convention parliament, however, was so favorable to them, as to petition the king, if they should be found guilty, to suspend their execution: but this new parliament, more zealous for monarchy, applied for their trial and condemnation. Not to revive disputes which were better buried in oblivion, the indictment of Vane did not comprehend any of his actions during the war between the king and parliament :. it extended only to his behavior after the late king's death, as member of the council of state, and secretary of the navy, where fidelity to the trust reposed in him required his opposition to monarchy. Vane wanted neither courage nor capacity to avail himself of this advantage. He urged that, if a compliance with the government at that time established in England, and the acknowledging of its authority, were to be regarded as criminal, the whole nation had incurred equal guilt, and none would remain whose innocence could entitle them to try or condemn him for his pretended treasons: that, according to these maxims, wherever an illegal authority was established by force, a tutal and universal destruction must ensue; while the usurpers proscribed one part of the nation for disobedience, the lawful prince punished the other for compliance: that the legislature of England, foreseeing this violent situation, had provided for public security by the famous statute of Henry VII.; in which it was enacted that no man, in case of any revolution, should ever be questioned for his obedience to the king in being: that whether the established government were a monarchy or a commonwealth, the reason of the thing was still the same; nor ought the expelled prince to think himself entitled to allegiance, so long as he could not afford protection: that it belonged not to private persons, possessed of no power, to discuss the title of their governors; and every usurpation, even the most flagrant, would equally require obedience with the most legal establishment: that the controversy between the late king and his parliament was of the most delicate nature; and men of the greatest probity had been divided in their choice of the party which they should embrace; that the parliament, being rendered indissoluble but by its own consent, was become a kind of coördinate power with the king; and as the case was thus entirely new and unknown to the constitution, it ought not to be tried rigidly by the letter of the ancient laws: that for his part, all the violences which had been put upon the parliament, and upon the person of the sovereign, he had ever condemned; nor had he once appeared 3

VOL. VI

in the house for some time before and after the execution of the king: that, finding the whole government thrown into disorder, he was still resolved, in every revolution, to adhere to the commons, the root, the foundation, of all lawful authority: that in prosecution of this principle, he had cheerfully under gone all the violence of Cromwell's tyranny; and would now with equal alacrity, expose himself to the rigors of perverted law and justice that though it was in his power, on the king's restoration, to have escaped from his enemies, he was determined, in imitation of the most illustrious names of antiquity, to perish in defence of liberty, and to give testimony with his blood for that honorable cause in which he had been enlisted; and that, besides the ties by which God and nature had bound him to his native country, he was voluntarily engaged by the most sacred covenant, whose obligation no earthly power should ever be able to make him relinquish.

All the defence which Vane could make was fruitless. The court, considering more the general opinion of his active guilt in the beginning and prosecution of the civil wars, than the articles of treason charged against him, took advantage of the letter of the law, and brought him in guilty. His courage deserted him not upon his condemnation. Though timid by nature, the persuasion of a just cause supported him against the terrors of death, while his enthusiasm, excited by the prospect of glory, embellished the conclusion of a lie, which through the whole course of it, had been so much disfigured by the prevalence of that principle. Lest pity for a courageous sufferer should make impression on the populace, drummers were placed under the scaffold, whose noise, as he began to launch out in reflections on the government, drowned his voice, and admonished him to temper the ardor of his zeal. He was not astonished at this unexpected incident. In all his behavior there appeared a firm and animated intrepidity; and he considered death but as a passage to that eternal felicity which he believed to be prepared for him.

This man, so celebrated for his parliamentary talents, and for his capacity in business, has left some writings behind him : they treat, all of them, of religious subjects, and are absolutely unintelligible: no traces of eloquence, or even of common sense, appear in them. A strange paradox! did we not know, that men of the greatest genius, where they relinquish by principle the use of their reason, are only enabled, by their vigor of mind, to work themselves the deeper into error and absurd

ty. It was remarkable, that as Vane, by being the chief instrument of Strafford's death, had first opened the way for that destruction which overwhelmed the nation, so by his death he closed the scene of blood. He was the last that suffered on account of the civil wars. Lambert, though condemned, was reprieved at the bar; and the judges declared, that it' Vane's behavior had been equally dutiful and submissive, he would have experienced like lenity in the king. Lambert survived his condemnation near thirty years. He was confined to the Isle of Guernsey, where he lived contented, forgetting all his past schemes of greatness, and entirely for gotten by the nation. He died a Roman Catholic.

