# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 3/Chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII.
REIGN OF JAMES II.
To the reign of merry cruelty now succeeded the reign of gloomy, ascetic, undisgvised ferocity. Charles could laugh ​and sport with his ladies whilst his subjects were ground and tortured; James, who never laughed, pursued the diabolic bent with a settled, butcher-like mood, and would have extirpated nations, were it in his power, to restore a bigot creed, and establish the political absolutism adored by the Stuarts. Yet he began the reign of the inquisition with the hypocrisy of the Jesuit. When the breath had left the body of Charles, James retired for a quarter of an hour to his chamber, and then met the privy council with a speech which promised everything that he was most resolved not to perform. He began by eulogising the deceased as "a good and gracious king." If he really thought his late merry, debauched, and despotic brother good and gracious, it was an evil omen for the nation whose ruler had such conceptions of what was good and gracious. He then added, "I have been reported to be a man fond of arbitrary power; but that is not the only falsehood which has been reported of me; and I shall make it my endeavour to preserve this government, both in church and state, as it is by law now established. I know the principles of the church of England are favourable to monarchy, and the members of it have shown themselves good and loyal subjects; therefore I shall take care to defend and support it. I know, too, that the laws of England are sufficient to make the king as great a monarch as I can wish; and as I shall never depart from the just rights and prerogatives of the crown, so I shall never invade any man's property. I have often before ventured my life in defence of this nation, and shall go as far as any man in preserving it in all its just rights and liberties."
This was, indeed, a gracious-sounding speech; but then Charles had sent as gracious a declaration from Broda, and all the world knew how it had been kept. No man had been more steady in advising him to crush the liberties of the nation, and rob and imprison the people on account of their religion, than this same fair-spoken James. It was only too well known what he had done to the covenanters in Scotland, and with what satisfaction he had gloated over the smashing of legs and thumbs in the iron boots and thumbscrews. Wondrous, therefore, must have been the credulity of those who could really believe that the royal tiger which had already tasted so much blood, was going to grow all at once mild and lamb-like when feeding on the stimulating aliment of royal power. Yet the council received these bland promises with raptures of delight, and the king was humbly entreated to have his speech published. He replied that it had sprung from the impromptu expression of his heart; he had not waited to commit anything to paper. Heneage Finch, the solicitor-general, however, declared that it had made such a profound impression on his heart, that he could remember every word of it, and, with the royal permission, would write it down. This was graciously accorded, and the written speech, receiving the full approbation of the king, was immediately published.
Casks of wine were simultaneously rolled into the streets, and the people were expected to be clamorous with joy over the halcyon prospects of the new reign, but the occasional shouts which were called forth were deemed by the spectators to be rather faint, and to owe more to the enjoyment of the wine than to the exhilaration of the promises. On the following Sunday, however, the pulpits of the establishment resounded with exulting eulogies on the new monarch, on the injustice which had been shown to such a man by unworthy suspicions of him, by attempts to exclude him from the throne, and by calumnies on the severity of his temper. The triumphant preachers now declared that the church and the nation had the most ample promises of security and favour "on the word of a king who never broke his word." A very little time taught these jubilant preachers a different note.
The first thing which scandalised the nation was the miserable economy of the late king's funeral. It was declared scarcely befitting a private gentleman, and the Scottish covenanters declared that the dead tyrant had been treated as the Scriptures declared tyrants should be, to "the burial of an ass." The first thing which James set about was the rearrangement of the cabinet. There was but one man in the cabinet of the late king who had his entire confidence—that was Rochester, the second son of the late lord Clarendon. To him he gave the office of lord high treasurer, thus constituting him prime minister; to Godolphin, who had held this office, he gave that of chamberlain to the queen; Halifax was deprived of the privy seal, and was made president of the council, a post both less lucrative and less influential, a circumstance which highly delighted Rochester, who now saw the wit who said he had been kicked upstairs, served precisely the same; Sunderland, the late secretary of state, was suffered to retain his office. He had both intrigued and acted against James; both he and Godolphin had supported the exclusion bill, but Sunderland now, with his usual supple artifice, represented that he could have no hope of the king's favour but from the merit of his future services, and as he possessed some dangerous secrets, he was permitted to retain his place. He did not, however, content himself with this, but cherished the ambition of superseding Rochester as lord treasurer, and therefore represented himself to the catholics as their stanch friend, whilst they knew that Rochester was the champion of the church of England. For the present, nevertheless, from having been at high feud with both Rochester and Clarendon, he cultivated a strong friendship with them to make his position from with the king. Halifax had opposed the exclusion bill, but he had become too well known to be a decided enemy of popery and of the French ascendancy. James, therefore, only tolerated him for the present; and whilst he assured him that all the past was forgotten, except the service he had rendered by his opposition to the exclusion bill, he told Barillon, the French ambassador, that he knew him too well to trust him, and only gave him the post of president to the council, to show how little influence he had.
The great seal was retained also by lord Guildford, who, though he was by no means a friend of liberty, was too much a stickler for the law to be a useful tool of arbitrary power. James secretly hated him, and determined to associate a more unscrupulous man with him in the functions of his office. This was his most obedient and most unflinching creature, the lord chief justice Jeffreys, of whose unexampled villainies we shall soon hear too much. Guildford was by the overbearing Jeffreys at once thrust back into the mere routine of a judge in equity, and all his state functions and ​patronage were usurped by this daring man. At the council board Jeffreys treated him with the most marked contempt, and even insult, and poor Guilford soon saw all influence and profit of the chancellorship, as well as the chief justiceship, in the hands of Jeffreys, and himself reduced to a cipher.
But the most ungenerous proceeding was that of depriving the old and faithful lord Ormond of the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland. Ormond had not only stood firmly by Charles I., but had suffered unrepiningly the evil fortunes of Charles II. He had shared his exile, and had done all in his power for his restoration. He had opposed all the endeavours by the popish plot and the exclusion bill to get rid of James, and was highly respected in his office in Ireland. He had lately lost his eldest son, lord Ossory, and, though aged, was still vigorous and zealous in discharge of his duties. But he had the unpardonable faults of being a firm protestant and as firm advocate for the constitutional restrictions of the crown. James recalled him from his lord-lieutenancy on the plea that he was wanted at court in his other office of lord steward of the household. But the ancient chief felt the ungrateful act, and at a farewell dinner at Dublin to the officers of the garrison, and in toasting the health of the king, filled a cup of wine to the brim, and holding it aloft without spilling a drop, declared that whatever the courtiers might say, neither hand, heart, nor reason yet failed him,—that he knew no approach of dotage.
Having made these changes in the ministry, James lost no time in letting his subjects see that he meant to enjoy his religion without the restraints to which he had been accustomed. He had been used to attend mass with the queen in her oratory, with the doors carefully closed; but the second Sunday after his accession he ordered the chapel doors to be thrown wide open, and went thither in procession. The duke of Somerset, who bore the sword of state, stopped at the threshold. James bade him advance, saying, "Your father would have gone further." But Somerset replied, "Your majesty's father would not have gone so far."
At the moment of the elevation of the host, the courtiers were thrown into a strange agitation. The catholics fell on their knees, and the protestants hurried away. On Easter Sunday mass was attended with still greater ceremony, Somerset stopped at the door, according to custom, but the dukes of Norfolk, Northumberland, Grafton, Richmond, and many other noblemen accompanied the king as far as the gallery. Godolphin and Sunderland also complied, but Rochester absolutely refused to attend. Not satisfied with proclaiming his catholicism, James produced two papers, which he said he had found in the strong box of the late king, wherein Charles was made to avow his persuasion that there could be no true church but the Roman, and that all who dissented from that church, whether communities or individuals, became heretic. James declared the arguments to be perfectly unanswerable, and challenged Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, to attempt it. This was not very consistent with his speech as it regarded the church of England, and his next step was as little so as regarded his assurances in it that he would not invade any man's property. Funds for carrying on the government were necessary, and James declared that as the customs and part of the excise had only been granted to Charles for his life, they had now lapsed. and that it would produce great inconvenience to wait for the meeting of parliament for their re-enactment. Nothing prevented him calling parliament at once, but James undoubtedly had a fancy for trying his father's favourite measure of levying taxes without parliament. It was contended that as no law for customs or excise now existed, all goods fresh imported would come in duty free, and ruin all the merchants who had to sell goods which had paid the duty. North, lord Guildford, recommended that the duties should be levied as usual, but the proceeds kept in the exchequer till parliament met and authorised their appropriation; but Jeffreys was a counsellor much more after the king's heart. He recommended that an edict should at once be issued, ordering the duties to be paid as usual to his majesty, and this advice was carried, every one being afraid of being declared disloyal, or a trimmer, who voted against it. The proclamation was issued, but to render it more palatable, it announced that a parliament would be very soon called, and was many addresses as possible from public bodies, sanctioning the measure, were procured. The barristers and students of the Middle Temple, in their address, thanked the king for preserving the customs, and both they and both the universities expressed the most boundless obedience to the king's sovereign and unlimited power. But the public at large looked on with silent foreboding. "The compliments of these bodies," says Dalrymple, "only serving to remind the nation that the laws had been broken."
Before venturing to assemble parliament, James endeavoured to render Louis of France acquiescent in this measure. He knew from the history of the late reign how averse Louis was to English parliaments, which were hostile to his designs against the continental nations. He therefore had a private interview with Barillon, in which he apologised most humbly for the necessity of calling a parliament. He begged him to assure his master of his grateful attachment, and that he was determined to do nothing without his consent. If the parliament attempted to meddle in any foreign affairs, he would send them about their business. Again he begged him to explain this, and that he desired to consult his brother of France in everything, but then he must have some money by some means. This hint of money was followed up the next day by Rochester, and Barillon hastened to convey the royal wishes. But Louis had lost no time in applying the effectual remedy for a parliament, the moment the assembling of one became menaced. He sent over five hundred thousand crowns, which Barillon carried in triumph to Whitehall, and James wept over the accursed bribe tears of joy and gratitude. But he and his ministers soon hinted that the money, though most acceptable, would not render him independent of parliament, and Barillon pressed his sovereign to send more with an urgency which rather offended Louis, and rendered it probable that the ambassador had a pretty good per centage out of what he obtained. James sent over to Versailles captain Churchill, already become lord Churchill, and in time to become known to us and all the world as the duke of Marlborough. He was to express James's gratitude and his assurances of keeping in view the interests of France, ​and so well did the proceedings of Churchill on that side of the channel, and of Barillon on this, succeed, that successive remittances, amounting to two millions of livres, were sent over. But of this, besides four hundred and seventy thousand livres, the arrears of the late king's pension, and about thirty thousand pounds for the corruption of the house of commons, Louis strictly forbade Barillon paying over more at present to James without his orders. In fact, he was no more assured of the good faith of James than he had been of that of Charles; and he had ample reason for his distrust, for at the very same time James was negotiating a fresh treaty with his son-in-law, the prince of Orange.
It is impossible to comprehend the full turpitude of this conduct of James without keeping steadily in view the aims of both James and Louis. James's, like that of all the Stuarts, was simply to destroy the British constitution and to reign absolute. To do this they must have the money of France to render them independent of parliaments, and a prospect of French troops should the English at length rebel against these attempts at their enslavement. The object of Louis was to keep England from affording any aid to any power on the continent, whilst he was endeavouring to overrun them with his armies, and anticipate the later endeavours of Napoleon to make Europe and France synonymous. To such a height had Louis carried his endeavours, that he had nearly absorbed Flanders, and kept Spain, Holland, Germany, and even Italy in perpetual alarm. Whether at peace or at war, this lawless monarch was in a constant position of aggression. He was constantly encroaching and disregarding treaties. For this reason catholic princes, Austrians, Spaniards, and Italians, the pope himself, looked anxiously to England for aid. The ancient religious antipathies were forgotten in the more imminent danger. Holland, besides the sympathies of protestantism, was allied closely by marriage with England, yet Holland was also sacrificed for the accursed gold of Louis; and England, which under the Tudors and under the commonwealth could hold the balance of Europe, under this detestable national treason of the Stuarts, was sunk to a condition of the utmost contempt amongst the nations. James, like his brother Charles, played on the fears and jealousies of Louis to extract all that he could; and when Barillon was obliged to refuse further supplies, he assumed a haughty air, and received Marshal de Lorge as Louis had received Churchill, seated and covered. When de Lorge reported this, Louis laughed and said, "The king, my good ally, is proud, but he loves my pistoles even more than his late brother did."
Great Seal of James II.
JAMES RECEIVING THE FRENCH BIBLE.
​offered his oblation on the heretical altar, and was anointed by heretical hands.
On the day of the coronation in England, being St. George's day, the parliament in Scotland met. He called on the Scots to set a good example to the approaching parliament of England in a liberal provision for the crown; and the Scottish estates, as if complimented by this appeal, not only responded to it by annexing the excise to the crown for ever, and offering him besides two hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year for his own life, but declared their abhorrence of "all principles derogatory to the king's sacred, supreme, sovereign, and absolute power and authority." They did more, they passed an act making it death for any one to preach in a conventicle, whether under a roof or in the open air. In England the elections were going on most favourably, and therefore James seized on the opportunity, whilst all appeared smiling and secure, to indulge his appetite for a little vengeance. On the 7th of May, Titus Oates, the enemy of James and of popery, the arch-instrument of the whig agitators, was brought up to the bar of the King's Bench, before the terrible Jeffreys. Death had prevented, in a great measure, the satisfaction of James and the catholics who had been so mercilessly pursued by the wretches who had sworn so freely to popish plots, and caused such torrents of innocent blood to be shed. Dugdalo, Badloe, Carstairs, and others had escaped into the grave; Dugdale, perpetually pursued, in his imagination, by the ghost of lord Stafford and Carstairs, declaring himself unfit to receive better burial than a dog. But two of the chief miscreants, Oates and Dangerfield, remained. Oates was already condemned to pay a fine of one hundred thousand pounds, or remain in prison till paid; but this actual doom of perpetual imprisonment did not satisfy James. When he was now brought up, the court was crowded with people, a large proportion of them being catholics, glad to see the punishment of their ruthless enemy. But if they expected to see him depressed or humbled, in that they were disappointed. He came up bold and impudent as ever. Jeffreys let fly his fiercest Billingsgate at him, but Oates returned him word for word unabashed. On his last trial he had sworn he had attended at a Jesuits' consult on the 24th of April, 1678, in London, but it was now proved beyond doubt, that on that very day Oates was at St. Omer. He had sworn also to being present at the commission of treasonable acts by Ireland, the Jesuit, in London, on the 8th and 12th of August, and on the 2nd of September of the same year. It was now also clearly proved that Ireland left London that year on the 2nd of August, and did not return till the 14th of September. Oates was convicted on both indictments, and was sentenced to pay a thousand marks on each indictment; to be stripped of his clerical habit; to be pilloried in Palace Yard and led round Westminster Hall, with an inscription over his head describing his crime. He was again to be pilloried in front of the Royal Exchange, and after that to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and after two days' interval whipped again from Newgate to Tyburn. If he survived this, which was not expected, he was to be confined for life, and five times every year he was to stand again in the pillory as long as he lived.
