Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, preached. He was one of those writers

who still affected the obsolete style of Archbishop Williams and Bishop

Andrews. The sermon was made up of quaint conceits, such as seventy

years earlier might have been admired, but such as moved the scorn of a

generation accustomed to the purer eloquence of Sprat, of South, and of

Tillotson. King Solomon was King James. Adonijah was Monmouth. Joab was

a Rye House conspirator; Shimei, a Whig libeller; Abiathar, an honest

but misguided old Cavalier. One phrase in the Book of Chronicles was

construed to mean that the King was above the Parliament; and another

was cited to prove that he alone ought to command the militia. Towards

the close of the discourse the orator very timidly alluded to the new

and embarrassing position in which the Church stood with reference to

the sovereign, and reminded his hearers that the Emperor Constantius

Chlorus, though not himself a Christian, had held in honour those

Christians who remained true to their religion, and had treated with

scorn those who sought to earn his favour by apostasy. The service in

the Abbey was followed by a stately banquet in the Hall, the banquet by

brilliant fireworks, and the fireworks by much bad poetry. [255]

This may be fixed upon as the moment at which the enthusiasm of the

Tory party reached the zenith. Ever since the accession of the new King,

addresses had been pouring in which expressed profound veneration for

his person and office, and bitter detestation of the vanquished Whigs.

The magistrates of Middlesex thanked God for having confounded the

designs of those regicides and exclusionists who, not content with

having murdered one blessed monarch, were bent on destroying the

foundations of monarchy. The city of Gloucester execrated the

bloodthirsty villains who had tried to deprive His Majesty of his just

inheritance. The burgesses of Wigan assured their sovereign that

they would defend him against all plotting Achitophels and rebellions

Absaloms. The grand jury of Suffolk expressed a hope that the Parliament

would proscribe all the exclusionists. Many corporations pledged

themselves never to return to the House of Commons any person who had

voted for taking away the birthright of James. Even the capital was

profoundly obsequious. The lawyers and the traders vied with each

other in servility. Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery sent up fervent

professions of attachment and submission. All the great commercial

societies, the East India Company, the African Company, the Turkey

Company, the Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Maryland

Merchants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant Adventurers, declared

that they most cheerfully complied with the royal edict which required

them still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city of the island, echoed

the voice of London. But nowhere was the spirit of loyalty stronger than

in the two Universities. Oxford declared that she would never swerve

from those religious principles which bound her to obey the King without

any restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe terms,

the violence and treachery of those turbulent men who had maliciously

endeavoured to turn the stream of succession out of the ancient channel.

[256]

Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time, every number

of the London Gazette. But it was not only by addressing that the Tories

showed their zeal. The writs for the new Parliament had gone forth,

and the country was agitated by the tumult of a general election. No

election had ever taken place under circumstances so favourable to

the Court. Hundreds of thousands whom the Popish plot had scared into

Whiggism had been scared back by the Rye House plot into Toryism. In the

counties the government could depend on an overwhelming majority of the

gentlemen of three hundred a year and upwards, and on the clergy almost

to a man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels of Whiggism

had recently been deprived of their charters by legal sentence, or

had prevented the sentence by voluntary surrender. They had now been

reconstituted in such a manner that they were certain to return members

devoted to the crown. Where the townsmen could not be trusted, the

freedom had been bestowed on the neighbouring squires. In some of the

small western corporations, the constituent bodies were in great part

composed of Captains and Lieutenants of the Guards. The returning

officers were almost everywhere in the interest of the court. In every

shire the Lord Lieutenant and his deputies formed a powerful, active,

and vigilant committee, for the purpose of cajoling and intimidating the

freeholders. The people were solemnly warned from thousands of pulpits

not to vote for any Whig candidate, as they should answer it to Him who

had ordained the powers that be, and who had pronounced rebellion a sin

not less deadly than witchcraft. All these advantages the predominant

party not only used to the utmost, but abused in so shameless a manner

that grave and reflecting men, who had been true to the monarchy in

peril, and who bore no love to republicans and schismatics, stood

aghast, and augured from such beginnings the approach of evil times.

[257]

Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishment of their errors,

though defeated, disheartened, and disorganized, did not yield without

an effort. They were still numerous among the traders and artisans of

the towns, and among the yeomanry and peasantry of the open country. In

some districts, in Dorsetshire for example, and in Somersetshire, they

were the great majority of the population. In the remodelled boroughs

they could do nothing: but, in every county where they had a chance,

they struggled desperately. In Bedfordshire, which had lately been

represented by the virtuous and unfortunate Russell, they were

victorious on the show of hands, but were beaten at the poll. [258] In

Essex they polled thirteen hundred votes to eighteen hundred. [259] At

the election for Northamptonshire the common people were so violent in

their hostility to the court candidate that a body of troops was drawn

out in the marketplace of the county town, and was ordered to load with

ball. [260] The history of the contest for Buckinghamshire is still more

remarkable. The whig candidate, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip

Lord Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity and by

audacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always a

respectable, part in the politics of several reigns. He had been one of

those members of the House of Commons who had carried up the Exclusion

Bill to the bar of the Lords. The court was therefore bent on throwing

him out by fair or foul means. The Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys himself

came down into Buckinghamshire, for the purpose of assisting a gentleman

named Hacket, who stood on the high Tory interest. A stratagem was

devised which, it was thought, could not fail of success. It was given

out that the polling would take place at Ailesbury; and Wharton,

whose skill in all the arts of electioneering was unrivalled, made his

arrangements on that supposition. At a moment's warning the Sheriff

adjourned the poll to Newport Pagnell. Wharton and his friends hurried

thither, and found that Hacket, who was in the secret, had already

secured every inn and lodging. The Whig freeholders were compelled to

tie their horses to the hedges, and to sleep under the open sky in

the meadows which surround the little town. It was with the greatest

difficulty that refreshments could be procured at such short notice for

so large a number of men and beasts, though Wharton, who was utterly

regardless of money when his ambition and party spirit were roused,

disbursed fifteen hundred pounds in one day, an immense outlay for those

times. Injustice seems, however, to have animated the courage of the

stouthearted yeomen of Bucks, the sons of the constituents of John

Hampden. Not only was Wharton at the head of the poll; but he was able

to spare his second votes to a man of moderate opinions, and to throw

out the Chief Justice's candidate. [261]

In Cheshire the contest lasted six days. The Whigs polled about

seventeen hundred votes, the Tories about two thousand. The common

people were vehement on the Whig side, raised the cry of "Down with the

Bishops," insulted the clergy in the streets of Chester, knocked

down one gentleman of the Tory party, broke the windows and beat the

constables. The militia was called out to quell the riot, and was kept

assembled, in order to protect the festivities of the conquerors. When

the poll closed, a salute of five great guns from the castle proclaimed

the triumph of the Church and the Crown to the surrounding country. The

bells rang. The newly elected members went in state to the City Cross,

accompanied by a band of music, and by a long train of knights and

squires. The procession, as it marched, sang "Joy to Great Caesar," a

loyal ode, which had lately been written by Durfey, and which, though

like all Durfey's writings, utterly contemptible, was, at that time,

almost as popular as Lillibullero became a few years later. [262] Round

the Cross the trainbands were drawn up in order: a bonfire was lighted:

the Exclusion Bill was burned: and the health of King James was drunk

with loud acclamations. The following day was Sunday. In the morning the

militia lined the streets leading to the Cathedral. The two knights of

the shire were escorted with great pomp to their choir by the magistracy

of the city, heard the Dean preach a sermon, probably on the duty of

passive obedience, and were afterwards feasted by the Mayor. [263]

In Northumberland the triumph of Sir John Fenwick, a courtier whose

name afterwards obtained a melancholy celebrity, was attended by

circumstances which excited interest in London, and which were thought

not unworthy of being mentioned in the despatches of foreign ministers.

