Chapter XV: George Jeffreys.114 (3)

Accordingly, Compton, Bishop of London, moved "that a day might be appointed for taking his majesty's speech into consideration," and said "that he spoke the united sentiments of the Episcopal bench when he pronounced the test act the chief security of the established church." This raised a very long and most animated debate, at which King James, to his great mortification, was present. Sunderland, and the popishly inclined ministers, objected to the regularity of the proceeding, urging that, having given thanks for the speech, they must be taken to have already considered it, and precluded themselves from finding fault with any part of it. The lords Halifax, Nottingham, and Mordaunt, on the other side, treated with scorn the notion that the constitution was to be sacrificed to a point of form, and, entering into the merits of the question, showed that if the power which the sovereign now, for the first time, had openly claimed were conceded to him, the rights, privileges, and property of the nation lay at his mercy.

At last the lord chancellor left the woolsack, and not only bitterly attacked the regularity of the motion after a unanimous vote of thanks to the king for his speech, but gallantly insisted on the legality and expediency of the power of the sovereign to dispense with laws for the safety and benefit of the state. No lord chancellor ever made such an unfortunate exhibition. He assumed the same arrogant and overbearing tone with which he had been accustomed from the bench to browbeat juries, counsel, witnesses, and prisoners, and he launched out into the most indecent personalities against his opponents. He was soon taught to know his place, and that frowns, noise, and menaces would not pass for arguments there. While he spoke he was heard with marked disgust by all parts of the house; when he sat down, being required to retract his words by those whom he had assailed, and finding all the sympathies of the House against him, he made to each of them an abject apology, "and he proved by his behavior that insolence, when checked, naturally sinks into meanness and cowardice."

The ministerialists being afraid to divide the House, Monday following, the 23d of November, was fixed for taking the king's speech into consideration. But a similar disposition having been shown by the other House, before that day Parliament was prorogued, and no other national council met till the Convention Parliament, after the landing of King William.

James, far from abandoning his plans, was more resolute to carry them into effect. The Earl of Rochester, his own brother-in-law, and others who had hitherto stood by him, having in vain remonstrated against his madness, resigned their offices; but Jeffreys still recklessly pushed him forward in his headlong career. In open violation of the test act, four Catholic lords were introduced into the cabinet, and one of them, Lord Bellasis, was placed at the head of the treasury in the room of the Protestant Earl of Rochester. Among such colleagues the lord chancellor was contented to sit in council, and the wonder is that he did not follow the example of Sunderland and other renegades, who at this time, to please the king, professed to change their religion, and were reconciled to the church of Rome. Perhaps, with his peculiar sagacity, Jeffreys thought it would be a greater sacrifice in the king's eyes to appear to be daily wounding his conscience by submitting to measures which he must be supposed inwardly to condemn.

As a grand _coup d'état_, he undertook to obtain a solemn decision of the judges in favor of the dispensing power,[138] and for this purpose a fictitious action was brought against Sir Edward Hales, the lieutenant of the Tower, an avowed Roman Catholic, in the name of his coachman, for holding an office in the army without having taken the oath of supremacy, or received the sacrament according to the rites of the church of England, or signed the declaration against transubstantiation. Jeffreys had put the great seal to letters patent, authorizing him to hold the office without these tests, "_non obstante_" the act of Parliament. This dispensation was pleaded in bar of the action, and upon a demurrer to the plea, after a sham argument by counsel, all the judges except one (Baron Street) held the plea to be sufficient, and pronounced judgment for the defendant. It was now proclaimed at court that the law was not any longer an obstacle to any scheme that might be thought advisable.

The Earl of Castlemaine was sent to Rome, regularly commissioned as ambassador to his holiness the pope, a papal nuncio being reciprocally received at St. James's. But assuming that religion was not embraced in the negotiations between the two courts, however impolitic the proceeding might be, I do not think that the king and the chancellor are liable to be blamed, as they have been by recent historians, for having in this instance violated acts of Parliament. If all those are examined which had passed from the commencement of the reformation down to the "Bill of Rights," it will probably be found that none of them can be applied to a mere diplomatic intercourse with the pope, however stringent their provisions may be against receiving bulls or doing any thing in derogation of the king's supremacy.[139]

There can be no doubt of the illegality of the next measure of the king and the chancellor. The Court of High Commission was revived with some slight modification, although it had been abolished in the reign of Charles I. by an act of Parliament, which forbade the erection of any similar court; and Jeffreys, having deliberately put the great seal to the patent creating this new arbitrary tribunal, undertook to preside in it. The commissioners were vested with unlimited jurisdiction over the church of England, and were empowered, even in cases of suspicion, to proceed inquisitorially, like the abolished court, "_notwithstanding any law or statute to the contrary_." The object was to have all ecclesiastics under complete control, lest any of them should oppose the intended innovations in religion.[140]

Jeffreys selected as his first victims, Sharp, rector of St. Giles's, called the "railing parson," who had made himself very obnoxious to the government by inveighing against the errors of Popery--and Compton, Bishop of London, his diocesan, who had raised the storm against the dispensing power in the House of Lords. A mandate was issued to the bishop to suspend the rector, and this being declined on the ground that no man can be lawfully condemned till he has been heard in his defence, both were summoned before the high commission.