If the crimes of this wretch were monstrous, his punishment was equally so. He had the assurance on his trial to call many persons of distinction, including members of parliament, to give evidence in his favour, but he was answered only by bitter reproaches, for having led them into the spilling of much innocent blood. The lash was applied the first day so unmercifully, that thought he endured it for some time, it compelled him to utter the most horrible yells. Several times he fainted, but the flagellation never ceased, and when the flogging ceased, it was doubted whether he were alive. The most earnest entreaties were made to both the king and queen to have the second flogging omitted, but they were both inexorable. Yet the guilty wretch survived through all, though he was said to receive seventeen hundred stripes the second day on his already lacerated body; and so long as James continued on the throne, he was subjected to the pillory his five times a year, and lived to be pardoned at the revolution, and receive a pension of five pounds a week in lieu of that granted him by Charles II.
Dangerfield, who had not only succeeded in destroying so many innocent victims, but who had displayed a villainy and ingratitude of the blackest dye, was also convicted, and was sentenced to pay five hundred pounds, and to be pilloried twice and whipped twice over the same ground as Oates. He was extremely insolent on his trial, but on hearing his sentence he was struck with horror, flew into the wildest exclamations, declared himself a dead man, and chose a text for his funeral sermon. Singularly enough, his end was really at hand. On returning from his whipping, a gentleman named Robert Francis, of Gray's Inn, stepped up to the coach and asked him how his back was. Dangerfield replied by a curse, and Francis thrusting at him with his cane, wounded him in the eye; the wound was declared to occasion his death, though the unmerciful flogging was probably the real cause, and Francis was tried for the murder and hanged.
The meeting of parliament on the 19th of May drew the public attention from these barbarities. Every means had been exerted to influence the elections. In the counties the reaction of toryism, and the effects of the Rye House plot in defeating and intimidating the whigs, gave the court every advantage. In the corporations the deprivation of their ancient charter's made them the slaves of government. But even with those advantages James was not satisfied. Wherever there appeared likely to be any independent spirit shown, agents were sent down to overawe the people, and to force a choice of the government candidate. Even Jeffreys, the blustering lord chief justice, was despatched into Buckinghamshire, to intimidate the countrymen of Hampden, but they showed their ancient spirit and threw out the government man. To other places copies of the exclusion bill and black boxes resembling those said to contain the evidence of the marriage of Charles II. and Lucy "Walters, were sent and burnt before the people. Everywhere the lords-lieutenants of counties and the returning officers were vehement in support of government, and in consequence, when parliament assembled, the great whig opposition which had predominated in the last three parliaments, now presented a mere remnant. A host of new men showed themselves on the benches, only a hundred and fifty out of the ​full number, six hundred and thirty-five members, having site before. The management of these raw representatives was intrusted by James to two thorough government creatures—the lord Middleton, who had cut so dismal a figure in the Scottish prosecutions with Lauderdale, and Graham, lord Preston, who had long been the ambassador at Paris, and well drilled into the practice of corruption through the secret bribery of Louis. In the first business, the election of a speaker, the court appeared divided against itself. The lord chancellor Guildford recommended Sir Thomas Mears, a trimmer, like himself, but Jeffreys, who never omitted an opportunity of mortifying Guildford, proposed Sir John Trevor, a pettifogging tool of his own, and he was chosen.
On the 22nd of May James went to the house of lords in great state to open parliament. He took his scat on the throne with the crown on his head, and his queen, and Anne, his daughter, princess of Denmark, standing on the right hand of the throne. The Spanish and other catholic ambassadors were present, and heard the pope, the mass, the worship of the Virgin Mary, and the saints all renounced, as the lords took their oaths. James then produced a written speech and read it. He repeated in it what he had before declared to the council, that he would maintain the constitution and the church as by law established, and added that, "Having given this assurance concerning their religion and property, they might rely on his word." Although it had been the custom to listen to the royal speech in respectful silence, at this declaration the members of both houses broke into loud acclamations, he then informed them that he expected a revenue for life, such as they had voted his late brother. Again the expression of accord was loud and satisfactory, but what followed was not so palatable. '"The inclination men have for frequent parliaments, some may think, would be the best secured by feeding me from time to time by such proportions as they shall think convenient, and this argument, it being the first time I speak to you from the throne, I will answer once for all, that this would be a very improper method to take with me; and that the best way to engage me to meet you often is always to use me well. I expect, therefore, that you will comply with me in what I have desired, and that you will do it speedily." This agreeable assurance he followed up by announcing a rebellion to have broken out in Scotland under Argyll and other refugees from Holland.
When the commons returned to their own house, lord Preston entered into a high eulogium of the king, telling the house that his name spread terror over all Europe, and that the reputation of England was already beginning to rise under his rule; they had only to have full confidence in him as a prince who had never broken his word, and thus enable him to assert the dignity of England. The house wont into a committee of supply, and voted his majesty the same revenue that Charles had enjoyed, namely, one million two hundred thousand pounds a year for life. But when several petitions against some of the late elections were presented, a serious opposition presented itself in a most unexpected quarter. This was from Sir Edward Seymour, of Berry Pomeroy Castle, the member for Exeter. Seymour was both a tory and a high churchman, proud of his descent from the lord protector Seymour, and who had great influence in the western communities. He was a man of an indifferent moral character, but able and accomplished, and a forcible debater. He was now irritated by the government proceedings in the elections which had interfered with his interests, and he made a fierce attack on the late government pressure on the elections; denounced the removal of the charters, the conduct of the returning officers; declared that there was a design to repeal the test and habeas corpus acts, and moved that no one should vote whose right to sit was disputed, till that right had been ascertained by a searching inquiry. There was no seconder to the motion, and it fell to, the ground; for the whole house, including the whigs, sate, as it were, thunderstruck. But the effect was deep and lasting, and in time did not fail of its end.
For the present, however, things went smoothly enough, and the king informed the house, through Sir Dudley North, the brother of the lord-keeper Guildford, and the same who had been elected sheriff of London by the influence of the late king for his ready and ingenious modes of serving the royal will, that his late brother had left considerable debts, and that the naval and ordnance stores were getting low. The house promptly agreed to lay on new taxes, and North induced them to tax sugar and tobacco, so that the king now had a revenue of one million nine hundred thousand pounds from England, besides his pension from France, and was strong in revenue.
The lords were employed in doing an act of justice, in calling before them the lord Danby, and rescinding the impeachment still hanging over his head, and also summoning to their bar the lords Powis, Arundel, and Bellasis, the victims of the alleged popish plot, and fully discharging them as well as the earl of Tyrone. They also passed a bill reversing the attainder of lord Stafford, who had been executed for treason and concern in the popish plot, now admitting that he had been unjustly sacrificed, through the perjury of Oates. The commons were proceeding to the third reading of this bill, when the rebellion of Monmouth was announced, and the question remained unsettled till the trial of Warren Hastings, more than a century afterwards, when men of all parties declared the Oates' popish plot a pure fiction, and the attainder of Staflbrd was then formally reversed.
The political refugees who had fled to Holland and sought protection from prince William, were numerous, and some of them of considerable distinction. Monmouth and the earl of Argyll were severally looked up to as the heads of the English and Scottish exiles. The famous persecution against the covenanters in Scotland and the whigs in England, had not only swelled these bands of refugees, but rendered them at once ardent for revenge and restoration. Amongst them Ford, lord Grey of Wavk, Fergmon, who had been conspicuous amongst the whig plotters, Wildman and Danvers, of the same party, Ayloffe and Wade, whig lawyers and plotters, Goodenough, formerly sheriff of London, and whom we have seen giving evidence against the papists, Rumbold, the Eye House maltster, and others, were incessantly endeavouring to excite Monmouth to avail himself of his popularity, and the hatred of popery which ​existed, against his uncle, and strike for the crown. Monmouth, however, for some time betrayed no desire for so hazardous an undertaking. On the death of Charles he had returned from the Hague to avoid giving cause of jealousy to James, and led the life of an English gentleman at Brussels. William of Orange strongly advised him to take a command in the war of Austria against the Turks, where he might win honour and a rank worthy of his birth; but Monmouth would not listen to it. He had left his wife, the great heiress of Buccleuch, to whom he had been married almost as a boy from royal policy, and had attached himself to lady Henrietta Wentworth, baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede. The attachment, though illicit, appeared to be mutual and ardent. Monmouth confessed that lady Henrietta, who was beautiful, amiable, and accomplished, had weaned him from a vicious life, and had their connection been lawful, nothing could have been more fortunate for Monmouth. In her society he seemed to have grown indifferent to ambition and the life of courts. But he was beset by both Grey and Ferguson, and, unfortunately for him, they won over lady Wentworth to their views. She encouraged Monmouth, and offered him her income and her jewels to furnish him with immediate funds. With such an advocate. Grey and Ford at length succeeded. Grey was a man of blemished character. He had seduced and run off with his wife's sister, a daughter of the earl of Berkeley, and was a poor and desperate adventurer, notoriously cowardly on the field of battle. Ferguson was a fiery demagogue and zealot of insurrection. He had been a preacher and school-master amongst the dissenters, then a clergyman of the church, and finally had become a most untiring intriguer, and was deep in the Rye House plot. Under all this fire of rebellion, however, there was more than a suspected fold smoke of espionage. He was shrewdly believed, though not by his dupes, to be in the pay of government, and employed to betray and urge on its enemies to ruin.
Monmouth having consented to take the lead in an invasion, though with much reluctance and many misgivings, a communication was opened with Argyll and the Scottish malcontents. We have seen that Argyll, after his father bad been inveigled from his mountains and beheaded, had himself nearly suffered the same fate from James when in Scotland. He had been imprisoned and condemned to death on the most arbitrary grounds, and had only managed to escape in disguise. He had purchased an estate at Leeuwarden, in Friesland, where the great MacCullum More, as he was called by the Highlanders, lived in great seclusion. He was now drawn from it once more to revisit his native country at the head of an invading force. But the views of the refugees were so different, and their means so small, that it was some time before they could agree upon a common plan of action. It was at length arranged that a descent should be made simultaneously on Scotland and England—the Scotch expedition headed by Argyll, that on England by Monmouth. Bat to maintain a correspondence and a sort of unison, two Englishmen, Ayloffe and Rumbold the maltster, were to accompany the Scots, and two Scotchmen, Fletcher of Saltoun and Ferguson, the English force. Monmouth was sworn not to claim any rank or reward on the success of the enterprise, except such as should be awarded him by a free parliament; and Argyll was compelled, although he had the nominal command of the army, to submit to hold it only as one of a committee of twelve, of whom Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth was to be president.
In fact, Argyll at the outset displayed a fetal want of knowledge of human nature or firmness of resolution, in consenting to accept a command on so impossible a basis. To expect success as a military leader when hampered with the conflicting views of a dozen men of ultra views in religion and politics, and of strong and domineering wills, was the height of folly. Hume, who took the lead in the committee, was a man of enormous conceit, a great talker, and a very dilatory actor. Next to him was Sir John Cochrane, the second son of lord Dundonald, who was almost equally self-willed and jealous of the power of Argyll. With their republican notions, they endeavoured to impose such restrictions on the power of the earl, as were certain to insure the ruin of the attempt, in which everything must depend on the independent action of a single mind.
We have already noticed the character of Ferguson, one of the twain selected to accompany Monmouth. Fletcher of Saltoun, the other, was a far different man—a man of high talent, fine taste, and finished education. At the head of a popular senate he would have shone as an orator and statesman; but he had those qualities of lofty pride and headstrong will which made him by no means a desirable officer in an army of adventurers, although his military skill was undoubted. 'What was worse, from the very first he foreboded no good result from the expedition, and only accompanied it because he would not seem to desert his more sanguine countrymen; but when Wildman and Danvers sent from London very flaming accounts of the ripeness of England for revolt, and said that just two hundred years before the earl of Richmond landed in England with a mere handful of men, and wrested the crown from Richard, Fletcher coolly replied that there was all the difference betwixt the fifteenth century and the seventeenth.
These men, Wildman and Danvers, represented the country as so prepared to receive Monmouth, that he had only to show his standard for whole counties to flock to it. They promised also six thousand pounds in aid of the preparations. But the fact was, that little or no money came, and James and his ministers were duly informed of the measures of the insurgents, and were at once using every means with the Dutch government to prevent the sailing of the armaments, and taking measures for the defence of the Scotch and English coasts. We may first follow the fortunes of Argyll and his associates, who sailed first. He put out from the coast of Holland on the 2nd of May, and after a prosperous voyage, sighted Kirkwall, in Orkney, on the 6th. There he very unwisely anchored, and suffered his two followers to go on shore to collect intelligence. The object of his armament then became known, and was sure to reach the English government in a little time. The bishop of Orkney boldly ordered the two insurgents to be secured, and refused to give them up. After three days lost in endeavouring to obtain their release, they seized some gentlemen living on the coast, and offered them in exchange. The bishop paid no regard to their ​proposal or their menaces, and they were compelled to pursue their voyage.
The consequence of this ill-advised measure was, that news of the armament was sent to Edinburgh with all speed, and whilst the invading force was beating round the northern capes and headlands, active preparations were made for defence. The whole of the militia, amounting to twenty thousand men, were called out, a third of these, accompanied by three thousand regulars, were marched into the western counties. At Dunstaffnage, Argyll sent his son Charles ashore to summon the Campbells to arms, but he returned with the report that many of the chiefs had fled or were in prison, and the rest afraid to move. At Campbell town, in Kintire, Argyll published a proclamation, setting forth that he came to suppress popery, prelacy, and Erastianism, and to take the crown from James, whom he accused of persecution of the covenanters, and the poisoning of his brother. He sent across the hills the fiery cross to summon all true men to his standard, and appointed Tarbet as the place of rendezvous. About eighteen hundred men mustered at the call, but any advantage to be derived from this handful of men, was far more than counterbalanced by the pertinacious interference of Cochrane and Hume. They insisted on arranging everything, even the appointment of the officers over Argyll's own clan. They insisted also that the attack should be directed against the Lowlands, though Argyll wisely saw that they had no chance whatever in the open country with their present force. He contended that having first cleared the western Highlands of the national soldiery, they should soon have five or six thousand Highlanders at their command, and might then descend on the Lowlands with effect. Rumbold advocated this prudential course, but all reasoning was lost on Hume and Cochrane, who insolently accused Argyll of wanting only to secure his own territories, and sailed away with part of the troops to the Lowlands. They found the coast, however, well guarded by the English ships, and escaped up the Clyde to Greenock. There they again quarrelled between themselves, and finding the people not at all disposed to join them, they returned to Argyll. But they had learned no wisdom: the earl again proposed to endeavour to secure Inverary—they as firmly opposed it. They therefore fixed on the castle of Ealau Ghierig as their present headquarters, landed their arms and stores, and made an officer named Elphinstone commander of the fort. Argyll and Rumbold now drove back the troops of Athol and prepared to march on Inverary; but from this they were diverted by a call from Hume and Cochrane at the ships, who were about to be attacked by the English fleet. Argyll hastened to them, and proposed to give fight to the English, but was again prevented by these infatuated men. The earl, therefore, in utter despair, passed into Dumbartonshire, and was the very next day followed by the news of the capture of all his ships, and the flight of Elphinstone from Ealau Ghierig, without striking a blow. As a last desperate attempt, Argyll proposed to make a rush on Glasgow and secure a strong footing there; but the very men who had so strongly urged the attempt on the Lowlands, now deserted him in numbers, and on the march nothing but disasters from the insubordination of the little army ensued. They were attacked on all sides by the militia, and when the earl and Ayloffe advised a bold attack on the enemy, Hulme and his partisans protested against it. The end of all was, that becoming involved amongst morasses, the army was seized with panic, and rapidly melted away. The wrong-headed Hume escaped and reached the continent; Cochrane was taken, and soon after Rumbold, major Fullerton, and Argyll himself.