Newcastle was lighted up with great piles of coal. The steeples sent

forth a joyous peal. A copy of the Exclusion Bill, and a black box,

resembling that which, according to the popular fable, contained the

contract between Charles the Second and Lucy Walters, were publicly

committed to the flames, with loud acclamations. [264]

The general result of the elections exceeded the most sanguine

expectations of the court. James found with delight that it would be

unnecessary for him to expend a farthing in buying votes. He Said that,

with the exception of about forty members, the House of Commons was just

such as he should himself have named. [265] And this House of Commons

it was in his power, as the law then stood, to keep to the end of his

reign.

Secure of parliamentary support, he might now indulge in the luxury of

revenge. His nature was not placable; and, while still a subject, he had

suffered some injuries and indignities which might move even a placable

nature to fierce and lasting resentment. One set of men in particular

had, with a baseness and cruelty beyond all example and all description,

attacked his honour and his life, the witnesses of the plot. He may

well be excused for hating them; since, even at this day, the mention of

their names excites the disgust and horror of all sects and parties.

Some of these wretches were already beyond the reach of human justice.

Bedloe had died in his wickedness, without one sign of remorse or shame.

[266] Dugdale had followed, driven mad, men said, by the Furies of an

evil conscience, and with loud shrieks imploring those who stood round

his bed to take away Lord Stafford. [267] Carstairs, too, was gone. His

end had been all horror and despair; and, with his last breath, he had

told his attendants to throw him into a ditch like a dog, for that he

was not fit to sleep in a Christian burial ground. [268] But Oates and

Dangerfield were still within the reach of the stern prince whom they

had wronged. James, a short time before his accession, had instituted

a civil suit against Oates for defamatory words; and a jury had given

damages to the enormous amount of a hundred thousand pounds. [269] The

defendant had been taken in execution, and was lying in prison as a

debtor, without hope of release. Two bills of indictment against him

for perjury had been found by the grand jury of Middlesex, a few weeks

before the death of Charles. Soon after the close of the elections the

trial came on.

Among the upper and middle classes Oates had few friends left. The most

respectable Whigs were now convinced that, even if his narrative had

some foundation in fact, he had erected on that foundation a vast

superstructure of romance. A considerable number of low fanatics,

however, still regarded him as a public benefactor. These people well

knew that, if he were convicted, his sentence would be one of extreme

severity, and were therefore indefatigable in their endeavours to manage

an escape. Though he was as yet in confinement only for debt, he was put

into irons by the authorities of the King's Bench prison; and even so he

was with difficulty kept in safe custody. The mastiff that guarded his

door was poisoned; and, on the very night preceding the trial, a ladder

of ropes was introduced into the cell.

On the day in which Titus was brought to the bar, Westminster Hall was

crowded with spectators, among whom were many Roman Catholics, eager to

see the misery and humiliation of their persecutor. [270] A few years

earlier his short neck, his legs uneven, the vulgar said, as those of a

badger, his forehead low as that of a baboon, his purple cheeks, and his

monstrous length of chin, had been familiar to all who frequented the

courts of law. He had then been the idol of the nation. Wherever he had

appeared, men had uncovered their heads to him. The lives and estates of

the magnates of the realm had been at his mercy. Times had now changed;

and many, who had formerly regarded him as the deliverer of his country,

shuddered at the sight of those hideous features on which villany seemed

to be written by the hand of God. [271]

It was proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that this man had by

false testimony deliberately murdered several guiltless persons. He

called in vain on the most eminent members of the Parliaments which had

rewarded and extolled him to give evidence in his favour. Some of those

whom he had summoned absented themselves. None of them said anything

tending to his vindication. One of them, the Earl of Huntingdon,

bitterly reproached him with having deceived the Houses and drawn on

them the guilt of shedding innocent blood. The Judges browbeat and

reviled the prisoner with an intemperance which, even in the most

atrocious cases, ill becomes the judicial character. He betrayed,

however, no sign of fear or of shame, and faced the storm of invective

which burst upon him from bar, bench, and witness box, with the

insolence of despair. He was convicted on both indictments. His offence,

though, in a moral light, murder of the most aggravated kind, was, in

the eye of the law, merely a misdemeanour. The tribunal, however, was

desirous to make his punishment more severe than that of felons or

traitors, and not merely to put him to death, but to put him to death

by frightful torments. He was sentenced to be stripped of his clerical

habit, to be pilloried in Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall

with an inscription declaring his infamy over his head, to be pilloried

again in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate to

Newgate, and, after an interval of two days, to be whipped from Newgate

to Tyburn. If, against all probability, he should happen to survive this

horrible infliction, he was to be kept close prisoner during life. Five

times every year he was to be brought forth from his dungeon and exposed

on the pillory in different parts of the capital. [272] This rigorous

sentence was rigorously executed. On the day on which Oates was

pilloried in Palace Yard he was mercilessly pelted and ran some risk of

being pulled in pieces. [273] But in the City his partisans mustered

in great force, raised a riot, and upset the pillory. [274] They were,

however, unable to rescue their favourite. It was supposed that he would

try to escape the horrible doom which awaited him by swallowing poison.

All that he ate and drank was therefore carefully inspected. On the

following morning he was brought forth to undergo his first flogging.

At an early hour an innumerable multitude filled all the streets from

Aldgate to the Old Bailey. The hangman laid on the lash with such

unusual severity as showed that he had received special instructions.

The blood ran down in rivulets. For a time the criminal showed a strange

constancy: but at last his stubborn fortitude gave way. His bellowings

were frightful to hear. He swooned several times; but the scourge still

continued to descend. When he was unbound, it seemed that he had borne

as much as the human frame can bear without dissolution. James was

entreated to remit the second flogging. His answer was short and clear:

"He shall go through with it, if he has breath in his body." An attempt

was made to obtain the Queen's intercession; but she indignantly refused

to say a word in favour of such a wretch. After an interval of only

forty-eight hours, Oates was again brought out of his dungeon. He was

unable to stand, and it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn on a

sledge. He seemed quite insensible; and the Tories reported that he had

stupified himself with strong drink. A person who counted the stripes

on the second day said that they were seventeen hundred. The bad

man escaped with life, but so narrowly that his ignorant and bigoted

admirers thought his recovery miraculous, and appealed to it as a proof

of his innocence. The doors of the prison closed upon him. During many

months he remained ironed in the darkest hole of Newgate. It was said

that in his cell he gave himself up to melancholy, and sate whole days

uttering deep groans, his arms folded, and his hat pulled over his eyes.

It was not in England alone that these events excited strong interest.

Millions of Roman Catholics, who knew nothing of our institutions or

of our factions, had heard that a persecution of singular barbarity had

raged in our island against the professors of the true faith, that many

pious men had suffered martyrdom, and that Titus Oates had been the

chief murderer. There was, therefore, great joy in distant countries

when it was known that the divine justice had overtaken him. Engravings

of him, looking out from the pillory, and writhing at the cart's tail,

were circulated all over Europe; and epigrammatists, in many languages,

made merry with the doctoral title which he pretended to have received

from the University of Salamanca, and remarked that, since his forehead

could not be made to blush, it was but reasonable that his back should

do so. [275]

Horrible as were the sufferings of Oates, they did not equal his crimes.

