home had been changing. He had made
up his mind to follow his father's example and try the experiment of
setting his people at defiance and governing without a parliament. This
could not be done without a great supply of money. Louis XIV. had
plenty of money, for there was no constitution in France to prevent his
squeezing what he wanted out of the pockets of an oppressed people.
France was thriving greatly now, for Colbert had introduced a
comparatively free system of trade between the provinces and inaugurated
an era of prosperity soon to be cut short by the expulsion of the
Huguenots. Louis could get money enough for the asking, and would be
delighted to foment civil disturbances in England, so as to tie the
hands of the only power which at that moment could interfere with his
seizing Alsace and Lorraine and invading Flanders. The pretty Louise de
Keroualle Duchess of Portsmouth, with her innocent baby face and heart
as cold as any reptile's, was the French Delilah chosen to shear the
locks of the British Samson. By such means and from such motives a
secret treaty was made in February, 1681, by which Louis agreed to pay
Charles 2,000,000 livres down, and 500,000 more in each of the next two
years, on condition that he should summon no more parliaments within
that time. This bargain for securing the means of overthrowing the laws
and liberties of England was, on the part of Charles II., an act no less
reprehensible than some of those for which his father had gone to the
block. But Charles could now afford for a while to wreak his evil will.
He had already summoned a parliament for the 21st of March, to meet at
Oxford within the precincts of the subservient university, and out of
reach of the high-spirited freemen of London. He now forced a quarrel
with the new parliament and dissolved it within a week. A joiner named
Stephen College, who had spoken his mind too freely in the taverns at
Oxford with regard to these proceedings, was drawn and quartered. The
Whig leader Lord Shaftesbury was obliged to flee to Holland. In the
absence of a parliament the only power of organized resistance to the
king's tyranny resided in the corporate governments of the chartered
towns. The charter of London was accordingly attacked by a writ of
_quo warranto_, and in June, 1683, the time-serving judges declared it
confiscated. George Jeffreys, a low drunken fellow whom Charles had made
Lord Chief Justice, went on a circuit through the count