The bishop appearing, and being asked by the chancellor why he had not obeyed the king's orders by suspending Dr. Sharp, prayed time to prepare his defence, as his counsel were on the circuit, and he begged to have a copy of the commission. A week's time was given; but as to the commission, he was told "all the coffee-houses had it for a penny." On the eighth day the business was resumed; but the bishop still said he was unprepared, having great difficulty to procure a copy of the commission; when the chancellor made him a bantering apology. "My lord, in telling you our commission was to be seen in every coffee-house, I did not speak with any design to reflect on your lordship, as if you were a haunter of coffee-houses. I abhor the thoughts of it!" A further indulgence of a fortnight was granted.

At the day appointed, the bishop again appeared with four doctors of the civil law, who were so frightened, that they hardly dared to say a word for him; but he himself firmly, though mildly, argued, "that he had acted _jurisperitorum consilio_, and could not have had any bad motive; that he should not have been justified in obeying an illegal order; that he had privately recommended to Dr. Sharp not to preach; that this advice had been followed, so that the king's wish was complied with; and that if he had committed any fault, he ought to be tried for it before his archbishop and brother bishops."

Several of the commissioners were inclined to let him off with an admonition; but Jeffreys obtained and pronounced sentence of _suspension during the king's pleasure_, both on the bishop and the rector.[141]

There was another political trial where justice was done to the accused, although Jeffreys presided at it. A charge was brought against Lord Delamere, the head of an ancient family in Cheshire, that he had tried to excite an insurrection in that county in aid of Monmouth's rebellion. An indictment for high treason being found against him, he was brought to trial upon it before Jeffreys, as lord high steward, and thirty peers-triers. The king was present, and was very desirous of a conviction, as Lord Delamere, when a member of the House of Commons, had taken an active part in supporting the exclusion bill.

Jeffreys did his best to gratify this wish. According to the habit he had lately acquired in the west, he at first tried to induce the noble prisoner to confess, in the hope of pardon "from the king's known clemency." "My lord," said he, "if you are conscious to yourself that you are guilty of this heinous crime, give glory to God, make amends to his vicegerent the king, by a plain and full discovery of your guilt, and do not, by an obstinate persisting in the denial of it, provoke the just indignation of your prince, who has made it appear to the world that his inclinations are rather to show mercy than inflict punishment."

Lord Delamere, to ease his mind from the anxiety to know whether the man who so spoke was to pronounce upon his guilt or innocence, said, "I beg your grace would please to satisfy me whether your grace be one of my judges in concurrence with the rest of the lords." _L. H. Steward._--"No, my lord, I am judge of the court, but I am none of your triers."[142]

A plea to the jurisdiction being put in, Lord Delamere requested his grace to advise with the other peers upon it, as it was a matter of privilege. _L. H. Steward._--"Good my lord, I hope you that are a prisoner at the bar are not to give me direction who I should advise with, or how I should demean myself here."

This plea was properly overruled, and not guilty pleaded, when his grace, to prejudice the peers-triers against the noble prisoner as a notorious exclusionist, delivered an inflammatory address to them before any evidence was given.

To create a further prejudice, poor Lord Howard was called to repeat once more his oft-told tale of the ryehouse plot, with which it was not pretended that the prisoner had any connection. The charge in the indictment was only supported by one witness, who himself had been in the rebellion, and who swore that Lord Delamere, at a time and place which he specified, had sent a message by him to Monmouth, asking a supply of money to maintain ten thousand men to be levied in Cheshire against King James. An _alibi_ was clearly proved. Yet his grace summed up for a conviction, and took pains, "for the sake of the numerous and great auditory, that a mistake in point of law might not go unrectified, which seemed to be urged with some earnestness by the noble lord at the bar, _that there is a necessity there should be two positive witnesses to convict a man of treason_."

To the honor of the peerage of England, there was a unanimous verdict of acquittal. James himself even allowed this to be right, wreaking all his vengeance on the witness for not having given better evidence, and swearing that he would have him first convicted of perjury, and then hanged for treason. Jeffreys seems to have struggled hard to behave with moderation on this trial; but his habitual arrogance from time to time broke out, and must have created a disgust among the peers-triers very favorable to the prisoner.

Jeffreys, still pretending to be a strong Protestant, eagerly assisted the king in his mad attempt to open the church and the universities to the intrusion of the Catholics. The fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, having disobeyed the royal mandate to elect, as head of their college, Anthony Farmer, who was not qualified by the statutes, and was a man of infamous character, and having chosen the pious and learned Hough, were summoned before the Court of Ecclesiastical Commission. Jeffreys observed that Dr. Fairfax, one of their number, had not signed the answer of the college to the charge of disregarding the king's recommendation. Fairfax asking leave to explain his reasons for declining to sign the answer, Jeffreys thought that he was willing to conform, and exclaimed, "Ay, this looks like a man of sense, and a good subject. Let's hear what he will say." _Fairfax._--"I don't object to the answer, because it is the vindication of my college: I go further; and as, according to the rules of the ecclesiastical courts, a libel is given to the party that he may know the grounds of his accusation, I demand that libel; for I do not know otherwise wherefore I am called here, and besides, this affair should be discussed in Westminster Hall." _Jeffreys._--"You are a doctor of _divinity_, not of _law_." _Fairfax._--"By what authority do you sit here?" _Jeffreys._--"Pray, what commission have you to be so impudent in court? This man ought to be kept in a dark room. Why do you suffer him without a guardian? Why did you not bring him to me? Pray let my officers seize him."