However odious Vane and Lambert were to the Presbyte. rians, that party had no leisure to rejoice at their condemna. tion. The fatal St. Bartholomew approached; the day when the clergy were obliged, by the late law, either to relinquish their livings, or to sign the articles required of them. A com. bination had been entered into by the more zealous of the Presbyterian ecclesiastics to refuse the subscription, in hope that the bishops would not venture at once to expel so great a number of the most popular preachers. The Catholic party at court, who desired a great rent among the Protestants, encouraged them in this obstinacy, and gave them hopes that the king would protect them in their refusal. The king himself, by his irresolute conduct, contributed, either from design or accident, to increase this opinion. Above all, the terms of subscription had been made strict and rigid, on purpose to disgust all the zealous and scrupulous among the Presbyterians, and deprive them of their livings. About two thousand of the clergy, in one day, relinquished their cures; and, to the astonishment of the court, sacrificed their interest to their religious tenets. Fortified by society in their sufferings, they were resolved to undergo any hardships, rather than openly renounce those principles, which, on other occasions, they were so apt, from interest, to warp or elude. The church enjoyed the pleasure of retaliation; and even pushed, as usual, the vengeance farther than the offence. During the dominion of the parliamentary party, a fifth of each living had been left to the ejected clergyman; but this indulgence, though at first insisted on by the house of peers, was now refused to the Presbyterians. However difficult to conciliate peace among theologians, it was hoped by many, that some relaxation in the terms of communion might have kept the Presby

terians united to the church, and have cured those ecclesiasti cal factions which had been so fatal, and were still so dangerous. Bishoprics were offered to Calamy, Baxter, and Rey. nolds, leaders among the Presbyterians: the last only could be prevailed on to accept. Deaneries and other preferments were refused by many.

The next measure of the king has not had the good fortune to be justified by any party, but is often considered, on what grounds I shall not determine, as one of the greatest mistakes, if not blemishes, of his reign. It is the sale of Dunkirk to the French. The parsimonious maxims of the parliament, and the liberal, or rather careless disposition of Charles, were ill suited to each other; and notwithstanding the supplies voted him, his treasury was still very empty and very much indebted. He had secretly received the sum of two hundred thousand crowns from France for the support of Portugal, but the forces sent over to that country, and the fleets maintained in order to defend it, had already cost the king that sum, and, together with it, near double the money which had been paid as the queen's portion. The time fixed for payment of his sister's portion to the duke of Orleans was approaching. Tangiers, a fortress from which great benefit was expected, was become an additional burden to the crown; and Rutherford, who now commanded in Dunkirk, had increased the charge of that garrison to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds a year. These considerations had such influence, not only on the king, but even on Clarendon, that this uncorrupt minister was the most forward to advise accepting a sum of money in lieu of a place which, he thought, the king, from the narrow state of his revenue, was no longer able to retain. By the treaty with Portugal, it was stipulated that Dunkirk should never be yielded to the Spaniards; France was therefore the only purchaser that remained. D'Estrades was invited over by a letter from the chancellor himself, in order to conclude the bargain. Nine hundred thousand pounds were demanded: one hundred thousand were offered. The English by degrees lowered their demand; the French raised their offer: and the bargain was concluded at four hundred thousand pounds. The artillery and stores were valued at a fifth of the sum.t The

* D'Estrades, 17th of August, 1662. There was above half of five hundred thousand pounds really paid as the queen's portion. + D'Estrades, 21st of August, 12th of September, 1662.

importance of this sale was not, at this time, sufficiently known, either abroad or at home. The French monarch himself, so fond of acquisitions, and so good a judge of his own interests, thought that he had made a hard bargain;1 and this sum, in appearance so small, was the utmost which he would allow his ambassador to offer.

A new incident discovered such a glimpse of the king's character and principles as, at first, the nation was somewhat at a loss how to interpret, but such as subsequent events, by degrees, rendered sufficier'y plain and manifest. He issued a declaration on pretence of mitigating the rigors contained in the act of uniformity. After expressing his firm resolution to observe the general indemnity, and to trust entirely to the affections of his subjects, not to any military power, for the support of his throne, he mentioned the promises of liberty of conscience contained in his declaration of Breda. And he subjoined, that, "as in the first place he had been zealous to settle the uniformity of the church of England, in discipline, ceremony, and government, and shall ever constantly maintain it, so, as for what concerns the penalties upon those who, living peaceably, do not conform themselves thereunto, through scruple and tenderness of misguided conscience, but modestly and without scandal perform their devotions in their own way, he should make it his special care, so far as in him lay, without invading the freedom of parliament, to incline their wis dom, next approaching sessions, to concur with him in making some such act for that purpose, as may enable him to exercise, with a more universal satisfaction, that power of dispensing,

• It appears, however, from many of D'Estrades's letters, particularly that of the 21st of August, 1661, that the king might have transferred Dunkirk to the parliament, who would not have refused to bear the charges of it, but were unwilling to give money to the king for that purpose. The king, on the other hand, was jealous lest the parliament should acquire any separate dominion or authority in a branch of administration which seemed so little to belong to them; a proof that the government was not yet settled into that composure and mutual confidence which is absolutely requisite for conducting it.

↑ D'Estrades, 3d of October, 1662. The chief importance, indeed, of Dunkirk to the English was, that it was able to distress their trade when in the hands of the French: but it was Lewis XIV. who first made it a good seaport. If ever England have occasion to transport armies to the continent, it must be in support of some ally whose towns serve to the same purpose as Dunkirk would, if in the hands the English.