unlike that
of the council of the "infernal peers" which Milton portrays in
"Paradise Lost," first published at that time. There he shows us the
five princes of evil, Moloch, Belial, Mammon, Beelzebub, and Satan,
meeting in the palace of Pandemonium to plot the ruin of the world.[3]
he chief ambition of Charles was to rule without a Parliament; he did
not like to have that body inquire too closely how he spent the money
which the taxpayers granted him. But his lavish outlays on his
favorites made it more and more difficult for him to avoid summoning a
Parliament in order to get supplies of cash. At length he hit on a
plan for securing the funds he wanted without begging help from
Parliament.

[1] This word was originally used to designate the confidential
members of the King's private council, and meant perhaps no more than
the word "cabinet" does to-day. In 1667 it happened, however, by a
singular coincidence, that the initial letters of the five persons
comprising it, namely, (C)lifford, (A)shley-Cooper [Lord Shaftesbury],
(B)uckingham, (A)rlington, and (L)auderdale, formed the word "CABAL,"
which henceforth came to have the odious meaning of secret and
unscrupulous intrigue that it has ever since retained. It was to
Charles II's time what the political "ring" is to our own.
[2] Macaulay's "Essay on Sir William Temple."
[3] Milton's "Paradise Lost," Book II. The first edition was
published in 1667, the year the "Cabal" came into power, though its
members had long been favorites with the King. It has been supposed
by some that the great Puritan poet had them in his mind when he
represented the Pandemonic debate. Shaftesbury and Buckingham are
also two of the most prominent characters in Dryden's noted political
satire of "Absalom and Achitophel," published in 1681; and compare
Butler's "Hudibras."

Louis XIV of France, then the most powerful monarch in Europe, wished
to conquer Holland, with the double object of extending his own
kingdom and the power of Catholicism. He saw in Charles the tool he
wanted to gain this end. With the aid of two members of the "Cabal,"
Charles negotiated the secret Treaty of Dover, 1670. Thereby Louis
bribed the English King with a gift of 300,000 pounds to help him
carry out his scheme. Thus, without the knowledge of Parliament,
Charles deliberately sold himself to the French sovereign, who was
plotting to destroy the political liberty and Protestant faith of
Holland.

In