Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution (60 page)

‘How do you know this?’

‘Why, I have calculated it.’

This was a reply that, as in Halley’s words, struck him ‘with joy and amazement’. No one had ever done it before. By the end of the year Newton had revisited his calculations and had produced a short treatise,
De motu corporum in gyrum
, that deciphered and proved mathematically the motion of bodies in orbit. He pressed on with his deliberations and, within the space of eighteen months, had completed the treatise that would confer upon him the acclamation of the world. He formulated the three laws of motion that are the foundation of his theory of universal gravitation, a revolutionary principle that proclaims the universe to be bound together by one force that can be mathematically promulgated and understood. It was the great revelation of the seventeenth century. Newton had understood the cosmos, and made it amenable to human laws. There was indeed a force that bound the sun and all the stars. ‘It is now established’, he wrote, ‘that this force is gravity, and therefore we shall call it gravity from now on.’

Newton was eventually chosen to become president of the Royal Society and for the last twenty years of his life governed its meetings with a somewhat forbidding dignity. He ruled that there should be no ‘whispering, talking nor loud laughters. If dissensions rose in any sort … they tended to find out truth, but ought not to arise to any personality.’ These were to be the new truths of science, objective and impersonal, as adumbrated in seventeenth-century London. One Fellow, William Stukeley, recalled that ‘everything was transacted with great attention and solemnity and decency’ for in truth this was the century in which science became a new form of religion with its laws and principles treated as matters of unassailable dogma. Newton himself declared that natural philosophy now ‘consists in discovering the frame and operations of Nature and reducing them, as far as may be, to general rules or laws, establishing these rules by observations and experiments, and thence deducing the causes and effects of things’. This is our inheritance from the seventeenth century.

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The casual deviousness of the king soon became apparent when at the beginning of 1668 he negotiated a ‘Triple Alliance’ with the Dutch republic and Sweden to oppose the French armies that had already occupied part of the Spanish Netherlands; it was a general defensive league against the encroaching power of the French and, at the time, it was regarded as a great stroke of policy. It was considered to be better to be allied with two Protestant powers against a common Catholic enemy. It was, more pertinently, meant to prove to Louis XIV that England still possessed significant influence in the game between the states.

Yet the king wrote to his sister residing at the French court, Henrietta, duchess of Orléans, that ‘I have done nothing to prejudice France in the agreement’. Even as he allied himself with the Dutch, in fact, he was preparing to move ever closer to France in a secret plan to destroy their republic. He had the ability to pursue two different, and indeed opposing, policies at the same time. Feeling great admiration for his cousin, Louis XIV, he also needed the French king’s money and perhaps, in some future contingency, his men. Louis ruled the most powerful state in Europe, and it was much better to be his ally than his enemy; he was also part of the family and, in dynastic terms, family was more important than country.

Suspicion was in the air. Pepys reported that in London ‘people do cry out in the streets … that we are betrayed by people about the king and shall be delivered up to the French’. In the ‘bawdy-house riots’ of the spring, the apprentices of London revised the ancient custom of attacking brothels on Shrove Tuesday. But this was no ritual performance; fifteen of their leaders would be tried for high treason, and four of them were hanged. The demonstrations involved thousands of people, and lasted for five days.

The riots began on Easter Monday when some brothels in Poplar were attacked and demolished; the insurrection spread on the following day to Moorfields, East Smithfield and Holborn. On Wednesday the apprentices, swelled by an appreciable force from Southwark, attacked the bawdy-houses of Moorfields. They did not form an inchoate crowd: they were mustered into regiments and marched behind flags; they carried iron bars and axes. Some of the more notorious prisons were also besieged.

The king himself professed not to understand the motive of the apprentices in attacking the brothels. ‘Why, why, do they go to them, then?’ he is reported to have asked. But in fact the brothels were a sign, or token, of what was for many a larger problem. In attacking the brothels the Londoners were attacking the perceived morals of the court and, in opposing its morals, they were disowning its principles. One of their cries was that ‘ere long they would come and pull Whitehall down’.