The old law of England, which had been suffered to become obsolete,

treated the false witness, who had caused death by means of perjury, as

a murderer. [276] This was wise and righteous; for such a witness is, in

truth, the worst of murderers. To the guilt of shedding innocent blood

he has added the guilt of violating the most solemn engagement into

which man can enter with his fellow men, and of making institutions,

to which it is desirable that the public should look with respect

and confidence, instruments of frightful wrong and objects of general

distrust. The pain produced by ordinary murder bears no proportion to

the pain produced by murder of which the courts of justice are made the

agents. The mere extinction of life is a very small part of what makes

an execution horrible. The prolonged mental agony of the sufferer, the

shame and misery of all connected with him, the stain abiding even to

the third and fourth generation, are things far more dreadful than death

itself. In general it may be safely affirmed that the father of a large

family would rather be bereaved of all his children by accident or by

disease than lose one of them by the hands of the hangman. Murder by

false testimony is therefore the most aggravated species of murder; and

Oates had been guilty of many such murders. Nevertheless the punishment

which was inflicted upon him cannot be justified. In sentencing him to

be stripped of his ecclesiastical habit and imprisoned for life, the

judges exceeded their legal power. They were undoubtedly competent to

inflict whipping; nor had the law assigned a limit to the number of

stripes. But the spirit of the law clearly was that no misdemeanour

should be punished more severely than the most atrocious felonies.

The worst felon could only be hanged. The judges, as they believed,

sentenced Oates to be scourged to death. That the law was defective is

not a sufficient excuse: for defective laws should be altered by the

legislature, and not strained by the tribunals; and least of all should

the law be strained for the purpose of inflicting torture and destroying

life. That Oates was a bad man is not a sufficient excuse; for the

guilty are almost always the first to suffer those hardships which are

afterwards used as precedents against the innocent. Thus it was in the

present case. Merciless flogging soon became an ordinary punishment for

political misdemeanours of no very aggravated kind. Men were sentenced,

for words spoken against the government, to pains so excruciating that

they, with unfeigned earnestness, begged to be brought to trial on

capital charges, and sent to the gallows. Happily the progress of this

great evil was speedily stopped by the Revolution, and by that article

of the Bill of Rights which condemns all cruel and unusual punishments.

The villany of Dangerfield had not, like that of Oates, destroyed

many innocent victims; for Dangerfield had not taken up the trade of

a witness till the plot had been blown upon and till juries had become

incredulous. [277] He was brought to trial, not for perjury, but for the

less heinous offense of libel. He had, during the agitation caused by

the Exclusion Bill, put forth a narrative containing some false and

odious imputations on the late and on the present King. For this

publication he was now, after the lapse of five years, suddenly taken

up, brought before the Privy Council, committed, tried, convicted, and

sentenced to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate to

Tyburn. The wretched man behaved with great effrontery during the trial;

but, when he heard his doom, he went into agonies of despair, gave

himself up for dead, and chose a text for his funeral sermon. His

forebodings were just. He was not, indeed, scourged quite so severely as

Oates had been; but he had not Oates's iron strength of body and mind.

After the execution Dangerfield was put into a hackney coach and was

taken back to prison. As he passed the corner of Hatton Garden, a Tory

gentleman of Gray's Inn, named Francis, stopped the carriage, and cried

out with brutal levity, "Well, friend, have you had your heat this

morning?" The bleeding prisoner, maddened by this insult, answered with

a curse. Francis instantly struck him in the face with a cane which

injured the eye. Dangerfield was carried dying into Newgate. This

dastardly outrage roused the indignation of the bystanders. They seized

Francis, and were with difficulty restrained from tearing him to

pieces. The appearance of Dangerfield's body, which had been frightfully

lacerated by the whip, inclined many to believe that his death was

chiefly, if not wholly, caused by the stripes which he had received. The

government and the Chief Justice thought it convenient to lay the whole

blame on Francis, who; though he seems to have been at worst guilty only

of aggravated manslaughter, was tried and executed for murder. His dying

speech is one of the most curious monuments of that age. The savage

spirit which had brought him to the gallows remained with him to the

last. Boasts of his loyalty and abuse of the Whigs were mingled with the

parting ejaculations in which he commended his soul to the divine

mercy. An idle rumour had been circulated that his wife was in love with

Dangerfield, who was eminently handsome and renowned for gallantry.

The fatal blow, it was said, had been prompted by jealousy. The dying

husband, with an earnestness, half ridiculous, half pathetic, vindicated

the lady's character. She was, he said, a virtuous woman: she came of

a loyal stock, and, if she had been inclined to break her marriage vow,

would at least have selected a Tory and a churchman for her paramour.

[278]

About the same time a culprit, who bore very little resemblance to Oates

or Dangerfield, appeared on the floor of the Court of King's Bench. No

eminent chief of a party has ever passed through many years of civil

and religious dissension with more innocence than Richard Baxter. He

belonged to the mildest and most temperate section of the Puritan body.

He was a young man when the civil war broke out. He thought that the

right was on the side of the Houses; and he had no scruple about acting

as chaplain to a regiment in the parliamentary army: but his clear

and somewhat sceptical understanding, and his strong sense of justice,

preserved him from all excesses. He exerted himself to check the

fanatical violence of the soldiery. He condemned the proceedings of

the High Court of Justice. In the days of the Commonwealth he had the

boldness to express, on many occasions, and once even in Cromwell's

presence, love and reverence for the ancient institutions of the

country. While the royal family was in exile, Baxter's life was chiefly

passed at Kidderminster in the assiduous discharge of parochial duties.

He heartily concurred in the Restoration, and was sincerely desirous to

bring about an union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. For, with

a liberty rare in his time, he considered questions of ecclesiastical

polity as of small account when compared with the great principles of

Christianity, and had never, even when prelacy was most odious to the

ruling powers, joined in the outcry against Bishops. The attempt to

reconcile the contending factions failed. Baxter cast in his lot with

his proscribed friends, refused the mitre of Hereford, quitted the

parsonage of Kidderminster, and gave himself up almost wholly to study.

His theological writings, though too moderate to be pleasing to the

bigots of any party, had an immense reputation. Zealous Churchmen called

him a Roundhead; and many Nonconformists accused him of Erastianism and

Arminianism. But the integrity of his heart, the purity of his life,

the vigour of his faculties, and the extent of his attainments were

acknowledged by the best and wisest men of every persuasion. His

political opinions, in spite of the oppression which he and his brethren

had suffered, were moderate. He was friendly to that small party which

was hated by both Whigs and Tories. He could not, he said, join in

cursing the Trimmers, when he remembered who it was that had blessed the

peacemakers. [279]

In a Commentary on the New Testament he had complained, with some

bitterness, of the persecution which the Dissenters suffered. That men

who, for not using the Prayer Book, had been driven from their homes,

stripped of their property, and locked up in dungeons, should dare to

utter a murmur, was then thought a high crime against the State and the

Church. Roger Lestrange, the champion of the government and the oracle

of the clergy, sounded the note of war in the Observator. An information

was filed. Baxter begged that he might be allowed some time to prepare

for his defence. It was on the day on which Oates was pilloried in

Palace Yard that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed by age

and infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to make this request. Jeffreys

burst into a storm of rage. "Not a minute," he cried, "to save his life.

I can deal with saints as well as with sinners. There stands Oates on

one side of the pillory; and, if Baxter stood on the other, the two

greatest rogues in the kingdom would stand together."

When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved and

honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor William

Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist divines. Two

Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop, appeared for the

defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his address to the jury, when

the Chief Justice broke forth: "Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a

mark on you. You are the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue,

a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy.

He would have nothing but longwinded cant without book;" and then

his Lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing

through his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style

of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear

people." Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late Majesty

had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the old

blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it?" His fury now

rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it would

be no more than justice to whip such a villain through the whole City.

Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. "You are in all

these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop," said the Judge. "Gentlemen of the long

robe ought to be ashamed to assist such factious knaves." The advocate

made another attempt to obtain a hearing, but to no purpose. "If you do

not know your duty," said Jeffreys, "I will teach it you."

Wallop sate down; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word. But

the Chief Justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of ribaldry and

invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. "My Lord," said the old

man, "I have been much blamed by Dissenters for speaking respectfully of

Bishops." "Baxter for Bishops!" cried the Judge, "that's a merry

conceit indeed. I know what you mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself,

Kidderminster Bishops, factious snivelling Presbyterians!" Again Baxter

essayed to speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed "Richard, Richard, dost

thou think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old

knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book as

full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace of God, I'll

look after thee. I see a great many of your brotherhood waiting to know

what will befall their mighty Don. And there," he continued, fixing his

savage eye on Bates, "there is a Doctor of the party at your elbow. But,

by the grace of God Almighty, I will crush you all."

Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for the defence

made a last effort, and undertook to show that the words of which

complaint was made would not bear the construction put on them by the

information. With this view he began to read the context. In a moment

he was roared down. "You sha'n't turn the court into a conventicle."

The noise of weeping was heard from some of those who surrounded Baxter.

"Snivelling calves!" said the Judge.

Witnesses to character were in attendance, and among them were several

clergymen of the Established Church. But the Chief Justice would hear

nothing. "Does your Lordship think," said Baxter, "that any jury will

convict a man on such a trial as this?" "I warrant you, Mr. Baxter,"

said Jeffreys: "don't trouble yourself about that." Jeffreys was right.

The Sheriffs were the tools of the government. The jurymen, selected

by the Sheriffs from among the fiercest zealots of the Tory party,

conferred for a moment, and returned a verdict of Guilty. "My Lord,"

said Baxter, as he left the court, "there was once a Chief Justice who

would have treated me very differently." He alluded to his learned

and virtuous friend Sir Matthew Hale. "There is not an honest man in

England," answered Jeffreys, "but looks on thee as a knave." [280]

The sentence was, for those times, a lenient one. What passed in

conference among the judges cannot be certainly known. It was believed

among the Nonconformists, and is highly probable, that the Chief Justice

was overruled by his three brethren. He proposed, it is said, that

Baxter should be whipped through London at the cart's tail. The majority

thought that an eminent divine, who, a quarter of a century before, had

been offered a mitre, and who was now in his seventieth year, would be

sufficiently punished for a few sharp words by fine and imprisonment.

[281]

The manner in which Baxter was treated by a judge, who was a member of

the cabinet and a favourite of the Sovereign, indicated, in a manner

not to be mistaken, the feeling with which the government at this time

regarded the Protestant Nonconformists. But already that feeling had

been indicated by still stronger and more terrible signs. The Parliament

of Scotland had met. James had purposely hastened the session of this

body, and had postponed the session of the English Houses, in the

hope that the example set at Edinburgh would produce a good effect

at Westminster. For the legislature of his northern kingdom was as

obsequious as those provincial Estates which Lewis the Fourteenth still

suffered to play at some of their ancient functions in Britanny and

Burgundy. None but an Episcopalian could sit in the Scottish Parliament,

or could even vote for a member, and in Scotland an Episcopalian was

always a Tory or a timeserver. From an assembly thus constituted, little

opposition to the royal wishes was to be apprehended; and even

the assembly thus constituted could pass no law which had not been

previously approved by a committee of courtiers.

All that the government asked was readily granted. In a financial point

of view, indeed, the liberality of the Scottish Estates was of little

consequence. They gave, however, what their scanty means permitted. They

annexed in perpetuity to the crown the duties which had been granted

to the late King, and which in his time had been estimated at forty

thousand pounds sterling a year. They also settled on James for life

an additional annual income of two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds

Scots, equivalent to eighteen thousand pounds sterling. The whole Sum

which they were able to bestow was about sixty thousand a year, little

more than what was poured into the English Exchequer every fortnight.

[282]

Having little money to give, the Estates supplied the defect by loyal

professions and barbarous statutes. The King, in a letter which was

read to them at the opening of their session, called on them in vehement

language to provide new penal laws against the refractory Presbyterians,

and expressed his regret that business made it impossible for him to

propose such laws in person from the throne. His commands were obeyed.

A statute framed by his ministers was promptly passed, a statute which

stands forth even among the statutes of that unhappy country at that

unhappy period, preeminent in atrocity. It was enacted, in few but

emphatic words, that whoever should preach in a conventicle under a

roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as hearer, a conventicle

in the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation of

property. [283]

This law, passed at the King's instance by an assembly devoted to his

will, deserves especial notice. For he has been frequently represented

by ignorant writers as a prince rash, indeed, and injudicious in his

choice of means, but intent on one of the noblest ends which a ruler

can pursue, the establishment of entire religious liberty. Nor can it be

denied that some portions of his life, when detached from the rest and

superficially considered, seem to warrant this favourable view of his

character.

While a subject he had been, during many years, a persecuted man; and

persecution had produced its usual effect on him. His mind, dull and

narrow as it was, had profited under that sharp discipline. While he was

excluded from the Court, from the Admiralty, and from the Council, and

was in danger of being also excluded from the throne, only because he

could not help believing in transubstantiation and in the authority

of the see of Rome, he made such rapid progress in the doctrines of

toleration that he left Milton and Locke behind. What, he often said,

could be more unjust, than to visit speculations with penalties which

ought to be reserved for acts? What more impolitic than to reject the

services of good soldiers, seamen, lawyers, diplomatists, financiers,

because they hold unsound opinions about the number of the sacraments or

the pluripresence of saints? He learned by rote those commonplaces which

all sects repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppression, and

forget so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed

his lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this subject

gave him credit for much more sense and much readier elocution than he

really possessed. His professions imposed on some charitable persons,

and perhaps imposed on himself. But his zeal for the rights of

conscience ended with the predominance of the Whig party. When fortune

changed, when he was no longer afraid that others would persecute him,

when he had it in his power to persecute others, his real propensities

began to show themselves. He hated the Puritan sects with a manifold

hatred, theological and political, hereditary and personal. He regarded

them as the foes of Heaven, as the foes of all legitimate authority in

Church and State, as his great-grandmother's foes and his grandfather's,

his father's and his mother's, his brother's and his own. He, who had

complained so fondly of the laws against Papists, now declared himself

unable to conceive how men could have the impudence to propose the

repeal of the laws against Puritans. [284] He, whose favourite theme had

been the injustice of requiring civil functionaries to take religious

tests, established in Scotland, when he resided there as Viceroy, the

most rigorous religious test that has ever been known in the empire.

[285] He, who had expressed just indignation when the priests of his own

faith were hanged and quartered, amused himself with hearing Covenanters

shriek and seeing them writhe while their knees were beaten flat in the

boots. [286] In this mood he became King; and he immediately demanded

and obtained from the obsequious Estates of Scotland as the surest

pledge of their loyalty, the most sanguinary law that has ever in our

island been enacted against Protestant Nonconformists.

With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in perfect

harmony. The fiery persecution, which had raged when he ruled Scotland

as vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever from the day on which he became

sovereign. Those shires in which the Covenanters were most numerous

were given up to the license of the army. With the army was mingled a

militia, composed of the most violent and profligate of those who called

themselves Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which oppressed

and wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons commanded by John

Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men used in their

revels to play at the torments of hell, and to call each other by the

names of devils and damned souls. [287] The chief of this Tophet, a

soldier of distinguished courage and professional skill, but rapacious

and profane, of violent temper and of obdurate heart, has left a name

which, wherever the Scottish race is settled on the face of the globe,

is mentioned with a peculiar energy of hatred. To recapitulate all the

crimes, by which this man, and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the

Western Lowlands into madness, would be an endless task. A few instances

must suffice; and all those instances shall be taken from the history

of a single fortnight, that very fortnight in which the Scottish

Parliament, at the urgent request of James, enacted a new law of

unprecedented severity against Dissenters.

John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular piety,

commonly called the Christian carrier. Many years later, when Scotland

enjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious freedom, old men who remembered

the evil days described him as one versed in divine things, blameless

in life, and so peaceable that the tyrants could find no offence in

him except that he absented himself from the public worship of the

Episcopalians. On the first of May he was cutting turf, when he was

seized by Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted of

nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even among the

soldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. For the wife of the

poor man was present; she led one little child by the hand: it was easy

to see that she was about to give birth to another; and even those wild

and hardhearted men, who nicknamed one another Beelzebub and Apollyon,

shrank from the great wickedness of butchering her husband before her

face. The prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the near

prospect of eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, till

Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by credible

witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well, sir, well; the

day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer replied, "To man I

can answer for what I have done; and as for God, I will take him into

mine own hand." Yet it was rumoured that even on his seared conscience

and adamantine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim made an

impression which was never effaced. [288]

On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce, were

tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting of fifteen soldiers.

