But the Fire was a great blessing to the City afterwards, for it arose from its ruins very much improved — built more regularly and therefore much more healthily.
The Catholics were accused of having willingly set London in flames; one poor Frenchman, who had been mad for years, even accused himself of having with his own hand fired the first house, a baker's shop. There is no reasonable doubt, however, that the fire was accidental. An inscription on the Monument at the London Bridge long attributed it to the Catholics; but the words were removed afterwards, and they were always a malicious and stupid untruth.
Comprehension questions
1.Why was Charles II called "The Merry Monarch"?
2.What were his first steps on the throne?
3.What were Charles’ religious policies?
4.What did his wife bring him as a dowry?
5.The sale of Dunkirk. The Peace of Breda.
6.The Great Plague of 1665. How many people did it kill in London?
7.The Great Fire of London.
62. REBUILDING OF LONDON AND OTHER EVENTS DURING THE REIGN OF CHARLES II
The Great Fire of 1666 burnt 13 thousand houses, 89 churches, the city gates, the public buildings, the hospitals and libraries. And among the destroyed churches was St. Paul's Cathedral.
When the terror of plague and fire had died away, the people decided to rebuild their city. There was a great architect in London at that time, whose name was Christopher Wren (16321723). He was the son of the Dean of Windsor, and when he was sent to Oxford University, he proved himself a wonderful pupil. He won success in mathematics and astronomy, and other sciences, and at the age of only twenty-four years old he was made a professor of astronomy. At this time there was already a St. Paul's Cathedral in existence. There had been a church in that place from far back in Saxon times, but four buildings, which, one after another, stood there, were destroyed by fire. In 1663 the building that stood there was sadly in need of repair, and they called on Christopher Wren to carry out repairs and alternations. He was very glad that they asked him, for he had longed to do the work. But he was prevented by the Great Fire of 1666. During this calamity Wren understood that London was simply a sink of filth and disease.
After the fire had ended Wren drew plans for a splendid city with broad thoroughfares and magnificent docks; but, unfortunately, people could not wait. They built as quickly as they could, without heeding the scheme Wren had designed. They built better houses than before, making them of brick and stone instead of wood, but they followed the old line of the streets, and so to this day London has wretched, crooked ways.
Wren's plans were not altogether wasted, however. He built more than fifty churches instead of those which had been burnt, and they are the finest churches in London. He built the Royal Exchange, Temple Bar, the Royal College of Physicians, Greenwich Observatory, Chelsea Hospital, and he added to Westminster Abbey. But the most famous feat of him was the building of the beautiful St. Paul's Cathedral. When Wren made a start with it, he picked out a stone from the heap of the ruins, and found on it a word in Latin which means, "I shall rise again". So he made this the first stone of the new Cathedral.
But it happened only in 1675, and now we must return to our subject of this chapter, King Charles the Second. Clarendon's rule made him unpopular with all classes; his moderation of
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resisting the extremer wishes of the Parliament on the one hand and the Court on the other earned him the hatred from both sides; above all, he was credited with the bad management of the Dutch war. To avoid his impeachment by Parliament for trying to raise a standing army and for traitorously selling Dunkirk, Charles retired to France.
His place was taken by a kind of committee, or, as it was called at that time, Cabal; it was a mere coincidence that the latter word happened to be formed by the initials of those who composed it: Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. But this committee did not represent any settled policy; indeed, its members were actuated by very different views and interests. Some were Catholics, others were Protestants; they were, in fact, merely individuals who were able to offer advice to the king more freely than any one else. It was the King, and not the Cabal, who was responsible in 1668 for the triple alliance between England, Holland and Sweden against France.
And yet, sending Sir William Temple to negotiate the alliance, Charles was acting against the personal inclinations. He was not at all sorry that Louis XIV should attack the Spanish Netherlands and thus threaten the Dutch, though he thought that a Protestant Alliance would induce Parliament to give him increased grants and increased power. But when this did not happen he had no hesitation in concluding, for a large sum down and an annual pension, the secret Treaty of Dover with France and an undertaking not only to declare himself a Roman Catholic but to do his best to help Louis to win the Spanish Netherlands (1670). Only the Roman Catholic members of the Cabal knew of this treaty; their colleagues, who were themselves not very partial to the Dutch, were hoodwinked by a sham treaty which omitted the clause referring to the king's conversion.
It is never difficult to find a pretext for war, and in 1672 England, still jealous of trade rivalry and still resenting the disgrace, declared war in alliance with France against Holland. Almost at the same time, in order to secure toleration for the Roman Catholics, the King published a Declaration of Indulgence to all Dissenters, thus overriding an Act of Parliament by his dispensing power. But, as Parliament had been prorogued in 1670, there was no opportunity to test opinion, and preparations for war fully occupied public attention.
But little was gained in that war, because James, Duke of York, the King's brother, could only claim a doubtful victory on a sea-fight off Southwold; but on land the French were before the English. The Dutch were to fall back on Amsterdam, and they had only saved themselves when they opened the dykes. In their extremity they called to the head of affairs the Young Prince of Orange, William III, nephew of the English King. He was a young man at this time, only just of age; but he was brave, cool, intrepid. He became popular.
