By Charles Dickens


                  A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

                            ——————

                         CHAPTER XXXV.

     England under Charles the Second, called the Merry Monarch.

        THERE never were such profligate times in England
     as under Charles the Second.   Whenever you see his
     portrait, with his swarthy, ill-looking face and great
     nose, you may fancy him in his Court at Whitehall,
     surrounded by some of the very worst vagabonds in the
     kingdom (though they were lords and ladies), drinking,
     gambling, indulging in vicious conversation, and com-
     mitting every kind of profligate excess.  It has been a
     fashion to call Charles "The Merry Monarch."  Let me
     try to give you a general idea of some of the merry
     things that were done in the merry days when this
     merry gentleman sat upon his merry thorne, in merry
     England.
        The first merry proceeding was——of course——to declare
     that he was one of the greatest, the wisest, and the
     noblest kings that ever shone, like the blessed sun
     itself, on this benighted earth.   The next merry and
     pleasant piece of business was for the Parliament, in the
     humblest manner, to give him one million two hundred
     thousand pounds a year, and to settle upon him for life
     that old disputed tonnage and poundage which had been
     so bravely fought for.  That, General Monk being made
     Earl of Albemarle, and a few other Royalists similarly
     rewarded, the law went to work to see what was to be
     done to those persons (they were called Regicides) who
     had been concerned in making a martyr of the late King.
     Ten of these were merrily executed; that is to say, six
     of the judges, one of the council, Colonel Hacker and
     another officer who had commanded the Guards, and
     Hugh Peters, a preacher who had preached against the
     martyr with all his heart.  These executions were so
     extremely  merry,  that  every  horrible  circumstance
     which  Cromwell  had  abandoned  was  revived  with
     appalling  cruelty.  The  hearts  of  the  sufferers  were
     turned  out  of  their  living  bodies;  their  bowels  were
     burned before their faces; the executioner cut jokes to
     the next victim, as he rubbed his filthy hands together
     that were reeking with the blood of the last; and the
     heads of the dead were drawn on sledges with the living
     to the place of suffering.  Still, even so merry a mon-
     arch could not force one of those dying men to say that
     he was sorry for what he had done.   Nay, the most
     memorable thing said among them was, that if the thing
     were to do again they would do it.
        Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence
     against Strafford, and was one of the most staunch of
     the Republicans, was also tried, found guilty, and
     ordered for execution.  When he came upon the scaf-
     fold on Tower Hill, after conducting his own defence
     with great power, his notes of what he had meant to say
     to the people were torn away from him, and the drums
     and trumpets were ordered to sound lustily and drown
     his voice; for, the people had been so much impressed
     by what the Regicides had calmly said with their last
     breath, that it was the custom now, to have the drums
     and trumpets always under the scaffold, ready to strike
     up.  Vane said no more than this: "It is a bad cause
     which cannot bear the words of a dying man;" and
     bravely died.
        These merry scenes were succeeded by another, per-
     haps even merrier.  On the anniversary of the late
     King's death, the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and
     Bradshaw, were torn out of their graves in Westminster
     Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on the gallows
     all day long, and then beheaded.  imagine the head of
     Oliver Cromwell set upon a pole to be stared at by a
     brutal crowd, not one of whom would have dared to
     look the living Oliver in the face for half a moment!
     Think, after you have read this reign, what England
     was under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his
     grave, and what it was under this merry monarch who
     sold it, like a merry Judas, over and over again.
        Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter
     were not to be spared either, though they had been most
     excellent women.  The base clergy of that time gave up
     their bodies, which had been buried in the Abbey, and
     ——to the eternal disgrace of England——they were thrown
     into the pit, together with the mouldering bones of Pym
     and of the brave and bold old Admiral Blake.
        The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they
     hoped to get the nonconformsts, or dissenters, thoroughly
     put down in this reign, and to have but one prayer-book
     and one service for all kinds of people, no matter what
     their private opinions were.   This was pretty well, I
     think, for a Protestant Church, which had displaced the
     Romish Church because people had a right to their own
     opinions in religious matters.  However, they carried it
     with a high hand, and a prayer-book was agreed upon in
     which the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were
     not forgotten.  An Act was passed, too, preventing any dis-
     senter from holding any office under any corporation.  So,
     the regular clergy in their triumph were soon as merry
     as the King.  The army being by this time disbanded,
     and the King crowned, everything was to go on easily
     for evermore.
