THERE never were such profligate times in England as under Charles the Second.Whenever you see his portrait,with his swarthy,ill-looking face and great nose,you may fancy him in his Court at Whitehall,surrounded by some of the very worst vagabonds in the kingdom (though they were lords and ladies),drinking,gambling,indulging in vicious conversation,and committing every kind of profligate excess.It has been a fashion to call Charles the Second 'The Merry Monarch.'Let me try to give you a general idea of some of the merry things that were done,in the merry days when this merry gentleman sat upon his merry throne,in merry England.
The first merry proceeding was-of course-to declare that he was one of the greatest,the wisest,and the noblest kings that ever shone,like the blessed sun itself,on this benighted earth.The next merry and pleasant piece of business was,for the Parliament,in the humblest manner,to give him one million two hundred thousand pounds a year,and to settle upon him for life that old disputed tonnage and poundage which had been so bravely fought for.
Then,General Monk being made EARL OF ALBEMARLE,and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded,the law went to work to see what was to be done to those persons (they were called Regicides)who had been concerned in making a martyr of the late King.Ten of these were merrily executed;that is to say,six of the judges,one of the council,Colonel Hacker and another officer who had commanded the Guards,and HUGH PETERS,a preacher who had preached against the martyr with all his heart.These executions were so extremely merry,that every horrible circumstance which Cromwell had abandoned was revived with appalling cruelty.The hearts of the sufferers were torn out of their living bodies;their bowels were burned before their faces;the executioner cut jokes to the next victim,as he rubbed his filthy hands together,that were reeking with the blood of the last;and the heads of the dead were drawn on sledges with the living to the place of suffering.Still,even so merry a monarch could not force one of these dying men to say that he was sorry for what he had done.Nay,the most memorable thing said among them was,that if the thing were to do again they would do it.
Sir Harry Vane,who had furnished the evidence against Strafford,and was one of the most staunch of the Republicans,was also tried,found guilty,and ordered for execution.When he came upon the scaffold on Tower Hill,after conducting his own defence with great power,his notes of what he had meant to say to the people were torn away from him,and the drums and trumpets were ordered to sound lustily and drown his voice;for,the people had been so much impressed by what the Regicides had calmly said with their last breath,that it was the custom now,to have the drums and trumpets always under the scaffold,ready to strike up.Vane said no more than this:'It is a bad cause which cannot bear the words of a dying man:'and bravely died.
These merry scenes were succeeded by another,perhaps even merrier.
On the anniversary of the late King's death,the bodies of Oliver Cromwell,Ireton,and Bradshaw,were torn out of their graves in Westminster Abbey,dragged to Tyburn,hanged there on a gallows all day long,and then beheaded.Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd,not one of whom would have dared to look the living Oliver in the face for half a moment!Think,after you have read this reign,what England was under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his grave,and what it was under this merry monarch who sold it,like a merry Judas,over and over again.
Of course,the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter were not to be spared either,though they had been most excellent women.The base clergy of that time gave up their bodies,which had been buried in the Abbey,and-to the eternal disgrace of England-they were thrown into a pit,together with the mouldering bones of Pym and of the brave and bold old Admiral Blake.
The clergy acted this disgraceful part because they hoped to get the nonconformists,or dissenters,thoroughly put down in this reign,and to have but one prayer-book and one service for all kinds of people,no matter what their private opinions were.This was pretty well,I think,for a Protestant Church,which had displaced the Romish Church because people had a right to their own opinions in religious matters.However,they carried it with a high hand,and a prayer-book was agreed upon,in which the extremest opinions of Archbishop Laud were not forgotten.An Act was passed,too,preventing any dissenter from holding any office under any corporation.So,the regular clergy in their triumph were soon as merry as the King.The army being by this time disbanded,and the King crowned,everything was to go on easily for evermore.