belief that the heat would keep off the infection. At last winter came, and the plague came to an end with cooler weather. The next year another disaster befell the great city. A fire broke out when a strong wind was blowing, and quickly spread. It burnt for three days. All the City from the Tower to the Temple and from the Thames to Smithfield was absolutely destroyed. The old St. Paul's, the largest cathedral in England, perished in the flames. Great as the suffering caused by the fire was, it did good in the end, for it destroyed the old houses which kept the air out of the streets, so that the plague never came to London again.

9. The Dutch in the Medway.-The Dutch war went on all the while, with plenty of hard fighting at sea, and no very great success on either side. Parliament voted money to keep the fleets ready for fighting. After a little time, even the Royalists in the House of Commons began to suspect that the King spent some of this money on his own pleasures. Both in Parliament and out of it they began to grumble, and to say to one another that if Cromwell had been alive things would have been different. At last a misfortune came which increased their discontent. Negotiations were opened at Breda, in Holland, and the terms of peace were almost settled. Before they were quite settled, Charles took it for granted that there would be no more war, and dismissed most of the sailors, in order to get for himself the money which would have paid them. The Dutch at once sent their fleet up the Thames, where there was no English fleet to meet them. The

Dutch ships sailed up the Medway, burnt three menof-war, and carried off a fourth. For some time they blockaded the Thames, so that the Londoners could get no coals. Charles was obliged to give way to the Dutch, and peace was made at Breda, as they wished to have it.

10. The Cabal Ministry.-In 1667, a few weeks

after peace was made, Clarendon fell from power. The five ministers who had influence after him were Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. The first letters of their names spelled the word Cabal, a word which was at that time applied to any body of men specially consulted by the King on state affairs. They are therefore known in history as the Cabal Ministry. Lauderdale was a

Scotchman, and was chiefly employed about Scotch business. The others wanted to tolerate other religions than the Church of England, allowing congregations to worship separately in churches of their own. The House of Commons did not want to have toleration at all, and it was much less likely to allow it to the Catholics than to the Dissenters. The Catholics were more disliked and more feared. There was now a very powerful king in France, Lewis XIV., who had very large armies and skilful generals, as well as plenty of money, and people in England thought that he was likely to send his soldiers to England to help the Catholics against the Protestants. Charles himself was first cousin to Lewis, as his mother, Henrietta Maria, had been the sister of Lewis's father, and he had lived a long time in France during his exile. He therefore did not feel at all ashamed to ask Lewis to help him to carry out his plans when his own people were against them, or even to take money from Lewis, to enable him to do as he liked, without having to ask his Parliament for more taxes.

11. The Triple Alliance and the Treaty of Dover.What Charles now wanted was to be independent of Parliament, and to get as much money as he could. A little time before he had made a treaty with the Dutch and the Swedes, known as the Triple Alliance, by which the three nations bound themselves to join together to stop Lewis from making any more conquests. Not long afterwards Lewis persuaded Charles to break off from his new friends, and to sign the Treaty of Dover, which bound Charles to join

Lewis in making war against the Dutch. Charles was also to declare himself a Catholic, and to receive money from Lewis. Lewis even promised to send French soldiers into England, if Charles thought that he wanted them to put down any resistance from his own subjects. The treaty was to be a profound secret. It was impossible to speak of it openly without producing a general rebellion. Charles did not even tell all of his own ministers. Two of them, Clifford and Arlington, who were Catholics, knew all about it. The others, who were Protestants, only knew that be a war with the Dutch, and that the King was about to give permission to his subjects to worship as they pleased.

there was going to

12. The Declaration of Indulgence and the Second Dutch War.-Charles did not after all venture to announce that he was a Catholic, but in 1672 he declared war against the Dutch, and he issued a Declaration of Indulgence, giving orders that the laws against the Catholics and the Dissenters should no longer be put in execution. Parliament was furious. The Commons were much less disposed to respect the King than they had been at the time of the Restoration, twelve years before, but they were quite as much disposed to refuse permission to anybody who was not a member of the Church of England to worship as he thought right. They declared that Charles had no right to refuse to execute the law, and the great body of the people thought so too. Charles did not persist in his own way. did not want to have another rebellion, to be driven

He

into exile, or to lose his head, as his father had done. He withdrew the Declaration, and the Prayer Book of the Church of England was again the only form of public prayer allowed in the land. Those who wished to join in prayer in any other way had to do it by stealth.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE LAST TWELVE YEARS OF CHARLES II.

(1673-1685.)

1. The Test Act.-Though the Treaty of Dover had been kept a secret, yet people suspected that there was something arranged of which they did not know. They were determined that the Catholics should not become powerful, and a law was made called the Test Act, which required every person appointed to any office either in the army and navy or in the state to receive the Sacrament from a minister of the Church of England. He was also to declare his disbelief in one of the most important doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, so as to test whether he really belonged to that Church or not. This Act put an end to the Cabal ministry. Clifford and Arlington refused to take the test, and Charles turned Ashley, who had been lately made Earl of Shaftesbury, out of office. There had been a quarrel between them, probably because Shaftesbury had found out the secret of the Treaty of Dover, and had been angry at having been duped.

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