Chapter 4 IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Cromwell's death was an epoch in Marvell's history. Up to that date he had, since he left the University, led the life of a scholar, with a turn for business, and was known to many as an agreeable companion and a lively wit. He was keenly interested in public affairs, and personally acquainted with some men in great place, and for a year before Cromwell's death he had been in a branch of the Civil Service; but of the wear and tear, the strife and contention, of what are called "practical politics" he knew nothing from personal experience.

Within a year of the Protector's death all this was changed and, for the rest of his days, with but the shortest of occasional intervals, Andrew Marvell led the life of an active, eager member of Parliament, knowing all that was going on in the Chamber and hearing of everything that was alleged to be going on in the Court; busily occupied with the affairs of his constituents in Hull, and daily watching, with an increasingly heavy heart and a bitter humour, the corruption of the times, the declension of our sea-power, the growing shame of England, and what he believed to be a dangerous conspiracy afoot for the undoing of the Reformation and the destruction of the Constitution in both Church and State.

"Garden-poetry" could not be reared on such a soil as this. The age of Cromwell and Blake was over. The remainder of Marvell's life (save so far as personal friendship sweetened it) was spent in politics, public business, in concocting roughly rhymed and bitter satirical poems, and in the composition of prose pamphlets.

Through it all Marvell remained very much the man of letters, though one with a great natural aptitude for business. His was always the critical attitude. He was the friend of Milton and Harrington, of the political philosophers who invented paper constitutions in the "Rota" Club, and of the new race of men whose thoughts turned to Natural Science, and who founded the Royal Society. Office he never thought of. He could have had it had he chosen, for he was a man of mark, even of distinction, from the first. Clarendon has told us how members of the House of Commons "got on" in the Long Parliament of Charles the Second. It was full of the king's friends, who ran out of the House to tell their shrewd master the gossip of the lobbies, "commended this man and discommended another who deserved better, and would many times, when His Majesty spoke well of any man, ask His Majesty if he would give them leave to let that person know how gracious His Majesty was to him, or bring him to kiss his hand. To which he commonly consenting, every one of his servants delivered some message from him to a Parliament man, and invited him to Court, as if the King would be willing to see him. And by this means the rooms at Court were always full of the members of the House of Commons. This man brought to kiss his hand, and the King induced to confer with that man and to thank him for his affection, which could never conclude without some general expression of grace or promise, which the poor gentleman always interpreted to his own advantage, and expected some fruit from it that it could never yield."

The suspicious Clarendon, already shaking to his fall, goes on to add, "all which, being contrary to all former order, did the King no good, and rendered those unable to do him service who were inclined to it."1

It is a lifelike picture Clarendon draws of the crowded rooms, and of the witty king moving about fooling vanity, ambition, and corruption to the top of their bent. That the king chose his own ministers is plain enough.

Marvell was at the beginning well disposed towards Charles. They had some points in common; and among them a quick sense of humour and a turn for business. But the member for Hull must soon have recognised that there was no place for an honest quick-witted man in any Stuart administration.

Marvell and his great chief remained in their offices until the close of the year 1659, when the impending Restoration enforced their retirement. Milton used his leisure to pour forth excited tracts to prove how easy it would still be to establish a Free Commonwealth. Once again, and for the last time, he prompted the age to quit its clogs

"by the known rules of ancient liberty."

These pamphlets of Milton's prove how little that solitary thinker ever knew of the real mind and temper of the English people.

The Lord Richard Cromwell was exactly the sort of eldest son a great soldier like Oliver, who had put his foot on fortune's neck, was likely to have. Richard (1626-1712) was not, indeed, born in the purple, but his early manhood was nurtured in it. Religion, as represented by long sermons, tiresome treatises, and prayerful exercises, bored him to death. Of enthusiasm he had not a trace, nor was he bred to arms. He delighted in hunting, in the open air, and the company of sportsmen. Whatever came his way easily, and as a matter of right, he was well content to take. He bore himself well on State occasions, and could make a better speech than ever his father was able to do. But he was not a "restless" Cromwell, and had no faith in his destiny. I do not know whether he had ever read Don Quixote, in Shelton's translation, a very popular book of the time; probably not, for, though Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Richard was not a reading man, but if he had, he must have sympathised with Sancho Panza's attitude of mind towards the famous island.

"If your highness has no mind that the government you promised should be given me, God made me of less, and perhaps it may be easier for Sancho, the Squire, to get to Heaven than for Sancho, the Governor. In the dark all cats are gray."

The new Protector took up the reins of power with proper forms and ceremonies, and at once proceeded to summon a Parliament, an Imperial Cromwellian Parliament, containing representatives both from Scotland and Ireland. In this Parliament Andrew Marvell sat for the first time as one of the two members for Kingston-upon-Hull. His election took place on the 10th of January 1659, being the first county day after the sheriff had received the writ. Five candidates were nominated: Thomas Strickland, Andrew Marvell, John Ramsden, Henry Smyth, and Sir Henry Vane, and a vote being taken in the presence of the mayor, aldermen, and many of the burgesses, John Ramsden and Andrew Marvell were declared duly elected.

Nobody to-day, glancing his eye over a list of the knights and burgesses who made up Richard Cromwell's first and last Parliament, would ever guess that it represented an order of things of the most recent date which was just about to disappear. On paper it has a solid look. The fine old crusted Parliamentary names with which the clerks were to remain so long familiar as the members trooped out to divide were more than well represented.1 The Drakes of Amersham were there; Boscawens, Bullers, and Trelawneys flocked from Cornwall; Sir Wilfred Lawson sat for Cumberland, and his son for Cockermouth; a Knightly represented Northamptonshire, whilst Lucys from Charlecote looked after Warwick, both town and county. Arthur Onslow came from Surrey, a Townshend from Norfolk, and, of course, a Bankes from Corfe Castle;2 Oxford University, contented, as she occasionally is, to be represented by a great man, had chosen Sir Matthew Hale, whilst the no less useful and laborious Thurloe sat for the sister University. Anthony Ashley Cooper was there, but in opposition, snuffing the morrow. Mildmays, Lawleys, Binghams, Herberts, Pelhams, all travelled up to London with the Lord-Protector's writs in their pockets. A less revolutionary assembly never met, though there was a regicide or two among them. But when the members found themselves alone together there was some loose talk.

On the 27th of January 1659 Marvell attended for the first time in his place, when the new Protector opened Parliament, and made a speech in the House of Lords, which was pronounced at the time to be "a very handsome oration."

The first business of the Commons was to elect a Speaker, nor was their choice a very lucky one, for it first fell on Chaloner Chute, who speedily breaking down in health, the Recorder of London was appointed his substitute, but the Recorder being on his deathbed at the time, and Chute dying very shortly afterwards, Thomas Bampfield was elected Speaker, and continued so to be until the Parliament was dissolved by proclamation on the 22nd of April. This proclamation was Richard Cromwell's last act of State.

Marvell's first Parliament was both short and inglorious. One only of its resolutions is worth quoting:-

"That a very considerable navy be forthwith provided, and put to sea for the safety of the Commonwealth and the preservation of the trade and commerce thereof."

It was, however, the army and not the navy that had to be reckoned with-an army unpaid, angry, suspicious, and happily divided. I must not trace the history of faction. There is no less exalted page in English history since the days of Stephen. Monk is its fitting hero, and Charles the Second its expensive saviour of society. The story how the Restoration was engineered by General Monk, who, if vulgar, was adroit, both on land and sea, is best told from Monk's point of view in the concluding chapter of Baker's Chronicle (Sir Roger de Coverley's favourite Sunday reading), whilst that old-fashioned remnant, who still love to read history for fun, may not object to be told that they will find printed in the Report of the Leyborne-Popham Papers (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1899, p. 204) a Narrative of the Restoration, by Mr. John Collins, the Chief Butler of the Inner Temple, proving in great and highly diverting detail how this remarkable event was really the work not so much of Monk as of the Chief Butler.

Richard Cromwell having slipped the collar, the officers assumed command, as they were only too ready to do, and recalled the old, dishonoured, but pertinacious Rump Parliament, which, though mustering at first but forty-two members, at once began to talk and keep journals as if nothing had happened since the day ten years before, when it was sent about its business. Old Speaker Lenthall was routed out of obscurity, and much against his will, and despite his protests, clapped once more into the chair. Dr. John Owen, an old parliamentary preaching hand, was once again requisitioned to preach before the House, which he did at enormous length one fine Sunday in May.

The Rump did not prove a popular favourite. It was worse than Old Noll himself, who could at least thrash both Dutchman and Spaniard, and be even more feared abroad than he was hated at home. The City of London, then almost an Estate of the Realm, declared for a Free Parliament, and it soon became apparent to every one that the whole country was eager to return as soon as possible to the old mould. Nothing now stood between Charles and his own but half a dozen fierce old soldiers and their dubious, discontented, unpaid men.

It was once commonly supposed (it is so no longer), that the Restoration party was exclusively composed of dispossessed Cavaliers, bishops in hiding, ejected parsons, high-flying jure divino Episcopalians, talkative toss-pots, and the great pleasure-loving crowd, cruelly repressed under the rule of the saints. Had it been left to these ragged regiments, the issue would have been doubtful, and the result very different. The Presbyterian ministers who occupied the rectories and vicarages of the Church of England and their well-to-do flocks in both town and country were, with but few exceptions, all for King Charles and a restored monarchy. In this the ministers may have shown a sound political instinct, for none of them had any more mind than the Anglican bishops to tolerate Papists, Socinians, Quakers, and Fifth Monarchy men, but in their management of the business of the Restoration these divines exposed themselves to the same condemnation that Clarendon in an often-quoted passage passed upon his own clerical allies. When read by the light of the Act of "Uniformity," the "Corporation," the "Five Mile," and the "Conventicle" Acts, the conduct of the Presbyterians seems recklessness itself, whilst the ignorance their ministers displayed of the temper of the people they had lived amongst all their lives, and whom they adjured to cry God save the King, but not to drink his Majesty's health (because health-drinking was forbidden in the Old Testament), would be startling were it not so eminently characteristic.1

The Rump, amidst the ridicule and contempt of the populace, was again expelled by military force on the 13th of October 1659. The officers were divided in opinion, some supporting, others, headed by Lambert, opposing the Parliament; but vis major, or superior cunning, was on the side of Lambert, who placed his soldiers in the streets leading to Westminster Hall, and when the Speaker came in his coach, his horses were turned, and he was conducted very civilly home. The regiments that should have resisted, "observing that they were exposed to derision," peaceably returned to their quarters.

Monk, in the meanwhile, was advancing with his army from Edinburgh, and affected not to approve of the force put upon Parliament. The feeling for a Free Parliament increased in strength and violence every day. The Rump was for a third time restored in December by the section of the London army that supported its claim. Lenthall was once more in the chair, and the journals were resumed without the least notice of past occurrences. Monk, having reached London amidst great excitement, went down to the House and delivered an ambiguous speech. Up to the last Monk seems to have remained uncertain what to do. The temper of the City, which was fiercely anti-Rump, may have decided him. At all events he invited the secluded, that is the expelled, members of the old Long Parliament to take their seats along with the others, and in a formal declaration addressed to Parliament, dated the 21st of February 1660, he counselled it among other things to dissolve legally "in order to make way for a succession of Parliaments." In a word, Monk declared for a Free Parliament. Great indeed were the national rejoicings.

On the 16th of March 1660 a Bill was read a third time dissolving the Parliament begun and holden at Westminster, 3rd November 1640, and for the calling and holding of a Parliament at Westminster on the 25th of April 1660. This time an end was really made of the Rump, though for many a long day there were parliamentary pedants to be found in the land ready to maintain that the Long Parliament had never been legally dissolved and still de jure existed; so long, I presume, as any single member of it remained alive.

Marvell was not a "Rumper," but on the 2nd of April 1660 he was again elected for Hull to sit in what is usually called the Convention Parliament. John Ramsden was returned at the head of the poll with 227 votes, Marvell receiving 141. There were four defeated candidates.

With this Convention Parliament begins Marvell's remarkable correspondence, on fine folio sheets of paper, with the corporation of Hull, whose faithful servant he remained until death parted them in 1678.

This correspondence, which if we include in it, as we well may, the letters to the Worshipful Society of Masters and Pilots of the Trinity House in Hull, numbers upwards of 350 letters, and with but one considerable gap (from July 1663 to October 1665) covers the whole period of Marvell's membership, is, I believe, unique in our public records. The letters are preserved at Hull, where I hope care is taken to preserve them from the autograph hunter and the autograph thief. Captain Thompson printed a great part of this correspondence in 1776, and Mr. Grosart gave the world the whole of it in the second volume of his edition of Marvell's complete works.

An admission may as well be made at once. This correspondence is not so interesting as it might have been expected to prove. Marvell did not write letters for his biographer, nor to instruct posterity, nor to serve any party purpose, nor even to exhibit honest emotion, but simply to tell his employers, whose wages he took, what was happening at Westminster. He kept his reflections either to himself or for his political broadsheets, and indeed they were seldom of the kind it would have been safe to entrust to the post.

Good Mr. Grosart fusses and frets terribly over Marvell's astonishing capacity for chronicling in sombre silence every kind of legislative abomination. It is at times a little hard to understand it, for Hull was what may be called a Puritan place. No doubt caution dictated some of the reticence-but the reserve of Marvell's character is one of the few traits of his personality that has survived. He was a satirist, not an enthusiast.

I will give the first letter in extenso to serve as a specimen, and a very favourable one, of the whole correspondence:-

"Nov. 17, 1660.

