Reign of Charles II. (Continued) page 4

Parliament being prorogued to October, Charles was now engaged in completing the secret treaty betwixt himself and Louis, by which he was to be an annual pensioner on France to an extent releasing him in a great measure from dependence on his own parliament. On his part, he was to employ the naval and military power of England to promote the wicked designs of Louis against his neighbours on the continent. The conditions of the treaty were these: - 1st, That the king of England should profess himself catholic at such time as should seem to him most expedient, and after that profession should 30m Louis in a war on Holland when the French king thought proper. 2nd, That to prevent or suppress any insurrection in consequence of this public avowal, Louis should furnish him with two millions of livres, nearly one hundred thousand pounds, and an armed force of six thousand troops, if necessary. 3rd, That Louis should not violate the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and Charles should be allowed to maintain it. 4th, That if new rights on the Spanish monarchy should accrue to Louis, Charles should aid him with all his power in obtaining those rights. 5th, That both monarchs should make war on Holland, and neither conclude the peace without the knowledge and consent of the other. 6th, The king of France to bear the charge of the war, but receiving from England a force of six thousand men. 7th, That Charles should furnish fifty, Louis thirty men-of-war, the combined fleet to be commanded by the duke of York; and that to support the charge of the war, the king of England should, during the war, receive annually three million of livres, about one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. England was to receive of the Dutch spoil Walcheren, Sluys, and the island of Cadsand, and the interests of the prince of Orange were to be guaranteed. There was also to be a treaty of commerce.

Perhaps the whole history of the world does not furnish a more infamous bargain, not even the partition of Poland in later days. Here was a king of England selling himself Jo the French monarch for money, to enable him to put down protestantism and parliament in this country, to do all and more than his father lost his head for attempting - for Charles I never plotted against the protestant religion. This was bad enough, but the bargain went to enable France to put its foot on the neck of this country, and to employ its forces to destroy protestantism abroad - protestantism and liberty; to throw Holland, and eventually all the Netherlands, and then Spain, into the power of France, making of it an empire so gigantic that neither freedom, nor protestantism, nor any political independence could ever more exist. Had this infamous scheme come to light in Charles's time, the Stuarts would not have been driven out in 1688, but then and there. But that this odious bargain did actually take place, and was acted on, so far as Charles's domestic vices and extravagance permitted, our times have produced the fullest evidence. The above treaty, which was deposited with Sir Thomas Clifford, still exists in the cabinet of his descendants at Chudleigh; and Sir John Dalrymple, seeking in the archives at Paris for material for his "Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland," published in 1790, unexpectedly stumbled on the damning evidences - under the hands of Charles and his ministers themselves - of this unholy transaction and its filthy reward. The duke of York was at first said to be averse to this secret treason and slavery, but he fell into it, and received his share of the pecunium, as well as Buckingham, through whose agency a second treaty was effected, raising the annual sum to five million of livres, or nearly two hundred, and fifty thousand pounds a year; the article requiring the king's change of religion being omitted altogether, Charles, meanwhile, having shown his readiness to engage in the Dutch war, which was the main question. Ashley and Lauderdale, Clifford and Arlington were also in the secret, and had their reward. Many were the suspicions of this diabolical business which oozed out, and much talk was the consequence at times; the proofs were preserved with inscrutable secrecy during the lives of the parties concerned, discovery being utter and inevitable destruction. The French copy of the treaty has hitherto escaped, all research.

To induce Charles to declare war without waiting for his confession of catholicism, Louis sent over Charles's sister, Henrietta, duchess of Orleans. The king met her at Dover, and the point was discussed, but Charles would not move another step till the treaty was formally signed, and the first payment made. The duchess, indeed, was much more earnest on her own affairs. She was most miserably married to the duke of Orleans, the brother and heir-apparent of Louis, who treated her with cruelty and neglect for other women. She was anxious for a divorce and to live in England, but Charles would not hear of what was so hostile to his interests. The unfortunate duchess returned to Paris, and within three weeks she was ä corpse, though only twenty- six years of age. There was every reason to believe that she was poisoned, though the doctors, on a post mortem examination, declared there were no signs of poison; but what was the value of the testimony of medical men given at the risk of their heads? On her deathbed, when questioned by Montague, the ambassador, as to her belief on that point, though warned by her confessor to accuse nobody, she would not say that she had no suspicions, but only shrugged her shoulders, a significant expression of her internal conviction.