The indictment is still extant. The prisoners were charged, not with any

act of rebellion, but with holding the same pernicious doctrines which

had impelled others to rebel, and with wanting only opportunity to act

upon those doctrines. The proceeding was summary. In a few hours the two

culprits were convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole under

the gallows. [289]

The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great crime.

Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of reprobation drawn the

consequence that to pray for any person who had been predestined to

perdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal decrees of the

Supreme Being. Three poor labouring men, deeply imbued with this

unamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer in the neighbourhood

of Glasgow. They were asked whether they would pray for King James the

Seventh. They refused to do so except under the condition that he was

one of the elect. A file of musketeers was drawn out. The prisoners

knelt down; they were blindfolded; and within an hour after they had

been arrested, their blood was lapped up by the dogs. [290]

While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible was

perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenanters, overcome by

sickness, had found shelter in the house of a respectable widow, and

had died there. The corpse was discovered by the Laird of Westerhall, a

petty tyrant who had, in the days of the Covenant, professed inordinate

zeal for the Presbyterian Church, who had, since the Restoration,

purchased the favour of the government by apostasy, and who felt towards

the party which he had deserted the implacable hatred of an apostate.

This man pulled down the house of the poor woman, carried away her

furniture, and, leaving her and her younger children to wander in the

fields, dragged her son Andrew, who was still a lad, before Claverhouse,

who happened to be marching through that part of the country.

Claverhouse was just then strangely lenient. Some thought that he had

not been quite himself since the death of the Christian carrier, ten

days before. But Westerhall was eager to signalise his loyalty, and

extorted a sullen consent. The guns were loaded, and the youth was told

to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and stood confronting his

murderers with the Bible in his hand. "I can look you in the face," he

said; "I have done nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will you

look in that day when you shall be judged by what is written in this

book?" He fell dead, and was buried in the moor. [291]

On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Margaret Wilson, the

former an aged widow, the latter a maiden of eighteen, suffered death

for their religion in Wigtonshire. They were offered their lives if they

would consent to abjure the cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to

attend the Episcopal worship. They refused; and they were sentenced to

be drowned. They were carried to a spot which the Solway overflows twice

a day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand between high and

low water mark. The elder sufferer was placed near to the advancing

flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify the younger into

submission. The sight was dreadful. But the courage of the survivor

was sustained by an enthusiasm as lofty as any that is recorded in

martyrology. She saw the sea draw nearer and nearer, but gave no sign

of alarm. She prayed and sang verses of psalms till the waves choked her

voice. After she had tasted the bitterness of death, she was, by a cruel

mercy unbound and restored to life. When she came to herself, pitying

friends and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say,

God save the King!" The poor girl, true to her stern theology, gasped

out, "May God save him, if it be God's will!" Her friends crowded round

the presiding officer. "She has said it; indeed, sir, she has said it."

"Will she take the abjuration?" he demanded. "Never!" she exclaimed.

"I am Christ's: let me go!" And the waters closed over her for the last

time. [292]

Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignorant men have

represented as a friend of religious liberty, whose misfortune it was to

be too wise and too good for the age in which he lived. Nay, even

those laws which authorised him to govern thus were in his judgment

reprehensibly lenient. While his officers were committing the murders

which have just been related, he was urging the Scottish Parliament

to pass a new Act compared with which all former Acts might be called

merciful.

In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by ancient

and noble laws which even the Tories would not patiently have seen him

infringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before military tribunals,

or enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them swoon in the boots. Here

he could not drown young girls for refusing to take the abjuration, or

shoot poor countrymen for doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yet

even in England he continued to persecute the Puritans as far as his

power extended, till events which will hereafter be related induced him

to form the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition for

the humiliation and spoliation of the established Church.

One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early period

of his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the Society of Friends.

His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be attributed to

religious sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the divine mission of

Jesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ most widely. It may seem

paradoxical to say that this very circumstance constituted a tie between

the Roman Catholic and the Quaker; yet such was really the case. For

they deviated in opposite directions so far from what the great body of

the nation regarded as right, that even liberal men generally considered

them both as lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration. Thus the

two extreme sects, precisely because they were extreme sects, had a

common interest distinct from the interest of the intermediate sects.

The Quakers were also guiltless of all offence against James and his

House. They had not been in existence as a community till the war

between his father and the Long Parliament was drawing towards a

close. They had been cruelly persecuted by some of the revolutionary

governments. They had, since the Restoration, in spite of much ill

usage, submitted themselves meekly to the royal authority. For they

had, though reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded as

heterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion,

that no excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify active

resistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the government had ever

been traced to a Quaker. [293] In no conspiracy against the government

had a Quaker been implicated. The society had not joined in the clamour

for the Exclusion Bill, and had solemnly condemned the Rye House plot as

a hellish design and a work of the devil. [294] Indeed, the friends then

took very little part in civil contentions; for they were not, as now,

congregated in large towns, but were generally engaged in agriculture,

a pursuit from which they have been gradually driven by the vexations

consequent on their strange scruple about paying tithe. They were,

therefore, far removed from the scene of political strife. They

also, even in domestic privacy, avoided on principle all political

conversation. For such conversation was, in their opinion, unfavourable

to their spirituality of mind, and tended to disturb the austere

composure of their deportment. The yearly meetings of that age

repeatedly admonished the brethren not to hold discourse touching

affairs of state. [295] Even within the memory of persons now living

those grave elders who retained the habits of an earlier generation

systematically discouraged such worldly talk. [296] It was natural that

James should make a wide distinction between these harmless people and

those fierce and reckless sects which considered resistance to tyranny

as a Christian duty which had, in Germany, France, and Holland, made

war on legitimate princes, and which had, during four generations, borne

peculiar enmity to the House of Stuart.

It happened, moreover, that it was possible to grant large relief to the

Roman Catholic and to the Quaker without mitigating the sufferings of

the Puritan sects. A law was in force which imposed severe penalties on

every person who refused to take the oath of supremacy when required to

do so. This law did not affect Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists;

for they were all ready to call God to witness that they renounced all

spiritual connection with foreign prelates and potentates. But the Roman

Catholic would not swear that the Pope had no jurisdiction in England,

and the Quaker would not swear to anything. On the other hand, neither

the Roman Catholic nor the Quaker was touched by the Five Mile Act,

which, of all the laws in the Statute Book, was perhaps the most

annoying to the Puritan Nonconformists. [297]

The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate at court. Though, as

a class, they mixed little with the world, and shunned politics as a

pursuit dangerous to their spiritual interests, one of them, widely

distinguished from the rest by station and fortune, lived in the

highest circles, and had constant access to the royal ear. This was the

celebrated William Penn. His father had held great naval commands,

had been a Commissioner of the Admiralty, had sate in Parliament, had

received the honour of knighthood, and had been encouraged to expect a

peerage. The son had been liberally educated, and had been designed

for the profession of arms, but had, while still young, injured his

prospects and disgusted his friends by joining what was then generally

considered as a gang of crazy heretics. He had been sent sometimes to

the Tower, and sometimes to Newgate. He had been tried at the Old Bailey

for preaching in defiance of the law. After a time, however, he had been

reconciled to his family, and had succeeded in obtaining such powerful

protection that, while all the gaols of England were filled with his

brethren, he was permitted, during many years, to profess his opinions

without molestation. Towards the close of the late reign he had

obtained, in satisfaction of an old debt due to him from the crown, the

grant of an immense region in North America. In this tract, then peopled

only by Indian hunters, he had invited his persecuted friends to settle.

