All the Conspirators
THE Stuarts have had a wonderful run for their money these last thirty years: Shaw, Feiling, Bryant, apologists all for the pedant, the martyr, the rake and the bigot. Whatever troubles the monarchy got into during the seventeenth century, somehow they were not to blame, or if a little to blame, not so• responsible as the cantankerous Coke, the power-crazed Cromwell, or the slimy Shaftesbury. The Tories have made hay, whilst the Whigs have slept. True, Christo- pher Hill and John Kenyon have done a little to redress the balance, but the poor, wronged Stuarts are still very much with us. Hence what a pity it is that this excellent book should not have been published by an English firm!
Mr. Lee has a sharp yet tolerant eye for character And his portraits of members of the Cabal—Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and Lauderdale are as wise as they are schol- arly. He shows how foolish it is to think of the ' 'Cabal as a sinister group of politicians, dedicated to Charles II's Grand Design. Buck- ingham and Ashley were duped by Charles II, kept in the inner ring of councillors only be- cause they might be more dangerous in oppo- sition. Clifford and Lauderdale would, perhaps,
have given total and uncritical support 'to Charles H's ultimate aim which was kingship
on the French model, combined with a com- plete toleration of Catholics and backed by a professional standing army. For that was Charles II's intention.
But Charles H became his own victim. As Mr. Lee shows, his declaration of Catholicity in the Treaty of Dover gave Louis XIV an in- comparable diplomatic advantage. If Charles could have brought himself, as Danby wanted, to head an administration at once Protestant and anti-French, Parliament might easily have been subjected or rendered as impotent as the Parliaments of Scotland and Ireland. But in all their major decisions the Stuarts proved singu- larly inept. And Charles II made his in 1670. Everywhere else in Europe the aristocracies were allying with monarchy to form powerful and effective 'governments. In England religion split them apart and so England began to drift towards political anarchy with the renewed pros- pect of another civil war.
The vital years for the restored Stuarts were the late 'sixties and early 'seventies, the years of the Cabal. These were the years when the de- cision, unconscious or conscious, it may have been either, was' taken to make a bid for abso- lutist kingship. This both Charles II and James II wanted and did their best to achieve. They were opposed not through any profound con- viction about liberty, representative govern- ment or the like but because the gentry feared for their own power and their own pockets. Mr. if, Lee has illuminated a difficult period of Stuart history and his book will help to dispel many current distortions.
J. H. PLUMB
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