To this war with Holland, a triple alliance between the three great Protestant powers, England, Holland, and Sweden, soon succeeded; but it was bounded on principles of too much utility to be sincerely cherished by Charles- By this league, which was signed by the wise and exalted Sir W. Temple on the part of Eng land, by Van Beuninghen for Holland, and by D'Ohna for Sweden, the Netherlands were protected from France; and by the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, (which the triple alliance produced) all Europe seemed to be promised repose under that Protestant confederacy; yet, amidst the rejoicings for the event, Sir Thomas Clifford, w ho possessed more of Charles's confidence than any of. his ministers, betrayed, by an unguarded expression, the secret perfidy of his master. Notwith standing all this joy, said he, we must still have another Dutch war.
In turning our attention, at this period, to the sister kingdom, we find the yoke of prelacy, which the resto ration had imposed on Scotland, attended with the most atrocious oppression. Middleton, whose drunkenness and cruelties had made his administration of Scottish affairs contemptible as well as odious, was disgraced in 1663, and was succeeded by Lauderdale, who, with a dark and vindictive temper, had yet the merit of intend ing more lenity to his Presbyterian countrymen, than the fury ol the prelates, on whom he was dependent, would permit him to exercise. A court of cclesiastical com mission traversed the kingdom, bound by no forms of law, and confined to no pi ice nor time of meeting, but established on the strict( st principles of the Spanish inquisition. The civil and military affairs were subor dinate to them ; their sentences were pronounced with out accusation, evidence, or defence. The soldiery were let loose upon the people ; all who attended, or were suspected of attending, the Presbyterian form of worship, were fined, imprisoned, or transported to the plantations. When sufferings too great for human pa tience. had at length driven the Scottish Presbyterians to insurrection, their defeat at P. inland afforded a pre text for judicial bloodshed, as well as fine and proscrip tion. But the victims died with such exultation. that it was at last difficult to procure exert loners. MCA, a young preacher, whom the prelates had excruciated, to extort a confession of his associates, endured the tor ture of the iron boot till his leg was crushed and broken, and expired in extacy on the scaffold, exclaiming, with a sublime enthusiasm, " Farewell, thou sun, and moon, and stars ! farewell, world and time ! farewell, weak and frail body ! Welcome eternity ! welcome angels and saints ! welcome Saviour of the world ! and wel come God, the Judge of all !" Towards the conclusion of an unfortunate and dis graceful war, the king was compelled to mitigate every where the rigours of government ; and when he had sacrificed Clarendon, the prelates lost their chief sup port. The violence of the Scottish archbishops had
also been artfully fomented by Lauderdale, till it reach ed a crisis destructive to themselves. A milder admi nistration succeeded, and the nation began to breathe again under the auspices of Tweedale, Kincardine, and sir Robert Murray, and enjoyed for a time, it not the blessings of liberty, at least those of a humane and impartial government. After the fall of Clarendon, the most unprincipled part of Charles's reign was yet to be acted. Clarendon is accused of having connived at his receiving money from France unknown to his people ; but this heavy charge is not proved against him, (ad duced by Dalrymple in his Memoirs.) That Charles had been, from the first years of his reign, guilty of this meanness, is, however, certain ; and in the begin ning of the year 1670, he signed an agreement with Louis XIV., by which the king of England was to re ceive 200,0001. a year, and the king of France was to assist in establishing Popery and despotic power in England : both were to unite in the plan of destroying the Dutch republic. In the very year that Charles signed this infamous treaty, the commons, deluded by his declarations about the triple alliance, voted him be tween 200,000 and 300,000/. No one as yet suspected the fraud that was carrying on. Lord Lucas was the first public speaker, who had the sagacity to discover, and the boldness to express in the House of Lords, while the king himself was present, the absurdity of this useless waste of the public money, and to demand why the maintenance of the triple alliance needed such supplies.
It may naturally be asked, who were the king's mi nisters at this disgraceful period ? After the dismission of the old royalists, the administration of the Cabal succeeded, so named from the initial letters of the five names, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, (af terwards Shaftesbury,) and Lauderdale. Those men, it is probable, were all ready to betray their king as well as their country ; yet it is certain that Charles betrayed them, keeping from some of them the real state of his connection with France, and of what he was pleased to call his religion.