The duchess left behind her one of her maids, a Mademoiselle Querouaille, or as the English came to call her, Madam Carwell, whom Louis had selected as a spy and agent, feeling assured that she would soon captivate this amorous king, which she did at once, and was in his usual way made at the same time his mistress and maid of honour to the queen. She was soon advanced to the title of duchess of Portsmouth, and so well did she serve the purposes of Louis, that in 1673 he gave her also a French title and estate. It was now thought by Charles and James that they could venture to put down the liberties, and, as James earnestly advocated, the religion of the nation. It was proposed to fortify Portsmouth, Hull, and Plymouth, by which places French soldiers might be introduced, and James having the command of the fleet, no interruption to their transit could take place. When parliament met in October, Charles observed that both Holland and France were increasing their navies - he could have told them really why-r-and on pretence of necessary caution, he demanded large supplies to place our own navy on a proper footing. There were complaints of prodigality and 'hints of popery thrown out, but a sum of no less than two million five hundred thousand pounds was voted, by taxes on land, on stock, on law proceedings, and on salaries - in fact, an income and property tax. There was a proposal to tax theatres, and when it was objected that the theatres contributed to Sis majesty's pleasure, Sir John Coventry asked sarcastically, "whether his majesty's pleasure lay amongst the men or the women players?"

For this remark Sir John was made to pay severely. The king and the whole court were furious at his hard hit against the Moll Davises and Nell Gwynnes. The king declared that he would send a detachment of the guards to watch in the street where Sir John Coventry lived, and set a mark upon him. The duke of York in vain endeavoured to dissuade the king; the duke of Monmouth, who was living on terms of great professed friendship with Coventry, yet undertook the execution of the business. He sent Sandys; his lieutenant, and O'Brien, the son of lord Inchiquin, with thirteen soldiers, who waited for Sir John as he returned from the parliament house on the evening of the 21st of December, and, encountering him in the Haymarket, assaulted him. Sir John placed his back to the wall, snatched the flambeau from the hands of his servant, and with that in one hand he so well plied his sword with the other, that he wounded several of the soldiers, and got more credit by his gallantry than for any action in his life. But he was overpowered by numbers in the end, beaten to the ground, and then had his nose cut to the bone with a penknife, to make a mark for life, to teach him respect for the king. They then went back to the duke of Monmouth's, where O'Brien, who was wounded in the arm, had it dressed. Coventry had his nose so well sewed up, that the trace of the outrage was scarcely discernible; but the house of commons, even such a house, resented this dastardly attempt on one of its members, and it passed an act making it felony without benefit of clergy to cut or maim the person, and banishing for life the four principal offenders unless they surrendered before a certain day, as well as incapable of pardon even by act of parliament. But Monmouth and his assistants got out of the way, and the parliament never had the virtue to enforce its own act., In a very few weeks, Monmouth and a set of his drunken companions - young Monk, now duke of Albemarle, and eight others - attacked the watch, and killed the beadle of the ward, though he prayed earnestly that they would spare his life. Charles granted a pardon to the whole crew of murderers, to the great indignation of the public. The only visible effect on the, court was that a ball at Whitehall ,which was to have taken place that night, was put off. It was thus referred to by Andrew Marvell in his satires: -

See what mishaps dare e'en invade Whitehall,
The silly fellow's death puts off the ball!
And disappoints the queen, poor little chuck,
Who doubtless would have danced it like a duck.
Yet shall Whitehall] the innocent, the good,
See these men dance all daubed with lace and blood.

