THE GREAT LORD CHANCELLOR.
But the Prince of Orange had already landed.
We learned this news next day, and you may be sure that we were in
the saddle again and riding to Exeter, there to join his standard.
This we did with the full consent of Madam and of Alice. Much as we
had suffered already, they would not deter us, because this thing
would have been approved by Sir Christopher and Dr. Eykin. Therefore
we went. As all the world knows, this expedition was successful. Yet
was not Barnaby made an Admiral, nor was I made a Court physician;
we got, in fact, no reward at all, except that for Barnaby was
procured a full pardon on account of the homicide of his late master.
My second campaign, as everybody knows, was bloodless. To begin
with, we had an army, not of raw country lads armed indifferently
and untrained, but of veteran troops, fifteen thousand strong, all
well equipped, and with the best General in Europe at their head.
At first, indeed, such was the dread in men's minds caused by Lord
Jeffreys' cruelties, few came in; yet this was presently made up
by what followed, when, without any fighting at all, the King's
regiments melted away, his priests fled, and his friends deserted
him. This was a very different business from that other, when we
followed one whom I now know to have been a mere tawdry pretender,
no better fitted to be a King than a vagabond actor at a fair is fit
to be a Lord. Alas! what blood was wasted in that mad attempt!--of
which I was myself one of the most eager promoters. I was then
young, and I believed all that I was told by the conspirators in
Holland; I took their list of well-wishers for insurgents already
armed and waiting only for a signal; I thought that the roll of
noble names set down for sturdy Protestants was that of men already
pledged to the Cause; I believed that the whole nation would rise at
the first opportunity to turn out the priests; I even believed in
the legitimacy of the Duke, and that against the express statement
of his father (if King Charles was in reality his father); and I
believed what they told me of his princely virtues, his knowledge
of the art of war, and his heroic valour. I say that I believed all
these things and that I became a willing and zealous tool in their
hands. As for what those who planned the expedition believed, I
know not; nor will any one now ever learn what promises were made
to the Duke, what were broken, and why he was, from the outset,
save for a few days at Taunton, so dejected and disappointed. As
for me, I shall always believe that the unhappy man--unwise and
soft-hearted--was betrayed by those whom he trusted.
It is now an old tale, though King Monmouth will not speedily be
forgotten in the West Country, nor will the memory of the Bloody
Assize. The brave lads who followed him are dead and buried; some
in unhonoured graves hard by the place where they were hanged, some
under the burning sun of the West Indies. The Duke himself hath long
since paid the penalty of his rash attempt. All is over and ended,
except the memory of it.
It is now common history, known to everybody, how the Prince of
Orange lingered in the West Country, his army inactive, as if he
knew (doubtless he was well informed upon this particular) that
the longer he remained idle the more likely was the King's Cause
to fall to pieces. There are some who think that if King James
had risked an action he could not but have gained, whatsoever
its event--I mean that, the blood of his soldiers once roused,
they would have remained steadfast to him, and would have fought
for him. But this he dared not to risk; wherefore the Prince did
nothing, while the King's regiments fell to pieces and his friends
deserted him. It was in December when the Prince came to Windsor,
and I with him, once more Chyrurgeon in a rebel army. While there
I rode to London--partly with the intention of judging for myself
as to the temper of the people; partly because, after so long an
absence, I wished once more to visit a place where there are books
and pictures; and partly because there were certain notes and
herbs which I desired to communicate to the College of Physicians
in Warwick Lane. It happened to be the very day when the King's
first flight--that, namely, when he was taken in the Isle of
Sheppey--became known. The streets in the City of London I found
crowded with people hurrying to and fro, running in bands and
companies, shouting and crying, as if in the presence of some great
and imminent danger. It was reported and currently believed that
the disbanded Irish soldiers had begun to massacre the Protestants.
