The Kansas herald of freedom., 1855-02-03
Disceiiaqeops.
Jehreys, the Infamous Tory Judge Of
Charles u.

Jefreys, the Infamous Tory Judge OF
Charles u
The great seal was left in Guilford's
custody but a marked indignity was,
at the same time, offered to him. 1t was
determined that another lawyer of more
vigor and audaeity should be called to
assist in the administration. The person
selected was Sir George Jefreys, chief
justice of the court of kings bench
The depravity of this man has passed in
TO a proverb. Both the great English
parties have attacked his memory with
emulous violence; for the wings consid-
cred him as their most barbarous enemy;
and the tories found it convenient to
throw on him all the blame of the crimes
which had gullied their triumph. A,
diligent and candid inquiry will show
that some frightful stories which had
been told concerning him are false or ex-
aggerated: yet the dispassionate histo-
rian will be able to make very little de-
duction from the vast mass of infamy
which the memory of the wicked Judge
has been loaded.
He was man of quick and vigorous
parts, but constitutionaIly prone to inso-
lence and to the angry passions. When
just emerging from boyhood, he had
risen into practice at Old Bailey Bar-a
bar where advocates have always used a
license of tongue unknown in the West
minister Hall. Here, during many years,
his chief business was to examine and
cross-examine the most hardened mis-
creants of a great capital. Daily conflicts
with prostitutes and thieves called out
and exercised his powers so efectually
that he became the most consummate
bully ever known in his profession. All
tenderness for the feelings of others, all
self-respect, all sense of the becoming,
were obliterated from his mind. He ac-
quired a boundless command Of the
rhetoric In which the vulgar express
hatred and contempt. The profusion of
maledictions and vituperatiye epithets,
which composed his vocabulary, could
hardly have been rivaled In the fish
market or the bear garden. His counte-
nance and his voice must always have
been unamisble; but those natural ad-
vantages-for such he seems to have
thought ther-he had improved to such
degrees that there were few who, in his
paroxysms of rage, could see orhear him
without emotion.
Impudence and ferocity sat upon his
brow. The glare of his eyes had fasci-
nation for the unhappy victim on whom
they were fixed, yet his brow and eyes
were said to be less terrible than the saw
age lines of his mouth. His yenof fury,
as was said by one who had often heard
it, sounded like the thunder of the Judg-
ment day. These qualifications he car
ried, while still young man, from the
bar to the bench. Heearl y became COM
mon sergeant, and then recorder of Lon
don. As Judge of the city sessions, he
exhibited the same propensities, which
.afterwsrd, in a higher post, gained for
him an unenviable Immortality. Already
might be remarked in him the most odi-
GUS vice which is incident to human ma
ture, a delight in misery merely as mise
~. There was fiendish exultation In
the way in which he pronounced sentence
on offenders. Their weeping and i'm
ploring seemed to titilate him voluptuous-
Iy; and he loved 70 scare them into fits
by dilating with luxuriant amplifcations
on all the details of what they were to
suffer. Thus, when he had an opportu-
nifty of ordering an unlucky adventures
to be whipped at the carts tail: Hang
-maa," he would exclaim, "I / charge you
to pay particular attention to this lady
Scourge her till the blood runs down !! 1t
is Christmas cold time for madam to
strip in! See that you warm her shoul-
,ders thoroughly y He was hardly less
facetious when he passed judgment on
Ludowick Muggieton, the drunken tailor,
who fancied himself a prophet. "Im-
pudent rogue T" roared Jeffreys, " thou
shalt have an easy, easy, easy punish
ment!' One part of this punishment
was the pillory, in which the wretched
fanatic was almost killed with briekbats.
BY this time the nature of Jeffreys had
been hardened to the temper which ty-
rants require in their worst implements.
He had hitherto looked for professional
advancement to the corporation of Lon
don. He had there confessed himself q
Roundhead. and had always appeared to
be IN higher state of exhileration when
ne explained to popish priests that they
were to be cut down alive, and were to
See their own bodies burned, than zhap