His colony was still in its infancy when James mounted the throne.

Between James and Penn there had long been a familiar acquaintance. The

Quaker now became a courtier, and almost a favourite. He was every

day summoned from the gallery into the closet, and sometimes had long

audiences while peers were kept waiting in the antechambers. It was

noised abroad that he had more real power to help and hurt than many

nobles who filled high offices. He was soon surrounded by flatterers and

suppliants. His house at Kensington was sometimes thronged, at his

hour of rising, by more than two hundred suitors. [298] He paid dear,

however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked coldly

on him, and requited his services with obloquy. He was loudly accused of

being a Papist, nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed that he had been educated

at St. Omers, and others that he had been ordained at Rome. These

calumnies, indeed, could find credit only with the undiscerning

multitude; but with these calumnies were mingled accusations much better

founded.

To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which requires some

courage; for he is rather a mythical than a historical person. Rival

nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising him. England is

proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards him

with a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus,

and the Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society of which he was a

member honours him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he

is generally regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhile

admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The French

philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as

his superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for priests,

and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all races

and to all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civilised

countries, a synonyme for probity and philanthropy.

Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was without doubt

a man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of religious duty and a

fervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind. On one or two points

of high importance, he had notions more correct than were, in his day,

common even among men of enlarged minds: and as the proprietor and

legislator of a province which, being almost uninhabited when it came

into his possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments,

he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into

practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to existing

institutions. He will always be mentioned with honour as a founder of

a colony, who did not, in his dealings with a savage people, abuse the

strength derived from civilisation, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of

persecution, made religious liberty the cornerstone of a polity. But his

writings and his life furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man of

strong sense. He had no skill in reading the characters of others. His

confidence in persons less virtuous than himself led him into great

errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle sometimes

impelled him to violate other great principles which he ought to

have held sacred. Nor was his rectitude altogether proof against the

temptations to which it was exposed in that splendid and polite, but

deeply corrupted society, with which he now mingled. The whole court was

in a ferment with intrigues of gallantry and intrigues of ambition. The

traffic in honours, places, and pardons was incessant. It was natural

that a man who was daily seen at the palace, and who was known to have

free access to majesty, should be frequently importuned to use his

influence for purposes which a rigid morality must condemn. The

integrity of Penn had stood firm against obloquy and persecution.

But now, attacked by royal smiles, by female blandishments, by the

insinuating eloquence and delicate flattery of veteran diplomatists and

courtiers, his resolution began to give way. Titles and phrases against

which he had often borne his testimony dropped occasionally from his

lips and his pen. It would be well if he had been guilty of nothing

worse than such compliances with the fashions of the world. Unhappily

it cannot be concealed that he bore a chief part in some transactions

condemned, not merely by the rigid code of the society to which he

belonged, but by the general sense of all honest men. He afterwards

solemnly protested that his hands were pure from illicit gain, and

that he had never received any gratuity from those whom he had obliged,

though he might easily, while his influence at court lasted, have made a

hundred and twenty thousand pounds. [299] To this assertion full credit

is due. But bribes may be offered to vanity as well as to cupidity; and

it is impossible to deny that Penn was cajoled into bearing a part in

some unjustifiable transactions of which others enjoyed the profits.

The first use which he made of his credit was highly commendable. He

strongly represented the sufferings of his brethren to the new King,

who saw with pleasure that it was possible to grant indulgence to these

quiet sectaries and to the Roman Catholics, without showing similar

favour to other classes which were then under persecution. A list was

framed of prisoners against whom proceedings had been instituted for

not taking the oaths, or for not going to church, and of whose loyalty

certificates had been produced to the government. These persons were

discharged, and orders were given that no similar proceeding should be

instituted till the royal pleasure should be further signified. In this

way about fifteen hundred Quakers, and a still greater number of Roman

Catholics, regained their liberty. [300]

And now the time had arrived when the English Parliament was to meet.

The members of the House of Commons who had repaired to the capital were

so numerous that there was much doubt whether their chamber, as it was

then fitted up, would afford sufficient accommodation for them. They

employed the days which immediately preceded the opening of the session

in talking over public affairs with each other and with the agents

of the government. A great meeting of the loyal party was held at the

Fountain Tavern in the Strand; and Roger Lestrange, who had recently

been knighted by the King, and returned to Parliament by the city of

Winchester, took a leading part in their consultations. [301]

It soon appeared that a large portion of the Commons had views which did

not altogether agree with those of the Court. The Tory country gentlemen

were, with scarcely one exception, desirous to maintain the Test Act and

the Habeas Corpus Act; and some among them talked of voting the revenue

only for a term of years. But they were perfectly ready to enact severe

laws against the Whigs, and would gladly have seen all the supporters

of the Exclusion Bill made incapable of holding office. The King, on the

other hand, desired to obtain from the Parliament a revenue for life,

the admission of Roman Catholics to office, and the repeal of the Habeas

Corpus Act. On these three objects his heart was set; and he was by no

means disposed to accept as a substitute for them a penal law against

Exclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have been positively unpleasing

to him; for one class of Exclusionists stood high in his favour, that

class of which Sunderland was the representative, that class which had

joined the Whigs in the days of the plot, merely because the Whigs were

predominant, and which had changed with the change of fortune. James

justly regarded these renegades as the most serviceable tools that he

could employ. It was not from the stouthearted Cavaliers, who had

been true to him in his adversity, that he could expect abject and

unscrupulous obedience in his prosperity. The men who, impelled, not

by zeal for liberty or for religion, but merely by selfish cupidity and

selfish fear, had assisted to oppress him when he was weak, were the

very men who, impelled by the same cupidity and the same fear, would

assist him to oppress his people now that he was strong. [302] Though

vindictive, he was not indiscriminately vindictive. Not a single

instance can be mentioned in which he showed a generous compassion

to those who had opposed him honestly and on public grounds. But he

frequently spared and promoted those whom some vile motive had induced

to injure him. For that meanness which marked them out as fit implements

of tyranny was so precious in his estimation that he regarded it with

some indulgence even when it was exhibited at his own expense.

The King's wishes were communicated through several channels to the Tory

members of the Lower House. The majority was easily persuaded to forego

all thoughts of a penal law against the Exclusionists, and to consent

that His Majesty should have the revenue for life. But about the Test

Act and the Habeas Corpus Act the emissaries of the Court could obtain

no satisfactory assurances. [303]

On the nineteenth of May the session was opened. The benches of the

Commons presented a singular spectacle. That great party, which, in

the last three Parliaments, had been predominant, had now dwindled to a

pitiable minority, and was indeed little more than a fifteenth part of

the House. Of the five hundred and thirteen knights and burgesses only

a hundred and thirty-five had ever sate in that place before. It is

evident that a body of men so raw and inexperienced must have been, in

some important qualities, far below the average of our representative

assemblies. [304]

The management of the House was confided by James to two peers of the

kingdom of Scotland. One of them, Charles Middleton, Earl of Middleton,

after holding high office at Edinburgh, had, shortly before the death

of the late King, been sworn of the English Privy Council, and appointed

one of the Secretaries of State. With him was joined Richard Graham,

Viscount Preston, who had long held the post of Envoy at Versailles.

The first business of the Commons was to elect a Speaker. Who should

be the man, was a question which had been much debated in the cabinet.