It was full seven years before this war ended in a treaty of peace made at Nimeguen. The war was very unpopular with the Englishmen. Rumours as to the secret clauses of the French alliance only increased their dislike of fighting with Catholics against Protestants. This change in popular opinion was clearly shown in the Parliament which Charles's want of money compelled him to reassemble in 1673. Not only was he obliged to withdraw the Declaration of Indulgence, but the Houses passed a Test Act which prevented any non-member of the Church of England from holding office under the Crown. The immediate consequence was the breakup of the Cabal and the resignation of James, the Duke of York, a Roman Catholic, from the command of the navy. The Duke of York, the King's brother, was heir to the throne, and after the death of his first wife, the daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, he was married to Mary of Modena, a Catholic Princess. With the Church party so powerful in Parliament as we have seen, toleration was out of the question. But while the Duke of York was a Roman Catholic, his children were Protestants. When William of Orange came to England and saw the Duke's elder daughter Mary, he fell in love and they married. We shall see by-and-by what came of that marriage and why it is never to be forgotten.
They married in 1667. Perhaps, it was this popularity of a Protestant alliance that induced Titus Oates, a convert of the Jesuits from Nonconformity, to come forward with a story of a
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Popish plot to kill the King and to put James, the Duke of York, on the throne. Englishmen were only too willing to believe the worst that could be told them about Roman Catholics, and, as usual in such cases, they were soon told all they wanted to hear. A curious outcome of the excitement caused by the plot was the impeachment of Danby by the House of Commons; no one was a stauncher with Holland, everyone was eager for his removal. The removal was brought about by revelation on Danby's secret negotiations with Louis for a pension for Charles in order that he might not need to call a Parliament.
The outburst of popular fury, when Oates and his imitators invented their plots, induced Lord Shaftsbury and the "country party", as his supporters were called, to bring in an Exclusion Bill16 (1679) to prevent the Duke of York, as a Roman Catholic, from succeeding to the throne. Before the Bill could be read a third time Parliament was dissolved, but not before it had passed the famous Act of Habeas Corpus, which secured personal liberty by giving every unconvicted prisoner the right to demand a trial or bail within twenty days of his imprisonment.17
Shaftsbury's friends (the Whigs18) immediately petitioned the King to reassemble the Parliament, while the court party (the Tories19), led by Halifax, expressed their abhorrence of such interference with the royal prerogative. The "petitioners" gained their point, but only to see the Exclusion Bill rejected by the "abhorrers" in the Lords (1680). Once more, the following year, the Bill was passed by Parliament, but by this time public opinion had veered round to the King's side, and he was able to stop any further progress by a dissolution. Shaftesbury too recognised that belief in the plot had died out, and thought it prudent to retire to Holland.
The triumph of the Court party was complete when discovery of the Rye House Plot (1683) to murder the King and the Duke of York on their return ride from Newmarket led to the implications and execution of Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, two of the Opposition
16This Bill was brought in to bar the heir, James II, from the ascension to the throne.
17Hebeas Corpus - the legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention, that is, detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence, passed in 1689 (from Lat. Habeas Corpus tuum - you have your body).
18The term Whig originated during the times of Oliver Cromwell when it was used to refer derisively to a radical faction of the Scottish Covenanters who called themselves the "Kirk Party". It was then applied to Scottish presbyterian rebels who were against the King's episcopalian order in Scotland. It entered English political discourse during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678-1681 and applied to those opposed to the hereditary ascendance of the Catholic Duke of York, future James II, to the throne. The fervent Tory Samuel Johnson often cracked that "the first Whig was the Devil."
The Whigs supported the great aristocratic families, the Protestant Hanoverian succession and toleration for nonconformist Protestants (the "dissenters," such as Presbyterians). Later on, the Whigs drew support from the emerging industrial interests, newly-emerging bourgeoisie (manufacturers), wealthy merchants, while the Tories drew support from the landed interests and the British Crown. The Whigs were originally also known as the "Country Party" (as opposed to the Tories, the "Court Party"). By the first half of the 19th century, however, the Whig political programme came to encompass not only the supremacy of parliament over the monarch and support for free trade, but Catholic emancipation, the abolition of slavery and, significantly, expansion of the franchise (suffrage).
19The word “tory” derives from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe; modern Irish tóraí: outlaw, robber, from the Irish word tóir, meaning "pursuit", since outlaws were "pursued men". The term was initially applied in Ireland to the isolated bands of guerrillas resisting Oliver Cromwell's nine-month 1649-1650 campaign in Ireland, who were allied with Royalists. During the Civil War the word Tories was applied to Cavaliers and gentry, who professed a traditionalist political philosophy, advocated monarchism, were usually of an Anglican or Catholic
religious heritage, and were opposed to the radical liberalism of the Whig faction.
The Tory ethics can be summed up with the phrase God, King and Country. English Tories from the time of the Glorious Revolution up until the Reform Bill of 1832 were characterized by strong monarchist tendencies, support of the Church of England, and hostility to reform, while the Tory Party was an actual organization which held power intermittently throughout the same period. The term remains in occasional use to refer to the modern Conservatives that evolved from this party.
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