Sir William Temple

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II ' The world has seen A type of peace.' Shelley. The year 1660 saw Charles II. welcomed with a frenzy of loyalty by the Royalists, who greeted his restoration as the triumph of the old order over the Sectary, the Democrat, and the Republican. The year of Temple's arrival in England saw the ' Cavalier...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II ' The world has seen A type of peace.' Shelley. The year 1660 saw Charles II. welcomed with a frenzy of loyalty by the Royalists, who greeted his restoration as the triumph of the old order over the Sectary, the Democrat, and the Republican. The year of Temple's arrival in England saw the ' Cavalier Parliament' leading the way in the long struggle which was to end only in the third great charter of our liberties; which was to give new definitions to the terms ' Prerogative' and ' Parliament'; which was to transfer a large share of the sovereign power wielded by Cromwell's political army from Whitehall to Westminster; and which was to prove that there was no room in England for a second Charles I., a second Strafford, or a second Laud. The struggle was a hard one, for the restored monarch was a true Stuart. He was, indeed, above all things, determined never to ' go on his travels again'; but, behind ministerial cat's-paws, he aimed at that Catholic despotism which was then considered to be the ideal polity in the greatest Continental nations. He had to inspire him two great examples of autocratic power?in Cromwell, with his glorious government by means of a standing army; and in Louis XIV., with his magnificent absolutism established on the ruins of the Fronde. His cousin in France was also a Catholic, as well as an autocrat, and Catholicism was the religion of his mother, of his well-loved sister, and of the Courts at which he had spent the greater part of his exile. Small wonder, then, that Charles, as a man, was always?at any rate, potentially?a Papist; as an English King, was eager for Catholic toleration, till the Test Acts taught him the hopelessness of his attempts; and, as a European monarch, was always inclined to an alliance with France rather than with ...