10 Jan., and eight days later dissolved it, and summoned a fresh one to meet at Oxford, no doubt to avoid the influence of the city. Clarke (i. 651) mentions a design of giving Shaftesbury the freedom of the city and of next day making him alderman and lord mayor, so as to secure the machinery of the city for his purposes.
On 25 Jan. Essex presented a very strongly worded petition to Charles, signed by Shaftesbury, himself, and fourteen other peers, praying that parliament might sit at Westminster. Shaftesbury now prepared instructions to be distributed among the constituencies for the guidance of the members whom they elected (Christie, ii. app. vii.) viz. (1) to insist on a bill of exclusion of the Duke of York and all popish successors; (2) to insist on an adjustment between the prerogatives of calling, proroguing, and dissolving parliaments, and the people's right to annual parliaments; (3) to get rid of guards and mercenary soldiers; and (4) to stop all supplies unless full security were provided against popery and arbitrary power.
Lodgings were taken by Locke for Shaftesbury at Dr. Wallis's, the Savilian professor; but in the end he was provided for at Balliol College. By the time of the meeting of the Oxford parliament Charles had again succeeded in making a treaty with Louis, which, as regarded money, rendered him free of the necessity of supply. He was thus enabled to open parliament with an uncompromising speech in which he especially declared that on the matter of the succession he would not give way. The commons were equally violent, and debated nothing but exclusion. In the lords Shaftesbury reintroduced a bill for a repeal of the act of 35 Eliz., which imposed penalties on protestant dissenters, and moved for a committee to inquire why it had not been presented to the king for signature along with other bills before the last prorogation. A very unsatisfactory explanation was given (Christie, ii. 406). A matter leading to a hot quarrel between the houses was the impeachment of Fitzharris, accused of a design of fastening upon Shaftesbury a libel concocted by himself against the king. The commons wished to impeach him, but the lords resolved that he should be left to the common law. Shaftesbury and nineteen other peers protested against the lords' refusal. The commons, too, were furious, but the sudden dissolution on 28 March put an end to the quarrel and to the exclusion agitation. Shaftesbury immediately returned to London. Barillon states (28 March) that a conversation took place between Charles and Shaftesbury in which the king told Shaftesbury that he would never yield on the Monmouth proposal.
The dissolution cut the ground from beneath Shaftesbury's feet. The excessive violence of the whigs, and his signal political blunder in espousing the cause of an illegitimate son of the king, had strengthened the natural tendency to a reaction. Shaftesbury felt his danger clearly; it was rumoured he wished to renounce the peerage that he might have the privilege of being judged by others than peers selected by the king. In anticipation of attack he secured his estate to his family by a careful settlement, and granted copyhold estates for their lives to several of his servants.
In a discussion of the committee of foreign affairs on 21 June, Halifax and Clarendon urged that Shaftesbury should be arrested before parliament should meet again; and early in the morning of 2 July he was seized at Thanet House, Aldersgate Street, and carried to Whitehall, where he was examined at a special meeting of the council in the king's presence. All his papers, too, had been seized without his being allowed to make a list of them as a reasonable precaution (Ralph, i. 611). The witnesses against him were chiefly the very men who had been his informants regarding the pretended Irish plot. Shaftesbury, who had in vain requested to have his accusers face to face (ib.), defended himself; he was in the end committed to the Tower on the charge of high treason, in conspiring for the death of the king and overthrow of government. He was taken to the Tower by water, and in the evening was visited there by Monmouth, Grey, and others of that party. It is mentioned, as showing how completely and suddenly his power was gone, that ‘he was brought from the heart of the city to his examination by two single messengers, and sent to the Tower, no man taking notice’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. 533 a). Two days later he was ordered to be kept close prisoner. He and Howard petitioned the judges, under the new Habeas Corpus Act, that they might be brought to trial or bailed; but the judges refused, on the ground that the Tower was out of their jurisdiction. In the Tower he was ill of his old ague, and on 14 July leave was given him to take the air. In the heat of August he was so ill, having had two fits in twenty-four hours, that the lieutenant of the Tower removed him to cooler lodgings. In the meanwhile the court were taking great pains to find evidence sufficient to convict Shaftesbury, and it was widely said that much tampering of witnesses was going on. In the beginning of September, and in October, applications