"Gentlemen, my worthy Friends,-Although during the necessary absence of my partner, Mr. Ramsden, I write with but halfe a penn, and can scarce perswade myselfe to send you so imperfect an account of your own and the publick affairs, as I needs must for want of his assistance; yet I had rather expose mine own defects to your good interpretation, then excuse thereby a totall neglect of my duty, and that trust which is divided upon me. At my late absence out of Town I had taken such order that if you had commanded me any thing, I might soon haue received it, and so returned on purpose to this place to haue obeyed you. But hearing nothing of that nature howeuer, I was present the first day of the Parliament's sitting, and tooke care to write to Mr. Maior what work we had cut out. Since when, we have had little new, but onely been making a progresse in those things I then mentioned. There is yet brought in an Act in which of all others your corporation is the least concerned: that is, where wives shall refuse to cohabit with their husbands, that in such case the husband shall not be liable to pay any debts which she may run into, for clothing, diet, lodging, or other expenses. I wish with all my heart you were no more touched in a vote that we haue made for bringing in an Act of a new Assessment for six moneths, of 70,000li. per mensem, to begin next January. The truth is, the delay ere monyes can be got in, eats up a great part of all that is levying, and that growing charge of the Army and Navy doubles upon us. And that is all that can be said for excuse of ourselues to the Country, to whom we had giuen our own hopes of no further sessment to be raised, but must now needs incurre the censure of improvidence before or prodigality now, though it becomes no private member, the resolution having passed the House, to interpose further his own judgment in a thing that can not be remedied; and it will be each man's ingenuity not to grudge an after-payment for that settlement and freedome from Armyes and Navyes, which before he would haue been glad to purchase with his whole fortune. There remain some eight Regiments to be disbanded, but those all horse in a manner, and some seauenteen shipps to be payd of, that haue laid so long upon charge in the harbour, beside fourscore shipps which are reckoned to us for this Winter guard. But after that, all things are to go upon his Majestye's own purse out of the Tunnage and Poundage and his other revenues. But there being so great a provision made for mony, I doubt not but ere we rise, to see the whole army disbanded, and according to the Act, hope to see your Town once more ungarrisond, in which I should be glad and happy to be instrumentall to the uttermost. For I can not but remember, though then a child, those blessed days when the youth of your own town were trained for your militia, and did, methought, become their arms much better than any soldiers that I haue seen there since. And it will not be amisse if you please (now that we are about a new Act of regulating the Militia, that it may be as a standing strength, but not as ill as a perpetuall Army to the Nation) to signify to me any thing in that matter that were according to your ancient custome and desirable for you. For though I can promise little, yet I intend all things for your service. The Act for review of the Poll bill proceeds, and that for making this Declaration of his Majesty a Law in religious matters. Order likewise is giuen for drawing up all the votes made during our last sitting, in the businesse of Sales of Bishops' and Deans' and Chapters' lands into an Act, which I should be glad to see passed. The purchasers the other day offerd the house 600,000li. in ready mony, and to make the Bishops', etc., revenue as good or better then before. But the House thought it not fit or seasonable to hearken to it. We are so much the more concernd to see that great interest of the purchasers satisfyed and quieted, at least in that way which our own votes haue propounded. On Munday next we are to return to the consideration of apportioning 100,000li. per annum upon all the lands in the nation, in lieu of the Court of Wards. The debate among the Countyes, each thinking it self overrated, makes the successe of that businesse something casuall, and truly I shall not assist it much for my part, for it is little reason that your Town should contribute in that charge. The Excise bill for longer continuance (I wish it proue not too long) will come in also next weeke. And I foresee we shall be called upon shortly to effect our vote made the former sitting, of raising his Majestie's revenue to 1,200,000li. per Annum. I do not love to write so much of this mony news. But I think you haue observed that Parliaments have been always made use of to that purpose, and though we may buy gold too deare, yet we must at any rate be glad of Peace, Freedom, and a good Conscience. Mr. Maior tells me, your duplicates of the Poll are coming up. I shall go with them to the Exchequer and make your excuse, if any be requisite. My long silence hath made me now trespasse on the other hand in a long letter, but I doubt not of your good construction of so much familiarity and trouble from, Gentlemen, your most affectionate friend and servant,

"Andr: Marvell.

"Westminster, Nov. 17, 1660."

Although this first letter of the Hull correspondence is dated the 17th of November 1660, the Convention Parliament began its sittings on the 25th of April.

In composition this Convention Parliament was very like Richard Cromwell's, and indeed it contained many of the same members, whose loyalty, however, was less restrained than in 1659. All the world knew what brought this Parliament together. It was to make the nation's peace with its king, either on terms or without terms. "We are all Royalists now" are words which must often have been on the lips of the members of this House. One can imagine the smiles, half grim, half ironical, that would accompany their utterance. Such a right-about-face could never be dignified. It is impossible not to be reminded of schoolboys at the inevitable end of "a barring out." The sarcastic comment of Clarendon has not lost its sting. "From this time there was such an emulation and impatience in Lords, Commons, and City, and generally over the Kingdom, who should make the most lively expressions of their duty and of their joy, that a man could not but wonder where those people dwelt who had done all the mischief and kept the King so many years from enjoying the comfort and support of such excellent subjects."1

The most significant sentence in Marvell's first letter to his constituents is that in which he refers to the Bill for making Charles's declaration in religious matters the law of the land. Had the passing of any such Bill been possible, how different the history of England would have been!

The declaration Marvell is referring to was contained in the famous message from Breda, which was addressed by Charles to all his loving subjects of what degree or quality, and was expressed as follows:-

"And because the passion and uncharitableness of the times have produced several opinions in Religion by which men are engaged in parties and animosities against each other (which, when they shall hereafter unite in a freedom of conversation, will be composed or better understood) we do declare a liberty to tender Consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of Religion which do not disturb the peace of the Kingdom; and that we shall be ready to consent to such an Act of Parliament as upon mature deliberation shall be offered to us for the full granting of that indulgence."

It is only doing the king bare justice to say that he was always ready and willing to keep this part of his royal word-but it proved an impossibility.

A Roman Catholic as a matter of creed, a Hobbist in conversation, a sensualist in practice, and the shrewdest though most indolent of cynics in council, Charles, in this matter of religious toleration, would gladly have kept his word, not indeed because it was his word, for on the point of honour he was indifferent, but because it jumped with his humour, and would have mitigated the hard lot of the Catholics. Charles was not a theorist, all his tastes being eminently practical, not to say scientific. He was not a tyrant, but a de facto man from head to heel. For the jure divino of the English Episcopate he cared as little as Oliver had ever done for the jure divino of the English Crown. Oliver once said, and he was not given to braggadocio, that he would fire his pistol at the king "as soon as at another if he met him in battle," and the second Charles would have thought no more of beheading an Anglican bishop than he did of sending Sir Harry Vane to the scaffold. Honesty and virtue, on the rare occasions Charles encountered them, he admired much as a painter admires the colours of a fine sunset. Above everything else Charles was determined never again, if he could help it, to be sent on his travels, to be snubbed and starved in foreign courts.

Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, the first and best translator of Rabelais, is said to have died of laughing on hearing of the Restoration; Charles did not die, but he must have laughed inwardly at the spectacle that met his eyes everywhere as he made his often-described progress from Dover to London, and examined the gorgeous beds and quilts, fine linen and carpets, couches, horses and liveries, his faithful Commons had been at the pains and at the expense of providing for his comfort.

A few years afterwards Marvell wrote the following lines:-

"Of a tall stature and of sable hue,

Much like the son of Kish, that lofty Jew;

Twelve years complete he suffered in exile

And kept his father's asses all the while.

At length, by wonderful impulse of fate,

The people called him home to help the state,

And what is more they sent him money too

To clothe him all from head to foot anew;

Nor did he such small favours then disdain,

Who in his thirtieth year began his reign."1

The "small favours" grew in size year by year.

Why it was impossible for Charles to keep his word may be read in Clarendon's Life, and in the history of the Savoy Conference, and need not be restated here. In the opinion of the Anglican clergy, the king's divine right stood no higher than their own. They too had suffered in exile. They had been "robbed" of their tithes, and turned out of their palaces, rectories and vicarages, and excluded from the churches they still called "theirs." Their Book of Common Prayer was no longer in common use, having been banished by the "Directory of Public Worship" since 1645. So late as July 1, 1660, Pepys records attending a service in the Abbey, and adds "No Common Prayer yet." If we find ourselves wondering why the Anglican party should have been so powerful in 1660, our wonder ought not to be greater than is excited by the power of the Puritan party when Laud was put to death. Both parties were, on each occasion, in a minority. Though England has never been long priest-ridden, it has often been priest-led.

The Convention Parliament did all that was expected of it. It was, however irregularly summoned, a truly representative assembly. Its members all swore-what will not members of Parliament swear?-that the king was supreme in Church and State, the only rightful king of the realm and of all other his dominions, and that from their hearts they abhorred, detested, and abjured the damnable doctrine that princes, excommunicated or deprived of the Pope, might be murdered by their subjects. They proceeded to pass a very useful Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, agreeing to let bygones be bygones, except in certain named cases. They ordered Mr. John Milton to be taken into custody, and prosecuted (which he never was) by the Attorney-General. Later on the poet was released from custody, and we find Mr. Marvell complaining to the House that their sergeant had extracted ￡150 in fees before he would let Mr. Milton go. On which Sir Heneage Finch, afterwards Lord Chancellor, laconically observed that Milton deserved hanging. He certainly got off easily, but, as he lived to publish Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, he may be said to have earned his freedom. All his poetry put together never brought him in a third of the sum the sergeant got for letting him out of prison. General Monk, the man-midwife, who so skilfully assisted at that great Birth of Time, the Restoration, was made a duke, and Cromwell's army, so long the force behind the supreme power, was paid its arrears and (two regiments excepted) disbanded. "Fifty thousand men," says Macaulay, "accustomed to the profession of arms, were thrown upon the world ... in a few months there remained not a trace indicating that the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed in the mass of the community."1

After this the House of Commons fell to discussing religion, and made the sad discovery that differences of opinion still existed. In these circumstances they decided to refer the matter to their pious king, and to such divines as he might choose. They then voted large sums of money for the royal establishment, and, it being the very end of August, adjourned till the 6th of November. As for making constitutional terms with the king, they never attempted it, though Sir Matthew Hale is credited with an attempt to induce them to do so. Any proposals of the kind must have failed. The people were in no mood for making constitutions.

Having met again on the 6th of November, Marvell, in a letter to the Mayor and Aldermen of Hull, dated the 27th of the month, reports that "the House fell upon the making out of the King's revenue to ￡1,200,000 a year." "The Customs are estimated toward ￡500,000 per annum in the revenue. His lands and fee farms ￡250,000. The Excise of Beer and Ale ￡300,000, the rest arise out of the Post Office, Wine Licenses, Stannaries Court, Probate of Wills, Post-fines, Forests, and other rights of the Crown. The excise of Foreign Commodities is to be continued apart until satisfaction of public debts and engagements secured upon the excise."

This settlement of revenue marks "the beginning of a time." Cromwell, as Cowley puts it in his Discourse, by far the ablest indictment of Oliver ever penned, "took armes against two hundred thousand pounds a year, and raised them himself to above two millions." It is true. Cromwell spent the money honestly and efficiently, and chiefly on a navy that enabled him to wrest the command of the sea from the Dutch, to secure the carrying trade, and to challenge the world for supremacy in the Indies, both East and West. In doing this, he had the instinct of the whole nation behind him. But it was expensive.

Had Charles been the most honest and thrifty of men, instead of one of the most dishonest and extravagant, he must have found his financial position a very difficult one. He was poorer than Cromwell. The feudal taxation had fallen into desuetude. To revive wardships, etc., was impossible, to recover arrears hopeless. There was nothing for it but scientific taxation. One of his first Acts contains a schedule of taxed articles extending over fifteen double-columned pages of a quarto volume. To raise this revenue was difficult-in fact impossible, and the amount actually obtained was always far below the estimates.

Marvell's letter concludes thus:-

"To-morrow is the Bill for enacting his Majesty's declaration in religious matters and to have its first reading. It is said that on Sunday next Doctor Reynolds shall be created Bishop of Norwich."

The rumour about Reynolds's bishopric proved to be true. The new bishop was a very "moderate" Anglican indeed, and his appointment was meant as a sop to the Presbyterians. Richard Baxter and Edmund Calamy refused similar preferment.

On the 29th of November Marvell's letter contains the following passage:-

"Yesterday the Bill of the King's Declaration in religious matters was read for the first time; but upon the question for a second reading 'twas carried 183 against 157 in the negative, so there is an end of that Bill and for those excellent things therein. We must henceforth rely only upon his Majesty's goodness, who, I must needs say, hath hitherto been more ready to give than we to receive."

It is a noticeable feature of this correspondence that Marvell seldom mentions which way he voted himself.

The letter of the 4th of December contains some interesting matter:-

"Gentlemen,-Since my last, upon Thursday, the Bill for Vicarages hath been carryed up to the Lords; and a Message to them from our House that they would expedite the Bill for confirmation of Magna Charta, that for confirmation of marriages, and other bills of publick concernment, which haue laid by them euer since our last sitting, not returned to us. We had then the Bill for six moneths assesment in consideration, and read the Bill for taking away Court of Wards and Purveyance, and establishing the moiety of the Excise of Beere and ale in perpetuum, about which we sit euery afternoon in a Grand Committee. Upon Sunday last were consecrated in the Abby at Westminster, Doctor Cossins, Bishop of Durham, Sterne of Carlile, Gauden of Exeter, Ironside of Bristow, Loyd of Landaffe, Lucy of St. Dauids, Lany, the seuenth, whose diocese I remember not at present, and to-day they keep their feast in Haberdasher's hall, in London. Dr. Reinolds was not of the number, who is intended for Norwich. A Congedelire is gone down to Hereford for Dr. Monk, the Generall's brother, at present Provost of Eaton. 'Tis thought that since our throwing out the Bill of the King's Declaration, Mr. Calamy, and other moderate men, will be resolute in refusing of Bishopricks.... To-day our House was upon the Bill of Attainder of those that haue been executed, those that are fled, and of Cromwell, Bradshaw, Ireton, and Pride, and 'tis ordered that the carkasses and coffins of the four last named, shall be drawn with what expedition possible, upon an hurdle to Tyburn, there (to) be hanged up for a while, and then buryed under the gallows....