The conduct of Argyll after his capture was distinguished by a calm dignity which showed how superior he was to this factious, pugnacious men who had baffled all his plans. With his arms pinioned behind him, he was led bareheaded through the streets of Edinburgh, from Holyrood to the castle. The royalists thus revelled in revenging on the son the act of his father thirty-five years before, when he caused Montrose to be conducted over the very same ground. The headsman marched before him with his axe, and on reaching his cell in the castle he was put into irons, and informed that his execution would quickly follow. This was the 20th of June; his execution did not take place till the 30th. During the ten days the orders of James were that he should be tried all ways to compel him to confess the full particulars of the invasion, its originators, supporters, and participators. It was understood that James meant that his favourite application of the boots and thumbscrews should be used, but this was not attempted. He was menaced, but his firm refusal to reveal anything that would criminate others, probably convinced his enemies that it was useless, and could only cover them with odium. His former sentence of death was deemed sufficient to supersede any fresh trial, and being brought out to the scaffold, and saying that he died in peace with all men, one of the episcopalian clergymen stepped to the edge of the scaffold and exclaimed to the people, "My lord dies a protestant." "Yes," said the earl, also going forward, "a protestant, and cordial hater of popery, prelacy, and all superstition." His head was fixed on the top of the Tolbooth, where that of Montrose had formerly stood.
Rumbold, who was severely wounded, was hurried to execution, lest he should by death escape from his punishment. He displayed the same undaunted courage as in the field, protested solemnly against having ever intended to assassinate the king and duke. He declared himself an advocate for a limited monarchy, but did not believe that "Providence had sent a few men, ready booted and spurred, into the world to ride millions ready bridled and saddled to be ridden by them." If he had as many lives, he said, as he had hair's on his head, he would give them for the cause he had engaged in. Argyll, in his last hours, bore the highest testimony to the worth, sound sense, and courage of Rumbold. As for Ayloffe, he was sent up to London, and examined in the presence of James, who bade him confess freely all that he knew, saying, "You had better be frank with me, Mr. Ayloffe: you know that it is in my power to pardon you." Ayloffe was the nephew, by marriage, of Clarendon, and therefore cousin to the present lords Clarendon and Rochester, and some thought he might be pardoned; but Ayloffe knew the king's disposition too well, and bluntly replied, "Yes, it is in your power, but not in your nature." Cochrane condescended to make disclosures, and obtained his pardon.
This invasion being crushed, the vengeance of the ​government was let loose upon the unfortunate clan Campbell. The marquis of Athol, the hereditary enemy of Argyll, was only restrained by the privy council, powerful intercession being made, from hanging Charles Campbell, the earl's son, whilst suffering from a raging fever, at the door of his father's castle of Inverary. He did hang numbers of the Campbells, and laid waste the country for thirty miles round, cutting down the fruit trees, treading down the green corn, burning the houses, and destroying the boats and fishing nets of the people, their chief means of livelihood. More than three hundred wretched Highlanders were handed over to Scott of Pitlochy and other planters as slaves in New Jersey and the West Indies. Thirty-five prisoners had each an ear cut off by the hangman in one day, and numbers of women were burnt on the cheek or the shoulder, for refusing to admit James to be the rightful king, and were shipped across the Atlantic.
On the 30th of May, nearly a month after the sailing of Argyll, Monmouth left the Texel. His squadron consisted of a frigate of thirty-two guns, called the Helderenbergh, and three small tenders, a fourth tender having been declined by the Dutch. He was attended by about eighty officers, and a hundred and fifty men of different degrees, fugitives from England and Scotland. With such a force he proposed to conquer the crown of England. All the fine promises of money by Wildman and Danvers had ended in smoke, and he had only been able, chiefly through the revenues of lady Henrietta Wentworth, to supply himself with arms and stores for a small body of cavalry and infantry. The voyage was long and tedious, the weather was stormy, and the channel abounded with the royal cruisers. On the morning of the 11th of June his little fleet appeared off the port of Lyme, in Dorsetshire. It was a beautiful day, and the little town lay in a profound summer repose, the inhabitants watching in wonder the approach of the four foreign-looking vessels, and little dreaming what freight of calamity they were bringing them. The custom house officers went on board, and to the alarm of the people did not return; but after a time a number of boats were seen putting off from the ships, and a little band of men in military costume landed from them. They were Monmouth, the lord Grey, Fletcher of Saltoun, Ferguson, Wade, and Buyse, an officer who had served in the army of the elector of Brandenburg. Monmouth, on setting his foot on shore, kneeled down and returned thanks to God for having brought them through the perils of the sea, and prayed for His blessing on their enterprise. He then led his little knot of followers into the town, where he set up his standard in the market-place, and issued a proclamation which had been drawn up by Ferguson in his most fiery and acrimonious terms.
In this proclamation James was declared to be a tyrant and usurper, the whole bent of whose life had been and was to destroy the constitution and the protestant religion. He was declared to have barbarously poisoned the late king, who had perilled his very crown in his defence, and therefore Monmouth, as the son of the murdered king, vowed to pursue the fratricide to the death. On James was still further heaped the burning of London, the origin of the popish plot, the confederacy with France against the protestant states of Holland, the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, of lord Essex in the Tower, and the subornation of witnesses to swear away the lives of the patriots. In fact, almost every crime which had or had not been committed during the late reign was charged to the account of this monster prince. Monmouth, on his part, did not pretend to lay claim to the crown, but to leave that to the decision of a free parliament; but he engaged that all penal laws on account of religion should be abolished; the violated charters should be restored; parliaments should be held annually, and no longer be dissolvable at the will of a tyrannic prince. The only army should be the militia, which should be commanded by the sheriffs, who, in their turn, should be elected by the freeholders of the county. In short, the whole constitution should be so established in its freedom, that it should never more be in the power of a single man to subvert the rights of the people.
Monmouth was extremely popular with the people, and on discovering that it was their favourite hero come to put down the popish tyrant, he was received with loud acclamations. "Monmouth and the protestant religion" was the cry. There was a rush to enlist beneath his banners, and within four-and-twenty hours he was at the head of fifteen hundred men. Dare, one of the adventurers, had been put ashore as they came along the coast, to ride across the country and rouse the people of Taunton, and he now came in at the head of about forty horsemen, and with the news that the people of Somersetshire were in favour of his cause. But with this arrival came the tidings that the Dorsetshire and Somersetshire people were mustering at Bridport to attack them, and Monmouth ordered lord Grey, who was the commander of the cavalry, to march there at once, and disperse them before they had collected in strength. But here an incident occurred which showed the unruly materials that he had to work with. Dare had mounted himself on a fine horse in his expedition to Taunton, and Fletcher of Saltoun, who was second in command of the cavalry under Grey, without asking leave of Dare, as superior officer, and being himself badly mounted, took possession of his horse. Dare refused to let him have it, they came to high words. Dare shook his whip at Fletcher, and the proud Scot drew his pistol and shot Dare dead on the spot. This summary proceeding, which might have passed in the ruder country of Scotland, created a violent outburst amongst the soldiers of Monmouth. They demanded of the duke instant execution of the murderer, and it was only by getting on board the Helderenbergh that Fletcher escaped with his life. He returned to Holland, and thus was lost to the expedition almost its only man of any talent and experience.
The next morning Grey, accompanied by Wade, led forth his untrained cavalry to attack the militia at Bridport. There was a smart brush with the militia, in which Monmouth's raw soldiers fought bravely, and would have driven the enemy from the place, but Grey, who was an arrant coward in the field, turned his horse and fled, never drawing bit till he reached Lyme. The men were indignant, and Monmouth was confounded with this conduct of his chief officer; but nevertheless he had not moral firmness to put some more trusty officer in his place. Four days after his landing, the 15th of June, Monmouth marched forward to ​Axminster, where he encountered Christopher Monk, duke of Albemarle, the son of the first general Monk, at the head of four thousand men of the trained bands. Though daunted at first, Monmouth accepted the situation, and disposed his men admirably for a fight. He drew up the main body in battle array on advantageous ground, sent out his skirmishers to the front, and, as a last precaution, lined the hedges of a narrow lane, through which Albemarle must pass to come at him, with musketeers. Monk, however, was too cautious to risk a pitched battle on these terms—the more especially as his own forces were untrustworthy. There appeared so much enthusiasm for Monmouth amongst his troops that, fearing their desertion, he drew back. The result was that the whole body was speedily thrown into disorder, that panic seized them, and that they fled pell-mell towards Exeter, flinging away their arms and uniforms to expedite their escape.
Monmouth advancing on Taunton.
Monmouth, however, probably not aware of the extent of the rout, steadily pursued his march to Chard, and thence to Taunton, where he arrived on the 18th of June, just a week after his landing, and was received by the whole place with the warmest demonstrations of joy. Taunton, through all the great struggle betwixt Charles I. and his parliament, had adhered firmly to the parliament. It had stood out two terrible sieges, but had been admirably defended by the great Blake, afterwards admiral of England. It had suffered severely, but had gloried in suffering, and had never yielded. After the restoration, Taunton still continued a place of indomitable popular and religious spirit. It was a hive of nonconformists, and its preachers, especially Alleine, the author of the Celebrated "Alarm to the Unconverted," had thundered from their pulpits against popery and prelacy, and the vices of the court, till they were silenced in dungeons. To such a people, Monmouth, as the hero of protestant liberty, came ​as an angel from heaven. They received him with the liveliest bursts of rejoicing. They adorned their doors and windows with flowers, they strewed his path with them, and appeared abroad wearing every man a sprig of green in his hat, as a badge of the popular cause. He and his officers were quartered in the houses of the chief citizens, and the people hurried to supply his little army with food and lodging. The young ladies of the place embroidered banners for the army, and a deputation of twenty-six of the handsomest and most distinguished maidens presented to Monmouth one emblazoned with the royal arms. The lady heading the procession, also kneeling, offered for his acceptance a Bible handsomely bound, which he received with an air of reverence, saying that he came to defend the truths of that book, and, if necessary, to seal them with his blood.
All this appeared auspicious and encouraging, but it did not satisfy Monmouth. He knew, without the adhesion of the army and the leading gentry, he should never make his way to the crown. Their adhesion had been promised him, but where were they? Not a regiment had given a sign of being ready to join him. The lords Macclesfield, Brandon, Delamere, and other whig noblemen, whom he had been assured would instantly fly to his standard, lay all still. Trenchard of Taunton, who had promised to join him, unlike his townsmen, fled at his approach, and made his way into Holland, to the prince of Orange. Wildman, who had promised such wonders of county support and of money, did not appear. On the contrary, the nobility and gentry from all parts of the country, with the clergy, were pouring in addresses of attachment and support to James. Parliament, both lords and commons, displayed the same spirit.
The common people might believe that the son of Lucy Walters was legitimate, but the educated classes knew better, and that Monmouth could never be king. Parliament, therefore, at once voted James four hundred thousand pounds for present necessities, and laid new taxes for five years on foreign silks, linen, and spirits. They ordered Monmouth's declaration to be burnt by the hangman, and rapidly passed against him a bill of attainder, setting a reward of five thousand pounds on his head. They were ready to go farther, and the commons actually passed a bill for the preservation of the king's person and government, making it high treason to say that Monmouth was legitimate, or to make any motion in parliament to alter the succession. But James, knowing the uselessness of any such act, adjourned parliament without waiting for the act passing the lords, and dismissed the nobles and gentry to defend his interests in their different localities. He took care, however, to revive the censorship of the press, which had expired in 1679.
When Monmouth, with consternation, noted these adverse circumstances, Ferguson was ready with a reason. It was, that Monmouth had committed a capital error in not taking the title of king. The style and title of king, he asserted, carried a wonderful weight with the English. But of this right he had deprived himself by abjuring this title and leaving it entirely to James. That the majority would fight for the man who was in possession of the royal name, but for whom were they to fight who fought for Monmouth? Nobody could tell, and the result must be discouragement. Grey seconded Ferguson—Wade and the republicans opposed the scheme. But probably Monmouth was only too willing to be persuaded, and, accordingly, on the 20th of June, he was proclaimed in the market-place of Taunton. As the names of both rivals were James, and James II. would continue to mean James who now had that title, Monmouth was styled king Monmouth. Immediately on taking this step, Monmouth issued four proclamations. Following the example of James, he set a price on the head of James, late duke of York; declared the parliament sitting at Westminster an unlawful assembly, and ordered it to disperse; forbade the people to pay taxes to the usurper; and proclaimed Albemarle a traitor, unless he forthwith repaired to the standard of king Monmouth, where he would be cordially received.
Almost every part of this proceeding was a gross political blunder. By assuming the royal title he lost nearly everything, and gained nothing. He offended the republican party, and divided the allegiance of his little army, some of the most energetic of whose officers, as Wade and others, were of that political faith. He offended that great protestant party which was looking forward to the protestant succession of William of Orange and the princess Mary, and in case of their want of issue to the princess Anne. He cut off all retreat to Holland in case of failure, and all hope of mercy from James if he fell into his hands. By pledging himself on landing not to aspire to the crown, and thus immediately breaking his pledge, he inspired the thinking portion of the public with deep distrust, as inducing the same disregard of his word as had been so long conspicuous in the Stuarts. With all the influential protestants who might have joined him, so soon as events gave hope of success, considering him the champion of a protestant succession, he had placed himself in a hopeless position, because that succession could only come through a legitimate issue. By denouncing the parliament that body became his mortal foes. The only party from which he could now expect any support was the people, and without means, without leaders, without military training, the result could only be failure utter and fearful.
And spite of the persuasions of Ferguson, the melancholy truth seemed already to stare the unhappy Monmouth in the face. He received a secret answer from Albemarle, addressed to James Scott, late duke of Monmouth, telling him that he knew who was his lawful king, and that he had better have let rebellion alone. As he rode out of Taunton on the 22nd of June towards Bridgewater, it was remarked that he looked gloomy and dejected; the very people who crowded in the road to greet him with huzzahs, could not help remarking how different was the expression of his countenance to what it had been in his gay procession there five years before. The only man who seemed elated with anticipation of triumph, was Ferguson, and if, as he is suspected to have been, playing the traitor to the unfortunate Monmouth, he might now well grow confident of his diabolical success. He is described as riding about brandishing his sword, and addressing the people in a wild, maniacal style.
