The last years of Charles II

Rye House, painted by J. M. W. Turner in 1793
Scene of an alleged plot to assassinate the king
Public domain

A potential for absolutism?

After the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament in March 1681 the monarchy was in a strong position and during the 1680s it grew even stronger and England seemed to be following the continental trend towards strong, centralised authoritarian government. 

Historians are divided on how far Charles had the potential to make himself an absolutist monarch on the lines of Louis XIV.  Some argue that the king lacked the energy and single-mindedness needed to build an absolutist state. Rather than turn himself into an abslute monarch, he embraced the principles of his natural supporters, the Tory-Anglicans. This meant defending the established Church and abandoning his earlier attempts to secure religious toleration.

Charles had several advantages in his battle with the Whigs.
(1) Fear of civil war
(2) the royal prerogative, which could be exercised because the crown had at last become financially solvent.

Charles was eager to press home his advantages against the Whigs. In April 1682 the Duke of York felt strong enough to return to England after his eighteen-month absence in Scotland and he was greeted by enthusiastic Tory demonstrations. In May 1683 there was a new lord chief justice, the notorious Sir George Jeffreys. From 1676 judges had been appointed durante bene placito (as long as they gave satisfaction) rather than quamdiu se bene gesserint (as long as they behaved themselves). Between this date and his death Charles unilaterally removed eleven judges. 

The fall of Shaftesbury

In spite of their defeat at Oxford, the Whigs had not gone away and the pope-burning procession in London on 17 November 1681 was the grandest yet. They still had a body of popular support. However, the crown harassed them systematically. On 2 July 1681 Shaftesbury was arrested at dawn and Charles came up unexpectedly from Windsor to Whitehall to examine him. The Council sent him to the Tower, where he was visited by Monmouth.

However while Charles could rely on the judges, the jury would present a problem. In Middlesex the sheriffs were elected (whereas in all other counties they were nominated by the king), and those elected for 1680-1 and 1681-2 were all Whigs - and it was the sheriffs who empanelled the grand jury. Shaftesbury was accused of saying that the king should be deposed that that he wished to bring back the Commonwealth. But in November the Whig grand jury brought in a verdict of ignoramus- no case to answer. The failure of this prosecution was a major setback, and there were bonfire celebrations in London. Shaftesbury was released on bail on 20 November and the prosecution was finally dropped in February 1682.

On the eve of the trial Dryden’s, Absalom and Achitophel appeared - a brilliant piece of Tory propaganda.

Copy owned by Ohio State University
Public domain

The purge of the corporations

Following the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, Charles pressed home his advantages against the Whigs. During the summer of 1681 many Whigs were purged from the commissions of the peace and the lord lieutenancies so that by the end of his reign county governance was in the hands of Tory loyalists.

The failure of the Shaftesbury prosecution convinced Charles that he needed to move against the legal privileges of London in order to destroy the Whig control of the city. The action against London began in December 1681. In the sheriffs’ election of September 1682 Tory sheriffs were returned. In November 1682, recognising that he had lost his power base, Shaftesbury fled to Holland. He died in exile in January 1683.

In June 1683, the final judgement declaring the City’s charter forfeit was delivered for the crown. From now on the king’s approval was required for the appointment of the lord mayor, sheriffs, and all other major office-holders. 

This move also encompassed all other boroughs under Whig control. Quo warranto writs compelled them to substantiate the legality of their charters. Since lawyers could easily find technical flaws in them, proceedings invariably resulted in the law courts declaring that the borough charters were forfeit. They then had to surrender their charters and receive new charters containing provisions that the king had to approve the choice of key officers. Other boroughs fought the writs in the courts and lost. All were given new charters which enabled the crown’s Tory supporters to entrench themselves in power. 

From 1681 until Charles’s death fifty-one new charters. This meant that the next general election could be guaranteed to bring in a Tory majority.

