1662 period also belongs the judicial murder of Vane. Vane was not a regicide. Nor was there anything except superior ability and loftiness of spirit to distinguish his case from that of his fellows in the Council of State. His great crime in Cavalier eyes probably was his production of fatal evidence against Strafford. His execution was a dastardly murder. His lofty bearing at his trial had excited the craven fears of Charles, who was personally responsible for the execution after having pledged his word that Vane's life should be spared. The judicial 1661 murder of Argyle in Scotland was, if possible, still more 1661 infamous, as was also that of Guthrie, who seems to have been put to death simply as the most prominent Presbyterian, to strike terror into his sect. Charles had leaned on Argyle's support when he set up his banner in Scotland as a Covenanting king, and in subsequently accepting the Protectorate Argyle had done no more than Monck and many others who enjoyed impunity or were even taken into favour. Monck had the baseness, when evidence was wanting against Argyle, to produce private letters showing that the marquis had been hearty and zealous on the side of the usurpation of which Monck himself had been the vicegerent. The marquis showed in his death the difference between physical and moral courage. He looked calmly on the axe, though he had never been able to look upon the sword. How Milton, the great defender, if not the instigator, of regicide, escaped is a mystery. He must have had powerful and adroit friends. Well he might say that he was "with darkness and with dangers compassed round." The Solemn League and Covenant, the symbol of Presbyterian rebellion, was burned by the public hangman. The Commonwealth perished, but with it by no means perished all the political fruits of the Revolution. The engines of the first Charles's arbitrary government which the Long Parliament had swept away, the star chamber, the court of high commission, the council of the north, the stannaries court, were not restored. The privy council no more dared to usurp the legislative powers of parliament. Ship money was not revived. There were to be no more benevolences or forced loans; nor were taxes to be imposed without a vote of the representatives of the nation. What the government hereafter did in the way of irregular exaction it had to do by fraud or sufferance, not by an exertion of the prerogative. The personal government of Charles I. had been supported partly by exaction of feudal dues of the crown, its wardships, and its compositions for knighthood. In the war with Scotland it had called out its military tenants in feudal array. All this, suspended by the Revolution, was now formally abolished. The lands before held in military tenure were henceforth to be held in free soccage. The vexatious court of wards was never to vex more. The not less vexatious privilege of purveyance was resigned. Thus the nation finally took leave of feudalism and the middle age, while the king lost, with his feudal over-lordship, something of his dignity and power. To indemnify him for the surrender of his feudal revenues and perquisites he received an hereditary excise. A landlord parliament thus made the nation pay for a boon which was confined to a class. The Act which did away with the service of the lord of the manor to the crown confirmed the services of the copy-holder to the lord of the manor. Nearly at the same time the old feudal sys tem of subsidies, which had been imperfectly and unfairly levied, was changed for that of regular assessments, the fiscal system of the Commonwealth. The Triennial Act requiring the crown to call a parliament not less than once in three years, and providing remedies against the crown in case of its default, was 1664 repealed as being, what it unquestionably was, an infringement of the constitutional right of the king to call and dissolve parliaments. But in the repealing Act words were inserted affirming the principle of triennial parliaments which showed that the House of Commons, however, in its Cavalier mood, it might be disposed extravagantly to exalt the crown, was not disposed to part with its own power. In truth, after a few years, when 1661 the factitious haze of Restoration sentiment had been cleared away, it appeared that, instead of having been effaced, parliament had really been the winner in the long struggle, and that in it had vested the sovereign power. Henceforth, if the crown forms sinister designs, instead of setting the representatives of the nation at defiance, it will have to resort to packing and corruption; nor, pack and corrupt as it may, will it induce parliament, however devoid of public principle, by parting with power, to ruin the market for votes; opposition is necessary to extort the bribe. There was, however, no limit to the duration of parliaments, so that the king could keep a subservient parliament sitting as long as he pleased. The Cavalier parliament of Charles sat for eighteen years. The command of the military force was given back to the king, to whom both constitutionally and as a necessary adjunct of the executive it belonged, dangerous to freedom in his hands as it might be and as, in the next But by A dangerous step was taken towards making the king 1660 independent of parliament by granting him a revenue for life of one million two hundred thousand pounds, made up of the port duties added to his hereditary excise. His extravagance proved an antidote to the unguarded liberality of the Commons. The mistresses and syco phants wrought for constitutional liberty in their way. The fangs of the treason law were sharpened, and it 1661 was made not only capital to conspire for the king's death or deposition, but punishable to affirm him to be a papist or a heretic, to write or speak against the established government, to maintain the legality of the Long Parliament, or to assert a legislative power in either or both houses of parliament without the king. The doctrine of non-resistance, pronouncing it treason to take up arms against the king on any pretence whatever, was ominously embodied in a statute. But to make 1661 the doctrine, thus affirmed in the abstract, practically effective, it would have been necessary to change the spirit of the nation. At the gorgeous coronation of Charles the religion of etiquette was fully revived, though with innovation derived from the customs of the court of France, “whereof,” says Clarendon, "the king and the duke had too much the image in their heads and than which there could not be a copy more universally ingrateful and odious to the English nation.” With the highest of all liberties, and that which is the salt of all, it fared for a time worst. But few, except the author of "Areopagitica," clearly saw the value of liberty of opinion. The press laws of the Commonwealth had been only occasional; they were the defensive measures of a government struggling for its life. The press law of the Cavalier parliament was an application of the 1662 paternal policy. The censorship of the press was appro priately conferred on L'Estrange, a royalist spy and conspirator, who had signalized his loyalty by an attack on Milton. This man was made inquisitor-general, not only for publications, but for the whole trade. His paper, published twice a week, was henceforth the whole newspaper press. Not only with freedom of the pen, but at a later period with freedom of the tongue, government sought to interfere. Coffee, now introduced, began to play a part in politics. Coffee-houses became resorts and 1675 centres of political gossip. These the government closed by proclamation; but, like other arbitrary governments, it found that it was more dangerous to aggress on the social pleasures of the people than on their rights, and the proclamation was withdrawn. In all our judgments on the conduct of the people at this time we must make allowance for the absence of a newspaper press, for the want of political information, and for the restraints upon liberty of discussion. Of this caution we shall soon have |