"Westminster, Dec. 4, 1660."

Marvell's cool reporting of the hideous indignity inflicted upon his old master, and allowing it to pass sub silentio, is one of the many occasions that stirred Mr. Grosart's wonder. Nerves were tough in those days. Pepys tells us unconcernedly enough how, after seeing Lord Southampton sworn in at the Court of Exchequer as Lord Treasurer, he noticed "the heads of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton set up at the further end of Westminster Hall." It is quite possible Lady Fauconberg may have seen the same sight.1

The Convention Parliament was dissolved on the 29th of December 1660.

On 1st April 1661 Marvell was returned for the third and last time for Hull, for Charles the Second's first Parliament was of unconscionable long duration, not being dissolved till January 1679, after Marvell's death. It is known in history as the Pensionary or Long Parliament. The election figures were as below:-

Colonel Gilbey, 294

Mr. Andrew Marvell, 240

Mr. Edward Barnard, 195

Mr. John Ramsden, 122

Marvell was not present at or before the election, for on the 6th of April he writes:-

"I perceive by Mr. Mayor that you have again (as if it were grown a thing of course) made choice of me now, the third time, to serve for you in Parliament, which as I cannot attribute to anything but your constancy, so shall I, God willing, as in gratitude obliged, with no less constancy and vigour continue to execute your commands and study your service."

A word may here be said about payment of borough members. The members' fee was 6s. 8d. for every day the Parliament lasted. The wages were paid by the corporation out of the borough funds. It was never a popular charge. Burgesses in many places cared as little for M.P.'s as do some of their successors for free libraries. Prynne, perhaps the greatest parliamentary lawyer that ever lived, told Pepys one day, as they were driving to the Temple, that the number of burgesses to be returned to Parliament for any particular borough was not, for aught Prynne could find, fixed by law, but was at first left to the discretion of the sheriff, and that several boroughs had complained of the sheriff's putting them to the charge of sending up burgesses.

In August 1661 the corporation paid Marvell ￡28 for his fee as one of their burgesses, being 6s. 8d. a day for eighty-four days, the length of the Convention Parliament. Marvell continued to take his wages until the end of his days; but it is perhaps a mistake to suppose he was the very last member to do so. It was, however, unusual in Marvell's time.1

This Pensionary Parliament, though of a very decided "Church and King" complexion, was not in its original composition a body lacking character or independence, but it steadily deteriorated in both respects. Vacancies, as they occurred, and they occurred very frequently in those days of short lives, were filled up by courtiers and pensioners.

In the small tract, entitled Flagellum Parliamentum, which is a highly libellous "Dod," often attributed to Marvell, a record is preserved of more than two hundred members of this Parliament in 1675. Despite some humorous touches, this Flagellum Parliamentum is still disagreeable to read. But the most graphic picture we have of this Parliament is to be found in one of Lord Shaftesbury's political tracts entitled "A letter from a Parliament man to his Friend" (1675):-

"Sir,-I see you are greatly scandalized at our slow and confused Proceedings. I confess you have cause enough; but were you but within these walls for one half day, and saw the strange make and complexion that this house is of, you would wonder as much that ever you wondered at it; for we are such a pied Parliament, that none can say of what colour we are; for we consist of Old Cavaliers, Old Round-Heads, Indigent-Courtiers, and true Country Gentlemen: the two latter are most numerous, and would in probability bring things to some issue were they not clogged with the numerous uncertainties of the former. For the Old Cavalier, grown aged, and almost past his vice, is damnable godly and makes his doting piety more a plague to the world than his debauchery was, for he is so much a by-got to the B(ishop) that he forces his Loyalty to strike sail to his Religion, and could be content to pare the nails a little of the Civil Government, so you would but let him sharpen the Ecclesiastical Talons: which behaviour of his so exasperates the Round-Head, that he on the other hand cares not what increases the Interest of the Crown receives, so he can but diminish that of the miter: so that the Round-Head had rather enslave the Man than the Conscience: the Cavalier rather the Conscience than the Man; there being a sufficient stock of animosity as proper matter to work upon. Upon these, therefore, the Courtier mutually plays, for if any Ante-court motion be made he gains the Round-Head either to oppose or absent by telling them, If they will join him now he will join them for Liberty of Conscience. And when any affair is started on behalf of the Country he assures the Cavaliers, If they will then stand by him he will then join with them in promoting a Bill against the fanatics. Thus play they on both hands.... Wherefore it were happy that he had neither Round-Head nor Cavalier in the House, for they are each of them so prejudicate against the other that their sitting here signifies nothing but their fostering their old venom and lying at catch to stop every advantage to bear down each other, though it be in the destruction of their country. For if the Round-Heads bring in a good bill the Old Cavalier opposes it, for no other reason but because they brought it in."1

Such was the theatre of Marvell's public actions for the rest of his days, and if at times he may need forgiveness for the savagery of his satire, it ought to be found easy to forgive him.

The two members for Hull were soon immersed in matters of much local importance. They began by quarrelling with one another, Marvell writing "the bond of civility betwixt Col. Gilby and myself being unhappily snappt in pieces, and in such manner that I cannot see how it is possible ever to knit them again." House of Commons quarrels are usually soon made up, and so was this one. The custom was for both members to sign these letters, though they are all written in Marvell's hand-but if this was for any reason inconvenient, Marvell signed alone. No letters, unless in Marvell's writing, are preserved at Hull, which is a curious fact.

One of these bits of local business related to a patent alleged to have been granted by the Crown to certain persons, authorising them to erect and maintain ballast wharfs in the various ports, and to make charges in respect of them. This was resented by the members for the ports, and on Marvell's motion the matter was referred to the Committee of Grievances, before whom the patentees were summoned. When they came it appeared that the patent warranted none of the exactions that had been demanded, and also that the warrant sent down to Hull naming these charges was nothing more than a draft framed by the patentees themselves, and not authorised in any way. The patent was at once suspended. Marvell, like a true member of Parliament, wishes to get any little local credit that may be due for such prompt action, and writes:-

"In this thing (although I count all things I can do for your service to be mere trifles, and not worth taking notice of in respect of what I owe you) I must do myself that right to let you know that I, and I alone, have had the happiness to do that little which hitherto is effected."

The matter required delicate handling, for a reason Marvell gives: "Because, if the King's right in placing such impositions should be weakened, neither should he have power to make a grant of them to you."

Another much longer business related to a lighthouse, which some outsiders were anxious to build in the Humber. The corporation of Hull, acting on Marvell's advice, had petitioned the Privy Council, and were asked by their business-like member "to send us up a dormant credit for an hundred pound, which we yet indeed have no use of, but if need be must have ready at hand to reward such as will not otherwise befriend your business." Some months later Marvell forwards an account, not of the ￡100, but of the legal expenses about the lighthouse. He wishes it were less, but hopes that the "vigorous resistance" will discourage the designers from proceeding farther. This it did not do. As a member of the bar, I find two or three of the items in this old-world Bill of Costs interesting:-

To Mr. Scroggs to attend the Council, ￡3 6 0

" " " again for the same, 3 6 0

Spent on Mr. Scroggs at dinner, 18 0

To Mr. Scroggs again, 3 0 0

Fees of the Council Table, 1 10 0

Fee to Clerk of the Council, 2 0 0

For dinner for Mr. Scroggs and wine after, 1 0 0

To Mr. Cresset (the Solicitor), 20 0 0

To Mr. Scroggs for a dinner, 1 0 0

The barrister who was so frequently "refreshed" by Marvell lived to become "the infamous Lord Chief Justice Scroggs" of all school histories.

A week before the prorogation of Parliament, which happened on the 19th of May 1662, Marvell went to Holland and remained there for nine months, for he did not return until the very end of March 1663, more than a month after the reassembling of the House.

What took him there nobody knows. Writing to the Trinity House about the lighthouse business on the 8th of May 1662, Marvell says:-

"But that which troubles me is that by the interest of some persons too potent for me to refuse, and who have a great direction and influence upon my counsels and fortune, I am obliged to go beyond sea before I have perfected it (i.e. the lighthouse business). But first I do thereby make my Lord Carlisle (who is a member of the Privy Council and one of them to whom your business is referred) absolutely yours. And my journey is but into Holland, from whence I shall weekly correspond as if I were at London with all the rest of my friends, towards the affecting your business. Then I leave Col. Gilbey there, whose ability for business and affection to yours is such that I cannot be wanted though I am missing."

It is plain from this that Lord Carlisle is one of the powerful persons referred to-but beyond this we cannot go.

Whilst in Holland Marvell wrote both to the Trinity House and to the corporation on business matters.

In March 1663 Marvell came back in a hurry, some complaints having been made in Hull about his absence. He begins his first letter after his return as follows:-

"Being newly arrived in town and full of business, yet I could not neglect to give you notice that this day (2nd April 1663) I have been in the House and found my place empty, though it seems, as I now hear, that some persons would have been so courteous as to have filled it for me."

In none of these letters is any reference made to the debates in the House on the unhappy Bill of Uniformity, nor does any record of those discussions anywhere exist. The Savoy Conference proved a failure, and no lay reader of Baxter's account of it can profess wonder. Not a single point in difference was settled. In the meantime the restored Houses of Convocation, from which the Presbyterian members were excluded, had completed their revision of the Book of Common Prayer and presented it to Parliament.

In considering the Bill for Uniformity, the House of Lords, where Presbyterianism was powerfully represented, showed more regard for those "tender consciences" to which the king (by the new Prayer Book called for the first time "our most religious King") had referred in his Breda Declaration than did the House of Commons. "The Book, the whole Book, and nothing but the Book" was, in effect, the cry of the lower House, and on the 19th of May, ten days after Marvell had left for the Continent, the Act of Uniformity became law, and by the 24th of August 1662 all beneficed ministers and schoolmasters had to make the celebrated subscription and profession, or go out into the wilderness.

There has always been a dispute as to the physical possibility of perusing the compilation in question before the day fixed by the Statute. The Book was advertised for sale in London on the 6th of August, but how many copies were actually available on that day is not known.

The Dean and Chapter of Peterborough did not get their copies until the 17th of August. When the new folios reached the lonely parsonages of Cumberland and Durham-who would care to say? The Act required a verbal avowal of "unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the Book of Common Prayer, and administrations of the Sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the Church according to the use of the Church of England, together with the Psalter, and the form of manner of making, ordaining, and consecrating Bishops, Priests, and Deacons" to be made after the service upon "some Lord's day" before the Feast of St. Bartholomew, i.e. the 24th of August 1662. The Act also required subscription within the same time-limit to a declaration of (inter alia) uniformity to the Liturgy of the Church of England "as it is now by law established."

That this haste was indecent no layman is likely to dispute, but that it wrought practical wrong is doubtful. The Vicar of Bray needed no time to read his new Folio to enable him to make whatever avowal concerning it the law demanded; and as for signing the declaration, all he required for that purpose was pen and ink. Neither had the incumbent, who was a good churchman at heart, any doubts to settle. He rejoiced to know that his side was once more uppermost, and that it would be no longer necessary for him, in order to retain his living, to pretend to tolerate a Presbyterian, or to submit to read in his church the Directory of Public Worship. Convocation had approved the new Prayer Book, which was in substance the old one, and what more did any churchman require? As for the Presbyterians and others who were in possession of livings, the failure of the Savoy Conference must have made it plain to them that the Church of England had not allowed the king to keep his word, that compromise and comprehension had failed, and that if they were to remain where they were, it could only be on terms of completely severing themselves from all other Protestant bodies in the world, and becoming thorough Episcopalians. No Presbyterian of any eminence was prepared to make the statutory avowal. Painful as it always must be to give up any good thing by a fixed date, it is hard to see what advantage would have accrued from delay.

When the day came, some two thousand parsons were turned out of the Church of England. Among them were included many of the most devout and some of the most learned of our divines. Their "coming in" had been irregular, their "going out" was painful.

Save so far as it turned these men out, the Act was a failure. It did not procure that uniformity in the public worship of God which it declared was so desirable; it prevented no scandal; it arrested no decay; it allayed no distemper, and it certainly did not settle the peace of the Church. Inside the Church the bishops were supine, the parochial clergy indifferent, and the worshippers, if such a name can properly be bestowed upon the congregations, were grossly irreverent. Nor was any improvement in the conduct of the Church service noticeable until after the Revolution, and when legislation had conceded a somewhat shabby measure of toleration to those who by that time had become rigid, traditional, and hereditary dissenters. Then indeed some attempts began to be made to secure a real uniformity of ritual in the public worship of the Church of England.1 How far success has rewarded these exertions it is not for me to say.

Marvell did not remain long at home after his return from Holland. A strange adventure lay before him. He thus introduces it in a letter dated 20th June 1663:-

"Gentlemen, my very worthy Friends,-The relation I have to your affairs, and the intimacy of that affection I ow you, do both incline and oblige me to communicate to you, that there is a probability I may very shortly have occasion to go beyond sea; for my Lord of Carlisle being chosen by his Majesty, Embassadour Extraordinary to Muscovy, Sweden, and Denmarke, hath used his power, which ought to be very great with me, to make me goe along with him Secretary in those embassages. It is no new thing for Members of our House to be dispens'd with for the service of the King and Nation in forain parts. And you may be sure that I will not stirre without speciall leave of the House; that so you may be freed from any possibility of being importuned or tempted to make any other choice, in my absence. However, I can not but advise also with you, desiring to take your assent along with me, so much esteeme I have both of your prudence and friendship. The time allotted for the embassy is not much above a yeare: probably it may not be much less betwixt our adjournment and next meeting; and, however, you have Colonell Gilby, to whom my presence can make litle addition, so that if I cannot decline this voyage, I shall have the comfort to believe, that, all things considered, you cannot thereby receive any disservice. I shall hope to receive herein your speedy answer...."

What was the "power" Lord Carlisle had over Marvell is not now discoverable, but the tie, whatever it may have been, was evidently a close one.