There was no truth at all in the report; but yet the bells were
ringing from all the towers, the crowds were exhorting each other to
tear down and destroy the Romish chapels, to hunt for and to hang
the priests, and especially Jesuits (I know not whether they found
any), and to shout for the Prince of Orange. I stood aside to let
the crowds (thus religiously disposed) run past, but there seemed no
end to them. Presently, however (this was in front of the new Royal
Exchange), there drew near another kind of crowd. There marched six
or eight sturdy fellows bearing stout cudgels and haling along a
prisoner. Round them there ran, shrieking, hooting, and cursing,
a mob of a hundred men and more; they continually made attacks
upon the guard, fighting them with sticks and fists; but they were
always thrust back. I thought at first that they had caught some
poor, wretched priest whom they desired to murder. But it proved
to be a prize worth many priests. As they drew nearer, I discerned
the prisoner. He was dressed in the garb of a common sailor, with
short petticoats (which they call slops), and a jacket; his cap had
been torn off, leaving the bare skull, which showed that he was no
sailor, because common sailors do not wear wigs; blood was flowing
down his cheek from a fresh wound; his eyes rolled hither and
thither in an extremity of terror; I could not hear what he said for
the shouting of those around him, but his lips moved, and I think he
was praying his guards to close in and protect him. Never, surely,
was seen a more terror-stricken creature.
I knew his face. Once seen (I had seen it once) it could never be
forgotten. The red and bloated cheeks, which even his fear could
not make pale; the eyes, more terrible than have been given to any
other human creature: these I could not forget--in dreams I see them
still. I saw that face at Exeter, when the cruel Judge exulted over
our misery and rejoiced over the sentence which he pronounced. Yea,
he laughed when he told us how we should swing, but not till we were
dead, and then the knife--delivering his sentence so that no single
point of its horror should be lost to us. Yes; it was the face
of Judge Jeffreys--none other--this abject wretch was that great
Judge. Why, when we went back to our prison there were some who cast
themselves upon the ground, and, for terror of what was to come,
fell into mere _dementia_. And now I saw him thus humbled, thus
disgraced, thus threatened, thus in the last extremity and agony of
terror.
They had discovered him, thus disguised and in hiding, at a tavern
in Wapping, and were dragging him to the presence of the Lord Mayor.
It is a long distance from Wapping to Guildhall, and they went but
slowly, because they were beset and surrounded by these wolves who
howled to have his blood. And all the way he shrieked and trembled
for fear!
Sure and certain is the vengeance of the Lord!
This Haman, this unjust Judge, was thus suffering, at the hands
of the savage mob, pangs far worse than those endured by the poor
rustics whom he had delivered to the executioner. I say worse,
because I have not only read, but have myself proved, that the rich
and the learned--those, that is, who live luxuriously and those who
have power to imagine and to feel beforehand--do suffer far more in
disease than the common, ignorant folk. The scholar dies of terror
before ever he feels the surgeon's knife, while the rustic bares his
limb, insensible and callous, however deep the cut or keen the pain.
I make no doubt, therefore, that the great Lord Chancellor, while
they haled him all the way from Wapping to Guildhall, suffered as
much as fifty ploughboys flogged at the cart-tail.
Many thousands there were who desired revenge upon him--I know not
what revenge would satisfy the implacable; because revenge can do no
more than kill the body, but his worst enemy should be satisfied
with this, his dreadful fate. Even Barnaby, who was sad because he
could get no revenge on his own account (he wanted a bloody battle,
with the rout of the King's armies and the pursuit of a flying
enemy, such as had happened at Sedgemoor), was satisfied with the
justice which was done to that miserable man. It is wonderful that
he was not killed amidst so many threatening cudgels; but his guards
prevented that, not from any love they bore him; but quite the
contrary (more unforgiving faces one never saw); for they intended
to hand him over to the Lord Mayor, and that he should be tried for
all his cruelties and treacheries, and, perhaps, experience himself
that punishment of hanging and disembowelling which he had inflicted
on so many ignorant and misled men.
How he was committed to the Tower, where he shortly died in the
greatest torture of body as well as mind, everybody knows.