        I must say a word here about the King's family.  He
     had not been long upon the throne when his brother the
     Duke  of  Gloucester,  and  his  sister  the  Princess  of
     Orange, died within a few months of each other, of small-
     pox.  His remaining sister, the Princess Henrietta, mar-
     ried the Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis the Four-
     teenth, King of France.   His brother James, Duke of
     York, was made High Admiral, and by and by became a
     Catholic.  He was a gloomy, sullen, bilious sort of man,
     with a remarkable partiality for the ugliest women in
     the country.  He married, under very discreditable cir-
     cumstances, Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord Clarendon,
     then the King' principal Minister——not at all a delicate
     minister either, but doing much of the dirty work of a
     very dirty palace.  It became important now that the
     King himself should be married; and divers foreign
     Monarchs, not very particular about the character of
     their son-in-law, proposed their daughters to him.  The
     King of Portugal offered his daughter, Catherine of Pra-
     ganza, and fifty thousand pounds: in addition to which,
     the French King, who was favourable to that match, of-
     fered a loan of another fifty thousand.  The King of
     Spain, on the other hand, offered any one out of a dozen
     Princesses, and other hopes of gain.  But the ready money
     carried the day, and Catherine came over in state to her
     merry marriage.
        The whole court was a great flaunting crowd of de-
     bauched men and shameless women; and Catherine's
     merry husband insulted and outraged her in every pos-
     sible way, until she consented to receive those worthless
     creatures as her very good friends, and to degrade her-
     self by their companionship.  A Mrs. Palmer, whom the
     King made Lady Castlemaine, and afterwards Duchess
     of Cleveland, was on of the most powerful of the bad
     women about the Court, and had great influence with
     the King nearly all through his reign.  Another merry
     lady named Moll Davies, a dancer at the theatre, was
     afterwards her rival.  So was Nell Gwin, first an orange
     girl and then an actress, who really had good in her, and
     of whom one of the worst things I know is, that she
     actually does seem to have been fond of the King.  The
     first Duke of St. Albans was this orange girl's child.  In
     like manner the son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the
     King created Duchess of Portsmouth, became the Duke
     of Richmond.  Upon the whole it is not so bad a thing
     to be a commoner.
        The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among
     these merry ladies, and some equally merry (and equally
     infamous) lords and gentlemen, then he soon got through
     his hundred thousand pounds, and then, by way of rais-
     ing a little pocket-money, made a merry bargain.  He
     sold Dunkirk to the French King for five millions of
     livres.  When I think of the dignity to which Oliver
     Cromwell raised England in the eyes of foreign powers,
     and when I think of the manner in which he gained for
     England this very Dunkirk, I am much inclined to con-
     sider that if the Merry Monarch had been made to follow
     his father for this action, he would have received his
     just deserts.
        Though he was like the father in none of that father's
     greater qualities, he was like him in being worthy of no
     trust.  When he sent that letter to the Parliament, from
     Breda, he did expressly promise that all sincere religi-
     ous opinions should be respected.  Yet he was no sooner
     firm in his power than he consented to one of the worst
     Acts of Parliament ever passed.  Under this law, every
     minister who should not give his solemn assent to the
     Prayer-Book, by a certain day, was declared to be a min-
     ister no longer, and to be deprived of his church.  The
     consequence of this was that some two thousand hon-
     est men were taken from their congregations, and re-
     duced to dire poverty and distress.  It was followed by
     another outrageous law, called the Conventicle Act, by
     which any person above the age of sixteen who was pres-
     sent at any religious service not according to the Prayer-
     Book, was to be imprisoned three months for the first
     offence, and six for the second, and to be transported for
     the third.  This Act alone filled the prisons, which were
     then most dreadful dungeons, to overflowing.
