CHAP. not, for many years, exceed a million; a sum confessedly too narrow for the public expences. LXIII. 1662. 19th May. King's marriage. A very rigid frugality at least, which the king seems to have wanted, would have been requisite to make it suffice for the dignity and security of government. After all business was dispatched, the parliament was prorogued. BEFORE the parliament rose, the court was employed in making preparations for the reception of the new queen, Catharine of Portugal, to whom the king was betrothed, and who had just landed at Portsmouth. During the time that the protector carried on the war with Spain, he was naturally led to support the Portuguese in their revolt; and he engaged himself by treaty to supply them with 50,000 men for their defence against the Spaniards. On the king's restoration, advances were made by Portugal for the renewal of the alliance; and in order to bind the friendship closer, an offer was made of the Portuguese princess, and a portion of 500,000 pounds, together with two fortresses, Tangiers in Africa, and Bombay in the East Indies. Spain, who, after the peace of the Pyrenees, bent all her force to recover Portugal, now in appearance abandoned by France, took the alarm, and endeavoured to fix Charles in an opposite interest. The catholic king offered to adopt any other princess as a daughter of Spain, either the princess of Parma, or what he thought more popular, some protestant princess, the daughter of Denmark, Saxony, or Orange: And on any of these, he promised to confer a dowry equal to that which was offered by Portugal. But many reasons inclined Charles rather to accept of the Portuguese proposals. The great disorders in the government and finances of Spain made the execution of her promises be much doubted; D'Estrades, 25th July 1661. Mr. Ralph's History, vol. i. p. 176. LXIII. doubted; and the king's urgent necessities demanded CHAP. some immediate supply of money. The interest of the English commerce likewise seemed to require 1662. that the independency of Portugal should be supported, lest the union of that crown with Spain should put the whole treasures of America into the hands of one potentate. The claims too of Spain upon Dunkirk and Jamaica, rendered it impossible, without farther concessions, to obtain the cordial friendship of that power: And on the other hand the offer, made by Portugal, of two such considerable fortresses, promised a great accession to the naval force of England. Above all, the proposal of a protestant princess was no allurement to Charles, whose inclinations led him strongly to give the preference to a catholic alliance. According to the most probable accounts," the resolution of marrying the daughter of Portugal was taken by the king, unknown to all his ministers; and no remonstrances could prevail with him to alter his intentions. When the matter was laid before the council, all voices concurred in approving the resolution; and the parliament expressed the same complaisance. And thus was concluded, seemingly with universal consent, the inauspicious marriage with Catharine, 21st. May, a princess of virtue, but who was never able, either by the graces of her person or humour, to make herself agreeable to the king. The report, however, of her natural incapacity to have children seems * Carte's Ormond, vol. ii. p. 254. This account seems better supported than that in Ablancourt's Memoirs, that the chancellor chiefly pushed the Portuguese alliance. The secret transactions of the court of England could not be supposed to be much known to a French resident at Lisbon: And whatever opposition the chancellor might make, he would certainly endeavour to conceal it from the queen and all her family, and even in the parliament and council would support the resolution already taken. Clarendon himself says in his Memoirs, that he never either opposed or promoted the Portuguese match. CHA P. seems to have been groundless; since she was twice declared to be pregnant.* LXIII. 1662. THE festivity of these espousals was clouded by the trial and execution of criminals. Berkstead, Cobbet, and Okey, three regicides, had escaped beyond sea; and after wandering some time concealed in Germany, came privately to Delft, having appointed their families to meet them in that place. They were discovered by Downing, the king's resident in Holland, who had formerly served the protector and commonwealth in the same station, and who once had even been chaplain to Okey's regiment. He applied for a warrant to arrest them. It had been usual for the States to grant these warrants; though, at the same time, they had ever been careful secretly to advertise the persons, that they might be enabled to make their escape. This precaution was eluded by the vigilance and dispatch of Downing. He quickly seized the criminals, hurried them on board a frigate which lay off the coast, and sent them to England. These three men behaved with more moderation and submission, than any of the other regicides who had suffered. Okey in particular, at the place of execution, prayed for the king, and expressed his intention, had he lived, of submitting peaceably to the established government. He had risen during the wars from being a chandler in London to a high rank in the army; and in all his conduct appeared to be a man of humanity and honour. In consideration of his good character and of his dutiful behaviour, his body was given to his friends to be buried. THE attention of the public was much engaged by the trial of two distinguished criminals, Lam bert Lord Lansdowne's defence of General Monk, Temple, vol. ii. p. 154. LXIII. bert and Vane. These men, though none of the CHAP. late king's judges, had been exempted from the general indemnity, and committed to prison. The 1662. convention-parliament, however, was so favourable to them, as to petition the king, if they should be found guilty, to suspend their execution: But this new parliament, more zealous for monarchy, applied for their trial and condemnation. Not to revive disputes, which were better buried in oblivion, the Trial of indictment of Vane did not comprehend any of his actions during the war between the king and parliament: It extended only to his behaviour after the late king's death, as member of the council of state, and secretary of the navy, where fidelity to the trust reposed in him required his opposition to monarchy. VANE wanted neither courage nor capacity to avail himself of this advantage. He urged, that, if a compliance with the government, at that time established in England, and the acknowledging of its authority, were to be regarded as criminal, the whole nation had incurred equal guilt, and none would remain, whose innocence could entitle them. to try or condemn him for his pretended treasons: That, according to these maxims, wherever an illegal authority was established by force, a total and universal destruction must ensue; while the usurpers proscribed one part of the nation for disobedience, the lawful prince punished the other for compliance. That the legislature of England, foreseeing this violent situation, had provided for public security by the famous statute of Henry VII.; in which it was enacted, that no man, in case of any revolution, should ever be questioned for his obedience to the king in being: That whether the established government were a monarchy or a commonwealth, the reason of the thing was still the same; nor ought the expelled prince to think him self Vane. LXIII. 1662. CHA P. self intitled to allegiance, so long as he could not afford protection: That it belonged not to private persons, possessed of no power, to discuss the title of their governors; and every usurpation, even the most flagrant, would equally require obedience with the most legal establishment: That the controversy between the late king and his parliament was of the most delicate nature; and men of the greatest probity had been divided in their choice of the party which they should embrace: That the parliament, being rendered indissoluble but by its own consent, was become a kind of co-ordinate power with the king; and as the case was thus entirely new and unknown to the constitution, it ought not to be tried rigidly by the letter of the ancient laws: That for his part, all the violences which had been put upon the parliament, and upon the person of the sovereign, he had ever condemned; nor had he once appeared in the house for some time before and after the execution of the king: That finding the whole government thrown into disorder, he was still resolved, in every revolution, to adhere to the commons, the root, the foundation of all lawful authority: That in prosecution of this principle, he had cheerfully undergone all the violence of Cromwel's tyranny; and would now, with equal alacrity, expose himself to the rigours of perverted law and justice: That though it was in his power, on the king's restoration to have escaped from his enemies, he was determined, in imitation of the most illustrious names of antiquity, to perish in defence of liberty, and to give testimony with his blood for that honourable cause, in which he had been inlisted: And that, besides the ties by which God and nature had bound him to his native country, he was voluntarily engaged by the most sacred covenant, whose obligation no earthly power should ever be able to make him relinquish. 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