A month after this letter Marvell started on his way.

"Gentlemen, my very worthy Friends,-Being this day taking barge for Gravesend, there to embark for Archangel, so to Muscow, thence for Sweden, and last of all Denmarke; all of which I hope, by God's blessing, to finish within twelve moneths time: I do hereby, with my last and seriousest thoughts, salute you, rendring you all hearty thanks for your great kindnesse and friendship to me upon all occasions, and ardently beseeching God to keep you all in His gracious protection, to your own honour, and the welfare and flourishing of your Corporation, to which I am and shall ever continue a most affectionate and devoted servant. I undertake this voyage with the order and good liking of his Majesty, and by leave given me from the House and enterd in the Journal; and having received moreover your approbation, I go therefore with more ease and satisfaction of mind, and augurate to myselfe the happier successe in all my proceedings...."

It was Marvell's good fortune to be in Lord Carlisle's frigate which made the voyage to Archangel in less than a month, sailing from Gravesend on the 22nd of July and arriving at the bar of Archangel on the 19th of August. The companion frigate took seven weeks to compass the same distance.

Nothing of any importance attaches to this Russian embassy. It cost a great deal of money, took up a great deal of time, exposed the ambassador and his suite to much rudeness and discomfort, and failed to effect its main object, which was to secure a renewal of the privileges formerly enjoyed in Muscovy by British merchants.

One of the attendants upon the ambassador made a small book out of his travels, which did not get printed till 1669, when it attracted little notice. Mr. Grosart was the first of Marvell's many biographers to discover the existence of this narrative.1 He found it in the first instance, to use his own language, "in one of good trusty John Harris' folios of Travels and Voyages" (two vols. folio, 1705); but later on he made the sad discovery that this "good trusty John Harris" had uplifted what he called his "true and particular account" from the book of 1669 without any acknowledgment. "For ways that are dark" the old compiler of travels was not easily excelled, but why should Mr. Grosart have gone out of his way to call an eighteenth-century book-maker, about whom he evidently knew nothing, "good and trusty"? Harris was never either the one or the other, and died a pauper!

A journey to Moscow in 1663-64 was no joke. Lord Carlisle, who was accompanied by his wife and eldest son, although ready to start from Archangel by the end of September, was doomed to spend both the 5th of November and Christmas Day in the gloomy town of Vologda, which they had reached, travelling by water, on the 17th of October. Some of this time was spent in quarrelling as to who was to supply the sledges that were required to convey the ambassador and all his impedimenta along the now ice-bound roads to Moscow. It was one of Marvell's many duties to remonstrate with the authorities for their cruel and disrespectful indifference; he did so with great freedom, but with no effect, and at last the ambassador was obliged to hire two hundred sledges at his own charges. Sixty he sent on ahead, following with one hundred and forty on the 15th of January 1664. It was an intensely cold journey, and the accommodation at night, with one happy exception, proved quite infamous. On the 3rd of February Lord Carlisle and his cortége found themselves five versts from Moscow. The 5th of February was fixed for their entry into the city in all their finery. They were ready on the morning of that day, awaiting the arrival of the Tsar's escort, but it never came. Lord Carlisle had sent his cooks on to Moscow to prepare the dinner he expected to eat in his city-quarters. Nightfall approached, and it was not till "half an hour before night" that the belated messengers arrived, full of excuses. The ambassador was hungry, cold, and furious, nor did his anger abate when told he was not to be allowed to enter Moscow that night, as the Tsar and his ladies were very anxious to enjoy the spectacle. The return of the cooks from Moscow and the preparation of dinner, though a mitigation, was no cure for wounded pride, and Lord Carlisle, calling Marvell to his side, and with his assistance, concocted a letter in Latin to the Tsar, complaining bitterly of their ill-treatment inter fumosi gurgustii sordes et angustias sine cibo aut potu, and going so far as to assert that had anything of the kind happened in England to a foreign ambassador, the King of England would never have rested until the offence had been atoned for with the blood of the criminals. When, some forty years afterwards, Peter the Great asked Queen Anne to chop off the heads of the rude men who had arrested his ambassador for debt, he had, perhaps, Marvell's letter before him.

On the 6th of February Lord Carlisle and his suite made their public entry into Moscow; but so long a time was occupied over the few versts they had to travel, that it was dusk before the Kremlin was reached.

The formal reception of the ambassador was on the 11th of February. Marvell was in the ambassador's sledge and carried his credentials upon a yard of red damask. The titles of the Russian Potentate would, if printed here, fill half a page. All the Russias, Great, Little, and White, emperies more than one, dukedoms by the dozen, territories, countries, and dominions-not all easy to identify on the map, and very hard to pronounce-were read out in a loud voice by Marvell. At the end of them came the homely title of the Earl and his offices, "his Majesty's Lieutenant in the Counties of Cumberland and Westmorland."

The letters read and delivered, the Tsar and his Boyars rose in their places simultaneously, and their tissue vests made so strange, loud, and unexpected a noise as to provoke the ever too easily moved risibility of the Englishmen.1 When Marvell and the rest of them had ceased from giggling, the Tsar inquired after the health of the king, but the distance between his Imperial Majesty and Lord Carlisle being too great for the question to carry, it had to be repeated by those who were nearer the ambassador, who gravely replied that when he last saw his master, namely on the 20th of July then last past, he was perfectly well. To the same question as to the health of "the desolate widow of Charles the First," Carlisle returned the same cautious answer. He then read a very long speech in English, which his interpreter turned into Russian. The same oration was rendered into Latin by Marvell, and presented. Over Marvell's Latin trouble arose, for the Russians were bent on taking and giving offence. Marvell had styled the Tsar Illustrissimus when he ought, so it was alleged, to have called him Serenissimus. Marvell was not a schoolmaster's son, an old scholar of Trinity, and Milton's assistant as Latin Secretary for nothing. He prepared a reply which, as it does not lack humour, has a distinct literary flavour, and is all that came of the embassy, may here be given at length:-

"I reply, saith he, that I sent no such paper into the Embassy-office, but upon the desire of his Tzarskoy Majesty's Councellor Evan Offonassy Pronchissof, I delivered it to him, not being a paper of State, nor written in the English Language wherein I treat, nor put into the hands of the near Boyars and Councellors of his Tzarskoy majesty, nor subscribed by my self, nor translated into Russe by my Interpreter, but only as a piece of curiosity, which is now restored me, and I am possessed of it; so that herein his Tzarskoy majestie's near Boyars and Councellors are doubtless ill grounded. But again I say concerning the value of the words Illustrissimus and Serenissimus compared together, seeing we must here from affaires of State, fall into Grammatical contests concerning the Latin tongue; that the word Serenus signifieth nothing but still and calm; and, therefore, though of late times adopted into the Titles of great Princes by reason of that benigne tranquility which properly dwells in the majestick countenance of great Princes, and that venerable stillness of all the Attendants that surround them, of which I have seen an excellent example when I was in the presence of his Tzarskoy majesty, yet is more properly used concerning the calmness of the weather, or season. So that even the night is elegantly called Serena by the best Authors, Cicero in Arato 12, Lucretius i. l. 29. 'Serena nox'; and upon perusing again what I have writ in this paper, I finde that I have out of the customariness of that expression my self near the beginning said, And that most serene night, &c. Whereas on the contrary Illustris in its proper derivation and signification expresseth that which is all resplendent, lightsome, and glorious, as well without as within, and that not with a secondary but with a primitive and original light. For if the Sun be, as he is, the first fountain of light, and Poets in their expressions (as is well known) are higher by much than those that write in Prose, what else is it when Ovid in the 2. of the Metamorphoses saith of Ph?bus speaking with Pha?thon, Qui terque quaterque concutiens Illustre caput, and the Latin Orators, as Pliny, Ep. 139, when they would say the highest thing that can be exprest upon any subject, word it thus, Nihil Illustrius dicere possum. So that hereby may appear to his Tzarskoy Majestie's near Boyars and Counsellors what diminution there is to his Tzarskoy Majesty (which farr be it from my thoughts) if I appropriate Serenissimus to my Master and Illustrissimus to Him than which nihil dici potest Illustrius. But because this was in the time of the purity of the Latin tongue, when the word Serenus was never used in the Title of any Prince or Person, I shall go on to deale with the utmost candor, forasmuch as in this Nation the nicety of that most eloquent language is not so perfectly understood, which gives occasion to these mistakes. I confess therefore that indeed in the declination of the Latin tongue, and when there scarce could be found out words enough to supply the modern ambition of Titles, Serenissimus as several other words hath grown in fashion for a compellation of lesser as well as greater Princes, and yet befits both the one and the other. So there is Serenissima Respublica Veneta, Serenitates Electori?, Serenitates Regi?, even as the word Highness or Celsitudo befits a Duke, a Prince, a King, or an Emperour, adjoyning to it the respective quality, and so the word Illustris. But suppose it were by modern use (which I deny) depressed from the undoubted superiority that it had of Serenus in the purest antiquity, yet being added in the transcendent degree to the word Emperour, the highest denomination that a Prince is capable of, it becomes of the same value. So that to interpret Illustrissimus unto diminution is to find a positive in a superlative, and in the most orient light to seek for darkness. And I would, seeing the near Boyars and Counsellors of his Tzarskoy Majesty are pleased to mention the Title given to his Tzarskoy Majesty by his Cesarian Majesty, gladly be satisfied by them, whether ever any Cesarian Majesty writ formerly hither in High-Dutch, and whether then they styled his Tzarskoy Majesty Durchluchtigste which is the same with Illustrissimus, and which I believe the C?sar hath kept for Himself. But to cut short, his Royal Majesty hath used the word to his Tzarskoy Majesty in his Letter, not out of imitation of others, although even in the Dutch Letter to his Tzarskoy Majesty of 16 June 1663, I finde Durchlauchtigste the same (as I said) with Illustrissimus, but out of the constant use of his own Court, further joyning before it Most High, Most Potent, and adding after it Great Lord Emperour, which is an higher Title than any Prince in the World gives his Tzarskoy Majesty, and as high a Title of honour as can be given to any thing under the Divinity. For the King my Master who possesses as considerable Dominions, and by as high and self-dependent a right as any Prince in the Universe, yet contenting Himself with the easiest Titles, and satisfying Himself in the essence of things, doth most willingly give to other Princes the Titles which are appropriated to them, but to the Tzarskoy Majesties of Russia his Royal Ancestors, and to his present Tzarskoy Majesty his Royal Majesty himself, have usually and do gladly pay Titles even to superfluity out of meer kindness. And upon that reason He added the word most Illustrious, and so did I use it in the Latin of my speech. Yet, that You may find I did not out of any criticisme of honor, but for distinction sake use it as I did, You may see in one place of the same speech Serenitas, speaking of his Tzarskoy Majesty: and I would have used Serenissimus an hundred times concerning his Tzarskoy Majesty, had I thought it would have pleased Him better. And I dare promise You that his Majesty will upon the first information from me stile him Serenissimus, and I (notwithstanding what I have said) shall make little difficulty of altering the word in that speech, and of delivering it so to You, with that protestation that I have not in using that word Illustrissimus erred nor used any diminution (which God forbid) to his Tzarskoy Majesty, but on the contrary after the example of the King my Master intended and shewed him all possible honor. And so God grant all happiness to His most high, most Potent, most Illustrious, and most Serene Tzarskoy Majesty, and that the friendship may daily increase betwixt His said Majesty and his most Serene Majesty my Master."

On the 19th of February the Tsar invited Lord Carlisle and his suite to a dinner, which, beginning at two o'clock, lasted till eleven, when it was prematurely broken up by the Tsar's nose beginning to bleed. Five hundred dishes were served, but there were no napkins, and the table-cloths only just covered the boards. There were Spanish wines, white and red mead, Puaz and strong waters. The English ambassador was not properly placed at table, not being anywhere near the Tsar, and his faithful suite shared his resentment. Time went on, but no diplomatic progress was made. The Tsar would not renew the privileges of the British merchants; Easter was spent in Moscow, May also-and still nothing was done. Carlisle, in a huff, determined to go away, and, somewhat to the distress of his followers, refused to accept the costly sables sent by the Tzar, not only to the ambassador, Lady Carlisle, and Lord Morpeth, but to the secretaries and others. The Tzar thereupon returned the plate which our king had sent him, which plate Lord Carlisle seems to have appropriated, no doubt with diplomatic correctness, as his perquisite in lieu of the sables; but the suite got nothing.

The embassy left Moscow on the 24th of June for Novgorod and Riga, and after visiting Stockholm and Copenhagen, Lord Carlisle and Marvell reached London on the 30th of January 1665.

During Marvell's absence war had been declared with the Dutch. It was never difficult to go to war with the Dutch. The king was always in want of money, and as no proper check existed over war supplies, he took what he wanted out of them. The merchants on 'Change desired war, saying that the trade of the world was too little for both England and Holland, and that one or the other "must down." The English manufacturers, who felt the sting of their Dutch competitors, were always in favour of war. Then the growing insolence of the Dutch in the Indies was not to be borne. Stories were circulated how the Hollanders had proclaimed themselves "Lords of the Southern Seas," and meant to deny English ships the right of entry in that quarter of the globe. A baronet called on Pepys and pulled out of his pocket letters from the East Indies, full of sad tales of Englishmen having been actually thrashed inside their own factory at Surat by swaggering Dutchmen, who had insulted the flag of St. George, and swore they were going to be the masters "out there." Pepys, who knew a little about the state of the royal navy, listened sorrowfully and was content to hope that the war would not come until "we are more ready for it."

In the House of Commons the prudent men were against the war, and were at once accused of being in the pay of the Dutch. The king's friends were all for the war, and nobody doubted that some of the money voted for it would find its way into their pockets, or at all events that pensions would reward their fidelity. A third group who favoured the war were supposed to do so because their disloyalty and fanaticism always disposed them to trouble the waters in which they wished to fish.

