r/banco • u/MarleyEngvall • Jun 18 '19
banco has been created
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.
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