rst type. The royal enmity towards
William of Orange was increased by a visit of the latter to England in
July. No more parliaments were called, and Charles subsisted on his
permanent revenue and his French pensions. He continued the policy of
double-dealing and treachery, deceiving his ministers as at the treaty
of Dover, by pretending to support Holland and Spain while he was
secretly engaged to Louis to betray them. On the 22nd of March 1681 he
entered into a compact with Louis whereby he undertook to desert his
allies and offer no resistance to French aggressions. In August he
joined with Spain and Holland in a manifesto against France, while
secretly for a million livres he engaged himself to Louis, and in 1682
he proposed himself as arbitrator with the intention of treacherously
handing over Luxemburg to France, an offer which was rejected owing to
Spanish suspicions of collusion. In the event, Charles's duplicity
enabled Louis to seize Strassburg in 1681 and Luxemburg in 1684. The
government at home was carried on principally by Rochester, Sunderland
and Godolphin, while Guilford was lord chancellor and Jeffreys lord
chief justice. The laws against the Nonconformists were strictly
enforced. In order to obtain servile parliaments and also obsequious
juries, who with the co-operation of judges of the stamp of Jeffreys
could be depended upon to carry out the wishes of the court, the borough
charters were confiscated, the charter of the city of London being
forfeited on the 12th of June 1683.

The popularity of Charles, now greatly increased, was raised to national
enthusiasm by the discovery of the Rye House plot in 1683, said to be a
scheme to assassinate Charles and James at an isolated house on the high
road near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire as they returned from Newmarket to
London, among those implicated being Algernon Sidney, Lord Russell and
Monmouth, the two former paying the death penalty and Monmouth being
finally banished to the Hague. The administration became more and more
despotic, and Tangier was abandoned in order to reduce expenses and to
increase the forces at home for overawing opposition. The first
preliminary steps were now taken for the reintroduction of the Roman
Catholic religion. Danby and those confined on account of participation
in the popish plot were liberated, and Titus Oates thrown into prison. A
scheme was announced for withdrawing the control of the army in Ireland
from Rochester, the