Three members of the ecclesiastical commission were sent to Oxford to represent that formidable body, and they annulled the election of Hough, expelled the refractory fellows, and made Magdalen College, for a time, a Popish establishment--the court in London, under the presidency of Jeffreys, confirming all their proceedings.

The lord chancellor next involved the king in the prosecution of the seven bishops, which, more than any other act of misrule during his reign, led to his downfall.[143] On the 25th of April, 1688, a new "declaration of indulgence" came out under the great seal; and, that it might be the more generally known and obeyed, an order was sent from the council to all bishops in England, enjoining that it should be read by the clergy in all churches and chapels within their dioceses during divine service. A petition, signed by Sancroft, the archbishop, and six other prelates, was laid before the king, praying in respectful language that the clergy might be excused from reading the declaration; not because they were wanting in duty to the sovereign, or in tenderness to the dissenters, but because it was founded upon the dispensing power, which had often been declared illegal in Parliament, and on that account they could not, in prudence, honor, or conscience, be such parties to it as the reading of it in the church would imply.

Even the Earl of Sunderland and Father Peter represented to the king the danger of arraying the whole church of England against the authority of the crown, and advised him that the bishops should merely be admonished to be more compliant. But with the concurrence of Jeffreys he resolved to visit them with condign punishment, and they were ordered to appear before the council, with a view to obtain evidence against them, as the petition had been privately presented to the king. When they entered the council chamber, Jeffreys said to them, "Do you own the petition?" After some hesitation, the archbishop confessed that he wrote it, and the bishops, that they signed it. _Jeffreys._--"Did you publish it?" They, thinking he referred to the _printing_ of it, of which the king had loudly complained, denied this very resolutely; but they admitted that they had delivered it to the king at Whitehall palace, in the county of Middlesex. This was considered enough to fix them with a publication, in point of law, of the supposed libel; and Jeffreys, after lecturing them on their disloyalty, required them to enter into a recognizance to appear before the Court of King's Bench, and answer the high misdemeanor of which they were guilty. They insisted that, according to the privileges of the House of Peers, of which they were members, they could not lawfully be committed, and were not bound to enter into the required recognizance. Jeffreys threatened to commit them to the Tower as public delinquents. _Archbishop._--"We are ready to go whithersoever his majesty may be pleased to send us. We hope the King of kings will be our protector and our judge. We fear nought from man; and having acted according to law and our consciences, no punishment shall ever be able to shake our resolutions."

If this struggle could have been foreseen, even Jeffreys would have shrunk from the monstrous impolicy of sending these men to jail, on what would be considered the charge of temperately exercising a constitutional right in defence of the Protestant faith, so dear to the great bulk of the nation; but he thought it was too late to resile. He therefore, with his own hand, drew a warrant for their commitment, which he signed, and handed round the board. It was signed by all the councillors present, except Father Peter, whose signature the king excused, to avoid the awkward appearance of Protestant bishops being sent to jail by a Jesuit.

An account of their trial will be found in the next chapter; but there are some circumstances connected with their acquittal in which Jeffreys personally appears.

Seeing how he had acquired such immense favor, there were other lawyers who tried to undermine him by his own arts. One of the most formidable of these was Sir John Trevor, master of the rolls, who, some authors say, certainly would have got the great seal had James remained longer on the throne, but whom Jeffreys had hitherto kept down by reversing his decrees. The chancellor's alarm was now excited by a report that Sir William Williams (who, from being Speaker of the last Westminster Parliament, and fined ten thousand pounds on the prosecution of the Duke of York, was become the caressed solicitor general to James II.) had a positive promise of the great seal if he could obtain a conviction of the seven bishops.[144] His brutal conduct to them during the whole trial, which was no doubt reported to Jeffreys, would confirm the rumor and increase his apprehensions. The jury having sat up all night without food, fire, or candle, to consider of their verdict, the lord chancellor had, while they were still enclosed, come down to Westminster Hall next morning, and taken his seat in court. When he heard the immense shout arise which soon made the king tremble on Hounslow Heath, he smiled and hid his face in his nosegay, "as much," observes the relater of the anecdote, "as to say, Mr. Solicitor, I keep my seal."

However, the part he had taken in sending the bishops to the Tower had caused such scandal, that the University of Oxford would not have him for their chancellor, although, in the prospect of a vacancy, he had received many promises of support. The moment the news arrived of the death of the old Duke of Ormond, his grandson was elected to succeed him; and next day a mandate coming from court to elect Lord Jeffreys, an answer was returned that an election had already taken place, which could not be revoked.

Suspecting that things were now taking an unfavorable turn, he began privately to censure the measures of the court, and to insinuate that the king had acted against his advice, saying, "It will be found that I have done the part of an honest man, but as for the judges they are most of them rogues."