Guildford had recommended Sir Thomas Meres, who, like himself, ranked

among the Trimmers. Jeffreys, who missed no opportunity of crossing the

Lord Keeper, had pressed the claims of Sir John Trevor. Trevor had been

bred half a pettifogger and half a gambler, had brought to political

life sentiments and principles worthy of both his callings, had become

a parasite of the Chief Justice, and could, on occasion, imitate, not

unsuccessfully, the vituperative style of his patron. The minion of

Jeffreys was, as might have been expected, preferred by James, was

proposed by Middleton, and was chosen without opposition. [305]

Thus far all went smoothly. But an adversary of no common prowess was

watching his time. This was Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy Castle,

member for the city of Exeter. Seymour's birth put him on a level with

the noblest subjects in Europe. He was the right heir male of the body

of that Duke of Somerset who had been brother-in-law of King Henry the

Eighth, and Protector of the realm of England. In the limitation of the

dukedom of Somerset, the elder Son of the Protector had been postponed

to the younger son. From the younger son the Dukes of Somerset were

descended. From the elder son was descended the family which dwelt at

Berry Pomeroy. Seymour's fortune was large, and his influence in the

West of England extensive. Nor was the importance derived from descent

and wealth the only importance which belonged to him. He was one of the

most skilful debaters and men of business in the kingdom. He had sate

many years in the House of Commons, had studied all its rules and

usages, and thoroughly understood its peculiar temper. He had been

elected speaker in the late reign under circumstances which made that

distinction peculiarly honourable. During several generations none

but lawyers had been called to the chair; and he was the first country

gentleman whose abilities and acquirements had enabled him to break that

long prescription. He had subsequently held high political office, and

had sate in the Cabinet. But his haughty and unaccommodating temper had

given so much disgust that he had been forced to retire. He was a Tory

and a Churchman: he had strenuously opposed the Exclusion Bill: he had

been persecuted by the Whigs in the day of their prosperity; and he

could therefore safely venture to hold language for which any person

suspected of republicanism would have been sent to the Tower. He had

long been at the head of a strong parliamentary connection, which

was called the Western Alliance, and which included many gentlemen of

Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Cornwall. [306]

In every House of Commons, a member who unites eloquence, knowledge, and

habits of business, to opulence and illustrious descent, must be highly

considered. But in a House of Commons from which many of the most

eminent orators and parliamentary tacticians of the age were excluded,

and which was crowded with people who had never heard a debate, the

influence of such a man was peculiarly formidable. Weight of moral

character was indeed wanting to Edward Seymour. He was licentious,

profane, corrupt, too proud to behave with common politeness, yet not

too proud to pocket illicit gain. But he was so useful an ally, and so

mischievous an enemy that he was frequently courted even by those who

most detested him. [307]

He was now in bad humour with the government. His interest had been

weakened in some places by the remodelling of the western boroughs: his

pride had been wounded by the elevation of Trevor to the chair; and he

took an early opportunity of revenging himself.

On the twenty-second of May the Commons were summoned to the bar of the

Lords; and the King, seated on his throne, made a speech to both Houses.

He declared himself resolved to maintain the established government

in Church and State. But he weakened the effect of this declaration

by addressing an extraordinary admonition to the Commons. He was

apprehensive, he said, that they might be inclined to dole out money to

him from time to time, in the hope that they should thus force him to

call them frequently together. But he must warn them that he was not to

be so dealt with, and that, if they wished him to meet them often they

must use him well. As it was evident that without money the government

could not be carried on, these expressions plainly implied that, if they

did not give him as much money as he wished, he would take it. Strange

to say, this harangue was received with loud cheers by the Tory

gentlemen at the bar. Such acclamations were then usual. It has now

been, during many years, the grave and decorous usage of Parliaments

to hear, in respectful silence, all expressions, acceptable or

unacceptable, which are uttered from the throne. [308]

It was then the custom that, after the King had concisely explained his

reasons for calling Parliament together, the minister who held the Great

Seal should, at more length, explain to the Houses the state of public

affairs. Guildford, in imitation of his predecessors, Clarendon,

Bridgeman, Shaftesbury, and Nottingham, had prepared an elaborate

oration, but found, to his great mortification, that his services were

not wanted. [309]

As soon as the Commons had returned to their own chamber, it was

proposed that they should resolve themselves into a Committee, for the

purpose of settling a revenue on the King.

Then Seymour stood up. How he stood, looking like what he was, the chief

of a dissolute and high spirited gentry, with the artificial ringlets

clustering in fashionable profusion round his shoulders, and a mingled

expression of voluptuousness and disdain in his eye and on his lip, the

likenesses of him which still remain enable us to imagine. It was not,

the haughty Cavalier said, his wish that the Parliament should withhold

from the crown the means of carrying on the government. But was there

indeed a Parliament? Were there not on the benches many men who had, as

all the world knew, no right to sit there, many men whose elections

were tainted by corruption, many men forced by intimidation on reluctant

voters, and many men returned by corporations which had no legal

existence? Had not constituent bodies been remodelled, in defiance

of royal charters and of immemorial prescription? Had not returning

officers been everywhere the unscrupulous agents of the Court? Seeing

that the very principle of representation had been thus systematically

attacked, he knew not how to call the throng of gentlemen which he saw

around him by the honourable name of a House of Commons. Yet never was

there a time when it more concerned the public weal that the character

of Parliament should stand high. Great dangers impended over the

ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the realm. It was matter of

vulgar notoriety, it was matter which required no proof, that the Test

Act, the rampart of religion, and the Habeas Corpus Act, the rampart

of liberty, were marked out for destruction. "Before we proceed to

legislate on questions so momentous, let us at least ascertain whether

we really are a legislature. Let our first proceeding be to enquire into

the manner in which the elections have been conducted. And let us look

to it that the enquiry be impartial. For, if the nation shall find that

no redress is to be obtained by peaceful methods, we may perhaps ere

long suffer the justice which we refuse to do." He concluded by

moving that, before any supply was granted, the House would take into

consideration petitions against returns, and that no member whose right

to sit was disputed should be allowed to vote.

Not a cheer was heard. Not a member ventured to second the motion.

Indeed, Seymour had said much that no other man could have said with

impunity. The proposition fell to the ground, and was not even entered

on the journals. But a mighty effect had been produced. Barillon

informed his master that many who had not dared to applaud that

remarkable speech had cordially approved of it, that it was the

universal subject of conversation throughout London, and that the

impression made on the public mind seemed likely to be durable. [310]

The Commons went into committee without delay, and voted to the King,

for life, the whole revenue enjoyed by his brother. [311]

The zealous churchmen who formed the majority of the House seem to have

been of opinion that the promptitude with which they had met the wish of

James, touching the revenue, entitled them to expect some concession

on his part. They said that much had been done to gratify him, and that

they must now do something to gratify the nation. The House, therefore,

resolved itself into a Grand Committee of Religion, in order to consider

the best means of providing for the security of the ecclesiastical

establishment. In that Committee two resolutions were unanimously

adopted. The first expressed fervent attachment to the Church of

England. The second called on the King to put in execution the penal

laws against all persons who were not members of that Church. [312]

The Whigs would doubtless have wished to see the Protestant dissenters

tolerated, and the Roman Catholics alone persecuted. But the Whigs were

a small and a disheartened minority. They therefore kept themselves as

much as possible out of sight, dropped their party name, abstained from

obtruding their peculiar opinions on a hostile audience, and steadily

supported every proposition tending to disturb the harmony which as yet

subsisted between the Parliament and the Court.

When the proceedings of the Committee of Religion were known at

Whitehall, the King's anger was great. Nor can we justly blame him for

resenting the conduct of the Tories If they were disposed to require

the rigorous execution of the penal code, they clearly ought to have

supported the Exclusion Bill. For to place a Papist on the throne, and

then to insist on his persecuting to the death the teachers of that

faith in which alone, on his principles, salvation could be found, was

monstrous. In mitigating by a lenient administration the severity of the

bloody laws of Elizabeth, the King violated no constitutional principle.

He only exerted a power which has always belonged to the crown. Nay, he

only did what was afterwards done by a succession of sovereigns zealous

for Protestantism, by William, by Anne, and by the princes of the House

of Brunswick. Had he suffered Roman Catholic priests, whose lives

he could save without infringing any law, to be hanged, drawn, and

quartered for discharging what he considered as their first duty, he

would have drawn on himself the hatred and contempt even of those to

whose prejudices he had made so shameful a concession, and, had he

contented himself with granting to the members of his own Church a

practical toleration by a large exercise of his unquestioned prerogative

of mercy, posterity would have unanimously applauded him.

