STATE PAPERS OF CHARLES H.* Tars series of Calendars is
probably the most generally interest- ing of all those which are being published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, as the period which it covers is the latest, and for many reasons special interest attaches to the reign of that clever voluptuary, Charles II. This volume, the eighth of Mrs. Green's series, comprises only six months, April to October, of 1667. The chief events of these six months are the death of the Lord Treasurer Southampton and the placing of the Treasury in Commission; the great disaster and disgrace of the sailing of the Dutch fleet up to Chatham, and its proceedings there ; the ter- mination of the unfortunate Dutch war by the treaties of Breda, and the dismissal of the Lord Chancellor and Prime Minister Clarendon. The letters calendared in this volume are full of particulars of the Dutch invasion and the alarms it created, and add much information of detail to the diaries of Pepys and
Ca?endar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles II., 1667, Pre- served in Her Majesty's Public Record Office. Edited by Mary Anne Everett Gr.en. London : Longmont'. 1566.
Evelyn, which are copious on this subject. Mrs Green, who is an excellent editor, has prefixed to this volume a judicious preface, containing long extracts from letters, principally those which relate to the Chatham disgrace. A London correspondent of Lord Conway in the country relates how the King had publicly told the citizens that he had been betrayed, and that in the Council only the Duke of York, Prince Rupert, Monk, Duke of Albemarle (the Lord General), and the Archbishop of Canterbury (Sheldon),
had been for arming the fleet, and so being ready for offence and defence while the negotiations for peace were proceeding ; " and so the greater part of his Council did oversway, much against his own opinion, which was to treat with his sword in his hand."
The letter-writer proceeds :—" Some considerable person standing by, endeavouring to excuse it and that he was also of that opinion, the King, in great anger, gave him the lie, and the next day did openly reproach his Council at the Council-table" Another cor- respondent of Lord Conway mentions :—" Upon the first attempt of the Dutch at Chatham, there was such an astonishment upon men's hearts that every one went to his goldsmith to recall his moneys ; but they were all sent back empty-handed, and the King was forced to set forth a declaration, to save the said gold- smiths from being so much persecuted as they were." Lord Conway was not at this time in any way connected with the Government ; he became one of the Secretaries of State for a short time in 1681, and he appears to have left much of his private correspondence from the Restoration at Whitehall. The news-letters addressed to him by various correspondents, some of whom are already known by the correspondence published in the interesting but ill edited volume called The Rawdon Papers, are an important part of the letters of public interest which Mrs. Green has calendared in this series.
A striking proof of the great respect in which Monk was held, contrary to the notion, which has generally prevailed, that after the accomplishment of the Restoration he became a mere cipher, was published in Mrs. Green's last volume. When the Great Fire of London broke out in September, 1666, Monk was immediately begged to coins to London from Portsmouth, where, with Prince Rupert, he commanded the fleet, as quite an indispensable man. A passage of the letter, found in the State Paper Office, which Arlington on that occasion wrote to Clifford at Portsmouth is well worth quoting : -
"I leave you to judge what a distraction this misfortune puts us into, whereof the consequences are yet more terrible to us by the dis- orders that are likely to follow. For these considerations, His Majesty, by the unanimous concurrence of his Council, wishes my Lord General were here ; and yet, not knowing how the resolution of commanding him homo would be acceptable to him, bath thought fit to sound his Grace's mind therein by a letter Mr. Secretary Morrice is bid to write to him. If my Lord General could see the condition we are in, I am confident, and so is every one else, he would think it more honour to be called to this occasion than to be stayed in the fleet, where it is possible he may not have an opportunity of fighting the enemy ; but hero it is certain he will have it in his hands to give the King his kingdom a second time, and the world see therein the value the Ring makes of him."