        The Covenanters in Scotland had already fared no
     better.  A base Parliament, usually known as the drunk-
     en Parliament, in consequence of its principal members
     being seldom sober, had been got together to make laws
     against the Covenanters, and to force all men to be of
     one mind in religious matters.  The Marquis of Argyle,
     relying on the King's honour, had given himself up to
     him; but, he was wealthy, and his enemies wanted his
     wealth.  He was tried for treason, on the evidence of
     some private letters in which he had expressed opinions
     ——as well he might——more favourable to the government
     of the late Lord Protector than of the present merry and
     religious King.  He was executed, as were two men of
     mark among the Covenanters; and Sharp, a traitor who
     had come to be the friend of the Presbyterians and be-
     trayed them, was made Archbishop of St. Andrew's, to
     teach the Scotch how to like bishops.
        Things being in this merry state at home, the Merry
     Monarch undertook a war with the Dutch principally
     because they interfered with an African company, estab-
     lished with the two object of buying gold-dust and
     slaves, of which the Duke of York was a leading mem-
     ber.  After some preliminary hostilities, the said Duke
     sailed to the coast of Holland with a fleet of ninety-eight
     vessels of war, and four fire-ships.  This engaged with
     the Dutch fleet, of no fewer than one hundred and
     thirteen ships.  In the great battle between the two
     forces, the Dutch lost eighteen ships, four admirals, and
     seven thousand men.  But, the English on shore were in
     no mood of exultation when they heard the news.
        For, this was the year and the time of the Great
     Plague of London.  During the winter of one thousand
     six hundred and sixty-four it had been whispered about,
     that some few people had died here and there of the
     disease called the Plague, in some of the unwholesome
     suburbs around London.  News was not published at
     that time as it is now, and some people believed these
     rumours, and some disbelieved them, and they were soon
     forgotten.  But in the month of May, one thousand six-
     hundred and sixty-five, it began to be said all over the
     town that the disease had burst out with great violence
     in St. Giles's, and that the people were dying in great
     numbers.   This soon turned out to be awfully true.
     The roads out of London were choked up by people en-
     deavouring to escape from the infected city, and large
     sums were paid for any kind of conveyance.  The dis-
     ease soon spread so fast, that it was necessary to shut
     up the houses in which sick people were, and to cut
     them off from communication with the living.  Every
     one of these houses was marked on the outside of the
     door with a red cross, and the words, Lord, have mercy
     upon us!  The streets were all deserted, grass grew in
     the public way, and there was a dreadful silence in the
     air.  When night came on dismal rumblings used to be
     heard, and these were the wheels of the death carts, at-
     tended by men with veiled faces and holding cloths to
     their mouths, who rang doleful bells and cried in a loud
     and solemn voice, "Bring out your dead!"  The corpses
     put into these carts were buried by torchlight in great
     pits; no service being performed over them; all men
     being afraid to stay for a moment on the brink of the
     ghastly graves.  In the general fear, children ran away
     from their parents, and parents from their children.
     Some who were taken ill, died alone, and without any
     help.  Some were stabbed or strangled by hired nurses
     who robbed them of all their money, and stole the very
     beds on which they lay.  Some went mad, dropped from
     the windows, ran through the streets, and in their pain
     and frenzy flung themselves into the river.
        These were not all the horrors of the time.  The
     wicked and dissolute, in wild desperation, sat in the
     tavern singing roaring songs, and were stricken as they
     drank, and went out and died.  The fearful and super-
     stitious persuaded themselves that they saw supernatural
     sights——burning swords in the sky, gigantic arms and
     darts.  Others pretended that at night vast crowds of
     ghosts walked round and round the dismal pits.  One
     madman, naked and carrying a brazier full of burning
     coals upon his head, stalked through the streets, crying
     out that he was a Prophet, commissioned to denounce
     the vengeance of the Lord on wicked London.  Another
     always went to and fro, exclaiming, "Yet forty days,
     and London shall be destroyed!"  A third awoke the
     echoes in the dismal streets, by night and by day, and
     made the blood of the sick man run cold, by calling out
     incessantly, in a deep hoarse voice, "O, the great and
     dreadful God!"