The Commons probably felt on reflection that they had acted absurdly.

They were also disturbed by learning that the King, to whom they looked

up with superstitious reverence, was greatly provoked. They made haste,

therefore, to atone for their offence. In the House, they unanimously

reversed the decision which, in the Committee, they had unanimously

adopted and passed a resolution importing that they relied with entire

confidence on His Majesty's gracious promise to protect that religion

which was dearer to them than life itself. [313]

Three days later the King informed the House that his brother had left

some debts, and that the stores of the navy and ordnance were nearly

exhausted. It was promptly resolved that new taxes should be imposed.

The person on whom devolved the task of devising ways and means was Sir

Dudley North, younger brother of the Lord Keeper. Dudley North was one

of the ablest men of his time. He had early in life been sent to the

Levant, and had there been long engaged in mercantile pursuits. Most men

would, in such a situation, have allowed their faculties to rust. For

at Smyrna and Constantinople there were few books and few intelligent

companions. But the young factor had one of those vigorous

understandings which are independent of external aids. In his solitude

he meditated deeply on the philosophy of trade, and thought out by

degrees a complete and admirable theory, substantially the same with

that which, a century later, was expounded by Adam Smith. After an exile

of many years, Dudley North returned to England with a large fortune,

and commenced business as a Turkey merchant in the City of London.

His profound knowledge, both speculative and practical, of commercial

matters, and the perspicuity and liveliness with which he explained

his views, speedily introduced him to the notice of statesmen.

The government found in him at once an enlightened adviser and an

unscrupulous slave. For with his rare mental endowments were joined lax

principles and an unfeeling heart. When the Tory reaction was in full

progress, he had consented to be made Sheriff for the express purpose

of assisting the vengeance of the court. His juries had never failed

to find verdicts of Guilty; and, on a day of judicial butchery, carts,

loaded with the legs and arms of quartered Whigs, were, to the great

discomposure of his lady, driven to his fine house in Basinghall

Street for orders. His services had been rewarded with the honour of

knighthood, with an Alderman's gown, and with the office of Commissioner

of the Customs. He had been brought into Parliament for Banbury, and

though a new member, was the person on whom the Lord Treasurer chiefly

relied for the conduct of financial business in the Lower House. [314]

Though the Commons were unanimous in their resolution to grant a further

supply to the crown, they were by no means agreed as to the sources from

which that supply should be drawn. It was speedily determined that part

of the sum which was required should be raised by laying an additional

impost, for a term of eight years, on wine and vinegar: but something

more than this was needed. Several absurd schemes were suggested. Many

country gentlemen were disposed to put a heavy tax on all new buildings

in the capital. Such a tax, it was hoped, would check the growth of

a city which had long been regarded with jealousy and aversion by the

rural aristocracy. Dudley North's plan was that additional duties should

be imposed, for a term of eight years, on sugar and tobacco. A great

clamour was raised Colonial merchants, grocers, sugar bakers and

tobacconists, petitioned the House and besieged the public offices. The

people of Bristol, who were deeply interested in the trade with Virginia

and Jamaica, sent up a deputation which was heard at the bar of the

Commons. Rochester was for a moment staggered; but North's ready wit and

perfect knowledge of trade prevailed, both in the Treasury and in the

Parliament, against all opposition. The old members were amazed at

seeing a man who had not been a fortnight in the House, and whose life

had been chiefly passed in foreign countries, assume with confidence,

and discharge with ability, all the functions of a Chancellor of the

Exchequer. [315]

His plan was adopted; and thus the Crown was in possession of a clear

income of about nineteen hundred thousand pounds, derived from England

alone. Such an income was then more than sufficient for the support of

the government in time of peace. [316]

The Lords had, in the meantime, discussed several important questions.

The Tory party had always been strong among the peers. It included the

whole bench of Bishops, and had been reinforced during the four

years which had elapsed since the last dissolution, by several fresh

creations. Of the new nobles, the most conspicuous were the Lord

Treasurer Rochester, the Lord Keeper Guildford, the Lord Chief Justice

Jeffreys, the Lord Godolphin, and the Lord Churchill, who, after his

return from Versailles, had been made a Baron of England.

The peers early took into consideration the case of four members of

their body who had been impeached in the late reign, but had never been

brought to trial, and had, after a long confinement, been admitted to

bail by the Court of King's Bench. Three of the noblemen who were thus

under recognisances were Roman Catholics. The fourth was a Protestant

of great note and influence, the Earl of Danby. Since he had fallen from

power and had been accused of treason by the Commons, four Parliaments

had been dissolved; but he had been neither acquitted nor condemned.

In 1679 the Lords had considered, with reference to his situation,

the question whether an impeachment was or was not terminated by a

dissolution. They had resolved, after long debate and full examination

of precedents, that the impeachment was still pending. That resolution

they now rescinded. A few Whig nobles protested against this step, but

to little purpose. The Commons silently acquiesced in the decision of

the Upper House. Danby again took his seat among his peers, and became

an active and powerful member of the Tory party. [317]

The constitutional question on which the Lords thus, in the short space

of six years, pronounced two diametrically opposite decisions, slept

during more than a century, and was at length revived by the dissolution

which took place during the long trial of Warren Hastings. It was

then necessary to determine whether the rule laid down in 1679, or the

opposite rule laid down in 1685, was to be accounted the law of the

land. The point was long debated in both houses; and the best legal and

parliamentary abilities which an age preeminently fertile both in

legal and in parliamentary ability could supply were employed in the

discussion. The lawyers were not unequally divided. Thurlow, Kenyon,

Scott, and Erskine maintained that the dissolution had put an end to

the impeachment. The contrary doctrine was held by Mansfield, Camden,

Loughborough, and Grant. But among those statesmen who grounded their

arguments, not on precedents and technical analogies, but on deep and

broad constitutional principles, there was little difference of opinion.

Pitt and Grenville, as well as Burke and Fox, held that the impeachment

was still pending Both Houses by great majorities set aside the decision

of 1685, and pronounced the decision of 1679 to be in conformity with

the law of Parliament.

Of the national crimes which had been committed during the panic excited

by the fictions of Oates, the most signal had been the judicial murder

of Stafford. The sentence of that unhappy nobleman was now regarded

by all impartial persons as unjust. The principal witness for the

prosecution had been convicted of a series of foul perjuries. It was

the duty of the legislature, in such circumstances, to do justice to the

memory of a guiltless sufferer, and to efface an unmerited stain from a

name long illustrious in our annals. A bill for reversing the attainder

of Stafford was passed by the Upper House, in spite of the murmurs of a

few peers who were unwilling to admit that they had shed innocent blood.

The Commons read the bill twice without a division, and ordered it to

be committed. But, on the day appointed for the committee, arrived news

that a formidable rebellion had broken out in the West of England. It

was consequently necessary to postpone much important business. The

amends due to the memory of Stafford were deferred, as was supposed,

only for a short time. But the misgovernment of James in a few months

completely turned the tide of public feeling. During several generations

the Roman Catholics were in no condition to demand reparation for

injustice, and accounted themselves happy if they were permitted to live

unmolested in obscurity and silence. At length, in the reign of King

George the Fourth, more than a hundred and forty years after the day on

which the blood of Stafford was shed on Tower Hill, the tardy expiation

was accomplished. A law annulling the attainder and restoring the

injured family to its ancient dignities was presented to Parliament by

the ministers of the crown, was eagerly welcomed by public men of all

parties, and was passed without one dissentient voice. [318]

It is now necessary that I should trace the origin and progress of

that rebellion by which the deliberations of the Houses were suddenly

interrupted.