About this time he was present at an event which was considered more than a counterpoise to recent discomfitures, but which greatly precipitated the crisis by taking away the hope of relief by the rightful succession of a Protestant heir. Being suddenly summoned to Whitehall, he immediately repaired thither, and found that the queen had been taken in labor. Other councillors and many ladies of quality soon arrived, and they were all admitted into her bedchamber. Her majesty seems to have been much annoyed by the presence of the lord chancellor. The king calling for him, he came forward and stood on the step of the bed to show that he was there. She then begged her consort to cover her face with his head and periwig; for she declared "she could not be brought to bed, and have so many men look on her." However, the fright may have shortened her sufferings; for James III., or "the old pretender," very speedily made his appearance, and the midwife having made the concerted signal that the child was of the wished-for sex, the company retreated.

Considering the surmises which had been propagated ever since the queen's pregnancy was announced, that it was feigned, and that a suppositious child was to be palmed upon the world, Jeffreys was lamentably deficient in duty to the king in not having recommended steps to convince the public from the beginning, beyond all possibility of controversy, of the genuineness of the birth. When the story of the "warming-pan" had taken hold of the public mind, many witnesses were examined before the Privy Council to disprove it, but it continued an article of faith with thorough anti-Jacobites during the two succeeding reigns.[145]

The birth of a son, which the king had so ardently longed for, led to his speedy overthrow. Instead of the intrigues between the discontented at home and the Prince and Princess of Orange, hitherto regarded as his successors, being put an end to, they immediately assumed a far more formidable aspect. William, who had hoped in the course of a few years to wield the energies of Britain against the dangerous ambition of Louis XIV., saw that if he remained quiet he should with difficulty even retain the circumscribed power of Stadtholder of the United Provinces. He therefore gladly listened to the representations of those who had fled to Holland to escape from the tyranny exercised in their native country, or who sent secret emissaries to implore his aid; and he boldly resolved to come to England--not as a military conqueror, but for their deliverance, and to obtain the crown with the assent of the nation. That he and his adherents might be protected against any sudden effort to crush them, a formidable fleet was equipped in the Dutch ports, and a considerable army, which had been assembled professedly for a different purpose, was ready on a short notice to be embarked in it.

James, who had been amusing himself by making the pope godfather to his son, and had listened with absolute incredulity to the rumors of the coming invasion, suddenly became sensible of his danger, and to avert it was willing to make any sacrifice to please his people. The slender merit of the tardy, forced, and ineffectual concessions which were offered is claimed respectively by the apologists of the king, of Jeffreys, and of the Earl of Sunderland, but seems due to the last of the three. James's infatuation was so transcendent,--he was so struck with judicial blindness,--being doomed to destruction, he was so demented,--that, if let alone, he probably would have trusted with confidence to his divine right and the protection of the Virgin, even when William had landed at Torbay. As far as I can discover, from the time when Jeffreys received the great seal, he never originated any measures, wise or wicked, and without remonstrance, he heartily coöperated in all those suggested by the king, however illegal or mischievous they might be. I do not find the slightest foundation for the assertion that, with all his faults, he had a regard for the Protestant religion, which made him stand up in its defence. The "Declaration of Indulgence," to which he put the great seal, might be imputed to a love of toleration, (to which he was a stranger,) but what can be said of the active part he took in the High Commission Court, and in introducing Roman Catholics into the universities and into the church? The Earl of Sunderland, though utterly unprincipled, was a man of great discernment and courage; he could speak boldly to the king, and he had joined in objecting to the precipitate measures for giving ascendancy to his new religion, which had produced this crisis. His seemingly forced removal from office he himself probably suggested, along with the other steps now taken to appease the people.

Whoever might first propose the altered policy, Jeffreys was the instrument for carrying it into effect, and thereby it lost all its grace and virtue. He took off the suspension of the Bishop of London, and, by a _supersedeas_ under the great seal, abolished the High Commission Court. He annulled all the proceedings respecting Magdalen College, and issued the necessary process for reinstating Dr. Hough and the Protestant fellows. He put the great seal to a general pardon.

But the reaction was hoped for, above all, from the restoration of the city charters. On the 2d of October he sent a flattering message to the mayor and aldermen to come to Whitehall in the evening, that they might be presented at court by "their old recorder." Here the king told them that he was mightily concerned for the welfare of their body, and that at a time when invasion threatened the kingdom, he was determined to show them his confidence in their loyalty by restoring the rights of the city to the state in which they were before the unfortunate _quo warranto_ proceedings had been instituted in the late reign. Accordingly, on the following day a meeting of the Common Council was called at Guildhall, and the lord chancellor proceeded thither in his state carriage, attended by his purse-bearer, mace-bearer, and other officers, and after a florid speech, delivered them letters patent under the great seal, which waived all forfeitures, revived all charters, and confirmed all liberties the city had ever enjoyed under the king or any of his ancestors. Great joy was manifested; but the citizens could not refrain from showing their abhorrence of the man who brought these glad tidings, and on his return they hissed him and hooted him, and gave him a foretaste of the violence he was soon to experience from an English mob.