The war began in November 1664, and on the 24th of that month the king opened Parliament and demanded money. He got it. Clarendon describes how Sir Robert Paston from Norfolk, a back-bench man, "who was no frequent speaker, but delivered what he had a mind to say very clearly," stood up and proposed a grant of two and a half million pounds, to be spread over three years. So huge a sum took the House by surprise. Nobody spoke; "they sat in amazement." Somebody at last found his voice and moved a much smaller sum, but no one seconded him. Sir Robert Paston ultimately found supporters, "no man who had any relation to the Court speaking a word." The Speaker put Sir Robert Paston's motion as the question, "and the affirmative made a good sound, and very few gave their negative aloud." But Clarendon adds, "it was notorious very many sat silent."

The war was not in its early stages unpopular, being for the control of the sea, for the right of search, for the fishing trade, for mastery of the "gorgeous East." The Admiralty had been busy, and a hundred frigates, well gunned, were ready for the blue water by February 1665. The Duke of York, who took the command, was a keen sailor, though his unhappy notions as to patronage, and its exercise, were fatal to an efficient service. On the 3rd of June the duke had his one victory; it was off the roadstead of Harwich, and the roar of his artillery was heard in Westminster. It was a fierce fight; the king's great friend, Charles Berkeley, just made a peer and about to be made a duke, Lord Muskerry and young Richard Boyle, all on the duke's ship the Royal Charles, were killed by one shot, their blood and brains flying in the duke's face. The Earls of Marlborough and Portland were killed. The gallant Lawson, who rose from the ranks in Cromwell's time, an Anabaptist and a Republican, but still in high command, received on board his ship, the Royal Oak, a fatal wound. On the other side the Dutch admiral, Opdam, was blown into the air with his ship and crew. The Dutch fleet was scattered, and fled, after a loss estimated at twenty-four ships and eight thousand men killed and wounded; England lost no ship and but six hundred men.

The victory was not followed up. Some say the duke lost nerve. Tromp was allowed to lead a great part of the fleet away in safety, and when the great De Ruyter was recalled from the West Indies he was soon able to assume the command of a formidable number of fighting craft.

In less than ten days after this great engagement the plague appeared in London, a terrible and a solemnising affliction, lasting the rest of the year. It was at its worst in September, when in one week more than seven thousand died of it. The total number of its dead is estimated at sixty-eight thousand five hundred and ninety-six.

On account of the plague Parliament was summoned to meet at Oxford in October 1665.

Marvell must have reached Oxford in good time, for the Admission Book of the Bodleian records his visit to the library on the last day of September. His first letter from Oxford is dated 15th October, and in it he tells the corporation that the House, "upon His Majesty's representation of the necessity of further supplies in reference to the Dutch War and probability of the French embracing their interests, hath voted the King ￡1,250,000 additional to be levied in two years." The king, who was the frankest of mortals in speech, though false as Belial in action, told the House that he had already spent all the money previously voted and must have more, especially if France was to prefer the friendship of Holland to his. Amidst loud acclamations the money was voted. The French ambassadors, who were in Oxford, saw for themselves the temper of Parliament.

Notwithstanding the terrible plight of the capital, Oxford was gaiety itself. The king was accompanied by his consort, who then was hopeful of an heir, and also by Lady Castlemaine and Miss Stewart. Lady Castlemaine did not escape the shaft of University wit, for a stinging couplet was set up during the night on her door, for the discovery of the authorship of which a reward of ￡1000 was offered. It may very well have been Marvell's.1

The Duke of Monmouth gave a ball to the queen and her ladies, where, after the queen's retirement, "Mrs. Stewart was extraordinary merry," and sang "French songs with great skill."2

Ten Acts of Parliament received the royal assent at Oxford, of which but one is still remembered in certain quarters-the Five Mile Act, which Marvell briefly describes as an Act "for debarring ejected Nonconformists from living in or near Corporations (where they had formerly pursued their callings), unless taking the new Oath and Declaration." Parliament was prorogued at the end of October.

Another visitation of Providence was soon to befall the capital. On Sunday morning, the 2nd of September, Pepys was aroused by one of his maid-servants at 3 a.m. to look at a fire. He could not make out much about it and went to bed again, but when he rose at seven o'clock it was still burning, so he left his house and made his way to the Tower, from whence he saw London Bridge aflame, and describes how the poor pigeons, loth to leave their homes, fluttered about the balconies, until with singed wings they fell into the flames. After gazing his fill he went to Whitehall and had an interview with the king, who at once ordered his barge and proceeded downstream to his burning City, and to the assistance of a distracted Lord Mayor.

The fire raged four days, and made an end of old London, a picturesque and even beautiful City. St. Paul's, both the church and the school, the Royal Exchange, Ludgate, Fleet Street as far as the Inner Temple, were by the 7th of the month smoking ruins. Four hundred streets, eighty-nine churches (just a church an hour, so the curious noted), warehouses unnumbered with all their varied contents, whole editions of books, valuable and the reverse of valuable, were wiped out of existence. Rents to an enormous amount ceased to be represented any longer by the houses that paid them. How was the king to get his chimney-money? How were merchants to meet their obligations? The parsons on Sunday, the 9th of September, ought to have had no difficulty in finding texts for their sermons. Pepys went to church twice, but without edification, and certainly Dean Harding, whom he heard complaining in the evening "that the City had been reduced from a folio to a duo decimo," hardly rose to the dignity of the occasion.

Strange to say, not a life was actually lost in the fire,1 though some old Londoners (among them Edmund Calamy's grandfather) died of grief, and others (and among them Shirley the dramatist and his wife) from exposure and exhaustion. One hysterical foreigner, who insisted that he lit the flame, was executed, though no sensible man believed what he said. It was long the boast of the merchants of London that no one of their number "broke" in consequence of the great fire.

Unhappily the belief was widespread, as that "tall bully," the monument, long testified, that the fire was the work of the Roman Catholics, and aliens, suspected of belonging to our old religion, found it dangerous to walk the streets whilst the embers still smoked, which they continued to do for six months.

The meeting of Parliament was a little delayed in consequence of this national disaster, and when it did meet at the end of the month, Marvell reports the appointment of two Committees, one "about the Fire of London," and the other "to receive informations of the insolence of the Popish priests and Jesuits, and of the increase of Popery." The latter Committee almost at once reported to the House, to quote from Marvell's letter of the 27th of October, "that his Majesty be desired to issue out his proclamation that all Popish priests and Jesuits, except such as not being natural-born subjects, or belong to the Queen Mother and Queen Consort, be banished in thirty days or else the law be executed upon them, that all Justices of Peace and officers concerned put the laws in execution against Papists and suspected Papists in order to their execution, and that all officers, civil or military, not taking the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance within twenty days be displaced."

In a very real sense the great fire of London continued to smoke for many a weary year, and to fill the air with black suspicions and civil discord.

Parliament had not sat long before it was discovered that a change had taken place in its temper and spirit. The plague and the fire had contributed to this change. The London clergy had not exhibited great devotion during the former affliction. Many of the incumbents deserted their flocks, and their empty pulpits had been filled by zealots, who preached "Woe unto Jerusalem." The profligacy of the Court, and the general decay of manners, when added to the severity of the legislation against the Nonconformists, gave the ejected clergy opportunities for a renewal of their spiritual ministrations, and as usual their labours, pro salute animarum, aroused political dissatisfaction. Some of the more outrageous supporters of the royal prerogative, the renegade May among them, professed to see in the fire a punishment upon the spirit of freedom, for which the City had once been famous, and urged the king not to suffer it to be rebuilt again "to be a bit in his mouth and a bridle upon his neck, but to keep it all open," and that his troops might enter whenever he thought necessary, "there being no other way to govern that rude multitude but by force."

Rabid nonsense of this kind had no weight with the king, who never showed his native good sense more conspicuously than in the pains he took over the rebuilding of London; but none the less it had its effect in getting rid once and for ever of that spirit of excessive (besotted is Hallam's word) loyalty which had characterised the Restoration.

The king, of course, wanted money, nor was Parliament disposed to refuse it, we being still at war with Holland; but to the horror of that elderly pedant, Lord Clarendon, the Commons passed a Bill appointing a commission of members of both Houses "to inspect"-I am now quoting Marvell-"and examine thoroughly the former expense of the ￡2,800,000, of the ￡1,250,000 of the Militia money, of the prize goods, etc." In an earlier letter Marvell attributes the new temper of Parliament, "not to any want of ardour to supply the public necessities, but out of our House's sense also of the burden to be laid upon the subject." Clarendon was so alarmed that he advised a dissolution. Charles was alarmed, too, knowing well that both Carteret, the Treasurer of the Navy, and Lord Ashley, the Treasurer of the Prize Money, issued out many sums upon the king's warrant, for which no accounts could be produced, but he was still more frightened of a new Parliament. In the present Parliament he had, so Clarendon admits, "a hundred members of his own menial servants and their near relations." The bishops were also against a dissolution, dreading the return of Presbyterian members, so Clarendon's advice was not followed, and the king very reluctantly consented to the commission, about which Pepys has so much to say. It did not get appointed at once, but when it did Pepys rejoices greatly that its secretary, Mr. Jessopp, was "an old fashioned Cromwell man"; in other words, both honest and efficient.

The shrewd Secretary of the Navy Office here puts his finger on the real plague-spot of the Restoration. Our Puritan historians write rather loosely about "the floodgates of dissipation," etc., having been flung open by that event as if it had wrought a sudden change in human nature. Mr. Pepys, whose frank Diary begins during the Protectorate, underwent no such change. He was just the same sinner under Cromwell as he was under Charles. Sober, grave divines may be found deploring the growing profligacy of the times long before the 29th of May 1660. An era of extravagance was evidently to be expected. No doubt the king's return assisted it. No country could be anything but the worse for having Charles the Second as its "most religious King." The Restoration of the Stuarts was the best "excuse for a glass" ever offered to an Englishman. He availed himself of it with even more than his accustomed freedom. But it cannot be said that the king's debauchery was ever approved of even in London. Both the mercurial Pepys and the grave Evelyn alike deplore it. The misfortune clearly attributable to the king's return was the substitution of a corrupt, inefficient, and unpatriotic administration for the old-fashioned servants of the public whom Cromwell had gathered round him.

Parliament was busy with new taxes. In November 1666 Marvell writes:-

"The Committee has prepared these votes. All persons shall pay one shilling per poll, all aliens two, all Nonconformists and papists two, all servants one shilling in the pound of their wages, all personal estates shall pay for so much as is not already taxed by the land-tax, after twenty shillings in the hundred. Cattle, corn, and household furniture shall be excepted, and all such stock-in-trade as is already taxed by the land-tax, but the rest to be liable."

Stringent work! Later on we read:-

"Three shillings in the pound for all offices and public employments, except military; lawyers and physicians proportionate to their practice."

Here is the income-tax long before Mr. Pitt.

The House of Lords, trembling on the verge of a breach of privilege, altered this Poll Bill. Marvell writes in January 1667:-

"We have not advanced much this week; the alterations of the Lords upon the Poll Bill have kept us busy. We have disagreed in most. Aliens we adhere to pay double. Nonconformists we agree with them not to pay double (126 to 91), to allow no exemptions from patents to free from paying, we adhere; and we also rejected a long clause whereby they as well as the Commoners pretend distinctly to give to the King, and to-day we send up our reasons."

The Lords agreed, and the Bill passed.

Ireland supplied a very stormy measure. I am afraid Marvell was on the wrong side, but owing to his reserve I am not sure. An Irish Cattle Bill was a measure very popular in the House of Commons, its object being to prevent Ireland from sending over live beasts to be fattened, killed, and consumed in England. You can read all about it in Clarendon's Life (vol. iii. pp. 704-720, 739), and think you are reading about Canadian cattle to-day. The breeders (in a majority) were on one side, and the owners of pasture-land on the other. The breeders said the Irish cattle were bred in Ireland for nothing and transported for little, that they undersold the English-bred cattle, and consequently "the breed of Cattle in the Kingdom was totally given over," and rents fell. Other members contended in their places "that their countries had no land bad enough to breed, and that their traffic consisted in buying lean cattle and making them fat, and upon this they paid their rent." Nobody, except the king, gave a thought to Ireland. He, in this not unworthy of his great Tudor predecessor, Henry the Eighth, declared he was King of Ireland no less than of England, and would do nothing to injure one portion of his dominions for the benefit of another. But as usual he gave way, being in great straits for money. The House of Lords was better disposed towards Ireland than the House of Commons, but they too yielded to selfish clamour, and the Bill, which had excited great fury, became law, and proved ineffective, owing (as was alleged) to that corruption which restrictions on trade seem to have the trick of breeding.1

It is always agreeable to be reminded that however large a part of our history is composed of the record of passion, greed, delusion, and stupidity, yet common-sense, the love of order and of justice (in matters of business), have usually been the predominant factors in our national life, despite priest, merchant, and party.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than by two measures to which Marvell refers as Bills "for the prevention of lawsuits between landlord and tenant" and for "the Rebuilding of London." Both these Bills became law in February 1668, within five months of the great catastrophe that was their occasion. Two more sensible, well-planned, well-drawn, courageous measures were never piloted through both Houses. King, Lords and Commons, all put their heads together to face a great emergency and to provide an immediate remedy.

The Bill to prevent lawsuits is best appreciated if we read its preamble:-

"Whereas the greatest part of the houses in the City of London having been burnt by the dreadful and dismal fire which happened in September last, many of the Tenants, under-tenants, and late occupiers are liable unto suits and actions to compel them to repair and to rebuild the same, and to pay their rents as if the same had not been burnt, and are not relievable therefor in any ordinary course of law; and great differences are likely to arise concerning the Repairs and rebuilding the said houses, and payment of rents which, if they should not be determined with speed and without charge, would much obstruct the rebuilding of the sd City. And for that it is just that everyone concerned should bear a proportionate share of this loss according to their several interests wherein in respect of the multitude of cases, varying in their circumstances, no certain general rule can be prescribed."