On reaching Bridgewater, where there existed a strong ​whig body, Monmouth was again well received. The mayor and aldermen in their robes welcomed him, preceded him in procession to the high cross, where they proclaimed him king. He took up his abode in the castle, encamped his army on the castle field, and crowds rushed to enlist in his service. His army already amounted to six thousand men, and might soon have been doubled or trebled; but his scanty supply of arms and equipments was already exhausted, he had no money, and men without weapons were useless. Numbers of them endeavoured to arm themselves mob fashion, with scythes, pitchforks, and other implements of husbandry and of mining. There was an active search for such weapons all round the neighbourhood; but what was an army of raw, undisciplined men, thus furnished, to do against regular forces with artillery and muskets? What was the motley cavalry, about a thousand in number, mounted on horses brought from the plough, or unbroken colts caught on the moors, to do against a disciplined force of horse mounted on steeds accustomed to start and keep order and the rush of military manœuvres? In fact, the expedition was equally hopeless from the lack of funds, of the support of those who could furnish them, and the unequal conditions on which these zealous but untrained and nearly unarmed people must engage with the royal troops.
Meantime, these troops were drawing from all quarters, and preparing to overwhelm the invaders. Lord Feveresham and Churchill, afterwards Marlborough, were ordered to march with strong bodies of troops to the west. Churchill was already arrived, and Feversham rapidly approaching. The militias of Sussex and Oxfordshire were drawing that way, followed by bodies of voluntary gownsmen from Oxford. To prevent any of the whig party affording Monmouth any aid, they and the nonconformists were closely watched, and many seized and imprisoned.
From Bridgewater Monmouth advanced to Glastonbury, and thence to Wells and Shepton Mallet. He appeared to have no precise object, but to seek reinforcements; from Shepton Mallet he directed his march on Bristol, which was only defended by the duke of Beaufort and the muster of his tenantry. Bristol once gained, would give them a strong position, and offered large supplies of money, stores, and arms. But Churchill harassed his rear on the march, and to reach the Gloucestershire side of the town, which was easiest of assault, it was necessary to march round by Keynsham Bridge, which was partly destroyed. Men were dispatched to repair it, and Monmouth following, on the 24th of June was at Ponsford, within five miles of the city. On reaching Keynsham Bridge, it was found to be replaced, but they were there encountered by a body of life guards under colonel Oglethorpe, and Bristol having received reinforcements, the attack on it was abandoned. It was then proposed to get across the Severn and march for Shropshire and Cheshire, where he had in his progress been enthusiastically received; but the plan was not deemed practicable, and he advanced to Bath, which was too strongly garrisoned to make any impression upon. On the 26th they halted at Philip's Norton.
Feversham was now at their heels, and attacked them, the charge being led by the duke of Grafton—the son of Charles and the duchess of Cleveland—who fought bravely, but was repulsed. Monmouth, however, took advantage of the night to steal away to Frome, which was well affected to his cause, but had been just visited and disarmed by the earl of Pembroke with the Wiltshire militia. The night march thither had been through torrents of rain and muddy roads; Frome could afford neither assistance nor protection; and, to add to his disappointment, here news reached him of the total failure of Argyll's expedition into Scotland, and that Feversham was now joined by his artillery and was in pursuit of him. Under these disastrous circumstances, and not a man of note, not a regiment of regulars or militia as had been so liberally promised him by Wildman and Danvers, having come over to him, Monmouth bitterly cursed his folly in having listened to them, and resolved to ride off with his chief adherents, and get back to the continent and his beloved lady Wentworth. But from this ignominous idea he was dissuaded by lord Grey, and they retreated again towards Bridgewater, where a report represented fresh assembling of armed peasantry. They reached that town on the 2nd of July, and, whilst throwing up trenches for defence, on the 5th Feversham arrived with about five thousand men, and pitched his tents on Sedgemoor, about three miles from the town. Feversham himself, with the cavalry at Weston Zoyland, and the earl of Pembroke with the Wiltshire militia, about fifteen hundred in number, camped at the village of Midleezoy. Monmouth and his officers ascended the tower of the church and beheld the disposition of the enemy. Sedgemoor had formerly been a vast marsh, where Alfred, in his time, had sought a retreat from the triumphant Danes, and it was now intersected by several deep ditches, as most fen lands are, behind which the royal army lay. Near Chedzoy lay some regiments of infantry which Monmouth had formerly commanded at Bothwell Bridge.
It was reported that the soldiers were left, by the reckless incapacity of the general, to drink cider and observe little watch; and Monmouth, who saw that they lay in a very unconnected condition, conceived that by a skilful night attack he could easily surprise them. The gormandising incapacity of Louis Duras, now lord Feversham, a foreigner who had been advanced by Charles II., was notorious, and the transcendant military talents of Churchill, who was in subordinate command, were yet little known. Preparations were therefore instantly made for the surprise. Scouts were sent out to reconnoitre the ground, who reported that two deep ditches full of mud and water lay betwixt them and the hostile camp, which would have to be passed. At eleven o'clock at night the troops, with "Soho" for their watch-word, marched out of Bridgewater in profound silence, taking a circuitous route, which would make the march about six miles. It was a moonlight night, but the moor lay enveloped in a thick fog, and about one in the morning the troops of Monmouth approached the royal camp. Their guides conducted the soldiers by a causeway over each of the two ditches, and Monmouth drew up his men for the attack, but by accident a pistol went off; the sentinels of the division of the army, the foot guards, which lay in front of them were alarmed, and, listening, became aware of the trampling of the rebels as they were forming in rank. They fired their carbines and flew to rouse the camp. ​There was an instant galloping and running in all directions. Feversham and the chief officers were aroused, and drums beat to arms, and the men ran to get into rank. No time was to be lost, and Monmouth ordered Grey to dash forward with the cavalry, but he was suddenly brought to a halt by a third dyke, of which they had no information. The foot guards on the other side of the dyke demanded who was there, and on the cry of "King Monmouth!" they discharged a volley of musketry with such effect, that the untrained horses of Grey's cavalry became at once unmanageable; the men were thrown into confusion, seized with panic, and fled wherever they could find a way or their horses chose to carry them. Grey, as usual, was in the van of the fugitives. But, on the other hand, Monmouth came now rushing forward with his infantry, and, in his turn, finding himself stopped by the muddy dyke, he fired across it at the enemy, and a fierce fight took place, which was maintained for three-quarters of an hour. Nothing could be more brave and determined than Monmouth and his peasant soldiers. But day was now breaking, the cavalry of Feversham, and the infantry of Church, were bearing down on their flanks from different quarters, and Monmouth, then seeing that his defeat was inevitable, forgot the hero and rode off to save his life, leaving his brave, misguided followers to their fate. If anything could have added to the base ignominy of Monmouth's desertion of his followers, it was the undaunted courage which they showed even when abandoned. They stood boldly to their charge; they cut down the horsemen with their scythes, or knocked them from their saddles with the butt end of their guns; they repulsed the vigorous attack of Oglethorpe, and left Sarsfield for dead on the field. But unfortunately their powder foiled, and they cried out for fresh supplies in vain. The men with the ammunition wagons had followed the flight of the cavalry, and driven far away from the field. Still the brave peasantry and soldiers fought desperately with their scythes and gunstocks, till the cannon was brought to bear on them, and mowed them down in heaps. As they began to give way the royal cavalry charged upon them from the flank, the infantry poured across the ditch, the stout men, worthy of a better fate and leader, were overwhelmed and broke, but not before a thousand of them lay dead on the moor, or before they had killed or wounded more than three hundred of the king's troops.
The unfortunate rebels were pursued with fury, and hunted through the day out of the neighbouring villages, whither they had flown for concealment. The road towards Bridgewater was crowded with flying men and infuriated troopers following and cutting them down. Many of those who rushed frantically into the streets of Bridgewater, fell and died there of their wounds, for the soldiers, who were treated by the farmers to hogsheads of cider, were drunk with drinking, with blood and fury. A vast number of prisoners was secured, for they were a profitable article of merchandise in the plantations; five hundred were crowded into the single church of Weston Zoyland, and the battle and pm-suit being over, the conqueror commenced that exhibition of vengeance which was always so dear to James. Gibbets were erected by the wayside, leading from the battle-field to Bridgewater, and no less than, twenty of the prisoners were hanging on them. The peasantry were compelled to bury the slain, and those most suspected of favouring the rebels were set to quarter the victims who were to be suspended in chains.
Meantime Monmouth, Grey, and Buyse, the Brandenburger, were flying for then lives. They took the north road, hoping to effect their escape into Wales. At Chedzoy he drew up a moment to hide his George and procure a fresh horse. From the summit of a hill they turned and saw the final defeat and slaughter of their deluded followers. They pushed forward for the Mendip Hills, and then directed their course towards the New Forest, hoping to obtain some vessel on that coast to convey them to the continent. On Cranbourne Chase their horses were completely exhausted, they therefore turned them loose, hid their saddles and bridles, and proceeded on foot. But the news of the defeat of the rebels had travelled as fast as they, and in the neighbourhood of Kingwood and Pool parties of cavalry were out scouring the country, in hopes of the reward of five thousand pounds for Monmouth. Lord Lumley and Sir William Portman, the commanders, agreed to divide the sum among their parties if successful, and early on the morning of the 7th, Grey and the guide were taken at the junction of the two cross roads. This gave proof that the more important prize was not far off. The officers inclosed a wide circle of land, within which they imagined Monmouth and Buyse must yet be concealed; and at five the next morning the Brandenburger was discovered. He confessed that he had parted from Momnouth only four hours before, and the search was renewed with redoubled eagerness. The place was a network of small inclosures, partly cultivated and covered with growing crops of pease, beans, and corn, partly overrun with fern and brambles. The crops and thickets were trodden and beaten down systematically in the search, and at seven o'clock Monmouth himself was discovered in a ditch covered with fern.
The once gay and graceful Momnouth could scarcely be recognised. He was clad in the dress of a peasant, with whom he had exchanged his clothes; fear and starvation had made him haggard, he trembled and could not speak. He had been endeavouring to abate his hunger by eating raw pease, some of which, with his purse and watch, were found in his pocket. With these also were his George, and a couple of manuscript little volumes, one of them a treatise on fortification, with a calculation of the annual cost of the army and navy of England; the other a collection of songs, charms, conjurations, recipes, and prayers. He was conveyed under a strong guard to Kingwood, the George was dispatched to London with the news of his capture, and two days after the prisoners were conducted thither themselves, where they arrived on the 13th of July.
Monmouth, though mild and agreeable in his manners, had, never displayed any high moral qualities. Indeed, if we bear in mind the frivolous and debauched character of the court in which he had grown up, whether it were the court of the exile or of the restored king, it would have been wonderful if he had. He was handsome, gay, goodnatured, but dissolute and unprincipled. He was ready to conspire against his father or his uncle, to profess the utmost contrition when defeated, and to forget it as soon as forgiven, He has been ​properly described as the Absalom of modern times. If he merely deserted his miserable followers on the battle-field, he now more meanly deserted his own dignity. He continued, from the moment of his capture to that when he ascended the scaffold, prostrating himself in the dust of abasement, and bogging for his life in the most unmanly terms. He wrote to James instantly from Kingwood, so that his humble and agonised entreaties for forgiveness would arrive with the news of his arrest. He threw all the blame of his folly and wickedness on the persuasions of horrid people who had abused his easy belief. He heaped shame and remorse on his own head in unmeasured terms, and he entreated earnestly a private interview with his uncle, because he could impart to him a secret, which, if concealed, would endanger the throne. He wrote also to the queen and to Rochester, imploring their intercession for him. On the journey his conduct was of the same unmanly character, whilst that of Grey, who was so cowardly in the field, was firm and calm. Grey declared that he was glad that he knew the worst, for that from the hour that they landed in England he had not had one quiet night, or one comfortable meal. Portman and Lumey kept alternate watch over their prize till they saw Monmouth safely delivered at Whitehall into the custody of the king.
James admitted the crawling supplicant to the desired interview, but it was in the hope of the promised word of wondrous revelation, not with any intention of pardoning him. Such a weakness never entered the heart of James Stuart. It has been said, that to see his nephew—the favourite son of his late brother, who had firmly protected him and his interests against all assailants—and not to pardon him, was the act of a barbarian. But James was a barbarian who delighted in the contemplation of agonies which would have unnerved any other man. He had shown that in Scotland in the iron boot and thumbscrews, which made the stoutest ruffians blench to witness. That he would spare the life of Monmouth when he had proclaimed him an assassin, a cut throat, and a fratricide poisoner, was not to be expected, but then the secret word must be obtained if possible, Monmouth had no such magic word to utter. He was led in pinioned by a silken cord, and throw himself abjectly at James's feet, and continued to confess all his guilt and to implore pardon for the sake of his father. He declared that all the calumnies put forth against his majesty were the work of that "bloody villain Ferguson," and he offered, he, the champion of protestantism, to embrace popery on condition that he was forgiven. James got him to sign a declaration that his father had assured him that hr was never married to his mother, and then coolly told him that his crime was of too grave a dye to be forgiven. The queen, who was the only person present besides James and the two secretaries of state, Sunderland and Middleton, is said to have insulted him in a most merciless and unwomanly manner. When, therefore, Monmouth saw that nothing but his death would satisfy the king and queen, he appeared to resume his courage and fortitude, and rising with an air of dignity, he was taken away. But his apparent firmness lasted only till he was out of their presence. On his way to the Tower he entreated lord Dartmouth to intercede for him,—"I know, my lord," he said, "that you loved my father; for his sake, for God's sake, endeavour to obtain mercy for me." But Dartmouth replied that there could be no pardon for one who had assumed the royal title. Grey continued to display a much more manly behaviour. In the presence of the king he admitted his guilt, but did not even ask forgiveness.
As Monmouth was under attainder, no trial was deemed necessary, and it was determined that he should be executed on Wednesday morning, the next day but one. His wife, the heiress of Buccleuch, desired to see him, not from any affection, for he had never cared for her, and had for two years wholly deserted her for lady Wentworth, but to draw from him a clearance of herself from any knowledge or participation in his designs on the throne, in order to save her estate for her children. James, in his "Memoirs," says that Monmouth was unwilling to see her, but she wont to the Tower with lord Clarendon, the lord privy seal. Monmouth received her coldly, and thought more of seizing the opportunity to persuade Clarendon to intercede for his pardon, than of listening to his wife. Clarendon replied as Dartmouth had done, that pardon was hopeless; once he had been pardoned for rebellion, such a thing could never happen twice. He still continued to press the point, but his wife interrupted him to demand whether she had received any intelligence of his late designs, or had been made acquainted with his political views for some years. He testified that she had not. She then asked him whether she had given him any cause of displeasure in any way, except by reproaching him with his attachment to other women, and his disobedience to the king. He replied that he had always found her a loving and dutiful wife, and an excellent mother, and had been frequently advised by her to show more obedience to the wishes of his late father.
That evening, Monday, Turner, bi.shop of Ely, and Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, came from the king with the message that he must die on Wednesday morning, and offering him their spiritual services. At the announcement he turned deadly pale, and remained some time unable to speak. He wrote to the king three times during the short interval left him of life, still imploring pardon, or at least a respite for better preparation. James remained inexorable, and Dalrymple says that in his third letter he warned the king of the intrigues of the hollow-hearted Sunderland, but that colonel Blood, or the son of that ruffian, then holding office in the Tower, carried the letter to Sunderland, who destroyed it. In consequence of having offered to embrace Catholicism on condition of pardon, James sent some catholic priests to him, but he let them know that without a pardon he did not want their services. According to Burnet and others, amongst his papers of charms and prognostications, was one by a fortune teller, in which he had firm faith, which was, that if he lived over the 15th he was destined for great things; but he consented to sign a paper renouncing his pretensions to the crown, for the sake of his children.
