Danby and the beginnings of opposition

William, Lord Russell
soon to head the opposition to Charles II
Public domain

The beginnings of an opposition party

Shaftesbury is reported to have said on his dismissal,

‘It is only laying down my gown, and putting on my sword’

The parliamentary session of early 1674 was the stormiest so far, arousing historical memories of the Long Parliament. Among the bills passed was a habeas corpus bill (though it did not become law until 1679). Buckingham was attacked for corruption and removed from all his offices. And articles of impeachment were brought against Arlington. He escaped a petition for his dismissal by a narrow majority, but he resigned his Secretaryship in September.

In the face of hardening opposition Charles made peace with the Dutch in the Treaty of Westminster, 9 February 1674). On 24 February he prorogued Parliament. He had now acquired a new minister: Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, who had succeeded Clifford as Lord Treasurer.

Thomas Osborne, 1st earl of Danby
later duke of Leeds
Government collection
Public domain

By this time something resembling an opposition party had come into existence, comprising men such as William Russell (afterwards Lord Russell). In 1673 an MP, Sir Thomas Meres, was able to speak of ‘this side of the house and that side’. A hard core of ‘country’ MPs were deeply exercised by the apparent spread of popery in high circles and opposed to anything that smacked of royal absolutism. In 1674 the Green Ribbon Club was founded at the King’s Head Tavern in Chancery Lane. The opposition was growing and its leaders included the former ministers, Buckingham and Shaftesbury. In May 1674 Shaftesbury was expelled from the privy council and the lord lieutenancy of Dorset, and from this date he worked to secure the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament and the exclusion of the Duke of York from the throne.


Looking back, thoughtful observers saw 1672-4 as the watershed of the reign, in which the king’s designs to establish popery and arbitrary government had become apparent. But it also brought out Charles's political skills. In the end he was able to outmanoeuvre his opponents. 

'No Popery'

The mid-1670s saw a burgeoning of anti-Catholic and republican literature that was often circulated in manuscript through the taverns and coffee-houses of London. The king saw coffee-houses as spreaders of sedition and in 1675 he unsuccessfully attempted to ban them. In November 1675 A Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friends in the Country was published - possibly written by Shaftesbury and John Locke. The House of Lords ordered the pamphlet to be burned.

In 1677 Andrew Marvell published anonymously An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government (1677):

There has now for divers years a design been carried on to change the lawful government of England for an absolute tyranny.

The tract, timed to appear before the next session of parliament in April 1678, alarmed the government, which in the Gazette for 21 February – 5 March offered £50 for the discovery of author and publisher. 

The association of ‘popery’ and ‘arbitrary power’ was a familiar theme of English political life. Anti-Catholicism was reinforced by the Marian persecutions, the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot and the Irish crisis of 1641. In 1667 the Commons had tried hard to ‘prove’ that the Catholics had started the Fire of London.

The conjunction of events seemed especially ominous. The queen, the heir to the throne, his recently pregnant second wife and the king’s current favoured mistress were all Catholics and nobody knew whether to believe the king’s denials of a secret treaty. Meanwhile Louis XIV was attacking Protestant Holland, and though the king explicitly denied (in 1675) the existence of a secret treaty with France, nobody knew whether to believe him. A religious survey instigated by Danby in 1676 revealed that Catholics were no more than 5 per cent of the population, but the main causes of the fear of popery in England were events in Europe, and especially in France’.

An important marriage

Feeling his position threatened by the hostility of Parliament to the government's pro-French policies, Danby arranged a marriage between William and the duke of York's elder daughter, the Lady Mary. This was done over James’s head, but, following his public announcement of his conversion, his daughters had been made wards of state and he had no say in their upbringing.

When Charles agreed to the betrothal in October 1677, the country celebrated with bonfires, though Mary is alleged to have wept for a day and a half. Yet the marriage seemed to be counter-balanced by the birth of a son to the duchess of York a few days later, even though this child lived only five days (he died of smallpox). His mother was under thirty and in good health - there was every likelihood that a son would replace Mary and Anne in the succession. But it seemed for a while as if the marriage of William and Mary had locked England into an alliance with the Netherlands. An Anglo-Dutch treaty was concluded in December.

The Lady Mary, by Peter Lely
second in line to the throne and
Princess of Orange from 1677
Public domain

When Mary entered The Hague in December 1677 in a golden coach drawn by six piebald horses, she won over the spectators with her beauty and affability. At the place of Honselersdijk she discovered a passion for gardening that stayed with her for the rest of her life and another passion for collecting porcelain. Very soon she fell in love with her solemn husband, and, though he was brusque and undemonstrative, he too came to love her. See Maureen Waller, Ungrateful Daughters (Sceptre, 2002).

Mary's love for her husband was to have important political consequences.

A standing army

In January 1678, fearing French designs on the United Provinces, Parliament voted to raise an army of 30,000 troops and in principle to grant a war supply of £1 million for six months. In May Charles concluded another secret agreement with Louis by which he received further subsidies in return for disbanding his army and again proroguing Parliament. But in July 1678 France and the United Provinces signed an armistice, the Peace of Nijmegen, by which time both countries had come to distrust England. Charles refused to disband his army, and with the king now in possession of a standing army, many MPs feared the imminent establishment of popery and absolutism. Inevitably perhaps, Danby was blamed.

Conclusion

1. By 1678 mistrust of Charles had deepened. Parliament did not trust him to follow ’Protestant’ policies either at home or abroad. Although they did not know about the Treaty of Dover, they believed he was to close to Louis XIV.
2. Anti-Catholicism was growing and was linked with fears of France and ‘arbitrary power’.
3. The Catholicism of the heir to the throne was about to cause a full-blown political crisis.