He had risen during the wars from being a chandler in London to a high rank in the army; and in all his conduct appeared to be a man of humanity and honour. In consideration of his good character and of his dutiful behaviour, his body was given to his friends to be buried.
Trial of Vane, 11th June. and execution. 14th June.
The attention of the public was much engaged by the trial of two distinguished criminals, Lambert and Vane. These men, though none of the late king’s judges, had been excepted from the general indemnity, and committed to prison. The convention-parliament, however, was so favourable to them, as to petition the king, if they should be found guilty, to suspend their execution: But this new parliament, more zealous for monarchy, applied for their trial and condemnation. Not to revive disputes, which were better buried in oblivion, the indictment of Vane did not comprehend any of his actions during the war between the king and parliament: It extended only to his behaviour after the late king’s death, as member of the council of state, and secretary of the navy, where fidelity to the trust, reposed in him, required his opposition to monarchy.
Vane wanted neither courage nor capacity to avail himself of this advantage. He urged, that, if a compliance with the government, at that time established in England, and the acknowledging of its authority were to be regarded as criminal, the whole nation had incurred equal guilt, and none would remain, whose innocence could entitle them to try or condemn him for his pretended treasons: That, according to these maxims, wherever an illegal authority was established by force, a total and universal destruction must ensue; while the usurpers proscribed one part of the nation for disobedience, the lawful prince punished the other for compliance: That the legislature of England, foreseeing this violent situation, had provided for public security by the famous statute of Henry VII.; in which it was enacted, that no man, in case of any revolution, should ever be questioned for his obedience to the king in being: That whether the established government were a monarchy or a commonwealth, the reason of the thing was still the same; nor ought the expelled prince to think himself entitled to allegiance, so long as he could not afford protection: That it belonged not to private persons, possessed of no power, to discuss the title of their governors; and every usurpation, even the most flagrant, would equally require obedience with the most legal establishment: That the controversy between the late king and his parliament was of the most delicate nature; and men of the greatest probity had been divided in their choice of the party which they should embrace: That the parliament, being rendered indissoluble but by its own consent, was become a kind of co-ordinate power with the king; and as the case was thus entirely new and unknown to the constitution, it ought not to be tried rigidly by the letter of the ancient laws: That for his part, all the violences, which had been put upon the parliament, and upon the person of the sovereign, he had ever condemned; nor had he once appeared in the house for some time before and after the execution of the king: That, finding the whole government thrown into disorder, he was still resolved, in every revolution, to adhere to the commons, the root, the foundation of all lawful authority: That in prosecution of this principle, he had chearfully undergone all the violence of Cromwel’s tyranny; and would now, with equal alacrity, expose himself to the rigours of perverted law and justice: That though it was in his power, on the king’s restoration, to have escaped from his enemies, he was determined, in imitation of the most illustrious names of antiquity, to perish in defence of liberty, and to give testimony with his blood for that honourable cause, in which he had been inlisted: And, that, besides the ties, by which God and nature had bound him to his native country, he was voluntarily engaged by the most sacred covenant, whose obligation no earthly power should ever be able to make him relinquish.
All the defence, which Vane could make, was fruitless. The court, considering more the general opinion of his active guilt in the beginning and prosecution of the civil wars, than the articles of treason charged against him, took advantage of the letter of the law, and brought him in guilty. His courage deserted him not upon his condemnation. Though timid by nature, the persuasion of a just cause supported him against the terrors of death; while his enthusiasm, excited by the prospect of glory, embellished the conclusion of a life, which, through the whole course of it, had been so much disfigured by the prevalence of that principle. Lest pity for a courageous sufferer should make impression on the populace, drummers were placed under the scaffold, whose noise, as he began to launch out in reflections on the government, drowned his voice, and admonished him to temper the ardour of his zeal. He was not astonished at this unexpected incident. In all his behaviour, there appeared a firm and animated intrepidity; and he considered death but as a passage to that eternal felicity, which he believed to be prepared for him.
This man, so celebrated for his parliamentary talents, and for his capacity in business, has left some writings behind him: They treat, all of them, of religious subjects, and are absolutely unintelligible: No traces of eloquence, or even of common sense appear in them. A strange paradox! did we not know, that men of the greatest genius, where they relinquish by principle the use of their reason, are only enabled, by their vigour of mind, to work themselves the deeper into error and absurdity. It was remarkable, that, as Vane, by being the chief instrument of Strafford’s death, had first opened the way for that destruction, which overwhelmed the nation; so by his death he closed the scene of blood. He was the last that suffered on account of the civil wars. Lambert, though condemned, was reprieved at the bar; and the judges declared, that, if Vane’s behaviour had been equally dutiful and submissive, he would have experienced like lenity in the king. Lambert survived his condemnation near thirty years. He was confined to the isle of Guernesey; where he lived contented, forgetting all his past schemes of greatness, and entirely forgotten by the nation: He died a Roman catholic.
Presbyterian clergy ejected. 24th Aug.
However odious Vane and Lambert were to the presbyterians, that party had no leisure to rejoice at their condemnation. The fatal St. Bartholomew approached; the day, when the clergy were obliged by the late law, either to relinquish their livings, or to sign the articles required of them. A combination had been entered into by the more zealous of the presbyterian ecclesiastics to refuse the subscription; in hopes, that the bishops would not venture at once to expel so great a number of the most popular preachers. The catholic party at court, who desired a great rent among the protestants, encouraged them in this obstinacy, and gave them hopes, that the king would protect them in their refusal. The king himself, by his irresolute conduct, contributed, either from design or accident, to encrease this opinion. Above all, the terms of subscription had been made strict and rigid, on purpose to disgust all the zealous and scrupulous among the presbyterians, and deprive them of their livings. About 2000 of the clergy, in one day, relinquished their cures; and to the astonishment of the court, sacrificed their interest to their religious tenets. Fortified by society in their sufferings, they were resolved to undergo any hardships, rather than openly renounce those principles, which, on other occasions, they were so apt, from interest, to warp or elude. The church enjoyed the pleasure of retaliation; and even pushed, as usual, the vengeance farther than the offence. During the dominion of the parliamentary party, a fifth of each living had been left to the ejected clergyman; but this indulgence, though at first insisted on by the house of peers, was now refused to the presbyterians. However difficult to conciliate peace among theologians, it was hoped by many, that some relaxation in the terms of communion might have kept the presbyterians united to the church, and have cured those ecclesiastical factions, which had been so fatal, and were still so dangerous. Bishoprics were offered to Calamy, Baxter, and Reynolds, leaders among the presbyterians; the last only could be prevailed on to accept. Deaneries and other preferments were refused by many.
Dunkirk sold to the French.
The next measure of the king has not had the good fortune to be justified by any party; but is often considered, on what grounds I shall not determine, as one of the greatest mistakes, if not blemishes, of his reign. It is the sale of Dunkirk to the French. The parsimonious maxims of the parliament, and the liberal, or rather careless disposition of Charles, were ill suited to each other; and notwithstanding the supplies voted him, his treasury was still very empty and very much indebted. He had secretly received the sum of 200,000 crowns from France for the support of Portugal; but the forces sent over to that country, and the fleets, maintained in order to defend it, had already cost the king that sum, and together with it, near double the money, which had been payed as the queen’s portion.x The time fixed