After this recital it was enacted that the judges of the King's Bench and Common Pleas and the Barons of the Exchequer, or any three or more of them, should form a Court of Record to hear and determine every possible dispute or difference arising out of the great fire, whether relating to liability to repair, and rebuild, or to pay rent, or for arrears of rent (other than arrears which had accrued due before the 1st of September) or otherwise howsoever. The proceedings were to be by summary process, sine forma et figura judicii and without court fees. The judges were to be bound by no rules either of law or equity, and might call for what evidence they chose, including that of the interested parties, and try the case as it best could be tried. Their orders were to be final and not (save in a single excepted case) subject to any appeal. All persons in remainder and reversion were to be bound by these orders, although infants, married women, idiots, beyond seas, or under any other disability. A special power was given to order the surrender of existing leases, and to grant new ones for terms not exceeding forty years. The judges gave their services for nothing, and, for once, released from all their own trammels, set to work to do substantial justice between landlord and tenant, personalty and realty, the life interest and the remainder, covenantor and covenantee, after a fashion which excited the admiration and won the confidence of the whole City. The ordinary suitor, still left exposed to the pitfalls of the special pleader, the risks (owing to the exclusion of evidence) of a non-suit and the costly cumbersomeness of the Court of Chancery, must often have wished that the subject-matter of his litigation had perished in the flames of the great fire.

This court sat in Clifford's Inn, and was usually presided over by Sir Matthew Hale, whose skill both as an arithmetician and an architect completed his fitness for so responsible a position. Within a year the work was done.

The Act for rebuilding the City is an elaborate measure of more than forty clauses, and aimed at securing "the regularity, safety, conveniency and beauty" of the new London that was to be. The buildings were classified according to their position and character, and had to maintain a prescribed level of quality. The materials to be employed were named. New streets were to be of certain widths, and so on. This is the Act that contains the first Betterment Clause: "And forasmuch as the Houses now remaining and to be rebuilt will receive more or less advantage in the value of the rents by the liberty of air and free recourse for trade," it was enacted that a jury might be sworn to assess upon the owners and others interested of and in the said houses, such sum or sums of money with respect of their several interests "in consideration of such improvement and melioration as in reason and good conscience they shall think fit."

It takes nothing short of a catastrophe to suspend in England, even for a few months, those rules of evidence that often make justice impossible, and those rights of landlords which for centuries have appropriated public expenditure to private gain.1

The moneys required to pay for the land taken under the Act to widen streets and to accomplish the other authorised works were raised, as Marvell informs his constituents, by a tax of twelve pence on every chaldron of coal coming as far as Gravesend. Few taxes have had so useful and so harmless a life.

All this time the Dutch War was going on, but the heart was out of it. Nothing in England is so popular as war, except the peace that comes after it. The king now wanted peace, and the merchants on 'Change had glutted their ire. In February 1667 the king told the Houses of Parliament that all "sober" men would be glad to see peace. Unluckily, it seems to have been assumed that we could have peace whenever we wanted it, and the fatal error was committed of at once "laying up" the first-and second-rate ships. It thus came about that, whilst still at war, England had no fleet to put to sea. It did not at first seem likely that the overtures for peace would present much difficulty, when suddenly arose the question of Poleroone. It is amazing how few Englishmen have ever heard of Poleroone, or even of the Banda Islands, of which group it is one. Indeed, a more insignificant speck in the ocean it would be hard to find. To discover it on an atlas is no easy task. Yet, but for Poleroone, the Dutch would never have taken Sheerness, or broken the chain at Gillingham, or carried away with them to the Texel the proud vessel that had brought back Charles the Second to an excited population.

Poleroone is a small nutmeg-growing island in the Indian Archipelago, not far from the eastern extremity of New Guinea. King James the First imagined he had some right to it, and, at any rate, Oliver Cromwell, when he made peace with the Dutch, made a great point of Poleroone. Have it he would for the East India Company. The Dutch objected, but gave way, and by an article in the treaty with Oliver bound themselves to give up Poleroone to the Company. All, in fact, that they did do, was to cut down the nutmeg trees, and so make the island good for nothing for many a long year. Physical possession was never taken. For some unaccountable reason Charles, who had sold Oliver's Dunkirk to the French for half a million of money, stuck out for Poleroone. What Cromwell had taken he was not going to give up! On the other hand, neither would the Dutch give up Poleroone. This dispute, about a barren island, delayed the settlement of the peace preliminaries; but eventually the British plenipotentiaries did get out to Breda, in May 1667. Our sanguine king expected an immediate cessation of hostilities, and that his unpreparedness would thus be huddled up. All of a sudden, at the beginning of June, De Ruyter led out his fleet, and with a fair wind behind him stood for the Thames. All is fair in war. England was caught napping. The doleful history reads like that of a sudden piratical onslaught, and reveals the fatal inefficiency of the administration. Sheerness was practically defenceless. "There were a Company or two of very good soldiers there under excellent officers, but the fortifications were so weak and unfinished, and all other provisions so entirely wanting, that the Dutch Fleet no sooner approached within a distance but with their cannon they beat all the works flat and drove all the men from the ground, which, as soon as they had done with their Boats, they landed men and seemed resolved to fortify and keep it."1 Capture of Sheerness by the Dutch! No need of a halfpenny press to spread this news through a London still in ruins. What made matters worse, the sailors were more than half-mutinous, being paid with tickets not readily convertible into cash. Many of them actually deserted to the Dutch fleet, which made its leisurely way upstream, passing Upnor Castle, which had guns but no ammunition, till it was almost within reach of Chatham, where lay the royal navy. General Monk, who was the handy man of the period, and whose authority was always invoked when the king he had restored was in greater trouble than usual, had hastily collected what troops he could muster, and marched to protect Chatham; but what were wanted were ships, not troops. The Dutch had no mind to land, and after firing three warships (the Royal James, the Royal Oak, and the London), and capturing the Royal Charles, "they thought they had done enough, and made use of the ebb to carry them back again."1 These events occupied the tenth to the fifteenth of June, and for the impression they produced on Marvell's mind we are not dependent upon his restrained letters to his constituents, but can turn to his longest rhymed satire, which is believed to have been first printed, anonymously of course, as a broadsheet in August 1667.

This poem is called The Last Instructions to a Painter about the Dutch Wars, 1667. The title was derived from Waller's panegyric poem on the occasion of the Duke of York's victory over the Dutch on the 3rd of June 1665, when Opdam, the Dutch admiral, was blown up with his ship.2 Sir John Denham, a brother satirist of Marvell's, and with as good an excuse for hating the Duke of York as this world affords, had seized upon the same idea and published four satirical poems on these same Dutch Wars, entitled Directions to a Painter (see Poems on Affairs of State, 1703, vol. i.).

Marvell's satire, which runs to 900 lines, is essentially a House of Commons poem, and could only have been written by a member. It is intensely "lobbyish" and "occasional." To understand its allusions, to appreciate its "pain-giving" capacity to the full, is now impossible. Still, the reader of Clarendon's Life, Pepys's Diary, and Burnet's History, to name only popular books, will have no difficulty in entering into the spirit of the performance. As a poem it is rough in execution, careless, breathless. A rugged style was then in vogue. Even Milton could write his lines to the Cambridge Carrier somewhat in this manner. Marvell has nothing of the magnificence of Dryden, or of the finished malice of Pope. He plays the part, and it is sincerely played, of the old, honest member of Parliament who loves his country and hates rogues and speaks right out, calling spades spades and the king's women what they ought to be called. He is conversational, and therefore coarse. The whole history of the events that resulted in the national disgrace is told.

"The close cabal marked how the Navy eats

And thought all lost that goes not to the cheats;

So therefore secretly for peace decrees,

Yet for a War the Parliament would squeeze,

And fix to the revenue such a sum

Should Goodricke silence and make Paston dumb.

...

Meantime through all the yards their orders were

To lay the ships up, cease the keels begun.

The timber rots, the useless axe does rust,

The unpractised saw lies buried in the dust,

The busy hammer sleeps, the ropes untwine."

Parliament is got rid of to the joy of Clarendon.

"Blither than hare that hath escaped the hounds,

The house prorogued, the chancellor rebounds.

What frosts to fruits, what arsenic to the rat,

What to fair Denham mortal chocolate,1

What an account to Carteret, that and more,

A parliament is to the chancellor."

De Ruyter makes his appearance, and Monk

"in his shirt against the Dutch is pressed.

Often, dear Painter, have I sat and mused

Why he should be on all adventures used.

Whether his valour they so much admire,

Or that for cowardice they all retire,

As heaven in storms, they call, in gusts of state,

On Monk and Parliament-yet both do hate.

...

Ruyter, the while, that had our ocean curbed,

Sailed now amongst our rivers undisturbed;

Surveyed their crystal streams and banks so green,

And beauties ere this never naked seen."

His flags fly from the topmasts of his ships, but where is the enemy?

"So up the stream the Belgic navy glides,

And at Sheerness unloads its stormy sides."

Chatham was but a few miles further up.

"There our sick ships unrigged in summer lay,

Like moulting fowl, a weak and easy prey,

For whose strong bulk earth scarce could timber find,

The ocean water, or the heavens wind.

Those oaken giants of the ancient race,

That ruled all seas, and did our channel grace;

The conscious stag, though once the forest's dread,

Flies to the wood, and hides his armless head.

Ruyter forthwith a squadron doth untack;

They sail securely through the river's track.

An English pilot too (O, shame! O, sin!)

Cheated of 's pay, was he that showed them in."

The chain at Gillingham is broken, to the dismay of Monk, who

"from the bank that dismal sight does view;

Our feather gallants, who came down that day

To be spectators safe of the new play,

Leave him alone when first they hear the gun,

(Cornbury,1 the fleetest) and to London run.

Our seamen, whom no danger's shape could fright,

Unpaid, refuse to mount their ships for spite,

Or to their fellows swim on board the Dutch,

Who show the tempting metal in their clutch."

Upnor Castle avails nought.

"And Upnor's Castle's ill-deserted wall

Now needful does for ammunition call."

The Royal Charles is captured before Monk's face.

"That sacred Keel that had, as he, restored

Its excited sovereign on its happy board,

Now a cheap spoil and the mean victor's slave

Taught the Dutch colours from its top to wave."

Horrors accumulate.

"Each doleful day still with fresh loss returns,

The loyal London now a third time burns,

And the true Royal Oak and Royal James,

Allied in fate, increase with theirs her flames.

Of all our navy none shall now survive,

But that the ships themselves were taught to dive,

And the kind river in its creek them hides.

Freighting their pierced keels with oozy tides."

The situation was indeed serious enough. One wiseacre in command in London declared his belief that the Tower was no longer "tenable."

"And were not Ruyter's maw with ravage cloyed,

Even London's ashes had been then destroyed."

But the Dutch admiral returns the way he came.

"Now nothing more at Chatham's left to burn,

The Holland squadron leisurely return;

And spite of Ruperts and of Albemarles,

To Ruyter's triumph led the captive Charles.

The pleasing sight he often does prolong,

Her mast erect, tough cordage, timber strong,

Her moving shape, all these he doth survey,

And all admires, but most his easy prey.

The seamen search her all within, without;

Viewing her strength, they yet their conquest doubt;

Then with rude shouts, secure, the air they vex,

With gamesome joy insulting on her decks.

Such the feared Hebrew captive, blinded, shorn,

Was led about in sport, the public scorn."

The poet then indulges himself in an emotional outburst.

"Black day, accursed! on thee let no man hail

Out of the port, or dare to hoist a sail,

Or row a boat in thy unlucky hour!

Thee, the year's monster, let thy dam devour,

And constant Time, to keep his course yet right,

Fill up thy space with a redoubled night.

When agèd Thames was bound with fetters base,

And Medway chaste ravished before his face,

And their dear offspring murdered in their sight,

Thou and thy fellows saw the odious light.

Sad change, since first that happy pair was wed,

When all the rivers graced their nuptial bed;

And father Neptune promised to resign

His empire old to their immortal line;

Now with vain grief their vainer hopes they rue,

Themselves dishonoured, and the gods untrue;

And to each other, helpless couple, moan,

As the sad tortoise for the sea does groan:

But most they for their darling Charles complain,

And were it burned, yet less would be their pain.

To see that fatal pledge of sea-command,

Now in the ravisher De Ruyter's hand,

The Thames roared, swooning Medway turned her tide,

And were they mortal, both for grief had died."

A scapegoat had, of course, to be at once provided. He was found in Mr. Commissioner Pett, the most skilful shipbuilder of the age.

"After this loss, to relish discontent,

Some one must be accused by Parliament.

All our miscarriages on Pett must fall,

His name alone seems fit to answer all.

Whose counsel first did this mad war beget?

Who all commands sold through the navy? Pett.

Who would not follow when the Dutch were beat?

Who treated out the time at Bergen? Pett.

Who the Dutch fleet with storms disabled met?

And, rifling prizes, them neglect? Pett.

Who with false news prevented the Gazette?

The fleet divided? writ for Rupert? Pett.

Who all our seamen cheated of their debt,

And all our prizes who did swallow? Pett.

Who did advise no navy out to set?

And who the forts left unprepared? Pett.

Who to supply with powder did forget

Languard, Sheerness, Gravesend, and Upnor? Pett.

Who all our ships exposed in Chatham net?

Who should it be but the fanatic Pett?"

This outburst can hardly fail to remind the reader of a famous outburst of Mr. Micawber's on the subject of Uriah Heep.

The satire concludes with the picture of the king in the dead shades of night, alone in his room, startled by loud noises of cannons, trumpets, and drums, and then visited by the ghost of his father.

"And ghastly Charles, turning his collar low,

The purple thread about his neck does show."

The pensive king resolves on Clarendon's disgrace, and on rising next morning seeks out Lady Castlemaine, Bennet, and Coventry, who give him the same advice. He knows them all three to be false to one another and to him, but is for the moment content to do what they wish.

