Never was a revolution of such magnitude and meaning accomplished more
peacefully. Not a drop of blood had been shed. There was hardly any
excitement or uproar. Even the bronze statue of the runaway King was
permitted to stand undisturbed in the rear of the palace of Whitehall,
London, where it remains to this day.
The great change had taken place thus quietly because men's minds were
ripe for it. England had entered upon another period of history, in
which old institutions, laws, and customs were passing away and all
was becoming new.
Feudalism had vanished under Charles II (S482), but political and
religious persecution had continued. In future, however, we shall
hear no more of the revocation of city charters or other punishments
inflicted because of political opinion (SS479, 487), and rarely of any
punishment for religious dissent.
Courts of justice will undergo reform. They will cease to be "little
better than caverns of murderers,"[1] where judges like Scroggs and
Jeffreys (SS478, 487) browbeat the prisoners, took their guilt for
granted, insulted and silenced witnesses for their defense, and even
cast juries into prison under penalties of heavy fines, for venturing
to bring in verdicts contrary to their wishes.[2]
[1] Hallam's "Constitutional History of England," p. 138. Hallam also
says that the behavior of the Stuart judges covered them "with
infamy," p. 597.
[2] See Hallam, and also the introduction to Professor Adams's "Manual
of Historical Literature." For a graphic picture of the times, see,
in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Christian's trial before Lord
Hategood.
The day, too, had gone by when an English sovereign could cast his
subjects into fetid dungeons in the Tower and leave them to die there
of lingering disease, in darkness, solitude, and despair. No future
king like the marble-hearted James II would sit in the court room at
Edinburgh, and watch with curious delight the agony inflicted by the
Scotch instruments of torture, the "boot" and the thumbscrew, or like
his grandfather, James I, burn Unitarian heretics at the stake in
Smithfield market place in London (S518).
For the future, thought and discussion in England were to be in great
measure free, as in time they would be wholly so. Perhaps the coward
King's heaviest retribution in his secure retreat in the royal French
palace of Versailles was the knowledge that all his efforts, and all
the efforts of his friend Louis XIV, to prevent the coming of this
liberty had absolutely failed.