The king’s favourite mistress, Lady Castlemaine, had converted to Roman Catholicism at the end of 1663. She was a sign, therefore, of the court’s leaning towards papistry and was a target of much virulent comment as a ‘whore’ and worse. That is another reason why the brothels were attacked. The bishops were also condemned for keeping mistresses, and the archbishop of Canterbury was rumoured to retain a prostitute; other prelates were ‘given to boys’. When the apprentices called out for ‘reformation’ they were giving voice to the pleas of the dissenters who distrusted or hated the established Church.

So sexual laxity was associated with papistry, and papistry with treason, and treason with the king of France. It was an unstable compound of rumour and fear, but all the more potent for that. The rioters could not have discerned the king’s secret purposes but, in their distrust, they were in fact close to the truth. Soon after the formation of the ‘Triple Alliance’ Buckingham entered negotiations with the duchess of Orléans in France. Charles meanwhile apologized to the French envoy for having entered the treaty with Holland and Sweden insinuating that he would like to establish a much closer union with Louis. In the spring of 1668 the king decided to prorogue parliament for what turned out to be the unprecedented period of seventeen months; in its absence he might more easily plot and plan.

At the beginning of 1669 he sprang a surprise. He called his brother, James, and three of his most important councillors to his private chamber where with tears in his eyes he announced his desire for conversion to the Catholic faith. His brother was soon to be received into that communion, and would remain a staunch and indeed almost hysterical Catholic for the rest of his life. The honesty and fidelity of the king are more doubtful. If Charles was preparing himself for negotiations with the devout French king, what could be better than to declare his espousal of the same religion?

A secret emissary was sent to the French court in March with the offer of an offensive and defensive alliance together with a request for men, money and ships in the event of a war with the Dutch. Charles also promised to declare himself a Catholic if, in return, Louis XIV would give him the sum of £200,000 to secure himself against public wrath. He never did make any such announcement, and it seems that he was converted only on his deathbed; he was adept at the arts of dissimulation and hypocrisy even in the great affairs of state.

Throughout this year, and the first half of the next, negotiations between the two kings continued in absolute secrecy. The English ambassador in Paris, and the French ambassador in London, were not informed. Charles’s anti-Catholic ministers were not told. The king continued negotiations with the Dutch as if nothing in the world had changed. By late summer or early autumn 1669, Charles and Louis reached agreement. Louis would come to Charles’s aid whenever the English king announced his Catholicism, and the two would join together in an assault upon the Dutch.

Henrietta, duchess of Orléans, arrived at Dover in the middle of May 1670, with diverse documents from the French court that she gave to her brother. Among these was a secret paragraph which read that ‘the king of England, being convinced of the truth of the Roman Catholic religion, is resolved to declare it, and to reconcile himself with the Church of Rome as soon as the state of his country’s affairs permit’. Charles hoped and believed that the majority of his subjects had such affection for him that they would not protest ‘but as there are unquiet spirits who mask their designs under the guise of religion, the king of England, for the peace of his kingdom, will avail himself of the assistance of the king of France’. The king was still engaged in subterfuge against his most intimate councillors. He allowed Buckingham, for example, to negotiate a version of the treaty that did not contain this important paragraph concerning the king’s conversion to Roman Catholicism. Instead he was asked to press on with a treaty of alliance that made no mention of the secret. He was not aware of the collusion. It is unlikely that Charles ever had any intention of announcing his conversion, however, and the commitment was in large part a ploy to bind the French king more tightly to him.

The financial reward granted to the king was not large. He was to be paid £140,000 – half in advance – as a token of the French king’s favour. He was also to be paid approximately £210,000 during each year of the proposed war with the Dutch, with the first instalment to be sent to him three months before the actual declaration of hostilities. The king of England had become a pensionary of the king of France, and had in effect sold his sovereignty. Another difficulty was apparent. If the French king should ever release into the world the secret paragraph, Charles’s hold over his subjects might be destroyed; so Louis had a potent weapon in any confrontation with his fellow sovereign.