I have omitted, in this review of a long poem, the earlier lines which deal with the composition of the House of Commons. All its parties are described, one after another-the old courtiers, the pension-hunters, the king's procurers, then almost a department of State.

"Then the Procurers under Prodgers filed

Gentlest of men, and his lieutenant mild

Bronkard, love's squire; through all the field arrayed,

No troop was better clad, nor so well paid."

Clarendon had his friends, soon sorely to be needed, and after them,

"Next to the lawyers, sordid band, appear,

Finch in the front and Thurland in the rear."

Some thirty-three members are mentioned by their names and habits. The Speaker, Sir Edward Turner, is somewhat unkindly described. Honest men are usually to be found everywhere, and they existed even in Charles the Second's pensionary Parliament:-

"Nor could all these the field have long maintained

But for the unknown reserve that still remained;

A gross of English gentry, nobly born,

Of clear estates, and to no faction sworn,

Dear lovers of their king, and death to meet

For country's cause, that glorious thing and sweet;

To speak not forward, but in action brave,

In giving generous, but in council grave;

Candidly credulous for once, nay twice;

But sure the devil cannot cheat them thrice."

No member of Parliament's library is complete without Marvell, who did not forget the House of Commons smoking-room:-

"Even iron Strangways chafing yet gave back

Spent with fatigue, to breathe awhile tabac."

Charles hastened to make peace with Holland. He was not the man to insist on vengeance or to mourn over lost prestige. De Ruyter had gone after suffering repulses at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Torbay. Peace was concluded at Breda on the 21st of July. We gave up Poleroone. Per contra we gained a more famous place, New Amsterdam, rechristened New York in honour of the duke. All prisoners were to be liberated, and the Dutch, despite Sheerness and the Royal Charles, agreed to lower their flag to all British ships of war.

The fall, long pending, of Clarendon immediately followed the peace. Men's tempers were furious or sullen. Hyde had no more bitter, no more cruel enemy than Marvell. Why this was has not been discovered, but there was nothing too bad for Marvell not to believe of any member of Clarendon's household. All the scandals, and they were many and horrible, relating to Clarendon and his daughter, the Duchess of York, find a place in Marvell's satires and epigrams. To us Lord Clarendon is a grave and thoughtful figure, the statesman-author of The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, that famous, large book, loftily planned, finely executed, full of life and character and the philosophy of human existence; and of his own Autobiography, a production which, though it must, like Burnet's History, be read with caution, unveils to the reader a portion of that past which usually is as deeply shrouded from us as the future. If at times we are reminded in reading Clarendon's Life of the old steward in Hogarth's plate, who lifts up his hands in horror over the extravagance of his master, if his pedantry often irritates, and his love of place displeases, we recognise these but as the shades of the character of a distinguished and accomplished public servant. But to Marvell Clarendon was rapacious, ambitious, and corrupt, a man who had sold Oliver's Dunkirk to the French, and shared the price; who had selected for the king's consort a barren woman, so that his own damaged daughter might at least chance to become Queen of England, who hated Parliaments and hankered after a standing army, who took money for patents, who sold public offices, who was bribed by the Dutch about the terms of peace, who swindled the ruined cavaliers of the funds subscribed for their benefit, and had by these methods heaped together great wealth which he ostentatiously displayed. Even darker crimes than these are hinted at. That Marvell was wrong in his estimate of Clarendon's character now seems certain; Clarendon did not get a penny of the Dunkirk money. The case made against him by the House of Commons in their articles of impeachment was felt even at the time to be flimsy and incapable of proof, and in the many records that have come to light since Clarendon's day nothing has been discovered to give them support. And yet Marvell was a singularly well-informed member of Parliament, a shrewd, level-headed man of affairs, who knew Lord Clarendon in the way we know men we have to see on business matters, whose speeches we can listen to, and whose conduct we discuss and criticise. "Gently scan your brother-man" is a precept Marvell never took to heart; nor is the House of Commons a place where it is either preached or practised.

When Clarendon was well nigh at the height of his great unpopularity, he built himself a fine big house on a site given him by the king where now is Albemarle Street. Where did he get the money from? He employed, in building it, the stones of St. Paul's Cathedral. True, he bought the stones from the Dean and Chapter, but if the man you hate builds a great house out of the ruins of a church, is it likely that so trivial a fact as a cash payment for the materials is going to be mentioned? Splendid furniture and noble pictures were to be seen going into the new palace-the gifts, so it was alleged, of foreign ambassadors. What was the consideration for these donations? England's honour! Clarendon House was at once named Dunkirk House, Holland House, Tangiers House.

Here is Marvell upon it:-

UPON HIS HOUSE

"Here lie the sacred bones

Of Paul beguilèd of his stones:

Here lie golden briberies,

The price of ruined families;

The cavalier's debenture wall,

Fixed on an eccentric basis:

Here's Dunkirk-Town and Tangier-Hull,

The Queen's marriage and all,

The Dutchman's templum pacis."

Clarendon's fall was rapid. He knew the house of Stuart too well to place any reliance upon the king. Evelyn visited him on the 27th of August 1667 after the seals had been taken away from him, and found him "in his bed-chamber very sad." His enemies were numerous and powerful, both in the House of Commons and at Court, where all the buffoons and ladies of pleasure hated him, because-so Evelyn says-"he thwarted some of them and stood in their way." In November Evelyn called again and found the late Lord-Chancellor in the garden of his new-built palace, sitting in his gout wheel-chair and watching the new gates setting up towards the north and the fields. "He looked and spoke very disconsolately. After some while deploring his condition to me, I took my leave. Next morning I heard he was gone."1

The news was true; on Saturday, the 29th of November, he drove to Erith, and after a terrible tossing on the nobly impartial Channel the weary man reached Calais, and died seven years later in Rouen, having well employed his leisure in completing his history. His palace was sold for half what it cost to the inevitable Monk, Duke of Albemarle.

On the 3rd of December Marvell writes that the House, having heard that Lord Clarendon had "withdrawn," forthwith ordered an address to his Majesty "that care might be taken for securing all the sea ports lest he should pass there." Marvell adds grimly, "I suppose he will not trouble you at Hull." The king took good care that his late Lord-Chancellor should escape. An act of perpetual banishment was at once passed, receiving the royal assent on the 19th of December.

Marvell was kept very busy during the early months of 1668, inquiring, as our English fashion is, into the "miscarriages of the late war." The House more than once sat from nine in the morning till eight at night, finding out all it could. "What money, arising by the poll money, had been applied to the use of the war?" This was an awkward inquiry. The House voted that the not prosecuting the first victory of June 1665 was a miscarriage, and one of the greatest: a snub to the Duke of York. The not furnishing the Medway with a sufficient guard of ships, though the king had then 18,000 men in his pay, was another great miscarriage. The paying of the fleet with tickets, without money, was a third great miscarriage. All this time Oliver Cromwell's skull was grinning on its perch in Westminster Hall.

Besides the honour of England, that of Hull had to be defended by its member. A young Lieutenant Wise, one of the Hull garrison, had in some boisterous fashion affronted the corporation and the mayor. On this correspondence ensues; and Marvell waits upon the Duke of Albemarle, the head of the army, to obtain reparation.

"I waited yesterday upon my Lord General-and first presented your usual fee which the General accepted, but saying that it was unnecessary and that you might have bin pleased to spare it, and he should be so much more at liberty to show how voluntary and affectionate he was toward your corporation. I returned the civilest words I could coin on for the present, and rendered him your humble thanks for his continued patronage of you ... and told him that you had further sent him up a small tribute of your Hull liquor. He thanked you again for all these things which you might-he said-have spared, and added that if the greatest of your military officers should demean himself ill towards you, he would take a course with him."

A mealy-mouthed Lord-General drawing near his end.1

Wise was removed from the Hull garrison. The affronted corporation was not satisfied, and Marvell had to argue the point.

"And I hope, Sir, you will incline the Bench to consider whether I am able or whether it be fit for me to urge it beyond that point. Yet it is not all his (Wise's) Parliament men and relations that have wrought me in the least, but what I simply conceive as the state of things now to be possible and satisfactory. What would you have more of a soldier than to run away and have him cashiered as to any command in your garrison? The first he hath done and the second he must submit to. And I assure you whatsoever he was among you, he is here a kind of decrepit young gentleman and terribly crest-fallen."

The letter concludes thus:-

"For I assure you they use all the civility imaginable to you, and as we sat there drinking a cup of sack with the General, Colonel Legge1 chancing to be present, there were twenty good things said on all hands tending to the good fame, reputation, and advantage of the Town, an occasion that I was heartily glad of."

Corporations may not have souls to save and bodies to kill, but evidently they have vanities to tickle.

In November 1669 the House is still busy over the accounts. Sir George Carteret was Treasurer of the Navy. Marvell refers to him in The Last Instructions to a Painter as:-

"Carteret the rich did the accountants guide

And in ill English all the world defied."

The following letter of Marvell's gives an excellent account of House of Commons business, both how it is conducted, and how often it gets accidentally interrupted by other business unexpectedly cropping up:-

"November 20, 1669.

"Gentlemen, my very worthy friends,-Returning after our adjournment to sit upon Wednesday, the House having heard what Sir G. Cartaret could say for himselfe, and he then commended to withdraw, after a considerable debate, put it to the question, whether he were guilty of misdemeanour upon the Commissioners first observation, the words of which were, That all monyes received by him out of His Majesty's Exchequer are by the privy seales assigned for particular services, but no such thing observed or specified in his payments, whereby he hath assumed to himselfe a liberty to make use of the King's treasure for other uses then is directed. The House dividing upon the question, the ayes went out, and wondered why they were kept out so extraordinary a time. The ayes proved 138 and the noes 129; and the reason of the long stay then appeared; the tellers for the ayes chanced to be very ill reckoners, so that they were forced to tell severall times over in the House, and when at last the tellers for the ayes would have agreed the noes to be 142, the noes would needs say that they were 143, whereupon those for the ayes would tell once more and then found the noes to be indeed but 129; and the ayes then coming in proved to be 138; whereas if the noes had been content with the first error of the tellers, Sir George had been quit upon that observation. This I have told you so minutely because it is the second fatall and ominous accident that hath fain out in the divisions about Sir G. Cartaret. Thursday was ordered for the second observation, the words of which are, Two hundred and thirty thousand seven hundred thirty and one thousand pounds thirteen shillings and ninepence, claimed as payd, and deposited for security of interest, and yet no distinct specification of time appeares either on his receits or payments, whereby no judgment can be made how interest accrues; so that we cannot yet allow the same. But this day was diverted and wholy taken up by a speciall report orderd by the Committee for the Bill of Conventicles, that the House be informed of severall Conventicles in Westminster which might be of dangerous consequences. From hence arose much discourse; also of a report that Ludlow was in England, that Commonwealths-men flock about the town, and there were meetings said to be, where they talkt of New Modells of Government; so that the House ordered a Committee to receive informations both concerning Conventicles and these other dangerous meetings; and then entered a resolution upon their books without putting it to the question, That this House will adhere to His Majesty, and the Government of Church and State as now established, against all its enemyes. Friday having bin appointed, as I told you in my former letter, for the House to sit in a grand Committee upon the motion for the King's supply, was spent wholy in debate, whether they should do so or no, and concluded at last in a consent, that the sitting in a grand Committee upon the motion for the King's supply should be put of till Friday next, and so it was ordered. The reason of which kind of proceeding, lest you should thinke to arise from an indisposition of the House, I shall tell you as they appeare to me, to have been the expectation of what Bill will come from the Lords in stead of that of ours which they threw out, and a desire to redresse and see thoroughly into the miscarriages of mony before any more should be granted. To-day the House hath bin upon the second observation, and after a debate till foure a'clock, have voted him guilty also of misdemeanor in that particular. The Commissioners are ordered to attend the House again on Munday, which is done constantly for the illustration of any matter in their report, wherein the House is not cleare. And to say the truth, the House receives great satisfaction from them, and shows them extraordinary respect. These are the things of principall notice since my last."

Carteret eventually was censured and suspended and dismissed.

The sudden incursion of religion during a financial debate is highly characteristic of the House of Commons.

Whilst Queen Elizabeth and her advisers did succeed in making some sort of a settlement of religion having regard to the questions of her time, the Restoration bishops, an inferior set of men, wholly failed. The repressive legislation that followed upon the Act of Uniformity, succeeded in establishing and endowing (with voluntary contributions) what is sometimes called, absurdly enough, Political Dissent. On points, not of doctrine, but of ceremony, and of church government, one half of the religiously-minded community were by oaths and declarations, and by employing the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper as "a picklock to a place," drawn out of the service of the State. Excluded from Parliament and from all corporate bodies, from grammar-schools and universities, English Dissent learned to live its own life, remote from the army, the navy, and the civil service, quite outside of what perhaps may be fairly called the main currents of the national life. Nonconformists venerated their own divines, were reared in their own academies and colleges, read their own books, went, when the modified law permitted it, to their own conventicles in back streets, and made it their boast that they had never entered their parish churches, for the upkeep of which they were compelled to subscribe-save for the purpose of being married. The nation suffered by reason of this complete severance. Trade excepted, there was no community of interest between Church and Dissent. Sobriety, gravity, a decent way of life, the sense of religious obligation (even when united with the habit of extempore prayer, and a hereditary disrespect for bishops' aprons), are national assets, as the expression now goes, which cannot be disregarded with impunity.

The Conventicle Act Marvell refers to was a stringent measure, imposing pecuniary fines upon any persons of sixteen years of age or upwards who "under pretence of religion" should be present at any meeting of more than five persons, or more than those of the household, "in other manner than allowed by the Liturgy and practice of the Church of England." Heavier fines were imposed upon the preachers. The poet Waller, who was "nursed in Parliaments," having been first returned from Amersham in 1621, made a very sensible remark on the second reading: "Let them alone and they will preach against each other; by this Bill they will incorporate as being all under one calamity."1 But by 144 to 78 the Bill was read, though it did not become law until the following session. An indignant Member of Parliament once told Cromwell that he would take the "sense" of the House against some proposal. "Very well," said Cromwell, "you shall take the 'sense' of the House, and I will take the 'nonsense,' and we will see who tells the most votes."