The forfeited and surrendered charters were likewise restored to the other corporations in England. These popular acts, however, were generally ascribed to fear, and the coalition of all parties, including the preachers of passive obedience, to obtain a permanent redress of grievances by force, continued resolute and unshaken.

When William landed, the frightful severities of Jeffreys in the west had the effect of preventing the populace from flocking to his standard, but he met with no opposition, and soon persons of great consideration and influence sent in their adhesion to him.

When we read in history of civil commotions and foreign invasions, we are apt to suppose that all the ordinary business of life was suspended. But on inquiry, we find that it went on pretty much as usual, unless where interrupted by actual violence. While the Prince of Orange was advancing to the capital, and James was marching out to give him battle, if his army would have stood true, the Court of Chancery sat regularly to hear "exceptions" and "motions for time to plead;" and on the very day on which the Princess Anne fled to Nottingham, and her unhappy father exclaimed, in the extremity of his agony, "God help me! my own children have forsaken me," the lord chancellor decided that "if an administrator pays a debt due by bond before a debt due by a decree in equity, he is still liable to pay the debt due by the decree."[146]

Change of dynasty was not yet talked of, and the cry was for "a free Parliament." To meet this, the king resolved to call one in his own name; and the last use which Jeffreys made of the great seal was by sealing writs for the election of members of the House of Commons, who were ordered to meet on the 15th of January following.

This movement only infused fresh vigor into the Prince of Orange, who now resolved to bring matters to a crisis; and James, finding himself almost universally deserted, as the most effectual way, in his judgment, of annoying his enemies, very conveniently for them, determined to leave the kingdom. Preparatory to this, he had a parting interview with Jeffreys, to whom he did not confide his secret; but he obtained from him all the parliamentary writs which had not been issued to the sheriffs, amounting to a considerable number, and these, with his own hand, he threw into the fire, so that a lawful Parliament might not be assembled when he was gone. To increase the confusion, he required Jeffreys to surrender the great seal to him,--having laid the plan of destroying it,--in the belief that without it the government could not be conducted.

All things being prepared, and Father Peter and the Earl of Melfort having been informed of his intentions, which he still concealed from Jeffreys, on the night of the 10th of December, James, disguised, left Whitehall, accompanied by Sir Edward Hales, whom he afterwards created Earl of Tenterden. London Bridge (which they durst not cross) being the only one then over the Thames, they drove in a hackney-coach to the Horse Ferry, Westminster, and as they crossed the river with a pair of oars, the king threw the great seal into the water, and thought he had sunk with it forever the fortunes of the Prince of Orange. At Vauxhall they found horses in readiness for them, and they rode swiftly to Feversham, where they embarked for France.

Instead of narrating the adventures of the monarch, when he was intercepted at Feversham, we must confine ourselves to what befell the unhappy ex-chancellor. He heard early next morning of the royal flight, and was thrown into a state of the greatest consternation. He was afraid of punishment from the new government which was now to be established, and being asked by a courtier if he had heard "what the _heads_ of the Prince's declaration were," he answered, "I am sure that _my head_ is one, whatever the rest may be." He dreaded still more the fury of the mob, of which the most alarming accounts were soon brought him. In the existing state of anarchy, almost the whole population of the metropolis crowded into the streets in quest of intelligence; the excitement was unexampled; there was an eager desire to prevent the king's evil councillors from escaping along with him; and many bad characters, under a pretence of a regard for the Protestant religion, took the opportunity to gratify their love of violence and plunder.

The first object of vengeance was Father Peter; but it was found that, in consequence of the information of the king's intentions conveyed to him and the Earl of Melfort, they had secretly withdrawn the day before, and were now in safety. The pope's nuncio was rescued from imminent peril by the interposition of the lords of the Council, who had met, and, exercising temporarily the powers of government, were striving to preserve the public tranquillity.

The next victim demanded was Jeffreys, who (no one knowing that the great seal had been taken from him) still went by the name of "the chancellor," and who, of all professing Protestants, was the most obnoxious to the multitude. He retired early in the day from his house in Duke Street to the obscure dwelling of a dependent in Westminster, near the river side, and here, lying concealed, he caused preparations to be made for his escape from the kingdom. It was arranged that a coal ship which had delivered her cargo should clear out at the custom house as for her return to Newcastle, and should land him at Hamburg.

To avoid, as he thought, all chance of being recognised by those who had seen him in ermine or gold-embroidered robes, with a long white band under the chin, his collar of S. S. round his neck, and on his head a full-bottom wig, which had recently become the attribute of judicial dignity, instead of the old-fashioned coif or black velvet cap,--he cut off his bushy eyebrows, wont to inspire such terror, he put on the worn-out dress of a common sailor, and he covered his head with an old tarred hat that seemed to have weathered many a blast.