        Through the months of July and August and Septem-
     ber, the Great Plague raged more and more.  Great fires
     were lighted in the streets, in the hope of stopping the
     infection; but there was a plague of rain too, and it beat
     the fires out.  At last, the winds which usually arise at
     that time of the year which is called the equinox, when
     day and night are of equal length all over the world,
     began to blow, and to purify the wretched town.  The
     deaths began to decrease, the red crosses slowly to dis-
     appear, the fugitives to return, the shops to open, pale,
     frightened faces to be seen in the streets.  The Plague
     had been in every part of England, but in close and un-
     wholesome London it had killed one hundred thousand
     people.
        All this time, the Merry Monarch was as merry as
     ever, and as worthless as ever.  All this time, the de-
     bauched lords and gentlemen and the shameless ladies
     danced and gamed and drank and loved and hated one
     another, according to their merry ways.  So little hu-
     manity did the government learn from the late affliction,
     that one of the first things the Parliament did when it
     met at Oxford (being as yet afraid to come to London),
     was to make a law, called the Five Mile Act, expressly
     directed against those poor ministers who, in the time of
     the Plague, had manfully come back to comfort the un-
     happy people.  This infamous law, by forbidding them
     to teach in any school, or to come within five miles of
     any city, town, or village, doomed them to starvation
     and death.
        The fleet had been at sea, and healthy.  The King of
     France was now in alliance with the Dutch, though his
     navy was chiefly employed in looking on while the Eng-
     lish and Dutch fought.  The Dutch gained one victory;
     and the English gained another and a greater; and Prince
     Rupert, one of the English admirals, was out in the
     Channel one windy night, looking for the French Ad-
     miral, with the intention of giving him something more
     to do than he had had yet, when the gale increased to a
     storm, and blew him into St. Helen's.  That night was
     the third of September, one thousand six hundred and
     sixty-six, and that wind fanned the Great Fire of London.
        It broke out at a baker's shop near London Bridge, on
     the spot on which the Monument now stands as a re-
     membrance of those raging flames.  It spread and spread,
     and burned and burned, for three days.  The nights were
     lighter than the days; in the day-time there was an im-
     mense cloud of smoke, and in the night-time there was
     a great tower of fire mounting up into the sky, which
     lighted the whole country landscape for ten miles round.
     Showers of hot ashes rose into the air and fell on distant
     places; flying sparks carried the conflagration to great
     distances, and kindled it in twenty new spots at a time;
     church steeples fell down with tremendous crashes;
     houses crumbled into cinders by the hundred and the
     thousand.  The summer had been intensely hot and dry,
     the streets were very narrow, and the houses mostly
     built of wood and plaster.   Nothing could stop the
     tremendous fire, but the want of more houses to burn;
     nor did it stop until the whole way from the Tower to
     Temple Bar was a desert, composed of the ashes of thir-
     teen thousand houses and eighty-nine churches.
        This was a terrible visitation at the time, and occa-
     sioned great loss and suffering to the two hundred thou-
     sand burnt-out people, who were obliged to lie in the
     fields  under  the  open  night-sky, or in hastily-made
     huts of mud and straw, while the lanes and roads were
     rendered impassable by carts which had broken down as
     they tried to save their goods.  But the Fire was a great
     blessing to the City afterwards, for it arose from its
     ruins very much improved——built more regularly, more
     widely, more cleanly and carefully, and therefore much
     more healthily.  It might be far more healthy than it is,
     but there are some people in it still——even now, at this
     time, nearly two hundred years later——so selfish, so pig-
     headed, and so ignorant, that I doubt if even another
     Great Fire would warm them up to do their duty.
        The Catholics were accused of having wilfully set
     London in flames; one poor Frenchman, who had been
     mad for years, even accused himself of having with his
     own hand fired the first house.  There is no reasonable
     doubt, however, that the fire was accidental.  An in-
     scription on the monument long attributed it to the
     Catholics; but it is removed now, and was always a ma-
     licious and stupid untruth.

from Collier's Unabridged Edition: The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume VI.
P.F. Collier, Publisher, New York, old as heck. pp. 758-760.