DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51519#0027
editor’s introduction. xiii
beg-inning- of 1669, which caused hot blood, and raised high
factions, “ even to the sober engaging of great persons.”—a It is
about my Lady Harvy’s being offended at Doll Common’s acting’
of Sempronia, to imitate her; for which she got my Lord Cham-
berlain,. (the Duke of Buckingham,) her kinsman, to imprison
Doll: upon which my Lady Castlemaine made the King to release
her, and to order her to act it again worse than ever, the other
day, where the King himself was; and since it was acted again,
and my Lady Harvy provided people to hiss her, and fling
oranges at her; but it seems the heat is come to a great height,
and real troubles at court about it.”
The ambition of the King’s ministers, and the apprehensions of
future retribution for the many extravagant and criminal measures
of which they had been the authors, drove them to seek gratification
and safety by desperate projects. The invaluable Diary of Pepys,
which throws so much light both on the temper of the people, and
on the secret intrigues of the court, closes with the year 1669 ;
but during that year we find several notices, which show that the
measures which were only fully developed a few years later, had
already been privately resolved. The King and his ministers had
conciliated no party in the state; the latter could only escape
punishment so long as they kept the power to avoid, or rather
delay it, in their own hands, and there was nothing they feared
so much as the meeting of parliament. On the 21st of April,
Pepys observes, “Sir H. Cholmley told me that now the great
design of the Duke of Buckingham is to prevent the meeting,
since he cannot bring- about with the King' the dissolving- of this
parliament, that the King’ may not need it; and therefore my Lord
St. Albans (the ambassador in France) is hourly expected, with
great offers of a million of money, to buy our breach with the
Dutch ; and this, they do think, may tempt the King- to take the
money, and thereby be out of a necessity of calling the parliament
again, which these people dare not suffer to meet again : but this
he doubts, and so do I, that it will be the ruin of the nation if we
fall out with Holland.”
beg-inning- of 1669, which caused hot blood, and raised high
factions, “ even to the sober engaging of great persons.”—a It is
about my Lady Harvy’s being offended at Doll Common’s acting’
of Sempronia, to imitate her; for which she got my Lord Cham-
berlain,. (the Duke of Buckingham,) her kinsman, to imprison
Doll: upon which my Lady Castlemaine made the King to release
her, and to order her to act it again worse than ever, the other
day, where the King himself was; and since it was acted again,
and my Lady Harvy provided people to hiss her, and fling
oranges at her; but it seems the heat is come to a great height,
and real troubles at court about it.”
The ambition of the King’s ministers, and the apprehensions of
future retribution for the many extravagant and criminal measures
of which they had been the authors, drove them to seek gratification
and safety by desperate projects. The invaluable Diary of Pepys,
which throws so much light both on the temper of the people, and
on the secret intrigues of the court, closes with the year 1669 ;
but during that year we find several notices, which show that the
measures which were only fully developed a few years later, had
already been privately resolved. The King and his ministers had
conciliated no party in the state; the latter could only escape
punishment so long as they kept the power to avoid, or rather
delay it, in their own hands, and there was nothing they feared
so much as the meeting of parliament. On the 21st of April,
Pepys observes, “Sir H. Cholmley told me that now the great
design of the Duke of Buckingham is to prevent the meeting,
since he cannot bring- about with the King' the dissolving- of this
parliament, that the King’ may not need it; and therefore my Lord
St. Albans (the ambassador in France) is hourly expected, with
great offers of a million of money, to buy our breach with the
Dutch ; and this, they do think, may tempt the King- to take the
money, and thereby be out of a necessity of calling the parliament
again, which these people dare not suffer to meet again : but this
he doubts, and so do I, that it will be the ruin of the nation if we
fall out with Holland.”