The counterfeit treaty was signed towards the close of the year, while the secret agreement reached earlier in the spring was not revealed even to the king’s confidants. The alliance with Louis against the Dutch, however, could not be concealed for ever. The popular sentiment against France was already very strong, and the Venetian ambassador commented that ‘although the king may join France, his subjects will not follow him’. A rumour was spread that French agents were kidnapping English children to take their blood as a cure for Louis’s supposed leprosy. It was clear to the king’s men that, if there was to be a war with the Dutch, it would have to be very short and very successful before public anger turned against them.

Yet how was any proposed war to be financed? In the intervals between various recesses and prorogations, parliament voted only modest supplies. The French pension itself was not over-generous. The king’s own hereditary revenues were all pledged to repay old debts but, as a sign of boldness or desperation, it was determined to postpone the repayment of all those loans. This became known as ‘the stop’, imposed on 2 January 1672. All payments due from the exchequer were cancelled, so that incoming revenues could be spent upon the preparations for war.

The principal victims were the goldsmiths operating as bankers, who in turn passed on the loss and refused to discharge to their clients the cash they held on deposit. It seemed that ‘the stop’ might also soon be put to trade itself. Yet another casualty, however, was the king, who at a stroke lost credibility; the financial probity of the government was severely undermined and it was not at all clear that anyone would lend to it again. One contemporary confided to his diary that the decision ‘will amaze all men and ruin thousands’.

In the spring of 1672, the French declared war on the Dutch; Charles immediately followed their example, and justified hostilities by citing the attempts of the republic to supplant English trade and to harass English traders. He also mentioned the fact that he was personally insulted by Dutch caricatures and publications. Two days before the call to war, Charles had honoured another undertaking to Louis by issuing a ‘declaration of indulgence’ that included his Catholic subjects. The nonconformists were granted complete freedom of worship while the Roman Catholic ‘recusants’ were permitted to worship in their private houses. It was a signal use of the royal prerogative at a time when parliament was not in session. Licences to hold public meetings were now generously and variously distributed to the nonconformists. John Bunyan was one of those released from prison. It may also have occurred to dissenters and Catholics that their new religious liberties now depended upon royal favour.

The measure could also have been designed to assist the king’s brother, who had recently been received into the Catholic communion. James, duke of York, by his own account, had been converted after reading certain tracts for and against the Roman faith; he also perused church histories and came to the conclusion that none of the English reformers ‘had power to do what they did’. His faith was a matter of conviction and principle; for his brother it was a question of expediency.

It was said by the earl of Arlington that the ‘declaration of indulgence’ was so intended ‘that we might keep all quiet at home while we are busy abroad’. Yet hostilities had already begun. In the middle of March an English squadron attempted to detain and board a rich Dutch fleet of merchant vessels on its way home from Smyrna and Malaga. Its commander had been warned in advance, however, and was accompanied by a convoy that allowed him to elude the English enemy. It was a humiliation for Charles, who had also been deprived of the treasure he had hoped to capture. The affair did not bode well for the greater war.

The duke of York had been appointed as lord high admiral, but Charles played a large part in preparing and arming the fleet. In the early summer of 1672 an inconclusive battle took place near Sole Bay, off the coast of Suffolk, in which both sides claimed success. Since the original plan of the English was to sail across the North Sea and blockade the Dutch in their home ports, they could hardly be described as the victors. It was clear enough that this would be no easy fight for the seas. The French fleet, ostensibly present to aid their allies, had played no part in the battle and thus earned the angry rebukes of the English; soon enough, in popular opinion, the French would be far more hated than the Dutch. John Evelyn observed in his diary entry for 27 June that the inconclusive battle ‘showed the folly of hazarding so brave a fleet, and losing so many good men, for no provocation but that the Hollanders exceeded us in industry, and in all things but envy’.