After this, Charles, during eighteen months, avoid ed calling a new parliament, and employed the inter mediate space in securing a great part of the nation in defence of his brother and himself; in dismissing from the ministry his popular ministers, Essex, Hali fax, and Shaftesbury ; and in increasing his army, by his brother's advice. The opponents of the court were, in the mean time, neither idle nor timid. Monmouth returned from exile without leave, and was received with joy and triumph by the people. Shaftesbury, the popular leader, at the head of a band of nobility, formed a project to impeach the duke of York as a Popish recusant. Addresses from bodies of the nobility, from counties, and from boroughs, against Popery, and peti tions for a new parliament, came to the king from all quarters. These the court counteracted by procuring addresses from a party, which expressed their abhor rence of the petitioning Whigs ; and the nation was divided into two violent parties of petitioners and abhorrers. The commons of that parliament, which Charles thought proper to assemble in 1680, after these agitations, was as unruly as the former. Pressing, like their predecessors, for the favourite exclusion bill, they determined against granting all supplies to the king until it should be carried. Charles determined, therefore, to dissolve them, and sent his usher of the black rod for that purpose to the house, whilst they were blending an absurd resolution respecting the burn ing of London by the Papists, with another highly to their honour, for emancipating their fellow Protestants, the dissenters, from the intolerant laws still subsisting against them.
It was doubtful if Charles would ever call another par liament; but the support which he had received from the church party, determined him to try a new election, in spite of the popular majorities which had hitherto prevailed in the commons. He summoned the new parliament to meet at Oxford, a place remarkable for its loyalty ; intending, by this preference, to show his dis pleasure at London. But this innovation raised new objects of passion ; for the king's aversion to his capi tal was construed into aversion at his people. In this fourth parliament of the present reign, the country party still prevailed. It consisted almost entirely of the same members, who chose the same speaker, and who instantly fell into the same measures,—the impeachment of Danby, the repeal of the laws against dissenters, the inquiry into the Popish plot, and the bill of exclusion. A dispute with this parliament respecting Fitzharris, an Irish Papist, who pretended to confess the secret of ano ther popish plot, more tremendous than the last, gave the king a pretence for dissolving them. The king im prisoned Fitzharris ; the commons avowed his cause, and wished to impeach him themselves, in order to pro tect him. This, however, was but the pretence for the dissolution. Charles had secured to himself a good pension from France. and was determined to have no more parliaments. This was, indeed, a condition on which he was base enough to receive his stipend from Louis. The measure of dissolution was exceedingly successful. The most flattering addresses poured in
from all parts of the kingdom ; the cries of divine right, and indiscriminate obedience, for a time overwhelmed the voice of liberty ; and men seemed to vie with each other, to have the greatest share in the glorious work of slavcry,—by securing to the king for the present. and to the duke after him, absolute, unlimited obedience.
The whole history of the rest of Charles's reign, ex hibits an uninterrupted series of attacks on the lives, liberties, and properties of his subjects. The character of the government appeared first, and with the most hideous features, in Scotland. Thither the duke of York had been permitted to go, after a temporary exile from Britain ; and here he exerted, during his adminis tration of that kingdom, a tyranny, if possible, more frightful than that of Lauderdale. The wretched re mains of the fugitive Covenanters, now known by the name of Cameronians, from the name of one of their clerical leaders, having publicly abjured allegiance to government, their executions were conducted, wherever they were found, with every circumstance of torture and cruelty. The innocent were artfully involved in the sacrifice. Availing itself of the frantic and fanatical de lusion which, the cruelties of government had created, the privy council intermixed its tortures with the most ensnaring questions :—Was Sharpe's death murder ? Was the rising at Bothwell's bridge rebellion ? Is Charles a rightful king, or a tyrant ? The victims of rage and suspicion, too sincere, or by torture made unable to pre varicate, were dismissed from their tormentors to the justiciary court, and from thence to the scaffold. James himself assisted, it is certain, at one of those tortures,• from choice, when Spreul was exposed to the question, and endured it twice almost without intermission.
The most illustrious object of this tyranny, in Scot land, was the earl of Argyle, (son to the nobleman al ready executed in Charles's reign,) a man whose only fault seems to have been submission to the oppressive system under which his country had hitherto groaned, although that very submission sprung from a love of peace, rather than an approbation of its enormities. When a contradictory test of loyalty was prescribed by the Scottish parliament, Argyle accepted the test as a privy counsellor, with an explanation, that he took it as far as it was consistent with itself and the Protestant faith. For this explanation, he was brought to trial, and, by the most infamous perversion of the most innocent words, a charge of treason was made out against him. Nairn, a superannuated judge, who was brought at midnight to make a majority on the relevancy of the indictment, fell asleep while the proceedings were read, and was wakened to give his vote. A jury of Argyle's personal enemies brought him in guilty. Argyle escaped from prison, but sentence of attainder was passed against him. After the fall of the exclusionists, and the dis mission of parliament, the duke was recalled to Eng land, but Scotland enjoyed no relief from the change of administration.