And now, when the Dutch fleet was burning and capturing our ships at Chatham, there was no one but Monk, to the neglect of whose counsels this great disaster was owing, who inspired any hope, or was able to do any good. An intercepted letter to a "grand rebel," as the post-office clerk who intercepted it describes Sir Henry Neville, to whom the letter was written, says, " They [the Dutch] attempted all the Navy, and had it not been for Albemarle, who went down himself with forces from London, and came just in time, they had destroyed it quite." It is written in the same letter, "Albemarle foresaw this long since, and told the King in Council that, whatever it should cost him to set forth his fleet once more, it would be the cheapest way to make peace with his sword drawn ; but it was over-ruled by the good husbands
of the Council, at which he storms very much now, and hath made the Ei g resent it too. So that if a peace be not presently clapt
up, you may hear more of it hereafter, to the prejudice of some grandees." This letter was written on June 20. A peace was soon after " clapt up." The treaties of Breda with Holland and with France, terminating the war, were signed on the 31st of July. A month after, on the 31st of August, the Great Seal was taken from the Lord Chancellor Clarendon, who, though the office was not recognized in the Constitution, had been virtually Prime Minister since the Restoration. Sir William Coventry, a very able and, for those times, honest man, is represented as the prin- cipal adviser of the measure of economy which, depriving us of a fleet, brought on us the humiliation and danger of a Dutch squadron sailing triumphantly up the Thames, and again as the principal adviser of the removal of Clarendon. The King's debts and the ex-
haustion of the Treasury rendered economy a matter of absolute necessity ; Coventry was Secretary to the Duke of York as Lord High Admiral, i. e., Secretary to the Admiralty, and he and Lord Ashley were the leading members of the Commission for the Treasury, appointed on the death of Lord Southampton, for the difficult, indeed hopeless, task of putting the finances in order. Albemarle was added to the Commission for the prestige of his name ; the two remaining members were Sir John Duncombe, a city goldsmith (also in this reign Chancellor of the Exchequer), and Clifford, at this time a man of no great consequence, but soon to attain prominence and notoriety as Lord Clifford, the Lord Treasurer of the so-called Cabal Ministry. There are many curious proofs in this volume of the penury of the Govern- ment. The King's very footmen were without their wages. Mrs. Green calendars (p. 494) a "petition of the twenty-six footmen to the King, for an order to the Treasury Commissioners to pay them their year's wages, due from the treasury of the Chamber at Michaelmas; have had to borrow money to attend His Majesty and the Queen in their journeys this summer, and are in danger of being thrown into prison."
Arlington, who had been one of the Council for reducing the Navy, had a quarrel with Prince Rupert at the Council-board, and a correspondent of Sir Joseph Williamson writes that "it was reported by a soldier of Sir Francis Compton's troop that Prince Rupert had struck Lord Arlington a box on the ear, and knocked off his hat and periwig." In 200 years the ways of Cabinet Ministers have changed.
It is difficult to give an adequate idea of the " infinite variety" of matters which turn up in one of these volumes. They rarely disclose State secrets, or throw great light ou large affairs of Government, but they abound in illustrative details for history and biography, and are a treasury of wealth for historians like Macaulay and biographers like John Forster. Dr. Cudworth, the celebrated philosopher, apologizes, as Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, for disobedience of the College to a Royal order for the election of a son of Sir Richard Fanshaw as Fellow, stating that "since the Restoration their little College has received and obeyed ten Royal letters, and even received a manciple imposed by letter, though it was a thing never known before." He adds that " when mandates are so plentifully granted, they cannot possibly all be obeyed" (p. 301). We have a glimpse of cruel persecu- tions of Scotch covenanters in a letter from Edinburgh,—" William Douglas, a sweet stately youth, not twenty-one years, a brave scholar and spirit, was beheaded at the Market Cross, and died very peni- tently." (p. 173). The Rector of Lamplugh, a Cumberland parish, joins in a request to Williamson " to procure His Majesty's touch for John Dixon, a neighbour and parishioner, who is troubled with the evil." (p. 447). There is another curious appearance of a rector in " a grant of pardon to John Latimer, rector of Halton, county Backs, for the manslaughter of Christopher Harper, his servant, who was hurt by him through passionate and indiscreet correc- tion." (p. 459). Then come together two warrants for writs of summons to the Earl of Rochester and Earl of Mulgrave, two noble poets, to the House of Peers, it being noted that they are both under twenty-one years of age. To historical inquirers these volumes are full of interest and information, and every suc- cessive publication must strengthen the public sense of the service rendered to literature by the Master of the Rolls.
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