Thus disguised, as soon as it was dusk he got into a boat; and the state of the tide enabling him to shoot London Bridge without danger, he safely reached the coal ship lying off Wapping. Here he was introduced to the captain and the mate, on whose secrecy he was told he might rely; but, as they could not sail till next day, when he had examined his berth, he went on board another vessel that lay at a little distance, there to pass the night. If he had not taken this precaution, he would have been almost immediately in the power of his enemies. The mate, without waiting to see what became of him, hurried on shore, and treacherously gave information to some persons who had been in pursuit of him, that he was concealed in the Newcastle collier. They applied to justices of the peace in the neighborhood for a warrant to arrest him, which was refused, on the ground that no specific charge was sworn against him. They then went to the lords of the council, whom they found sitting, and who actually gave them a warrant to apprehend him for high treason, under the belief that the safety of the state required his detention. Armed with this, they returned to the coal ship in which he had taken his passage, but he was not there, and the captain, a man of honor, baffled all their inquiries.

He slept securely in the vessel in which he had sought refuge; and had it not been for the most extraordinary imprudence, leading to the belief that he was fated speedily to expiate his crimes, he might have effected his escape. Probably with a view of indulging more freely his habit of intemperance, he next morning came ashore, and made his appearance at a little alehouse bearing the sign of "The Red Cow," in Anchor and Hope Alley, near King Edward's Stairs, Wapping, and called for a pot of ale. When he had nearly finished it, still wearing his sailor's attire, with his hat on his head, he was so rashly confident as to put his head out from an open window to look at the passengers in the street.

I must prepare my readers for the scene which follows by relating, in the words of Roger North, an anecdote of the behavior of Jeffreys to a suitor in the heyday of his power and arrogance. "There was a scrivener of Wapping brought to hearing for relief against a _bummery bond_.[147] The contingency of losing all being showed, the bill was going to be dismissed;[148] but one of the plaintiff's counsel said that the scrivener was a strange fellow, and sometimes went to church, sometimes to conventicles, and none could tell what to make of him; and it was thought he was a trimmer. At that the chancellor fired; and 'A trimmer!' said he; 'I have heard much of that monster, but never saw one. Come forth, Mr. Trimmer, turn you round, and let us see your shape,' and at that rate talked so long that the poor fellow was ready to drop under him; but at last the bill was dismissed with costs, and he went his way. In the hall one of his friends asked him how he came off. 'Came off' said he; 'I am escaped from the terrors of that man's face, which I would scarce undergo again to save my life, and I shall certainly have the frightful impression of it as long as I live.'"[149]

It happened, by a most extraordinary coincidence, that this very scrivener was then walking through Anchor and Hope Alley on the opposite side of the way, and immediately looking towards "The Red Cow," thought he recollected the features of the sailor who was gazing across towards him. The conviction then flashed upon his mind that this could be no other than the lord chancellor who had so frightened him out of his wits before pronouncing a decree in his favor about the "_bummery bond_." But hardly believing his own senses, he entered the tap-room of the alehouse to examine the countenance more deliberately. Upon his entrance, Jeffreys must have recognized the "trimmer," for he coughed, turned to the wall, and put the quart pot before his face. An immense multitude of persons were in a few minutes collected round the door by the proclamation of the scrivener that the pretended sailor was indeed the wicked Lord Chancellor Jeffreys. He was now in the greatest jeopardy, for, unlike the usual character of the English mob, who are by no means given to cruelty, the persons here assembled were disposed at first to tear him limb from limb, and he was only saved by the interposition of some of the more considerate, who suggested that the proper course would be to take him before the lord mayor.

The cry was raised, "To the lord mayor's!" but before he could be secured in a carriage to be conveyed thither, they assaulted and pelted him, and might have proceeded to greater extremities if a party of the train-bands had not rescued him from their fury. They still pursued him all the way with whips, and halters, and cries of "Vengeance! justice! justice!" Although he lay back in the coach, he could still be discovered in his blue jacket, and with his sailor's hat flapped down upon his face. The lord mayor, Sir John Chapman, a nervous, timid man, who had stood in tremendous awe of the lord chancellor, could not now see him, disguised as a sailor, without trepidation; and instead of ordering him to stand at the bar of his justice room, with much bowing and scraping, and many apologies for the liberty he was using, requested that his lordship would do him the honor to dine with him, as, it being now past twelve o'clock, he and the lady mayoress were about to sit down to dinner. Jeffreys, though probably with little appetite, was going to accept the invitation, when a gentleman in the room exclaimed, "The lord chancellor is the lord mayor's prisoner, not his guest, and now to harbor him is treason, for which any one, however high, may have to answer with his own blood." The lord mayor swooned away, and died (it is said of apoplexy) soon after.

The numbers and violence of the mob had greatly increased from the delay in examining the culprit, and they loudly threatened to take the law into their own hand. Some were for examining him before an alderman, and leading him out by a back way for that purpose; but he himself showed most prudence by advising that, without any previous examination, he should be committed to the Tower for safe custody, and that two other regiments of the train-bands should be ordered up to conduct him thither. In the confusion, he offered to draw the warrant for his own commitment. This course was followed, but was by no means free from danger, the mob defying the matchlocks and pikes of the soldiers, and pressing round the coach in which the noble prisoner was carried, still flourishing the whips and halters, and expressing their determined resolution to execute summary justice upon him for the many murders he had committed. Seeing the imminent danger to which he was exposed, and possibly conscience struck when he thought he was so near his end, he lost all sense of dignity and all presence of mind. He held up his imploring hands, sometimes on one side of the coach, and sometimes on the other, exclaiming, "For the Lord's sake, keep them off! For the Lord's sake, keep them off!" Oldmixon, who was an eye-witness of this procession, and makes loud professions of compassion for malefactors, declares that he saw these agonizing alarms without pity.

