ear. The ministers indeed were already seeking to conclude a peace
through the mediation of France. It was not the public distress alone
which drove Clarendon to peace negotiations: his own fears and those of
the king had been alike fulfilled as the war went on. The country
squires were disgusted at the obstinacy and cost of the struggle, and
they visited their disgust on Clarendon as its supposed author. He had
lost the support of the Houses, and the admission of fresh opponents
into the royal council spoke of the secret enmity of the king. But
Charles too had his reasons for desiring peace. He had a sleepless
distrust of Parliaments, and his distrust was already justified. The
"Cavalier" Parliament had met in a passion of loyalty. It had pressed
for the death of the regicides. It had hardly been hindered from
throwing all England into confusion by refusing its assent to the
Amnesty Bill. It had ordered the League and Covenant, as well as the act
deposing Charles Stuart, to be burned by the common hangman. It had
declared the taking up arms against the king on any pretext to be
treason, and had turned its declaration into a test to be exacted from
every parson and every alderman. And yet this loyal Parliament had faced
and checked the Crown as boldly and pertinaciously as the Long
Parliament itself. It had carried out its own ecclesiastical policy in
the teeth of the known wishes of the king. It had humiliated him by
forcing him to cancel his public declaration in favour of the
Nonconformists. It gave counsel in foreign affairs, and met the king's
leanings towards Lewis by expressions of its will for a contest with
France. It voted large subsidies indeed, but at this juncture it
inserted into the Subsidy Bill a clause which appointed a Parliamentary
commission with powers to examine into the royal expenditure, and to
question royal officers upon oath.

[Sidenote: The Dutch in the Medway.]

To Clarendon such a demand seemed as great an usurpation on the rights
of the Crown as any measure of the Long Parliament, and he advised a
dissolution. But the advice was rejected, for there was no hope that
fresh elections could bring together a more royalist House of Commons
than that of 1661. The attitude of the Houses showed in fact that the
hottest Royalists had learned, whether they would or no, the lesson of
the Civil War. Whatever might in other ways be the temper of the Commons
who assembled at Westminster, it was certain