The bishops Ken and Turner laboured hard with him to convince him of his heinous sin in abandoning "the badge of the Anglican church,"—the doctrine of non-resistance; but now convinced that he could not move the inexorable ​James, he began to show a firmness that surprised them. He would not admit the doctrine, and as little would he admit that he had committed any great sin in forsaking his wife, and attaching himself to Henrietta Wentworth. And in this respect the voice of nature spoke in him more convincingly than the ministers of a state religion could venture to admit, and which courts, kings, and others would do well to reflect upon.
Flight of Monmouth.
He contended that his marriage with the heiress of Bucclench was a mere political marriage, a marriage without any regard to the affections or fitness of the parties, but merely with regard to royal purposes; that in the sight of God it was no marriage at all; that he never could get up an attachment to the duchess; that his affections were unconcerned, his home was cold and unattractive, and that in consequence he had sought in idle and vicious amours an interest that he did not feel elsewhere; that from this wicked career lady Wentworth drew him, and led him to adopt a life of domestic order; that lady Wentworth was a woman of virtue and honour, and that he had been strictly constant to her; that they were united by mutual and ardent affection, and had prayed to God to be guided in the matter by him; that so far from feeling any condemnation, his affection had increased, and that had satisfied him that this was the true marriage in the sight of heaven, and that nothing would ever persuade him to the contrary. They who condemn the reasoning of Monmouth should be careful not to force their children into a like false position. They who are expected not to sin should not be sinned against.
RECEPTION OF MONMOUTH BY THE LADIES OF TAUNTON.
​The bishops were so scandalised at his morality, that they refused him the sacrament. On the fatal morning of the 15th they were joined by Dr. Tenison, afterwards archbishop, who united in their views, and reasoned with Monmouth with equal want of success. Before setting out for the scaffold, his wife and children came to take leave of him. Lady Monmouth was deeply moved, Monmouth himself spoke kindly to her, but was cold and passionless. When the hour arrived, he went to execution with the same courage that he had always gone into battle. He was no more the cringing, weeping supplicant, but a man who had made up his mind to die. The whole neighbourhood of the Tower was one dense mass, from ground to roof, of spectators, and he was conducted in the carriage of the lieutenant of the Tower, surrounded by an unusually numerous guard, for fear of some popular effort in his favour. At his appearance the whole crowd seemed affected with weeping and sobbing. He mounted the steps of the scaffold with a firm step, and the groans and lamentations subsiding into a deep silence, he said, "I came here not to speak but to die. I die a protestant of the church of England." But there the bishops interrupted him, saying that unless he repented of his sins, he was no member of their church. He must acknowledge the doctrine of non-resistance. Monmouth again proceeded, openly avowing his attachment to Henrietta Wentworth, and vindicating it, warmly declaring her a woman of virtue and honour, asserting that he loved her to the last, and was convinced in his conscience that their attachment was just and innocent in the sight of God.
The bishops again zealously interposed, calling upon him to renounce such perilous opinions; and even Gosling, one of the sheriffs, who forgot or appeared to forget the notorious and multiplied breaches of the marriage law by both the last and the present king, several of whose mistresses were said to be amongst the spectators, asked him if he were married to lady Henrietta, and remarked that he hoped to have heard him expressing repentance for his rebellion. "I die very penitent," calmly replied Monmouth; but this did not satisfy the bishops; they were not contented to receive a general confession of great penitence; they had a vigilant and vigorous master's eye upon them, who wanted of all things a sanction for the doctrine of non-resistance. Monmouth referred them to a paper in the Tower signed by him; they replied there was nothing in it about non-resistance, and pressed him importunately for a specific answer. Monmouth, wearied with this unfeeling pertinacity, replied, "I came to die; pardon me, my lords. I refer to my paper."
They insisted that he should call his invasion rebellion.
"Call it what you please," he replied. "I am sorry for invading the kingdom, I am sorry for the blood that has been shed, and for the souls which have been lost by my means; I am sorry that it ever happened."
This ought to have satisfied any men under the circumstances, but they still continued clamorously to pursue him with their persuasions. At length he began to pray, and they condescended to pray with him, but when they came to the blessing on the king, Momnouth was silent. They repeated again the words, "O Lord, save the king." He was still silent. "Do you not pray for the king?" they demanded. After a pause, he said, "Amen!" Once more they pressed him to address the soldiers and spectators, admitting that great doctrine, of which they were soon to have enough themselves. "I will make no speeches," he replied. "Only ten words, my lord." But he turned from them with impatience, and putting into the hands of his servant a toothpick case, as a 'last little token of his affection to lady "Wentworth, he said, "Give it to that person."
He then turned to Jack Ketch, and feeling the edge of the axe, said, "Hero are six guineas for you, but mind and do not hack me as you did my lord Russell. My servant will give you more gold if you do the work well." He refused to have a cap drawn over his face, and laid his head on the block, the bishops continuing to ejaculate, "God accept your imperfect repentance!" His words to the executioner had apparently the very effect which he wished to avoid, for he trembled violently, struck him so feeble and erring a blow, that Monmouth rose up and looked at him. Twice the man struck him, but without dispatching him, and then flung down the axe in horror, exclaiming, "I cannot do it." The people yelled and groaned frightfully in indignation. The sheriff cried, "Take up the axe, man;" the people, "Fling him over the rails!" and amid this awful scene Ketch aimed two more blows at the mangled victim, and then separated the head finally with a knife. The populace were so enraged at the executioner's clumsiness, that they would have torn him to pieces if they could have come at him for the guards. Many rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, and the barbarous circumstances of his execution, and the unfeeling persecution of the prelates, did not a little to restore his fame as a martyr to liberty and protestantism. There have not been wanting those who have vindicated the bishops, as exerting only an earnest zeal for the sufferer's soul. We may, without much want of charity, ascribe a considerable amount of government subserviency to this zeal, and we are much disposed to take the same view as Charles James Fox of the extraordinary conduct:—" Certain it is that none of these holy men seem to have erred on the side of compassion or complaisance to their illustrious penitent. Besides endeavouring to convince him of the guilt of his connection with his beloved lady Henrietta, of which hr could never be brought to a due sense, they seem to have repeatedly teased him with controversy, and to have been far more solicitous to make him profess what they deemed the true creed of the church of England, than to soften or console his sorrows, or to help him to that composure of mind so necessary to his situation." No stronger proof of the deep and sincere attachment of Henrietta Wentworth could have been given than was given by her. Within a few months she followed him broken-hearted to the grave. As for king Monmouth, the romance of his story continued to circulate amongst the people. Many refused to believe that it was he who had really perished on the scaffold. Impostors at different times personated him, and even when the man in the iron mask was discovered in the Bastile, the long lapse of time did not prevent some from supposing it to be Monmouth.
It was expected that Grey would be executed immediately after Monmouth, but he was spared, undoubtedly for sufficient reasons. His estate was entailed on his brother, and would have gone to him immediately on his death; but ​Rochester was to have a large sum out of it if he was allowed to live, and this saved him. "The earl of Rochester," says Burnet, "had sixteen thousand pounds of him, others had smaller shares. He was likewise obliged to tell all he knew, and to be a witness in order to the conviction of others, but with this assistance, that nobody was to die upon his evidence."
Whilst these things were going on in London, the unfortunate people in the west were suffering a dreadful penalty for their adherence to Monmouth. Feversham was called to town, and covered with honours and rewards, though it was notorious that he had done nothing towards the victory. Buckingham even declared that he had won the battle of Sedgemoor in bed. In his place was left one of the most ferocious and unprincipled monsters that ever disgraced the name of soldier. This was colonel Kirke, who had been governor of Tangier until it was abandoned, and now practised the cruelties that he had learned in his unrestrained command there. In that settlement, left to do his licentious will on those in, his power, he has left a name for arbitrary, oppressive, and dissolute conduct, which in ordinary times would have insured his death. He here commanded the demoralised soldiers that he had brought back with him, and who, whilst they were capable of every atrocity, were called Kirke’s lambs, because, as a Christian regiment sent against the heathen, they bore on their banner the desecrated sign of the lamb. His debauched myrmidons were let loose on the, inhabitants of Somersetshire, and such as they could not extort money from, they accused on the evidence of the most abandoned miscreants, and hanged and quartered, boiling the quarters in pitch, to make them longer endure the weather on their gibbets. The most horrible traditions! still remain of Kirke and his lambs. He and his officers are said to have caused the unhappy wretches brought in, who were not able to pay a heavy ransom, to be hanged on the sign post of the inn where they messed, and to have caused the drums to boat as they were in the agonies of death, saying they would give them music to their dancing. To prolong their sufferings, Kirke would occasionally have them cut down alive and then hung up again; and such numbers were quartered, that the miserable peasants compelled to do that revolting work, were said to stand ankle deep in blood. All this was duly reported to the king in London, who directed lord Sunderland to assure Kirke that "he was very well satisfied with his proceedings." It was asserted in London that in the single week following the battle, Kirke butchered a hundred of his victims, besides pocketing large sums for the ransom of others, yet he declared that he had not gone to the lengths which he was ordered to do. On the 10th of August he was sent for to court, to state personally the condition of the west, James being apprehensive that he had let the rich delinquents escape for money, and the system of butchery was left to colonel Trelawny, who continued it without intermission, soldiers pillaging the wretched inhabitants, or dragging them away to execution under the forms of martial law. But a still more sweeping and systematic slaughter was speedily initiated under a different class of exterminators—butchers in ermine.
Lord chief justice Jeffreys, the most diabolical judge that ever sate on the bench, now rendered furious by nightly debauch and daily commission of cruelties, in his revels hugging in mawkish and disgusting fondness his brutal companions, in his discharge of his judicial duties passing the most barbarous sentences in the most blackguard and vituperative language, in whose blazing eye, distorted visage, and bellowing voice raged the unmitigated fiend, was now sent forth by his delighted master to consummate his vengeance on the unhappy people whom the soldiers had left alive and cooped up in prison. He was already created baron of Wem, dubbed by the people earl of Flint, and, the lord-keeper just now dying, he was promised the great seal if he shed blood enough to satisfy his ruthless king. Four other judges, Montague, the chief baron, Levinz, Watkins, and Wight, were associated with him, rather for form than for anything else, for Jeffreys was the hardened, daring, and unscrupulous instrument on whom James confidently relied. Amid the scenes of horror already enacted, and the still worse to come, we must do two men the justice to testify that they dared to raise their voices against the wickedness and barbarity of this blood-thirsty king. Poor old lord-keeper Guildford, brow-beaten, thwarted, and insulted by Jeffreys, before retiring from his office to die, dared to speak out to James on the illegality and monstrosity of the proceedings of the soldiery in Somersetshire; and bishop Ken, though the rebels had stripped the lead from his cathedral at Wells, and grievously defaced its shrines and images, yet notwithstanding he rendered the last hours of Monmouth bitter by his religious zeal, did all in his power to obtain mercy for, and to mitigate the sufferings of the outraged people in his diocese.
Jeffreys' bloody campaign, as it was then and always has been termed, both from its wholesale slaughter and from the troops which accompanied him throughout the circuit—a name constantly used by the unfeeling king himself—was opened at Winchester on the 27th of August, and commenced with a case of hitherto unexampled ruthlessness. Mrs. Alice Lisle, or, as she was generally called, lady Alice, her husband, one of the judges of Charles I., having been created a lord by Cromwell, was now an infirm and aged woman, deaf, and lethargic. Her husband had been murdered, as we have related, by the royalists, as he was entering the church at Lausanne. Lady Alice was known far and wide for her benevolence. Though her husband was on the other side, she had always shown active kindness to the followers of the king during the civil war, and on this account, after her husband's death, his estate had been granted to her. During the rebellion of Monmouth her son had served in the king's army against the invader; yet this poor old lady was now accused of having given a night's shelter to Hicks, a nonconformist minister, and Nelthorpe, a lawyer, outlawed for his concern in the Rye House plot. They were fugitives from Sedgemoor, and the law of treason was, and it appears yet is, that he who harbours a traitor is liable to death, the punishment of a traitor. Mrs. Lisle had no counsel, and pleaded that though she knew that Hicks was a presbyterian minister, she did not know that they were concerned in the rebellion, and there was no direct proof of the fact. The jury was exceedingly unwilling to condemn a woman of such known kindness of heart, who was merely accused of showing the same favour to these men that she ​had uniformly shown to royal fugitives, and asked Jeffreys whether it was as much treason to harbour Hicks before conviction as after. Jeffreys replied that it was, but neither he nor the four judges sitting on the same bench told them, which was equally true, that the traitor must be convicted before the receiver of the traitor can be brought to trial. "A provision," says Sir James Mackintosh, " so manifestly necessary to justice, that without the observance of it. Hicks might have been acquitted of treason after Mrs. Lisle had been executed for harbouring him as a traitor."
The peasant who had led the fugitives to her house, was brought as the reluctant witness against her. This poor man, thus led up to destroy so good a woman, was unwilling to speak. Jeffreys stormed, swore, and cursed him in such style, that he was totally confounded. As he stood speechless, Jeffreys roared out, " Oh, how hard it is for the truth to come out of a lying presbyterian knave!" As he could only mutter some unintelligible words, Jeffreys went on:—
"Was there ever such a villain on the face of the earth? Dost thou believe there is a God? Dost thou believe in hell fire? Of all the witnesses that I ever met with, I never saw thy fellow." The man being still more frightened, Jeffreys screeched, "I hope, gentlemen of the jury, that you take notice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How can any one help abhorring both these men and their religion? A Turk is a saint to such a fellow as this; a Pagan would be ashamed of such villainy. Oh, blessed Jesus! what a generation of vipers do we live among!"
In this style he terrified the witnesses, and then came the turn of the jury. They retired to consult, but not coming to a speedy conclusion, for they were afraid of the judge and yet loth to condemn the prisoner, Jeffreys sent them word that if they did not agree he would lock them up all night. They then came into court and expressed their doubts of Mrs. Lisle knowing that Hicks had been with Monmouth. Jeffreys told them that their doubt was altogether groundless, and sent them back to agree. Again they returned, unable to get rid of their doubt. Then Jeffreys thundered against them in his fiercest style, and declared that were he on the jury, he would have found her guilty had she been his own mother. At length the jury gave way and brought in a verdict of guilty. The next morning Jeffreys pronounced sentence upon her amid a storm of vituperation against the presbyterians, to whom he supposed Mrs. Lisle belonged. He ordered her, according to the rigour of the old law of treason, to be burned alive that very afternoon.