In February 1670 the king opened a new session, and in March Marvell wrote a private letter to a relative at Bordeaux, in which he "lends his mind out," after a fashion forbidden him in his correspondence with his constituents:-

"Dear Cousin,- ... You know that we having voted the King, before Christmas, four hundred thousand pounds, and no more; and enquiring severely into ill management, and being ready to adjourn ourselves till February, his Majesty, fortified by some undertakers of the meanest of our House, threw up all as nothing, and prorogued us from the first of December till the fourteenth of February. All that interval there was great and numerous caballing among the courtiers. The King also all the while examined at council the reports from the Commissioners of Accounts, where they were continually discountenanced, and treated rather as offenders than judges. In this posture we met, and the King, being exceedingly necessitous for money, spoke to us stylo minaci et imperatorio; and told us the inconveniences which would fall on the nation by want of a supply, should not ly at his door; that we must not revive any discord betwixt the Lords and us; that he himself had examined the accounts, and found every penny to have been employed in the war; and he recommended the Scotch union. The Garroway party appeared with the usual vigour, but the country gentlemen appeared not in their true number the first day: so, for want of seven voices, the first blow was against them. When we began to talk of the Lords, the King sent for us alone, and recommended a rasure of all proceedings. The same thing you know that we proposed at first. We presently ordered it, and went to tell him so the same day, and to thank him. At coming down, (a pretty ridiculous thing!) Sir Thomas Clifford carryed Speaker and Mace, and all members there, into the King's cellar, to drink his health. The King sent to the Lords more peremptoryly, and they, with much grumbling, agreed to the rasure. When the Commissioners of Accounts came before us, sometimes we heard them pro forma, but all falls to dirt. The terrible Bill against Conventicles is sent up to the Lords; and we and the Lords, as to the Scotch busyness, have desired the King to name English Commissioners to treat, but nothing they do to be valid, but on a report to Parliament, and an act to confirm. We are now, as we think, within a week of rising. They are making mighty alterations in the Conventicle Bill (which, as we sent up, is the quintessence of arbitrary malice), and sit whole days, and yet proceed but by inches, and will, at the end, probably affix a Scotch clause of the King's power in externals. So the fate of the Bill is uncertain, but must probably pass, being the price of money. The King told some eminent citizens, who applyed to him against it, that they must address themselves to the Houses, that he must not disoblige his friends; and if it had been in the power of their friends, he had gone without money. There is a Bill in the Lords to encourage people to buy all the King's fee-farm rents; so he is resolved once more to have money enough in his pocket, and live on the common for the future. The great Bill begun in the Lords, and which makes more ado than ever any Act in this Parliament did, is for enabling Lord Ros, long since divorced in the spiritual court, and his children declared illegitimate by Act of Parliament, to marry again. Anglesey and Ashly, who study and know their interests as well as any gentlemen at court, and whose sons have marryed two sisters of Ros, inheritrixes if he has no issue, yet they also drive on the Bill with the greatest vigour. The King is for the Bill: the Duke of York, and all the Papist Lords, and all the Bishops, except Cosins, Reynolds, and Wilkins, are against it. They sat all Thursday last, without once rising, till almost ten at night, in most solemn and memorable debate, whether it should be read the second time, or thrown out. At last, at the question, there were forty-two persons and six proxys against it, and forty-one persons and fifteen proxys for it. If it had not gone for it, the Lord Arlington had a power in his pocket from the King to have nulled the proxys, if it had been to the purpose. It was read the second time yesterday, and, on a long debate whether it should be committed, it went for the Bill by twelve odds, in persons and proxys. The Duke of York, the bishops, and the rest of the party, have entered their protests, on the first day's debate, against it. Is not this fine work? This Bill must come down to us. It is my opinion that Lauderdale at one ear talks to the King of Monmouth, and Buckingham at the other of a new Queen. It is also my opinion that the King was never since his coming in, nay, all things considered, no King since the Conquest, so absolutely powerful at home, as he is at the present; nor any Parliament, or places, so certainly and constantly supplyed with men of the same temper. In such a conjuncture, dear Will, what probability is there of my doing any thing to the purpose? The King would needs take the Duke of Albemarle out of his son's hand to bury him at his own charges. It is almost three months, and he yet lys in the dark unburyed, and no talk of him. He left twelve thousand pounds a year, and near two hundred thousand pounds in money. His wife dyed some twenty days after him; she layed in state, and was buryed, at her son's expence, in Queen Elizabeth's Chapel. And now,

"Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem,

Fortunam ex aliis.

"March 21, 1670."

This remarkable letter lets us into many secrets.

The Conventicle Bill is "the price of money." The king's interest in the Roos divorce case was believed to be due to his own desire to be quit of a barren and deserted wife.1 Our most religious king had nineteen bastards, but no lawful issue. It may seem strange that so high a churchman as Bishop Cosin should have taken the view he did, but Cosin had a strong dash of the layman in his constitution, and was always an advocate of divorce, with permission to re-marry, in cases of adultery.

A further and amending Bill for rebuilding the city was before the House-one of eighty-four clauses, "the longest Bill, perhaps, that ever past in Parliament," says Marvell; but the Roos Divorce Bill and the Conventicle Bill proved so exciting in the House of Lords that they had little time for anything else. Union with Scotland, much desired by the king, but regarded with great suspicion by all Parliamentarians, fell flat, though Commissioners were appointed.

The Conventicle Bill passed the Lords, who tagged on to it a proviso Marvell refers to in his next letter, which the Lower House somewhat modified by the omission of certain words. Lord Roos was allowed to re-marry. The big London Bill got through.

Another private letter of Marvell's, of this date, is worth reading:-

"Dearest Will,-I wrote to you two letters, and payd for them from the posthouse here at Westminster; to which I have had no answer. Perhaps they miscarryed. I sent on an answer to the only letter I received from Bourdeaux, and having put it into Mr. Nelthorp's hand, I doubt not but it came to your's. To proceed. The same day (March 26th letter) my letter bore date, there was an extraordinary thing done. The King, about ten o'clock, took boat, with Lauderdale only, and two ordinary attendants, and rowed awhile as towards the bridge, and soon turned back to the Parliament stairs, and so went up into the House of Lords, and took his seat. Almost all of them were amazed, but all seemed so; and the Duke of York especially was very much surprized. Being sat, he told them it was a privilege he claimed from his ancestors to be present at their deliberations. That therefore, they should not, for his coming, interrupt their debates, but proceed, and be covered. They did so. It is true that this has been done long ago, but it is now so old, that it is new, and so disused, that at any other but so bewitched a time as this, it would have been looked on as an high usurpation, and breach of privilege. He indeed sat still, for the most part, and interposed very little; sometimes a word or two. But the most discerning opinion was, that he did herein as he rowed for having had his face first to the Conventicle Bill, he turned short to the Lord Ross's. So that, indeed, it is credible, the King, in prospect of diminishing the Duke of York's influence in the Lord's House, in this, or any future matter, resolved, and wisely enough at present, to weigh up and lighten the Duke's efficacy, by coming himself in person. After three or four days continuance, the Lords were very well used to the King's presence, and sent the Lord Steward and Lord Chamberlain, to him, when they might wait, as an House on him, to render their humble thanks for the honour he did them. The hour was appointed them, and they thanked him, and he took it well. So this matter, of such importance on all great occasions, seems riveted to them, and us, for the future, and to all posterity. Now the Lord Ross's Bill came in order to another debate, and the King present. Nevertheless the debate lasted an entire day; and it passed by very few voices. The King has ever since continued his session among them, and says it is better than going to a play. In this session the Lords sent down to us a proviso1 for the King, that would have restored him to all civil or ecclesiastical prerogatives which his ancestors had enjoyed at any time since the Conquest. There was never so compendious a piece of absolute universal tyranny. But the Commons made them ashamed of it, and retrenched it. The Parliament was never embarrassed, beyond recovery. We are all venal cowards, except some few. What plots of State will go on this interval I know not. There is a new set of justices of peace framing through the whole kingdom. The governing cabal, since Ross's busyness, are Buckingham, Lauderdale, Ashly, Orrery, and Trevor. Not but the other cabal too have seemingly sometimes their turn. Madam,1 our King's sister, during the King of France's progress in Flanders, is to come as far as Canterbury. There will doubtless be family counsels then. Some talk of a French Queen to be then invented for our King. Some talk of a sister of Denmark; others of a good virtuous Protestant here at home. The King disavows it; yet he has sayed in publick, he knew not why a woman may not be divorced for barrenness, as a man for impotency. The Lord Barclay went on Monday last for Ireland, the King to Newmarket. God keep, and increase you, in all things.-Yours, etc.

"April 14, 1670."

77:1 Clarendon's Life, vol. ii. p. 442.

79:1 The clerks, however, only counted the members who voted, and kept no record of their names. Mr. Gladstone remembered the alteration being made in 1836, and how unpopular it was. The change was a greater revolution than the Reform Bill. See The Unreformed House of Commons by Edward Posselt, vol. i. p. 587.

79:2

"And a Parliament had lately met

Without a single Bankes."-Praed.

82:1 See Dr. Halley's Lancashire-its Puritanism and Nonconformity, vol. ii. pp. 1-140, a most informing book.

88:1 Clarendon's History, vol. vi. p. 249.

90:1 An Historical Poem.-Grosart, vol. i. p. 343.

92:1 Macaulay's History, vol. i. p. 154.

95:1 I am acquainted with the romantic story which would have us believe that Lady Fauconberg, foretelling the time to come, had caused some other body than her father's to be buried in the Abbey (see Notes and Queries, 5th October 1878, and Waylen's House of Cromwell, p. 341).

96:1 See The Unreformed House of Commons, by Edward Porritt, vol. i. p. 51. Marvell's old enemy, Parker, Bishop of Oxford, in his History of his own Time, composed after Marvell's death, reviles his dead antagonist for having taken this payment which, the bishop says, was made by a custom which "had a long time been antiquated and out of date." "Gentlemen," says the bishop, "despised so vile a stipend," yet Marvell required it "for the sake of a bare subsistence, although in this mean poverty he was nevertheless haughty and insolent." In Parker's opinion poor men should be humble.

98:1 Parliamentary History, vol. iv., App. No. III.

104:1 Mr. Gladstone's testimony is that no real improvement was effected until within the period of his own memory. 'Our services were probably without a parallel in the world for their debasement.' (See Gleanings, vi. p. 119.)

106:1 There is a copy in the library of the Athen?um, London: "A Relation of Three Embassies from his sacred Majestie Charles ii. to the Great Duke of Muscovie, the King of Sweden, and the King of Denmark. Performed by the Right Hoble the Earle of Carlisle in the Years 1663 and 1664. Written by an Attendant on the Embassies, and published with his Lordship's approbation. London. Printed for John Starkie at the Miter in Fleet Street, near Temple Barr, 1669."

109:1 "I have mentioned the dignity of his manners.... He was at his very best on occasion of Durbars, investitures, and the like.... It irritated him to see men giggling or jeering instead of acting their parts properly."-Life of Lord Dufferin, vol. ii. p. 317.

116:1 Hist. MSS. Com., Portland Papers, vol. iii. p. 296.

116:2 See above, vol. iii. p. 294.

118:1 Sir Walter Besant doubted this. See his London.

123:1 Mr. Goldwin Smith says this was the first pitched battle between Protection and Free Trade in England.-The United Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 25.

126:1 Being curious to discover whether no "property" man raised his voice against these measures, I turned to that true "home of lost causes," the Protests of the House of Lords; and there, sure enough, I found one solitary peer, Henry Carey, Earl of Dover, entering his dissent to both Bills-to the Judicature Bill because of the unlimited power given to the judges, to the Rebuilding Bill because of the exorbitant powers entrusted to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to give away or dispose of the property of landlords.

128:1 Clarendon's Life, vol. iii. p. 796.

129:1 Clarendon's Life, vol. iii. p. 798.

129:2 "Instructions to a Painter for the drawing of the Posture and Progress of His Majesty's forces at Sea under the command of His Highness Royal: together with the Battel and Victory obtained over the Dutch, June 3, 1665."-Waller's Works, 1730, p. 161.

130:1 Sir John Denham's wife was reported to have been poisoned by a dish of chocolate, at the bidding of the Duchess of York.

131:1 Clarendon's eldest son.

139:1 It is disconcerting to find Evelyn recording this, his last visit to Clarendon, in his Diary under date of the 9th December, by which time the late Chancellor was in Rouen. One likes notes in a diary to be made contemporaneously and not "written-up" afterwards. Evelyn makes the same kind of mistake about Cromwell's funeral, misdating it a month.

140:1 The duke died in 1670 and had a magnificent funeral on the 30th of April. See Hist. MSS. Com., Duke of Portland's Papers, vol. iii. p. 314. His laundress-Duchess did not long survive him.

141:1 Afterwards Lord Dartmouth, a great friend of James the Second, but one who played a dubious part at the Revolution.

145:1 The poet Waller was one of the wittiest speakers the House of Commons has ever known.

148:1 For a full account of this remarkable case, see Clarendon's Life, iii. 733-9.

149:1 "Provided, etc., that neither this Act nor anything therein contained shall extend to invalidate or avoid his Majesty's supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs [or to destroy any of his Majesty's rights powers or prerogatives belonging to the Imperial Crown of this realm or at any time exercised by himself or any of his predecessors Kings or Queens of England] but that his Majesty his heirs and successors may from time to time and at all times hereafter exercise and enjoy all such powers and authorities aforesaid as fully and amply as himself or any of his predecessors have or might have done the same anything in this Act (or any other law statute or usage to the contrary) notwithstanding." The words in brackets were rejected by the Commons. See Parliamentary History, iv. 446-7.

150:1 Madame's business is now well known. The secret Treaty of Dover was the result of this visit.