The defeat of the insurgents who had rallied under Monmouth's flag was
followed by a series of trials known, from their results, as the
"Bloody Assizes" (1685). They were conducted by Judge Jeffreys,
assisted by a band of soldiers under Colonel Kirke, ironically called,
from their ferocity, "Kirke's Lambs." Jeffreys was by nature cruel,
and enjoyed the spectacle of mental as well as bodily anguish. As he
himself said, he delighted to give those who had the misfortune to
appear before him "a lick with the rough side of his tongue,"
preparatory to roaring out the sentence of torture or death, in which
he delighted still more.
All who were in the remotest way implicated in the late rebellion were
now hunted down and brought to a trial which was but a mockery of
justice. No one was permitted to defend himself. In fact, defense
would have been useless against the blind fury of such a judge. The
threshold of the court was to most that crossed it the threshold of
the grave. A gentleman present at one of these scenes of slaughter,
touched with pity at the condition of a trembling old man called up
for sentence, ventured to put in a word in his behalf. "My Lord,"
said he to Jeffreys, "this poor creature is dependent on the parish."
"Don't trouble yourself," cried the judge; "I will soon ease the
parish of the burden," and ordered the officers to execute him at
once.
Those who escaped death were often still more to be pitied. A young
man was sentenced to be imprisoned for seven years, and to be whipped
once a year through every market town in the county. In his despair,
he petitioned the King to grant him the favor of being hanged. The
petition was refused, but a partial remission of the punishment was at
length gained by bribing the court; for Jeffreys, though his heart was
shut against mercy, always had his pockets open for gain. Alice
Lisle, an aged woman, who, out of pity, had concealed two men flying
from the King's vengeance, was condemned to be burned alive; and it
was with the gratest difficulty that the clergy of Winchester
Cathedral succeeded in getting the sentence commuted to beheading.
As the work went on, the spirits of Jeffreys rose higher and higher.
He laughed, shouted, joked, and swore like a drunken man. When the
court had finished its sittings, more than a thousand persons had been
brutally scourged, sold as slaves, hanged, or beheaded. The
guideposts of the highways were converted into gibbets, from which the
blackened corpses swung in chains, and from every church tower in
Somersetshire ghastly heads looked down on those who gathered there to
worship God; in fact, so many bodies were exposed that the whole air
was "tainted with corruption and death."
Not satisfied with vengeance alone, Jeffreys and his friends made
these trials a means of speculation. Batches of rebels were given as
presents to courtiers, who sold them for a period of ten years to be
worked to death or flogged to death on West India plantations; and the
Queen's maids of honor extorted large sums of money for the pardon of
a number of country schoolgirls who had been convicted of presenting
Monmouth with a royal flag at Taunton.
On the return of Jeffreys to London after this carnival of blood, his
father was so horrified at his cruelty that he forbade him to enter
his house. James, on the contrary, testified his approval by making
Jeffreys Lord Chancellor of the realm, at the same time mildly
censuring him for not having shown greater severity!
The new Lord Chancellor testified his gratitude to his royal master by
procuring the murder, by means of a packed jury, of Alderman Cornish,
a prominent London Whig (S479), who was especially hated by the King
on account of his support of that Exclusion Bill (S478) which was
intended to shut James out from the throne. On the same day on which
Cornish was executed, Jeffreys also had the satisfaction of knowing
that Elizabeth Gaunt was burned alive at Tyburn, London, for having
assisted one of the Rye-House conspirators, who had fought for
Monmouth at Sedgemoor, to escape.
488. The King makes Further Attempts to reestablish Catholicism;
Second Declaration of Indulgence (1687); Oxford.
An event occurred about this time which encouraged James to make a
more decided attempt to restore Catholicism. Henry IV of France had
granted the Protestants of his kingdom liberty of worship, by the
Edict of Nantes (1598). Louis XIV deliberately revoked it (1685). By
that shortsighted act the Huguenots, or French Protestants, were
exposed to cruel persecution, and thousands of them fled to England
and America.
James, who, like his late brother Charles II, was "the pensioned slave
of the French King" (S476), resolved to profit by the example set him
by Louis. He did not expect to drive the Protestants out of Great
Britain as Louis had driven them from France, but he hoped to restore
the country to its allegiance to Rome (SS370, 382, 477). He began by
suspending the Test Act (S477) and putting Catholics into important
offices in both Church and State.[1] He furthermore established an
army of 13,000 men on Hounslow Heath, just outside London (1686), to
hold the city in subjection in case it should rebel.
[1] The Dispensing Power and the Suspending Power were prerogatives by
which the King claimed the right of preventing the enforcement of such
laws as he deemed contrary to public good. A packed bench of judges
sustained the King in this position, but the power so to act was
finally abolished by the Bill of Rights (1689). See S497 and top of
page xxxii, Article XII.
He next recalled the Protestant Duke of Ormonde, governor of Ireland,
and put in his place Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, a Catholic. Tyrconnel
had orders to recruit an Irish Roman Catholic army to aid the King in
carrying out his designs (1687). He raised some soldiers, but he also
raised that famous song of "Lilli Burlero," by which, as its author
boasted, James was eventually "sung out of his kingdom."[2]
[2] Lord Wharton, a prominent English Whig (S479), was the author of
this satirical political ballad, which, it is said, was sung and
whistled from one end of England to the other, in derision of the
King's policy. It undoubtably had a powerful popular influence in
bringing on the Revolution of 1688.
The ballad began:
"Ho, Brother Teague, dost hear de decree?
Lilli Burlero, bullen a-la,
Dat we shall have a new deputie,
Lilli Burlero, bullen a-la."
The refrain, "Lilli Burlero," etc. (also written
"Lillibullero"), is said to have been the watchword used by the Irish
Catholics when they rose against the Protestants of Ulster in 1641.
See Wilkins's "Political Songs," Vol I.
Having got the courts completely under his control through the
appointment of judges in sympathy with Jeffreys (S487) and with
himself, the King issued a Declaration of Indulgence similar to that
which his brother Charles II had issued (S477).[1] It suspended all
penal laws against both the Roman Catholics on the one hand, and the
Protestant Dissenters (S472) on the other. The latter, however,
suspecting that this apparently liberal measure was simply a trick to
establish Catholicism, refused to avail themselves of it, and
denounced it as an open violation of the Constitution.
[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxi,
S23.
James next proceeded, by means of the tyrannical High Commission
Court, which he had revived (S382), to bring Magdalen College, Oxford,
under Catholic control. The President of that college having died,
the Fellows were considering the choice of a successor. The King
ordered them to elect a Catholic. The Fellows refused to obey, and
elected a Protestant. James ejected the new President, and drove out
the Fellows, leaving them to depend on the charity of neighboring
country gentlemen for their support.
But the King, in attacking the rights of the college, had "run his
head against a wall,"[2] as he soon discovered to his sorrow. His
temporary success, however, emboldened him to reissue the first
Declaration of Indulgence (1688). Its real object, like that of the
first Declaration (S477), was to put Roman Catholics into still higher
positions of trust and power.
[2] "What building is that?" asked the Duke of Wellington of his
companion, Mr. Croker, pointing, as he spoke, to Magdalen College
wall, just as they entered Oxford in 1834. "That is the wall which
James II ran his head against," was the reply.