This monstrous sentence thoroughly roused the inhabitants of the place; and the clergy of the cathedral, the stanchest supporters of the king's beloved arbitrary power, remonstrated with Jeffreys in such a manner, that he consented to a respite of five days, in order that application might be made to the king. The clergy sent a deputation to James, earnestly interceding for the life of the aged woman, on the ground of her generous conduct on all occasions to the king's friends. Ladies of high rank, amongst them the ladies St. John and Abergavenny, pleaded tenderly for her life. Feversham, moved by a bribe of a thousand pounds, joined in the entreaty, but nothing could move that obdurate heart, and all the favour that James would grant her was, that she should be beheaded instead of burnt. Her execution, accordingly, took place at Winchester on the 2nd of September, and James II. won the unenviable notoriety of being the only tyrant in this country, however implacable, who had ever dyed his hands in woman's blood for the merciful deed of attempting to save the lives of the unfortunate. What made this case worse was, that neither Hicks nor Nelthorpe had yet been tried, so that the trial of Mrs. Lisle was altogether illegal, and the forcing of the jury completed one of the most diabolical instances of judicial murder on record.
From Winchester Jeffreys proceeded to Dorchester. He came surrounded by still more troops, and, in fact, rather like a general to take bloody vengeance, than as a judge to make a just example of the guilty, mingled with mercy, on account of the ignorance of the offenders. The ferocious tyrant was rendered more ferocious, from his temper being exasperated by the agonies of the stone which his drunken habits had inflicted on him. He had the court hung with scarlet, as if to announce his sanguinary determination. When the clergyman who preached before him, recommended mercy in his sermon, he was seen to make a horrible grimace, expressive of his savage disdain of such a sentiment. It was whilst preparing to judge the three hundred prisoners collected there, that he received the news of his elevation to the woolsack. He had received orders from James to make effectual work with the rebels, and he now adopted a mode of dispatching the unhappy wretches in a most wholesale style. As it would be a very tedious work to try all that number one by one, he devised a very expeditious plan. He sent two officers to them into the prison, offering them mercy or certain death. All who chose to make confession of their guilt should be treated with clemency, all who refused should be led to immediate execution. His clemency amounted to a respite of a day or two—he hanged them all the same. Writing to Sunderland, Jeffreys said on the 16th of September:—"This day I began with the rebels, and have dispatched ninety-eight." Of the three hundred, two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death. Eighty only were hanged, the rest were, for the most part, sent to the plantations as slaves. Jeffreys had declared that any lawyer or parson found amongst the rebels should be hanged to a certainty, and here he had the pleasure of hanging Matthew Brag, an attorney. One of the prisoners objected to the witnesses brought against him, a prostitute and a papist. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed Jeffreys, "to reflect on the king's evidence. I see thee, villain—I see thee already with the halter around thy neck." Some one told hun that a prisoner was a poor creature, who was maintained by the parish. "Make yourself easy," said Jeffreys; "I will relieve the parish of him."
From Dorchester he proceeded to Exeter, where two hundred and forty-three prisoners awaited their doom. He proceeded in the same way, and condemned the whole body in a batch, and as they saved him much trouble, he did not hang so many of them. Taunton, the capital of Somersetshire, the county where the rebellion was the strongest, presented him with no fewer than a thousand prisoners. Here he perfectly revelled in his bloody task. The work seemed to have the effect of brandy or champagne upon him. He grew every day more exuberant and riotous. He was in ​such a state of excitement from morning to night, that many thought him drunk the whole time. He laughed like a maniac, bellowed, scolded, cut his filthy jokes on the confounded prisoners, and was more like an exulting demon than a man. There were two hundred and thirty-three prisoners hanged, drawn, and quartered in a few days. The whole number hanged in this bloody campaign have been variously stated at from three to seven hundred. Probably the medium is the most correct. But so many were hung in chains, or their jointed quarters and limbs displayed on the highways, village greens, and in the market-places, that the whole country was infected with the intolerable stench. Some of their heads were nailed on the porches of parish churches, the whole district was a perfect Golgotha. It was in vain that the most distinguished people endeavoured to check the infuriated judge's fury, he only turned his evil diatribes on them, and gave them what he called "a lick with the rough side of his tongue." Because lord Stowell, a royalist, complained of the remorseless butchery of the poor people of his neighbourhood, he gibbeted a corpse at his kirk-gate.
That James was perfectly cognisant daily of these proceedings, his own letters to William of Orange too unquivocally testify. On the 24th of September he wrote:—"Lord chief justice has almost done his campaign; he has already condemned several hundreds, some of which are already executed, more are to be, and the others sent to the plantations." Amongst the prisoners were a considerable number of a superior station, but nothing could save them. Abraham Holmes, an aged officer, who had fought under Cromwell, lost an arm at the battle of Sedgemoor, yet when on the way to the gallows, the horses turned restive, and would not go forward, he got out and walked thither, saying, "Stop, gentlemen, there is more in this than you think. The ass saw formerly what the rider could not." A young templar, of the name of Battiscombe, was another victim, whose affianced bride threw herself at Jeffreys' feet to implore his life, but the hideous monster refused her with a jest too detestable for any ears but his own. In another case, the sister of two mere youths, of the name of Hewling, got admittance to the king at Whitehall, to solicit the pardon of the second after the execution of the first. Churchill saw her in the antechamber, and warned her not to hope, for, said he, touching the chimney-piece, "this marble is not harder than the king," and it proved so.
The fate of the transported prisoners was worse than death itself. They were eight hundred and forty in number, and were granted as favours to the courtiers. Jeffreys estimated that they were, on an average, worth from ten pounds to fifteen pounds apiece to the grantee. They were not to be shipped to New England or New Jersey, because the puritan inhabitants might have a sympathy with them on account of their religion, and mitigate the hardship of their lot. They were to go to the West Indies, where they were to be slaves, and not acquire their freedom for ten years. They were transported in small vessels with all the horrors of the slave trade. They were crowded so that they had not room for lying down all at once; were never allowed to go on deck; and in darkness, starvation, and pestiferous stench, they died daily in such quantities, that the loss of one-fifth of them was calculated on. The rest reached the plantations, ghastly, emaciated, and all but lifeless.
The property of these unfortunates, and of those who were put to death, was clutched by Jeffreys, or scrambled for by his myrmidons. Every means was taken by these bullies and informers to terrify the widows and relations out of their substance, and the amount of bribery for pardons or for exemptions from trial, was something enormous. In London, as in the west, the same severity to the poor or obstinate, and extortion from the rich was carried on. Cornish, formerly sheriff of London, was hanged within sight of his own door. Elizabeth Gaunt of Wapping was burnt at Tyburn, for giving refuge to one Burton after the battle of Sedgemoor, on the evidence of the scoundrel Burton himself; and one Edward Prideaux, arrested on mere suspicion, was frightened out of fifteen thousand pounds, with which Jeffreys bought an estate, which the people named Aceldama, the field of blood. During this time James not only revelled in descriptions of these horrors amongst the courtiers and foreign ministers, but went to Winchester and enjoyed himself at the races. Still more expressive of his approbation, was the éclat with which Jeffreys was received on his return at court, and the parade with which his new honours were gazetted.
Macaulay says, "Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the number of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very much exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have been put to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of 1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more formidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or after the rebellion of 1745, the house of Hanover erred on the side of clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together will appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgraced the bloody assizes."
Even the innocent school girls, many under ten years of age, at Taunton, who had gone in procession to present a banner to Monmouth, at the command of their mistress, were not excused. The queen, who had never preferred a single prayer to her husband for mercy to the victims of this unexampled proscription, was eager to participate in the profit, and had a hundred sentenced men awarded to her, the profit on which was calculated at one thousand pounds. Her maids of honour solicited a share of this blood-money, and had a fine of seven thousand pounds on these poor girls assigned to them. In noticing this disgraceful fact, Macaulay has perpetrated a gross and most unsupported calumny on the celebrated William Penn. He says, "Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, the tory member for Bridgewater, was requested to undertake the office of exacting the ransom. Warre excused himself from taking any part in a transaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested William Penn to act for them, and Penn accepted the commission." Now, it is a grave charge against an historian to say that there is not one word of truth in this most injurious assertion. The charge rests entirely on a ​letter of Sunderland's, addressed to "a Mr. Penne," which Sir James Mackintosh discovered in the state paper office, and not knowing of any other Penn, or Penne, incautiously asserted it to be William Penn. There is no mention whatever of William Penn, no address under that name; and so far from any proof that "Penn accepted it," it is clearly shown by Oldmixon, who did accept and undertake the dirty business, namely, "one Breat, a popish lawyer, and his under agent, one Crane, of Bridgewater."
Now these facts have been fully stated since Macaulay published this, and many other calumnies on the same excellent man, by the "Tablet" newspaper, by W. E. Forster, in a paper now given as preface to Clarkson's "Life of Penn," and followed up by Dixon in another "Life of Penn;" yet in his recent edition of his History, Macaulay, without being able to produce one iota of evidence in support of the flagrant and groundless charge, has still persisted in it, only asking whether William Penn, who had influence at court, or one George Penne, who has been pointed out as the probable man, seeing that he was actually engaged in bargaining for the pardon of one of these prisoners, was most likely to be selected by the queen's women for their agent. In our opinion, the George Penne who was acting in such matters was the most likely; for it was not more likely that Penn would defile his soul with such a thing than Sir Francis Warre. But the thing is not a thing of probability, it is a thing of fact. There is not a title of proof that William Penn "did accept the commission," not even that it was ever offered to him; yet lord Macaulay not only perpetuates the base falsehood, but accompanies it by a baser assurance, that he could produce much worse charges against Penn if he pleased. It is difficult to express our real opinion on such conduct in an historian who, instead of proving what he has asserted, asserts further by innuendo what it is certain he cannot make good. The honourable fame of one of our most virtuous historic characters demanded this brief vindication from us in passing.
The only persons who escaped from this sea of blood were Grey, as we have said, Sir John Cochrane, who had been in Argyll's expedition, Storey, who had been commissary to Monmouth's army, Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson. All these owed their escape to money or their secret services in giving information against their old friends, except Ferguson, who by some means escaped to the continent. On the other hand Bateman, the surgeon who had bled Oates in Newgate after his scourging, and thus saved his life, was, for a mere duty of his profession, arrested, tried, hanged, and quartered.
James now seemed at the summit of his ambition. He had established an actual reign of terror. The dreadful massacre of the west struck dumb the most courageous, and this gloomy tyrant gave full play to his love of cruelty. The nonconformists were everywhere beset by informers, who imprisoned, robbed, and abused them at pleasure. They could only meet for worship in the most obscure places and in the most secret manner. Their houses were broken into and searched on pretence of discovering conventicles. Their ministers were seized and thrust into prison. Baxter was there; Howe was obliged to escape abroad. Never, even in the time of Laud, had the oppression been so universal and crushing. All spirit of resistance appeared to be quenched in terror. The close of the year 1685 was long remembered as one of indescribable and unexampled depression and speechless misery.
James, on the contrary, never was so triumphant. He believed that he had now struck effectual terror into the country, and might rule at will. He had increased the army, and openly declared the necessity of increasing it further. He had in many instances dispensed with the test act in giving many commissions in the army to catholics, and he resolved to abolish both that act and the habeas corpus act. His great design was to restore the Roman religion to full liberty in England; he believed that he was able now to accomplish that daring deed. Parliament was to meet in the beginning of November, and he announced to his cabinet his intention to have the test act repealed by it, or if it refused, to dispense with it by his own authority. This declaration produced the utmost consternation. Halifax, however, was the only member who dared to warn him of the consequences, and avowed that he must be compelled to oppose the measure. James endeavoured to win him over to his views, but finding it vain, determined to dismiss him from office. His more prudent counsellors cautioned him against such an act on the eve of the meeting of parliament, on the ground that Halifax possessed great influence, and might head a dangerous opposition. But James was the last man to see danger ahead, and Halifax ceased to be president of the council. The news was received with astonishment in England, with exultation in Paris, and with discontent at the Hague.
The dismissal of Halifax produced a great sensation out of doors. The opposition gathered new courage. Danby and his party showed themselves early to coalesce with the adherents of Halifax. The whispered assurance that Halifax was dismissed for refusing to betray the test and habeas corpus acts, created general alarm, and even the leading officers of the army did not hesitate to express their disapprobation. Just at this crisis, only a week before parliament would assemble, came the news of the revocation of the edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. This edict had been issued under the ministry of Richelieu, and had closed the long and bloody war betwixt catholic France and its protestant subjects. Under certain restrictions the Huguenots were tolerated, and were contented. But Louis, urged by the Jesuits, had long been infringing on the conditions of the treaty. He had dismissed all Huguenots from his service, had forbade them to be admitted to the profession of the law, and compelled protestant children to be educated by catholics. Now at length he abolished the edict altogether, by which the Huguenots were once more at the mercy of dragoons and ruffian informers and constables. Their ministers were banished, their children torn from them, and sent to be educated in convents. The unhappy people, seeing nothing but destruction before them, fled out of the kingdom on all sides. No less than fifty thousand families were said to have quitted France, some of them of high rank and name, the bulk of them weavers in silk and stuffs, hatters, and artificers of various kinds. Many settled in London, where they introduced silk weaving, and where ​their descendants yet remain, still bearing their French names, in Bethnal Green and Spitalfields. Others carried their manufacturing industry to Saxony, and others emigrated to the Cape as vine growers. Franco, by this blind act of bigotry, lost a host of her best citizens, and had her arts carried to her rivals.
This was a terrible blow to the scheme of James for restoring Romanism to power in England. The public justly said, if a politic monarch like Louis could not refrain at such a serious cost from persecuting protestants, what was England to expect should Romanism gain the ascendancy here, under a bigoted and narrow-minded king like James? James himself saw the full extent of the, to him, inopportune occurrence, and professed to join heartily in the universal outcry of Europe, not excepting the very pope himself, and Spain, the land of Jesuits and inquisitions; for those parties who were suffering from the aggressions of Louis, found it like James, convenient to make an outcry. What more irritated James, was an address which the French clergy in a body had presented to Louis, applauding the deed and declaring that the pious king of England was looking to Louis for his aid in reducing his heretical subjects. This address was read with astonishment and terror by the English people, and James hastened to condemn the revocation of the edict, and to promote and contribute to the relief of the refugees who had sought shelter here. We shall see that this affected sympathy did not last long.
Burning of Elizabeth Gaunt.