The Rye House plot

In their desperation, the Whigs became reckless. In September 1682 Monmouth staged a ‘progress’ in Cheshire to raise support from Whig magnates in the north-west. His enthusiastic reception – at Chester he was welcomed by bonfires -  angered his father, who ordered his arrest. There is now evidence that a radical underground, headed by some powerful Whigs  including Shaftesbury and Russell, was prepared to launch a revolt against the king’s policy.

In June 1683 sensational details were revealed by plotters who turned king’s evidence of an alleged conspiracy by former Cromwellians - the Rye House Plot -  to assassinate the king and the duke of York on their way to Newmarket. A second conspiracy involving the earl of Essex, William, lord Russell, and the republican, Algernon Sidney, was a scheme to seize the king’s person and assume power.  The three Whig notables were promptly arrested. 

On 13 July Essex was found with his throat cut, though there was some evidence that he might have been assassinated. Russell was executed by the notoriously incompetent Jack Ketch on 21 July at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the presence of a silent crowd, some of whom dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood. 

William, Lord Russell, Whig martyr
Public domain

Sidney’s trial was presided over in a very bullying fashion by Jeffreys, began on 21 November. The evidence focused largely on his manuscript 'A Discourse Concerning Government', a classic republican polemic which justified both resistance and tyrannicide. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on 7 December and his remains were buried at Penshurst.  

Algernon Sidney, Republican matryr
Wikimedia Commons

A Whig martyrology was created and with it a body of radical ideas that never found their way into mainstream Whiggism. But the Whig legend that the executed men were all innocent is probably false. Russell himself subsequently admitted that he was guilty of misprision of treason.

Monmouth first went into hiding and then publicly submitted to his father and was formally pardoned. Charles continued to make it clear that James was his successor. In 1684 he was readmitted to the Privy Council. (In August 1681 the Scots Parliament had declared his inalienable hereditary right.) He brought an action against Titus Oates for scandalum magnatum (defamation of a peer by a commoner). He was put in the pillory, flogged and imprisoned, with payment of £100,000 in damages.

The persecution of Dissenters

After the Oxford dissolution, repression of dissenters began on an increasingly systematic and severe scale with Charles’s explicit encouragement, though the laws against Catholics were enforced less severely (this partly reflected the duke of York’s influence). He made an exception only for William Penn, who publicly dissociated himself from the Whigs, rewarding him with the Pennsylvania Charter in 1681.

In January 1684 over 200 Dissenters faced charges at Coventry for not attending church. Entire families were reduced to poverty and many were forced to have their homes and businesses. Between 1681 and 1685 as many as 400 Quakers died in prison, many during the exceptionally cold winter of 1684. 

The Crown finances

Under the influence of Lawrence Hyde, earl of Rochester, who continued (with more success) Danby’s policies of royal retrenchment, revenue from customs, hearth tax and excise (the crown’s permanent ordinary revenue) soared beyond the £1.2m agreed in 1660-1. By 1684-5 it had risen to £1,370,750 and was still increasing. Charles even had money to put aside for his new palace at Winchester. In October 1684 Charles and his brother inspected the troops mustered on Putney Heath – the Crown now had a standing army.

Conclusion

1. By the end of his reign Charles’s position was extremely strong. His enemies were scattered, the judiciary was siding with the government, and the crown was solvent. The corporations had been purged of Whigs and filled with Tory supporters. When he defied the Triennial Act and did not summon a new parliament in 1684 there was no outcry. 
2. The king had abandoned his earlier policy of playing one faction against each other. His power base lay with Tory Anglicans, who disliked the Duke of York's Catholicism but believed strongly in the right of hereditary succession.
3. His achievement was limited. He had not definitively settled any major issue and the political and religious divisions had not gone away. Toryism and Anglicanism seemed triumphant but the Whigs were still there and the Dissenters were refusing to be cowed. And the duke of York’s Catholicism was still a problem.

Charles died on 5 February 1685, having been received into the Catholic Church.