The difficulty was greatest in passing the open space on Tower Hill. But at length the carriage passed the drawbridge, and the portcullis descended. Within all was still. Jeffreys was courteously received by Lord Lucas, recently appointed lieutenant, and in a gloomy apartment, which he never more left, he reflected in solitude on the procession which had just terminated, so different from those to which he had been accustomed for some years on the first day of each returning term, when, attended by the judges and all the grandees of the law, he had moved in state to Westminster Hall, the envy and admiration of all beholders.

A regular warrant for his commitment was the same night made out by the lords of the Council, and the next day a deputation from their body, consisting of Lords North, Grey, Chandos and Ossulston, attended to examine him at the Tower. Four questions were asked him. 1. "What he had done with the great seal of England." He answered "that he had delivered it to the king on the Saturday before at Mr. Cheffnel's, no person being present, and that he had not seen it since." He was next asked, 2. "Whether he had sealed all the writs for the Parliament, and what he had done with them." "To the best of his remembrance," he said, "the writs were all sealed and delivered to the king," (suppressing that he had seen the king throw a great many of them in the fire.) 3. "Had he sealed the several patents for the then ensuing year?" He declared "that he had sealed several patents for the new sheriffs, but that he could not charge his memory with the particulars." Lastly, he was asked "whether he had a license to go out of the kingdom." And to this he replied, "that he had several licenses to go beyond sea, which were all delivered to Sir John Friend." He subscribed these answers with an affirmation that "they were true upon his honor," and the lords withdrew.

But no sympathy did he meet with from any quarter, and he was now reproachfully spoken of even by the king. The news of the outbreak against him coming speedily to Feversham, the fugitive monarch, who then meditated an attempt to remount his throne, thought that his chancellor might possibly be accepted by the nation as a scape-goat, and laid upon him the great errors of his reign. It happened, strangely enough, that the inn to which James had been carried when captured off Sheerness, was kept by a man on whom Jeffreys, for some supposed contempt of court, had imposed a very heavy fine, which had not yet been levied. Complaining of this arbitrary act to his royal guest,--who had admitted him to his presence, and had asked him, in royal fashion, "his name, his age, and his history,"--James desired him to draw a discharge as ample as he chose; and, establishing a precedent, which has been often followed since, for writing in a seemingly private and confidential document what is intended afterwards to be communicated to the public, he subjoined to his signature these remarkable words, which were immediately proclaimed in Feversham and transmitted to London: "I am sensible that my lord chancellor hath been a very ill man, and hath done very ill things."

Jeffreys was assailed by the press in a manner which showed how his cruelties had brutalized the public mind. A poetical letter, addressed to him, advising him to cut his own throat, thus concluded: "I am your lordship's obedient servant in any thing of this nature. From the little house over against Tyburn, where the people are almost dead with expectation of you."

This was followed by "a letter from hell from Lord Ch----r Jeffreys to L---- C---- B---- W----d." His "confession," hawked about the streets, contained an exaggerated statement of all the bad measures of the latter part of the preceding and of the present reign. Then came his "last will and testament," commencing, "In the name of Ambition, the only god of our setting and worshipping, together with Cruelty, Perjury, Pride, Insolence, &c., I, George Jeffreys, being in sound and perfect memory, of high commissions, _quo warrantos_, dispensations, pillorizations, floggations, gibitations, barbarity, butchery, &c., do make my last will," &c. Here is the concluding legacy: "Item, I order an ell and a half of fine cambric to be cut into handkerchiefs for drying up all the wet eyes at my funeral; together with half a pint of burnt claret for all the mourners in the kingdom."

When he had been some weeks in confinement, he received a small barrel, marked "Colchester oysters," of which, ever since his arrival in London when a boy, he had been particularly fond. Seeing it, he exclaimed--"Well, I have some friends left still;" but on opening it, the gift was--a halter!

An actual serious petition was received by the lords of the council of England from "the widows and fatherless children in the west," beginning, "We, to the number of a thousand and more widows and fatherless children of the counties of Dorset, Somerset, and Devon; our dear husbands and tender fathers having been so tyrannously butchered and some transported; our estates sold from us, and our inheritance cut off, by the severe and brutish sentence of George Lord Jeffreys, now we understand in the Tower of London, a prisoner," &c. After enumerating some of his atrocities, and particularly dwelling upon his indecent speech (which I may not copy) to a young lady who asked the life of her lover, convicted before him, the petitioners thus concluded:--"These, with many hundred more tyrannical acts, are ready to be made appear in the said counties by honest and credible persons, and therefore your petitioners desire that the said George Jeffreys, late lord chancellor, the vilest of men, may be brought down to the counties aforesaid, where we the good women of the west shall be glad to see him, and give him another manner of welcome than he had there three years since."