On the 9th of November James met his parliament. He congratulated them on the suppression of the rebellion in the west, but observed that it had shown how little dependence could be placed on the militia. It would be necessary to maintain a strong regular force, and that would, of course, require proportionate funds. He had, he observed, admitted some officers to commissions who had not taken the test, but they were such as he could rely on, and he was resolved to continue them there. On their return to their house the lords tamely voted him an address of thanks, but with the commons a demur on this head arose, and a delay of three days was voted before considering an address. This was ominous, and during the interval the ambassadors of Austria and the pope advised James to be careful not to quarrel with the parliament. Barillon, on the contrary, urged him towards the fatality, for which he required little stimulus. If he quarrelled with his parliament, he must become Louis's slave, and leave Austria, Spain, and Italy at his mercy. When the parliament resumed the question, the members, both whigs and tories, who were alike opposed to James's projected aggressions, carefully avoided any irritating topic except that of the army. They took no notice of the atrocities committed in the west; they did not revert to the illegal practices by which members in the interest of government had been returned, but they skilfully proposed improvements in the militia, so as to supersede the necessity of a standing army. When the vote for supply was proposed, the house carried a motion for bringing a bill for rendering the militia more effective before it, and on this motion Seymour of Exeter, a tory, as well as Sir William Temple, Sir John Maynard, who had taken a loading part in the parliamentary struggle against ​Charles I., and was now upwards of eighty years of age, took part, and several officers of the army, including Charles Fox, paymaster of the forces, voted on the popular side of the question. Of course they were dismissed. But the house now having broken the ice, voted an address to the king on the subject of maintaining inviolate the test act. When they went into committee for the supply, the king demanded one million two hundred thousand pounds, the house proposed four hundred thousand pounds. They were afterwards willing to advance the sum to seven hundred thousand pounds, but ministers put the motion for the original sum to the vote, and were defeated. The next day the commons went in procession to "Whitehall, with their Address regarding the test. James received them sullenly, and told them that whatever they pleased to do, he would abide by all his promises. This was saying that he would violate the test act as he had done. On returning to their house, John Coke of Derby said he hoped they were all Englishmen, and were not going to be frightened from their duty by a few high words. As the house had been careful to avoid any expressions disrespectful to the king, they resented this manly but incautious speech, and committed Coke to the Tower. The court took courage at this proceding, but though the commons had not all at once recovered their independent tone, the discontent was strongly fermenting, and though Seymour had at first in vain called on them to examine the abases of the franchise during the last election, they now took up the question, and Sir John Lowther of Cumberland, another tory member, headed this movement. The same spirit in the same day broke out in the lords. Though they had voted thanks for the address, Halifax now contended that that was merely formal, and the earl of Devonshire, William Cavendish, the bosom friend of the late lord Russell, and viscount Mordaunt, afterwards the celebrated earl of Peterborough, proposed to consider the king's speech, and vehemently denounced a standing army. What was still more significant was, that Compton, the bishop of London, a royalist, and the son of a royalist, that earl of Northampton who had fought for Charles I., and who had, moreover, been the educator of the two princesses, not only spoke for himself, but for the whole bench and church, and declared that the constitution, civil and ecclesiastic, was in danger. Here was a quick end of the doctrine of non-resistance. Jeffreys endeavoured to reply to these ominous harangues, but the bully of the bench, where he had it all his own way, here cut a very different figure. He was scarified in a style of refined sarcasm, against which his coarse Billingsgate was worse than harmless; it recoiled upon his own head, and this brutal monster, cowardly as he was insolent, sunk prostrate (before the whole house, and even gave way to a dastardly flood of tears of shame. James, astonished and enraged, but not warned by this first breath of the rising tempest, the next morning hurried to the house of lords and prorogued parliament till the 10th of February; but it never met again, being repeatedly prorogued, till the national spirit arose which drove him from the throne.
The prorogation of parliament was followed by the trial of three whig leaders of eminence. These were Gerard, lord Prandon, the eldest son of the earl of Macclesfield, Hampden, the grandson of the patriot, and Henry Booth, lord Delamere. Hampden and Gerard were accused afresh of having been concerned in the Rye House plot, Delamere of having been in league with Monmouth. Grey, earl of Stamford, had been on the eve of being tried by the peers on a similar charge of concern in the Rye House plot, but the prorogation defeated that, and he was soon after liberated. These were the men against whom Grey had been induced to give information, and who, with Wade and Goodenough, were witnesses. Hampden and Gerard wore tried at the Old Bailey and condemned. But Grey had stipulated that their lives should be safe, and they were redeemed by their relatives at a heavy price. Delamere, as a peer of the realm, was tried by a high court of peers, and as he was accused of having been engaged with Monmouth, his life was in danger. Jeffreys was appointed lord high steward, and he selected thirty peers as triers, all of whom were in politics opposed to Delamere, and half of them ministers and members of the royal household. He did not stop there, but as he had a personal spite against Delamere for having complained of him to parliament when lord chief justice of Chester, and called him a drunken jackpudding, he did his best personally to condemn him. But spite of the murderous bias with which the villainous judge had contrived the prisoner's death, the lord triers unanimously acquitted him. This was a fact that equally electrified James and the country. Both saw that there was a spirit abroad that was no longer to be trifled with. The public openly rejoiced; the infatuated tyrant raged, but took no warning. The very tories who had carried the crown hitherto through every attempt, the established church which had preached non-resistance, saw the gulf, to the edge of which their principles had brought them. Their loyalty paused at the threshold of Romanism, and the destruction of the safeguards of the liberty of the subject. The deadly artifices which an abandoned judge and a lawless monarch had employed against the life of Delamere, might soon be practised against every one of them. The spell of despotism, therefore, was broken. The spirit of an unconquerable suspicion had reached the very cabinet and the household of the Romish king, and his power was at an end.
But the greater the danger the more recklessly the bigotry-blinded monarch rushed upon it. His father had been bent on destroying the constitution, but stood firm to the Anglican church; James was resolved to root out both church and constitution together; but to his narrow intellect it never occurred that if his father lost his head in attempting half this impossible enterprise, his danger was double in aiming at the whole. At the very beginning of the year 1686 he took a sudden stride in the direction of avowed Romanism, and during the whole year he marched forward with an insane hardihood that struck the boldest and most adventurous of his friends with consternation. The fact as to whether Charles II. had died a catholic or protestant was still a matter of dispute. A few knew the truth, more surmised, but the bulk of the people still believed him to have been a protestant. James determined to sweep away the remaining delusion. He therefore brought forth the two papers from Charles's strong box, and challenged the whole bench of bishops to refute them. He especially called on Sancroft, ​the archbishop of Canterbury, to do it; but as the primate from policy declined it, James took it for granted that they were secretly admitted to be unanswerable. He therefore had them printed in magnificent style, and appended to them his own signature, asserting that they were his late brother's own competition, and left in his own handwriting. He had this proof of Charles's Romanism distribute liberally to his courtiers, to the prelates and dignitaries of the church, and amongst the people, even delivering them out of his coach-window to the crowds as he drove about. He thus at once made known that his late brother had been secretly a Romanist, and that he was himself an open and uncompromising one.
His next step was to throw all the power of the government into the hands of the most unscrupulous catholics. His brother-in-law, Rochester, the lord treasurer, was nominally his prime minister, but Sunderland and a knot of catholics were the really ruling junto. Sunderland, one of the basest men that ever crawled in the dust of a court's corruption, was the head of this secret cabal. Sunderland, in the last reign, had been a violent exclusionist. He had intrigued with the duchess of Portsmouth, through her, if possible, to bring Charles to consent to this measure; but so soon as James was on the throne, he became his most servile tool, declaring that as he had nothing to hope but from the king's clemency and his own efforts to make compensation for the past, James could have no more efficient servant. James, who was a mean soul himself, did not spurn this meanness, but made use of it, and truly Sunderland earned his dirty bread. Avarice was his master vice, and he would have sold two souls for money if he had them. He retained the post of president of the council, and held with it his old one of secretary of state; whilst observing the course which James was taking, he did not despair to wrest from the stanch protestant Rochester his still more lucrative office of lord treasurer. He had not the foresight to perceive—what Mammon, always looking on the money bags, has—that the project which James entertained to restore Romanism must bring a speedy destruction on them all. This sordid minister was at the same time in the pay of Louis, at the rate of six thousand pounds a year, to betray all his master's most secret counsels to him. With Sunderland was associated in the secret Romish junta—Sunderland himself not being an avowed catholic, but a secret professor—some of those catholic lords who had been imprisoned on account of the popish plots—Arundel, Bellasis, and William Herbert, earl of Powis. To these were added Castlemaine, the man who for a title and revenue had sold his wife to Charles II. He had been imprisoned, too, on account of the popish plot and was ready to take vengeance by assisting to destroy his protestant enemies and their church together. With him were associated two of the most profligate and characterless men of that profligate age—Jermyn, celebrated for his duels and his licentious intrigues, and lately created by James lord Dover, and a man familiarly named Dick Talbot—whom James had also for these crimes, which were merits in James's eyes, made earl of Tyrconnel. These merits were, that Talbot was ready for any service of unmanly villainy that his master could desire. Like another prime favourite and associate of James, lord chancellor Jeffreys, Tyrconnel was notorious for his drinking, gambling, lying, swearing, bullying, and debauchery. He was equally ready to lie away a woman's character or to assassinate a hotter man than himself. In the last reign, when it was desired by the court to ruin the character of James's wife, Anne Hyde, that she might be got rid of, with colonel Berkeley he joined in the infamous association that they had had the most familiar intrigues with her. When they did not succeed with James, they as readily confessed that the whole was a lie. A man with the least spark of honour in him would have remembered this unpardonable villainy to his now deceased wife, and have banished the wretch from court. James promoted him, and made him one of his most intimate companions. Tyrconnel ordered to murder the duke of Ormond, and was rewarded for his readiness by being made commander of the forces in Ireland; but his services were chiefly at present demanded at court, where he occupied the same post as Chiffinch had discharged for Charles II.—that of royal pander.
To this precious cabal was added father Petre, the Jesuit provincial, brother of lord Petre, and the organ of the Jesuits at court. The pope, too, had his agents at court, Adda, his nuncio, and a vicar apostolic, but these advocated cautious measures, for Innocent XI. had a difficult card to play in the popedom. Louis, the greatest of the catholic kings, was the most dangerous enemy of the temporal power of the pope, as of every other temporal power, and the Jesuits were all at variance with him, because he leaned toward the Jansenist party, which at this time was in the ascendancy, through the triumphant attacks on the Jesuits of Pascal in his "Lettres d'un Provincale." The Jesuits, on the contrary, advocated all James's views. These generally subtle men seemed driven, by their falling estimation all over Europe, to clutch at a hope of power here, and they had at all times been famed for their sly policy of insinuation than for their caution and moderation when successful. For their high-handed proceedings they had then, as they have since, been driven again and again from almost every Christian country. They did not display more than their ordinary foresight in the affairs of James.
But we should not possess a complete view of the position and character of James's court if we did not take in a few other actors, the French king's agents, and the king's mistresses. To Barillon, who had so long been ambassador at the English court, and the agent of Louis's bribes, the French king had sent over Bonrepaux; and whilst Barillon attached himself to Sunderland and the secret catholic cabal, Bonrepaux devoted his attentions to Rochester and his section of the ministry, so that Louis learned the minutest movements and opinions of both parties. These parties, in their turn, made use of the king's mistresses, for James, although in disposition the very opposite of the gay Charles, was, with all his moroseness and profession of zealous piety, just as loose in his adulteries, and much more disgusting. James, amongst his other depraved tastes, had a particular fancy for ugly women. Ugliness was as piquant to him as beauty to other men. He chose his first wife, though possessed of no recommendations of birth or family, from among the plainest women of the court; and his mistresses, ​and he had a number of them, were so excessively homely, that Charles used laughingly to say that his confessor must have prescribed them as penances for him. His chief mistress, in his first wife's lifetime, was Arabella Churchill, the plain sister of the after duke of Marlborough. His present wife, Mary of Modena, was young, handsome, and spirited, but these qualities had no attraction for James, who was now the abject slave of Catherine Sedley, the bold and clever but ugly daughter of the profligate wit and poet, Sir Charles Sedley. The homely but acute Sedley used to ridicule James's fancy for her and her uncomely sisters of his harem, saying, " We are none of us handsome, and it cannot be our wit that he likes us for, for if we had wit, he has not enough himself to find it out."
With the aid of the council of his catholic cabal, James now began in earnest to put down protestantism in this kingdom, and restore Romanism. As there was no hope of money from a parliament, he made his peace with the king of France, stooped his shoulder to the burden, and became once more a servant unto tribute. He abandoned all the best interests of England, apologised to Lotus for having received the Huguenots, and took measures to defeat the very subscription in their favour which he had commenced and recommended. He arrested John Claude, one of the refugees who had published an account of the persecutions of the Huguenots by Louis, and caused his book to be publicly burnt. Spite of this, and of his open discouragement, the subscription amounted to forty thousand pounds, but he took good care that the unfortunate Huguenots should never get the money, by ordering every one who applied for it to first take the sacrament according to the Anglican ritual, which he knew differed so much from their own mode, as to form an effectual bar, which it did. And this was the man who complained of the test act as a violation of conscience. He had himself dispensed with this act in open defiance of the law, but he now sought to obtain a sanction from the judges for the breach of the act. To parliament he dare not appeal; he therefore called on the twelve judges to declare that he possessed this dispensing power as part of his prerogative. The judges to a man refused; he dismissed them, and appointed more pliant ones. But the law officers of the crown were equally stubborn. Sawyer, the attorney-general, told the king that he dared not do it, for it was not to abolish a statute, but the whole statute law from the accession of Elizabeth. Sawyer was too useful to be dismissed, but Heneage Finch, the solicitor-general, was turned out, and Powis, a barrister of no mark, put in his place. A case was immediately tried in the court of King's Bench, to obtain the judges' sanction. Sir Edward Hales was formally prosecuted for holding a commission in the army, being a catholic; but the lord chief justice, Sir Edward Herbert, took the opinion of the new judges upon it, which was, that the king possessed the power to dispense with the act, and judgment was given accordingly. No sooner was James in possession of this decision of the King's Bench, than he appointed the four catholic lords of his secret cabal members of the privy council—namely, Arundel, Bellasis, Powis, and Dover.
Having perpetrated this daring act in the conned, James hastened to exercise the same power in the church. Encouraged by the known opinions and intentions of the king, several clergymen who had outwardly conformed to the church of England and held livings, now threw off the mask and proclaimed themselves of the catholic church, and applied to James to authorise them still to hold their livings. These were Obadiah Walker, master of University College, Oxford; Boyce, Dean, and Bernard, fellows of different colleges; and Edward Selater, curate of Putney and Esher. The king granted them dispensations to hold their livings, spite of their avowed conversion to the doctrines of another church, on the plea that he would not oppress their consciences. But to support men in holding livings in a church which, they had abandoned was so outrageous a violation of that church's conscience, that if was impossible long to be submitted to. James, in his very contracted mind, imagined that, because the bishops and ministers had so zealously advocated absolute submission to his will, they would practise it. How little could he have read human nature. Of these sudden converts, Selater and Walker as suddenly reconverted themselves at the revolution.
James having now his hand in, went on boldly He had permitted professed converts to Catholicism to retain their protestant livings, he next appointed a catholic to a church dignity. John Massey, a fellow of Merton, who had gone over to Rome, was, in violation of every local and national statute, appointed dean of Christchurch. Massey at once erected an altar and celebrated mass in the cathedral of Christchurch, and James told the pope's nuncio that the same should soon be the case in Cambridge. It remained now only to fill the sees of the church with catholic bishops as they fell vacant; and to enable him to do that, it was necessary, in the first place, to possess himself of a power in the church like that which he had assumed in the state. He must have a tribunal before which he could summon any refractory clergy, as he could now by his pliant judges control any appeal to the bench. He therefore determined to revive the Court of High Commission, that terrible engine of the Tudors and the Stuarts, which the Long Parliament had put down. This court had power not only to cite any clergyman before it who dared to preach or publish anything reflecting on the views or measures of the king, but "to correct, amend, and alter the statutes of the universities, churches, and schools," or where the statutes were bad to make new ones, and the powers of the commission were declared to be effectual for these purposes, "notwithstanding any law or statute to the contrary." In fact, all the old powers of the High Commission were revived, and the same device and motto were adopted on the seal.
