IV.
Charles II., good man! despised him. The happiness of England underCharles II. was more than happiness, it was enchantment. A restorationis like an old oil painting, blackened by time, and revarnished. All thepast reappeared, good old manners returned, beautiful women reigned andgoverned. Evelyn notices it. We read in his journal, "Luxury,profaneness, contempt of God. I saw the king on Sunday evening with hiscourtesans, Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarin, and two or three others, allnearly naked, in the gaming-room." We feel that there is ill-nature inthis description, for Evelyn was a grumbling Puritan, tainted withrepublican reveries. He did not appreciate the profitable example givenby kings in those grand Babylonian gaieties, which, after all, maintainluxury. He did not understand the utility of vice. Here is a maxim: Donot extirpate vice, if you want to have charming women; if you do youare like idiots who destroy the chrysalis whilst they delight in thebutterfly.
Charles II., as we have said, scarcely remembered that a rebel calledClancharlie existed; but James II. was more heedful. Charles II.governed gently, it was his way; we may add, that he did not govern theworse on that account. A sailor sometimes makes on a rope intended tobaffle the wind, a slack knot which he leaves to the wind to tighten.Such is the stupidity of the storm and of the people.
The slack knot very soon becomes a tight one. So did the government ofCharles II.
Under James II. the throttling began; a necessary throttling of whatremained of the revolution. James II. had a laudable ambition to be anefficient king. The reign of Charles II. was, in his opinion, but asketch of restoration. James wished for a still more complete return toorder. He had, in 1660, deplored that they had confined themselves tothe hanging of ten regicides. He was a more genuine reconstructor ofauthority. He infused vigour into serious principles. He installed truejustice, which is superior to sentimental declamations, and attends,above all things, to the interests of society. In his protectingseverities we recognize the father of the state. He entrusted the handof justice to Jeffreys, and its sword to Kirke. That useful Colonel, oneday, hung and rehung the same man, a republican, asking him each time,"Will you renounce the republic?" The villain, having each time said"No," was dispatched. "_I hanged him four times_," said Kirke, withsatisfaction. The renewal of executions is a great sign of power in theexecutive authority. Lady Lisle, who, though she had sent her son tofight against Monmouth, had concealed two rebels in her house, wasexecuted; another rebel, having been honourable enough to declare thatan Anabaptist female had given him shelter, was pardoned, and the womanwas burned alive. Kirke, on another occasion, gave a town to understandthat he knew its principles to be republican, by hanging nineteenburgesses. These reprisals were certainly legitimate, for it must beremembered that, under Cromwell, they cut off the noses and ears of thestone saints in the churches. James II., who had had the sense to chooseJeffreys and Kirke, was a prince imbued with true religion; he practisedmortification in the ugliness of his mistresses; he listened to le Perela Colombiere, a preacher almost as unctuous as le Pere Cheminais, butwith more fire, who had the glory of being, during the first part of hislife, the counsellor of James II., and, during the latter, the inspirerof Mary Alcock. It was, thanks to this strong religious nourishment,that, later on, James II. was enabled to bear exile with dignity, and toexhibit, in his retirement at Saint Germain, the spectacle of a kingrising superior to adversity, calmly touching for king's evil, andconversing with Jesuits.
It will be readily understood that such a king would trouble himself toa certain extent about such a rebel as Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie.Hereditary peerages have a certain hold on the future, and it wasevident that if any precautions were necessary with regard to that lord,James II. was not the man to hesitate.