1689. The infamous judge Jefferies died in the Tower, whither he had
been committed by the lords of the council, after he had been taken in
the disguise of a common sailor for the purpose of leaving England. He
was born at Acton, near Wrexham, in Denbighshire, and being raised to
the bench, polluted its sanctity by perversions of the law. His habits
and language were vulgar and disgusting. John Evelyn says, “I went this
day to a wedding of one Mrs. Castle, to whom I had some obligation: and
it was to her fifth husband, a lieutenant-colonel of the city. She was
the daughter of one Bruton, a broom-man, by his wife, who sold
kitchen-stuff in Kent-street, whom God so blessed, that the father
became very rich, and was a very honest man; and this daughter was a
jolly, friendly woman. There were at the wedding the lord mayor, the
sheriff, several aldermen, and persons of quality; above all sir George
Jefferies, newly made lord chief justice of England, who, with Mr.
justice Withings, danced with the bride, and were exceeding merry! These
great men spent the rest of the afternoon, till eleven at night, in
drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath the gravity
of judges that had but a day or two before condemned Mr. Algernon
Sidney, who was executed the 7th of Dec. 1683, on Tower-hill, on the
single witness of that monster of a man, lord Howard of Escrick, and
some sheets of paper taken in Mr. Sidney’s study, pretended to be
written by him, but not fully proved.” James II. found Jefferies a fit
instrument for his arbitrary purposes. After the defeat of the duke of
Monmouth in the west, he employed the most sanguinary miscreants, and
Jefferies among the rest, to wreak his vengeance on the deluded people.
Bishop Burnet says, that Jefferies’s behaviour was brutally disgusting,
beyond any thing that was ever heard of in a civilized nation; “he was
perpetually either drunk or in a rage, liker a fury than the zeal of a
judge.” He required the prisoners to plead guilty, on pretence of
showing them favour; but he afterwards showed them no mercy, hanging
many immediately. He hanged in several places about six hundred persons.
The king had a daily account of Jefferies’ proceedings, which he took
pleasure to relate in the drawing-room to foreign ministers, and at his
table he called it Jefferies’s campaign. Upon Jefferies’ return, he
created him a peer of England, by the title of earl of Flint. During
these “_bloody assizes_,” the lady Lisle, a noble woman of exemplary
character, whose husband had been murdered by the Stuart party, was
tried for entertaining two gentlemen of the duke of Monmouth’s army; and
though the jury twice brought her in not guilty, Jefferies sent them out
again and again, until, upon his threatening to attaint them of treason,
they pronounced her guilty. Jefferies, before he tried this lady, got
the king to promise that he would not pardon her, and the only favour
she obtained was the change of her sentence from burning to beheading.
Mrs. Gaunt, a widow, near Wapping, who was a Baptist, and spent her time
in acts of charity, was tried on a charge of having hid one Burton, who,
hearing that the king had said that he would sooner pardon rebels than
those who harboured them, accused his benefactress of having saved his
life. She was burned at the stake. The excellent William Penn, the
Quaker, saw her die, and related the manner of her death to Burnet. She
laid the straw about her for her burning speedily, and behaved herself
so heroically, that all melted into tears. Six men were hanged at
Tyburn, on the like charge, without trial. At length, the bloody and
barbarous executions were so numerous, that they spread horror
throughout the nation. England was an _acaldema_: the country, for sixty
miles together, from Bristol to Exeter, had a new and terrible sort of
sign-posts or gibbets, bearing the heads and limbs of its butchered
inhabitants. Every soul was sunk in anguish and terror, sighing by day
and by night for deliverance, but shut out of all hope, till the arrival
of the prince of Orange, on whom the two houses of parliament bestowed
the crown. Jefferies had attained under James II. to the high office of
lord chancellor.
1794. Died Charles Pratt, earl Camden, born in 1713. As chief justice of
the common pleas, he was distinguished for having discharged the
celebrated John Wilkes from the tower. By that decision, general
warrants were pronounced illegal; and for so great a service to his
country, lord Camden received the approbation of his fellow citizens;
they conferred on him the freedom of their cities, and placed his
picture in their corporation-halls. He was equally distinguished for
opposing the opinion of prerogative lawyers in matters of libel. At his
death he was lord president of the council. Firm of purpose, and mild in
manners, he was a wise and amiable man. It is pleasantly related of him,
that while chief justice, being upon a visit to lord Dacre, at Alveley,
in Essex, he walked out with a gentleman, a very absent man, to a hill,
at no great distance from the house, upon the top of which stood the
stocks of the village. The chief justice sat down upon them; and after a
while, having a mind to know what the punishment was, he asked his
companion to open them and put him in. This being done, his friend took
a book from his pocket, sauntered on, and so completely forgot the judge
and his situation, that he returned to lord Dacre’s. In the mean time,
the chief justice being tired of the stocks, tried in vain to release
himself. Seeing a countryman pass by, he endeavoured to move him to let
him out, but obtained nothing by his motion. “No, no, old gentleman,”
said the countryman, “you was not set there for nothing;” and left him,
until he was released by a servant of the house despatched in quest of
him. Some time after he presided at a trial in which a charge was
brought against a magistrate for false imprisonment, and for setting in
the stocks. The counsel for the magistrate, in his reply, made light of
the whole charge, and more especially setting in the stocks, which he
said every body knew was no punishment at all. The chief justice rose,
and leaning over the bench, said, in a half-whisper, “Brother, have you
ever been in the stocks?” “Really, my lord, never.”--“Then I have,” said
the judge, “and I assure you, brother, it is no such trifle as you
represent.”
1802. Dr. Erasmus Darwin died. He was born at Newark in Nottinghamshire,
in 1732, and attained to eminence as a physician and a botanist. His
decease was sudden. Riding in his carriage, he found himself mortally
seized, pulled the check-string, and desired his servant to help him to
a cottage by the road-side. On entering, they found a woman within, whom
the doctor addressed thus, “Did you ever see a man die?”--“No,
sir.”--“Then now you may.” The terrified woman ran out at the door, and
in a few minutes Darwin was no more. He strenuously opposed the use of
ardent spirits, from conviction that they induced dreadful maladies,
especially gout, dropsy, and insanity; hence his patients were never
freed from his importunities, and the few who had courage to persevere
benefited by his advice.