Cabal ministry

 ( English Ministries ) 

The linchpin of the Cabal was probably George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Although he only held the household office of Master of the Horse, with responsibility for overseeing the King's travel arrangements, Buckingham was a long and close associate of King Charles II, having been practically raised together since they were children, during the close association of their fathers, Charles I and the first Duke of Buckingham, a relationship they consciously compared themselves to in adulthood, and might have replicated had the younger Buckingham possessed the skills of his father. Nonetheless, Buckingham was in constant contact with and a clear favourite of the King, and the centre of the Cabal's grip on power. Gilbert Burnet, who knew some of its members personally, said that Buckingham stood somewhat apart from the rest of the Cabal, hating them and being hated in return.Burnet, Gilbert, History of his Own Time (Everyman's Library abridgement, 1979), p. 125.

The Lord High Treasurer Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton having died just before Clarendon's departure, the Treasury went into commission in 1667, under the nominal chairmanship of George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle. But as Monck was practically retired from public life, control of the Treasury commission was taken up by Sir Thomas Clifford (Comptroller and soon Treasurer of the Household) and Anthony Ashley Cooper (Chancellor of the Exchequer). With the assistance of their close associates John Duncombe (Ashley's deputy at the Exchequer), Stephen Fox (the Paymaster of the Forces) and notably Sir George Downing, the highly capable secretary to the Treasury commission, Clifford and Ashley overhauled the monarchical finances, placing them in a much more solvent state than before.Kishlansky, Mark, A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603–1714 (Penguin, 1996), p. 244.

Foreign affairs was principally directed by Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington (Secretary of the South), with occasional assistance from George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. (Although foreign affairs were notionally in the purview of the Secretary of the North, the Cabal bullied Sir William Morice into selling the seat to Sir John Trevor, and then sidelined the latter.)

John Maitland, 2nd Earl of Lauderdale (Secretary of State for Scotland) had already consolidated his position in 1663 by securing the dismissal of his principal rival, John Middleton (Lord High Commissioner to the Parliament of Scotland) and his replacement by the more pliable John Leslie, Earl of Rothes. In 1669, Lauderdale went one step further, and got Leslie dismissed and the Lord High Commissioner position for himself, consolidating his hold and ruling Scotland as a virtual autocrat for the remainder of his career.

Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the Cavalier lawyer who had prosecuted the , and who took over Clarendon's duties as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in 1667, was outside of this inner circle, although cooperative with their goals.

Despite their comparative energy and efficiency, the Cabal were a fractious and unpopular lot.Kishlansky, p. 244. Although perceived as a secretive and unsavoury junta, they rarely formed a united front, and their internal quarrels often spilled over into the public arena. John Philipps Kenyon suggests that the King actually encouraged the Cabal members to quarrel, in the belief that this made them easier to control.Kenyon, J. P., Stuart England (Pelican, 1978), p. 212. They in turn never trusted him not to bring them down as he had brought down Clarendon, and as Kenyon remarks, they hardly dared turn their backs on him for fear of sudden dismissal.Kenyon 1970, p. 11. It was said that the King treated his ministers very much as he did his mistresses: "he used them, but he was not in love with them, and was tied to them no more than they to him, which implies sufficient liberty on either side". Sir William Coventry, the Secretary to the Admiralty, resigned from office following a duel challenge from the Duke of Buckingham, and re-emerged in the House of Commons at the head of a group of MPs known as the "Country Party", which loudly opposed the Cabal and its policies.Fraser, p. 264. Causing poor relations with members of parliament, Charles II acceded to the Cabal's recommendation to prorogue parliament repeatedly, keeping it out of session for as long as he could, and leaving the Cabal to run the country on their own. In financial exigency (a pressing need to levy taxes), following the Great Stop of the Exchequer in 1672 and the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Charles was obliged to re-convene parliament in 1673 and the parliamentarians were bent on revenge.