Meanwhile, the great seal, the _clavis regni_, the emblem of sovereign sway, which had been thrown into the Thames that it might never reach the Prince of Orange, was found in the net of a fisherman near Lambeth, and was delivered by him to the lords of the council, who were resolved to place it in the hands of the founder of the new dynasty; and James, after revisiting the capital and enjoying a fleeting moment of popularity, had finally bid adieu to England, and was enjoying the munificent hospitality of Louis at St. Germaine's.

The provisional government, in deference to the public voice, issued an order for the more rigorous confinement of the ex-chancellor in the Tower, and intimated a resolution that he should speedily be brought to trial for his misdeeds; but, amidst the stirring events which rapidly followed, he was allowed quietly to languish out the remainder of his miserable existence. While the elections were proceeding for the Convention Parliament--while the two houses were struggling respecting the "abdication" or "desertion" of the throne--while men were occupied with discussing the "declaration of rights"--while preparations were making for the coronation of the new sovereigns--while curiosity was keenly alive in watching their demeanor, and while alarms were spread by the adherence of Ireland to the exiled king--the national indignation, which at first burst forth so violently against the crimes of Jeffreys, almost entirely subsided, and little desire was evinced to see him punished as he deserved.

However, considerable sensation was excited by the news that he was no more. He breathed his last in the Tower of London, on the 19th of April, 1689, at thirty-five minutes past four in the morning. Those who take a vague impression of events, without attention to dates, may suppose, from the crowded vicissitudes of his career, that he must have passed his grand climacteric, but he was still only in the forty-first year of his age.

On the meeting of the Convention Parliament, attempts were made to attaint the late Chancellor Jeffreys, to prevent his heirs from sitting in Parliament, and to charge his estates with compensation to those whom he had injured; but they all failed, and no mark of public censure was set upon his memory beyond excepting him, with some other judges, from the act of indemnity passed at the commencement of the new reign.

We have no very distinct account of him in domestic life. Having lost his first wife, whom he had espoused so generously, within three months from her death he again entered the married state. The object of his choice was the widow of a Montgomeryshire gentleman, and daughter of Sir Thomas Bludworth, who had been lord mayor of London, and for many years one of the city representatives. I am sorry to say there was much scandal about the second Lady Jeffreys, and she presented him prematurely with a full-grown child. It is related that he was once disagreeably reminded of this mistake: when cross-examining a flippant female, he said to her, "Madam, you are very quick in your answers." "Quick as I am, Sir George," cried she, "I was not so quick as your lady." Even after the marriage she is still said to have encouraged Sir John Trevor, M. R., and other lovers, while her husband was indulging in his cups.

He had children by both his wives; but of these only one son grew up to manhood, and survived him. This was John, the second Lord Jeffreys, who has acquired celebrity only by having rivalled his father in the power of drinking, and for having, when in a state of intoxication, interrupted the funeral of Dryden, the poet. He was married, as we have seen, to the daughter of the Earl of Pembroke, but dying in 1703, without male issue, the title of Jeffreys happily became extinct. He soon dissipated large estates, which his father, by such unjustifiable means, had acquired in Shropshire, Buckinghamshire, and Leicestershire.

In his person Jeffreys was rather above the middle stature, his complexion (before it was bloated by intemperance) inclining to fair, and he was of a comely appearance. There was great animation in his eye, with a twinkle which might breed a suspicion of insincerity and lurking malice. His brow was commanding, and he managed it with wonderful effect, whether he wished to terrify or to conciliate. There are many portraits of him, all, from his marked features, bearing a great resemblance to each other, and, it may be presumed, to the original.

"He had a set of banterers for the most part near him, as in old time great men kept fools to make them merry. And these fellows, abusing one another and their betters, were a regale to him." But there can be no doubt that he circulated in good society. He was not only much at court, but he exchanged visits with the nobility and persons of distinction in different walks of life. In the social circle, being entirely free from hypocrisy and affectation, from haughtiness and ill-nature, laughing at principle, courting a reputation for profligacy, talking with the utmost freedom of all parties and all men--he disarmed the censure of the world, and, by the fascination of his manners, while he was present, he threw an oblivion over his vices and his crimes.

On one occasion, dining in the city with Alderman Duncomb, the lord treasurer and other great courtiers being of the party, they worked themselves up to such a pitch of loyalty by bumpers to "confusion to the Whigs," that they all stripped to their shirts, and were about to get upon a signpost to drink the king's health, when they were accidentally diverted from their purpose, and the lord chancellor escaped the fate which befell Sir Charles Sedley, of being indicted for indecently exposing his person in the public streets. But this frolic brought upon him a violent fit of the stone, which nearly cost him his life.

As a civil judge he was by no means without high qualifications, and in the absence of any motive to do wrong, he was willing to do right. He had a very quick perception, a vigorous and logical understanding, and an impressive eloquence.

When quite sober, he was particularly good as a Nisi Prius judge. His summing up, in what is called "the Lady Ivy's case"--an ejectment between her and the dean and chapter of St. Paul's to recover a large estate at Shadwell--is most masterly. The evidence was exceedingly complicated, and he gives a beautiful sketch of the whole, both documentary and parol; and, without taking the case from the jury, he makes some admirable observations on certain deeds produced by the Lady Ivy, which led to the conclusion that they were forged, and to a verdict for the dean and chapter.[150]