This was a direct and during declaration of war on the church. The act of supremacy was thus turned against it, and every clergyman, professor, and schoolmaster, from the primate to the simple curate and tutor, were laid at the mercy of this insane tyrant. The alarm of the whole court and country, when this astounding fact was made known, was indescribable. The stanchest courtiers trembled at the temerity of the monarch: the French ministers and the Jesuits alone applauded. The new and terrible power of the ​tribunal was quickly brought into play. The commission was made known about the middle of July, and seven commissioners named. At their head stood the horrible Jeffreys, who was now to display his truculent spirit in the character of a grand inquisitor. The six other commissioners were archbishop Bancroft, bishops Crewe of Durham and Sprat of Rochester, lords Rochester, Sunderland, and the chief justice Herbert. Sancroft excused himself acting on the plea of ill health, and James in anger immediately ordered him to be omitted in the summons to the privy council, saying if his health were too bad to attend the commission, it was equally so to attend the council, and Cartwright, bishop of Chester, was put in the commission in his stead. Those pliant churchmen and courtiers were quickly shown what work they had to do. Amongst the clergymen who had ventured to preach against the Roman church, and to reply to the attacks which the Romish preachers were now emboldened to make on the Anglican church, beginning at Whitehall itself, Sharp, dean of Norwich, and one of the royal chaplains, had been honest enough to defend his own faith, and expose the errors of Rome in a sermon at his own church of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. Compton, the bishop of London, was immediately called upon by Sunderland to suspend him. But Compton, though he had lately fallen under the royal displeasure for opposing James's designs in the house of lords, and had been dismissed from the privy council, and from his post of dean of the royal chapel, replied that he could not suspend Sharp without hearing him in his defence. Thereupon Compton was at once summoned before the new commissioners. He demurred, declared the court illegal, that he was a prelate, and amenable only to his peers in the church, or, as lord of parliament, to his peers in parliament. Consenting, however, at length to appear, he was abruptly asked by Jeffreys why he had not suspended Sharp. Compton demanded a copy of the commission, to see by what right they summoned him. This roused the base blood of Jeffreys, who began to insult the prelate, as he had done many a good man before, declaring that he would take another course with him; but the rest of the commissioners recalled the brutal bully to a sense of the respect due to the bishop. After the hearing of the case, Rochester, Herbert, and Sprat declared for his acquittal; but James, enraged at his treasurer, vowed if he did not give his vote against Compton, he would dismiss him from his office. The place-loving minister gave way. Compton was suspended from his spiritual functions, but dared the court to touch his revenues; and the chief justice warned James, that did he attempt to seize them, he would be defeated at common law. For awhile, therefore, James was obliged to restrain his proceedings till, as he resolved, he had put the laws more completely under his feet.
But enough had already been done to produce a change such as never had been seen in England since the days of queen Mary. Encouraged by the king's countenance and proceedings, the catholics now openly set at nought all the severe laws against them, their chapels, and priests. Though it was still death by the law for any Romish clergyman to appear in England, and all meeting of catholics were forbidden for worship under the severest penalties, the streets now swanned with the clergy in full canonicals, and popish chapels were opened in every part of the kingdom. The protestant public gazed in astonishment at sights which neither they nor their fathers had beheld in England. The frieze cowls, and girdles of rope, crosses, and rosaries, passed before them as apparitions of an almost fabulous time. James threw open the old chapel at St. James's, when a throng of Benedictine monks located themselves. He built for himself a public chapel at Whitehall, and induced Sandford, an Englishman, but the envoy of the prince palatine, to open a third in the city. A brotherhood of Franciscans established themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields: another of Carmelites appeared in the city; a convent was founded in Clerkenwell, on the site of the ancient cloister of St. John, and a Jesuit church and school were opened in the Savoy, under a rector named Palmer.
The same ominous change appeared all over the country, especially in those districts where catholics were numerous. But neither in town nor country were the common people disposed to see the whole empire of popery thus restored. They assembled and attacked the catholics going into their chapels, insulted them, knocked down their crosses and images, and turned them into the streets. Hence riots ran high and fiercely in London, Worcester, Coventry, and other places. The lord mayor ordered the chapel of the prince palatine in Lime Street to be closed, but he was severely threatened by the king and Jeffreys. The mob then took the matter into their hands; they attacked the chapel at high mass, drove out the people and priests, and set the cross on the parish pump. It was in vain that the train bands were ordered out to quell the riot, they refused to fight for popery.
But this spirit, which would have caused a wiser monarch to pause, only incensed James, and he assembled an army of thirteen thousand men on Hounslow Heath to overawe the city, and conveyed thither twenty-six pieces of artillery, and ample supplies of ammunition from the Tower. But it boded little prospect of support from his army that the people of London immediately fraternised with it, and the camp became the great holiday resort of all classes, resembling, in the strange concourse of strange characters who appeared there, Schiller's description of the camp of Wallenstein. James, however, was proud of his army, and flattered himself that from his having formerly been a general in the French service, he could command it to some purpose. But there were as clever tacticians as himself at work. He allowed mass to be publicly celebrated in the tent of lord Dumbarton, the second in command, and this with the known fact that many officers were catholics, and the sight of priests and friars strolling about amongst the tents roused the zeal of protestant patriots. Foremost amongst these was Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had been chaplain to lord Russell, and was a man of the most liberal ideas of government, and a sturdy champion of protestantism. In the last reign he had written a severe satire on James, under the title of "Julian the Apostate," in which he drew a vigorous, parallel betwixt the Roman apostate and the English one. Julian, according to him, an idolater even when he pretended not to be, was a persecutor when he pretended freedom of conscience, and robbed cities of their municipal charters, which were zealous for the true faith. For this ​daring philippic he was prosecuted and imprisoned in the King's Bench, but this did not prevent him from still making war on the popish prince. Julian Johnson, as he was called, had found, while imprisoned in the King's Bench, congenial society in the companionship of a fellow-prisoner, whose name was Hugh Speke. This man, Speke, being of a gloomy, seditious temperament, furnished Julian Johnson with money to print, and encouraged him by every kind of argument in endeavouring to excite in the Hounslow camp an active spirit of hostility to the Romish schemers. Thereupon Johnson wrote and published a stirring address to the soldiers, which was distributed in thousands amongst the army There could be no mistake concerning the style of this document, even if the writer and his friend had kept their counsel, as they did not. The publication was speedily traced to Johnson, who was thereupon brought up to the bar of the King's Bench, and, after a long examination, condemned to stand three times in the pillory, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, and to pay a fine of five hundred marks.
William of Orange.
MONMOUTH EXCHANGING CLOTHES WITH A SHEPHERD.
Though the clergy blamed Johnson, and stood aloof from him as a firebrand, because he preached resistance to popery, which they were soon to do themselves, they were now loud in all their pulpits in replying to its attacks, and exposing its lying legends, and all its mummery of relics, its tricks of priestcraft, its denial of the Scriptures and the cup to the laity, the celibacy of the clergy, the abuse of the confessional, and the idolatry of image worship, and prayers to saints. Distinguished amongst these declaimers were Tillotson, Tenison, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Prideaux, Wake, Atterbury, and many lessor lights in the pulpit, and through the presses of the universities, Obadiah Walker being for the time especially zealous with his types at Oxford. The catholics, under royal patronage, replied as actively, and the war of pamphlets and pulpits foreshadowed a war of actual arms. James, as blind to all signs of the times as his father had been, went insanely on his way, now eagerly endeavouring to convert his daughter Anne, and now as resolutely scheming to deprive his daughter Mary of the succession. In Scotland and Ireland his crusade against the constitution of the realm and the protestant religion was squally fierce and reckless.
To Scotland James sent down orders to the government to dispense with the test and admit catholics to all offices, and nothing was to be published without the chancellor's licence, so that no reflections might be made on the catholic religion or the king's order. The duke of Queensberry—who was lord treasurer, and therefore regarded as prime minister—though a tory, declared that he would not undertake to do anything against the protestant religion, but there were not wanting sycophants who were ready to attempt just what the king pleased, in the hope of supplanting Queensberry. There were lord Perth, the, chancellor, and his brother lord Melfort, secretary of state. They went over to Romanism as a moans of preferment, and were imitated by the earl of Murray, a descendant of the regent, and a member of the privy council. Perth opened a catholic chapel in his house, and soon received a cargo of priests' dresses, images, crosses, and rosaries. The incensed mob attacked the house during mass, tore down the iron bars from the windows, chased the worshippers from their shrine, and pelted lady Perth with mud. The soldiers were called out, and considerable bloodshed followed. James, irritated instead of being warned, sent down orders to punish the rioters severely, and to screen the catholics from all penalties, but to renew the persecution of the covenanters with all rigour. Alarmed at these insensate orders, three members of the privy council, the duke of Hamilton, Sir George; Lockhart, and general Drummond hastened up to London to: explain to James the impossibility of enforcing such orders, but made no impression.
On the 29th of April the time arrived for the meeting of the Scottish parliament, when a letter from James was read calling on the estates to pass a bill freeing the catholics from all penalties; but so far from the parliament accepting such a proposition, the lords of the articles, whose business it was to introduce the propositions for now measures, and who had been chosen by James himself, declined to comply with the proposal. In vain they were urged by Perth, Melfort, and Murray; they remained refractory for three weeks, and then only desired to recommend that the catholics should be permitted to worship in their own houses. But even this the parliament would not consent to, and, after a week's debate, threw out even this very much modified scheme. James, who had during this discussion seen the intense anxiety in England to learn the news of the progress of the debate, perpetrated one of the most audacious acts of arbitrary power that modern times have witnessed. He sent for the mail bags from the north regularly, and detained all correspondence thence till the matter was ended. No single Scotch letter was issued in London for a whole week.
When at length the news, spite of him, burst forth amid loud rejoicings, he was enraged, but, like his father, he declared that he would do by his own royal authority what he wanted. That he had been only foolish in asking for what the act of supremacy gave him in Scotland as perfectly as in England. He therefore launched the bolts of his vengeance at all those in office who had disputed his will. Queensberry was dismissed from all his offices, the bishop of Dunkeld ejected from his see, and crowds of papists were appointed to the offices of those who had refused to obey the royal mandate. Without the ceremony of an act of parliament, James proceeded to usurp the rights of boroughs, and to appoint mayors and town councillors at his will; he ordered the judges to declare all the laws against catholics void, and announced his intention of fitting up a Roman catholic chapel in Holyrood. These measures struck a momentary terror and deep silence into the Scottish people, but it was the silence only preceding the storm.
In Ireland James had a preponderating body of catholics eager to receive justice and the restoration of their estates at his hands. But only a wise and cautious monarch could succeed in making decent recompense to the native Irish for their many sufferings and spoliations. Their lands, by the act of settlement, were for the most part in the hands of a sturdy race of Englishmen, both episcopalians and presbyterians, who had been placed there at successive periods, and extensively by the commonwealth. To announce that he would repeal this act, and reinvest the natives with their ancient demesnes, was at once to rouse to arms a body of such pluck and nerve as the Celtic race had no chance with, notwithstanding their numbers. At the news that the act was to be revoked, and the church and government of Ireland to be put into the hands of catholics, the timid English gentry fled, the trade of the island received ​a paralysing blow, and the sturdy Saxon population prepared not only to defend their possessions, but to exterminate, if necessary, the aboriginal tribes.
Clarendon, the lord-lieutenant, the brother of Rochester, the prime minister of England, in great alarm wrote to James, detailing the immediate effects of this announcement, but James persisted in his obstinate course. He declared that the protestants were his enemies, and that it was necessary to fortify himself with his friends. That his father had lost his head by conceding—he should have said by conceding too late—and that he would concede nothing, he went on putting catholics info the privy council, into the corporations and the army, dismissing protestants to make room for them. He then sent out Tyrconnel, as his unscrupulous instrument, to occupy the post already his, the head of the army; he was at the same time furnished with instructions to take virtually all the functions of government into his hands, and reduce Clarendon to a cipher. Clarendon, like all the Hydes, was meanly attached to office and its emoluments, or he would at once have resigned rather than suffer the indignity of beholding his office usurped by a bullying ruffian like Tyrconnel. This desperate gambler, duellist, and debauchée, soon began to talk of the act of settlement as a damned and villainous thing; set about remodelling the army so as to exclude all protestants, and replace them by catholics; officers and men of the protestant faith were dismissed by wholesale; he was in league with the priests to drill the whole papist population, so as to confer the whole power of the island on them, and place every protestant throat at their mercy. In a very few weeks he had introduced two thousand popish soldiers into the army, and gave out that by Christmas the whole of the troops would be native catholic. In the church and the state he pushed on rudely the same measures, and with a violence of conduct and of language which appeared more like drunken madness than anything else. Taking the cue from him, and instructed by the priests, everybody treated Clarendon with marked insult and contempt. Still clinging meanly to office, he appealed to his brother in London to obtain for him more honourable treatment, but was thunderstruck by the news that Rochester himself was dismissed.
Rochester, the champion to whom the protestants of the Anglican church looked up for aid, had himself as meanly as his brother disgraced himself by suffering his honour to be compromised by the love of office and income. he saw the career which James was running, and which no remonstrance or popular menace Could arrest, and instead of resigning with dignity when his counsels became useless, he had even flattered James with the hope of his conversion. But he did not deceive the Jesuit cabal which surrounded and governed James. They assured the king that nothing would ever make Rochester a genuine supporter of catholic views, and the sooner he cut himself loose from the connection the better. Accordingly, on the 19th of December, the king, with many professions of regard, took from his brother-in-law Rochester the treasurer's staff, but softened his fall by granting him out of the estate of lord Grey's lands to the yearly value of seventeen hundred pounds, and an annuity of four thousand pounds for his own life and that of his son. He was spared also the mortification of seeing his rival Sunderland invested with his office; the treasurership was put in commission; lord Arundel received the privy seal, and Bellasis was made first lord of the treasury. whilst Dover, a ruined gambler, and Godolphin received places at the board.
The fall of Clarendon followed rapidly on that of Rochester. On the 8th of January, 1687, he received the order to resign his post to Tyrcounel. Such was the panic at this news, that no less than fifteen hundred families of gentlemen, merchants, and tradesmen, are said to have fled from Dublin to England in a week, and a reign of terror commenced all over Ireland. The known intentions of the king, and the character of his lord lieutenant, were the signals for proscription to all protestants, and they were turned out of the army, the offices of state, from the bench, and the magistracy, with an indecency which astonished the moderate catholics themselves. Law and justice appeared to be at an end. The worst passions of a population long loaded with every species of injustice were let loose, and the long dominant race now saw themselves the objects of unconcealed hatred and recrimination. The wild population drove off their cattle, set fire to their houses, and the newly-raised soldiery devoted themselves with the gusto of vengeance to pillaging, murdering, and outraging the protestant settlers with a frightful exultation.
Such were the ominous circumstances under which opened the year 1687. By driving from him his relatives, the Hydes, James had severed the last ties betwixt him and protestantism; had demolished the last guarantees of protestant security. The whole protestant public, and many of the more clear-sighted catholics, looked forward with an awful sense of impending mischief, and they were only too correct in their apprehensions.