growing since 1679. Danby had convinced him that supporting the Church of England was the key to the loyalty of many of his subjects, probably the large majority of his subjects, and he must make it a pillar and banner of his rule, shouted from the rooftops and embedded in law. To do this meant that he must abandon any hopes of reconciling Dissenters. But he was now beginning to look at things in a different way; and to consider that Dissenters were actually his enemies. They had a view of the relationship between king and people that would ruin Charles’ vision of the crown. They were dangerous. They must be defeated, and rendered politically powerless.

There are a few example of this kind of thinking before the Oxford parliament of 1681, this change of heart did not come out of a vacuum.  Charles had greeted some of the whig petitions with some acidity as we have heard – and making explicit comparisons between them and the civil war parliamentarians who had held his father to account. When he received applications for the vacant post of attorney general, he was heard to remark that he would never give the job to the son of a rebel.

And then there’s an anecdote about a lunch party he went to for one of his household officials, just before he left for Oxford. As he sat down he promised all his officers that he would do his utmost to extirpate popery – as you do at dinner parties. When we sit down for supper at my house we do something similar – though the promise I make is to extirpate cucumbers, but it’s the same principle; on occasion one of my guests will reply ‘Amen. And Broccoli too’. In the case of Charles’ household, when he promised to extirpate popery, one of his guests did not mention either cucumbers or broccoli but they did say

Amen – and Presbytery too

To which Charles replied

With all my heart.

Charles was setting out to rule in a new different way. He would employ the same weapons of propaganda the Whigs were using, and turned against them. He had the people to do that – Roger L’estrange just for starters. But Charles had tools at his disposal Shaftesbury could only dream of. The Oxford parliament was the first step of a new approach.

He started by laying out his stall to MPs, with a speech which contrasted his reasonable, if not saintly willingness to compromise and accept the law, against the whig obsession, aggression, populism and intransigence. Shaftesbury stuck to his guns and before you could say ‘the first year of our freedom 1649’ the Commons were debating an exclusion bill, and Shaftesbury had even found a little red button with ‘self Destruct’ written on it, and in a fit of curiosity had pressed it, by adding in a clause to replace James with the other James, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth.

So picture the scene. The MPs are gathered and their brows are furrowed, some are angry, some engaged, the debate is intense, they have been in Oxford precisely one week. Suddenly, without warning, they were summoned to meet together with the lords. Charles had been taken to what is now part of the Bodleian Library by Sedan chair, where he sat in full regalia as they stumbled hurriedly in. There, they heard the king summarily and angrily announce that parliament was dissolved, with one curt sentence, and then watched him bring carried out in all his majesty, while his armed guards watched them.

Within a few days, as the MPs trudged home, at every church in the country, in every parish,  village and town, ministers and churchwardens mounted their pulpit, to deliver, willingly or not the first blast of their King’s first propaganda campaign. Charles had a channel to his people more complete than any available to some ordinary mortal, be they whig or Tory polemicist. From pulpits around the kingdom, the people heard a declaration from Charles explaining why he had dissolved parliament. He declared nothing would make him fall out of love with parliament – at which the minister was required to hold the end of their nose and pull violently, and then went on to read from the Tory Playbook:

Who cannot but remember that religion, liberty and property were all lost when the monarchy was shaken off, and could never be revived till that restored

For many historians, the end of this, the Third Exclusion Parliament at Oxford, was a victory for Charles, the start of a fight back against the Whig campaign to limit royal powers. And in a sense it really was; because Shaftesbury and pals will find themselves on the back foot from now on, and as we’ll hear next time, it is the last parliament of his reign – and, by the by, while we are on it, the last every parliament to be held outside Westminster, so there’s a thing. Charles had won his financial independence unless he went to war, and that freed his hands. He’d won that financial independence by the hard work of the public servants he employed in reforming crown finances, through luck by economic growth, and by treason, by accepting bribes from a foreign monarch.

But viewed in another way, it’s also a profound failure, almost as profound as his father’s. Foreign monarchs throughout Europe had seen the relationship of the crown fail with his national assembly, he ruled a disunited kingdom. He might be fine in normal times, but just like his Dad, he would be unable to fight a foreign war. William of Orange realised this, and was horrified, and for purely selfish reasons will urge his Uncle to patch things up with his parliament.

So; the last years of Charles reign might be seen as a high point and his triumph; or they might be seen as the nadir of his reign, and his failure as a national leader.

[1] Lipson, E: ‘The Elections to the Exclusion Parliaments 1679-1681’

[2] Owers, G: ‘The Rage of Party’, p38

[3] Harris, T: ‘Restoration’, p245

[4] Owers, G: ‘The Rage of Party’, p44

[5] Harris, T: ‘Restoration’, pp183-4