The year 1670 was not destined to end without another extraordinary event. The duke of Ormond was returning on the 6th of December from a dinner in the city given to the young prince of Orange, and as he passed through St. James's Street, his carriage was stopped, he was dragged out, and mounted behind a man on horseback. There were five ruffians concerned, but having bound the duke behind their companion, the rest rode on to Tyburn to prepare the gallows, for hanging him upon it. But when they were gone, the duke threw himself forcibly from the horse, dragging his keeper with him. As they lay struggling on the ground footsteps were heard approaching. The duke's servants had given the alarm, and people were hurrying to the rescue. On this the villain loosened the belt which bound him to the duke, discharged two pistols at him, and made off. Fortunately the duke was not wounded except by the fall and the scuffle. The house of lords instituted an inquiry into this occurrence; the king offered one thousand pounds reward to any one giving information of the assassins, with pardon to the informant if one concerned. Nothing, however, could be traced till another affair, quite as extraordinary, took place in May of the next year.

A person habited as a clergyman, in the spring of 1671, introduced himself to Edwards, the keeper of the regalia in the Tower. He informed him of the attachment of his nephew to the keeper's daughter, and proposed a marriage between them. An acquaintance was thus commenced, and on the 9th of May the pretended clergyman brought two of his friends to see the regalia. The moment that they reached the regalia room, a cloak was thrown over the keeper's head, a gag was forced into his mouth, and he was then assured that no harm should happen to him if he only remained quiet. But the trusty keeper resisted with all his might, and the ruffians then knocked him down, and wounded him in the belly. The clerical-looking person then put the crown under his cossack, another concealed the globe in his breeches, and the third filed the sceptre in two and put it in a bag. But the keeper's son happening to come in at the moment, rushed away and raised an alarm. The ruffians ran for jt; one then fired at the first sentinel, who, though untouched, believed himself shot and fell. They had nearly reached their horses at St. Catherine's Gate before they were seized. The ruffians refused to give any account of themselves, but Charles's curiosity being raised to see such extraordinary caitiffs, the chief of them freely avowed to him that he was a colonel Blood, and the same man who had attempted to hang, and, failing in that, to shoot the duke of Ormond. That he was of Sarney, in the county of Meath, in Ireland, the author of a libel called "Mene Tekel," and that his determination to kill Ormond arose from his having executed his companions for an attempt to surprise Dublin Castle, in 1663.

The king was struck with the wonderful audacity of the villain, who not only confessed these things, but gloried in them; and the artful villain told the king a story which was calculated to deter him from taking his life. He said that he was one of a band of three hundred, who had sworn to revenge each other's deaths. That on one occasion he had engaged to shoot his majesty as he went to swim in the Thames above Battersea, but that when he was about to take aim, the awe of majesty had paralysed his hand, and that he not only gave up his design, but bound his confederates to do the same. Their cause of offence was the persecution of the godly. That the king now could do as he pleased - he could execute him if he preferred it, but that he would then expose his life to the revenge of three hundred daring men, who were bound by the most solemn obligation to destroy the men, whoever they were, who put him to death. On the other hand, if he pardoned him, he would secure the gratitude and the lasting services of three hundred undaunted and faithful adherents.

The deeplaid artifice of this daring miscreant succeeded to a miracle. Charles was, on the one hand, so exquisitely flattered by "the awe of majesty," and on the other so terrified by the idea of three hundred desperadoes on the perpetual watch for his life, that he not only pardoned Blood, but, to bind him more firmly to his interests, he granted him an estate in Ireland of five hundred pounds a year, and admitted him to the court on the footing of a gentleman and a favourite. The duke of Ormond was persuaded to pardon him, and the fellow was at once familiar with all the great people about the court. Evelyn describes, his seeing him there, dining at the treasurer's table with the due de Grammont and several French noblemen. Yet the marks of the scoundrel were unmistakably upon him. "The man," says Evelyn, "had not only a daring, but a villainous, unmerciful look; a false countenance, but very well spoken, and dangerously insinuating." He was suspected of being a double spy, and was fully capable of it, both by his audacity and cunning, for the republicans and nonconformists on the one hand, and for the king on the other. Ormond, who was detested by Buckingham and his party, believed that nobleman to be at the bottom of Blood's attack on himself; and lord Ossory, Ormond's son, told him in the presence of the king, that if, his father came to any untimely end in any manner, he should know on whom to take vengeance, and would do it, even though he stood behind his majesty's chair. Blood maintained his ground at court for nearly thirteen years, but at length he was thrown into prison for subpoenaing witnesses to swear a vile crime against Buckingham, and ended his days in the King's Bench.