Chapter IX: REIGN OF CHARLES II. (concluded) (1)

Charles's Embarrassments--Exclusion Intrigues--Parliament
Dissolved--The King again Pensioned by Louis--New Parliament
at Oxford--Violence of the Whigs--Charles Dissolves the
Oxford Parliament--Execution of Archbishop Plunket--Arrest of
Shaftesbury--Dismay of the Gang of Perjurers--Oates turned out of
Whitehall--Shaftesbury's Lists--Visit of William of Orange--James
in Scotland--Defeat of the Cameronians--Cargill's Manifesto--The
Duke of York's Tyranny--Flight of Argyll--The Torture in
Edinburgh--Arrogance of Monmouth--Contest between the Court and the
City--Death of Shaftesbury--Rye-House Plot--Suicide of the Earl of
Essex--Trial of Lord William Russell--Extraordinary Declaration
of the University of Oxford--Trial of Algernon Sidney--The
Duke of Monmouth Pardoned--Base Conduct of Monmouth--Trial of
Hampden--Trials in Scotland--Absolutism of Charles--Forfeiture
of Charters by the Corporations--Influence of the Duke of
York--Opposition of Halifax--Sickness and Death of the King.

Amid the contending factions of his Court, and in spite of the most absolute destitution of money, Charles is described as being outwardly merry.

Yet his situation would have embarrassed a much wiser man. The Opposition, trusting to his need of money, calculated on his giving way on the Exclusion Bill; and they kept up their warfare by speeches, pamphlets, and addresses to the public, and by secret pressure on him through his ministers, his mistress, his nephew, the Prince of Orange, and his allies. Sunderland and Godolphin urged his concession to the Opposition in Parliament. The duchess, when he sought retirement with her, harped on the same string. Halifax, who had offended the Opposition greatly by his determined resistance to the Exclusion Bill, now proposed a Bill of Limitations of the authority of James in case of his succession; and the Prince of Orange warned the king on no account to adopt this Bill, because it would undermine the very foundation of the monarchy.

The Spaniards complained that Louis was violating the Treaty of Nimeguen, and called on Charles to act as their ally and a party to the Treaty. To contend with Louis required money, even if he were so disposed, and money he had none. Instead of answering his demands for it, the Commons expressed their resentment of his resistance to the Exclusion Bill, by attacking all the supporters of the king. They summoned various Tory leaders on one pretence or another to their bar; they demanded the removal of Jeffreys from the office of Recorder of London, and he made haste to submit; they voted impeachments against Scroggs and North, the chief justices, and Lewis Weston and other judges. They sent a message to the king, that unless the Duke of York was excluded, there was no safety to Protestantism. They voted that the Marquis of Worcester, Halifax, Clarendon, and Feversham, were promoters of Popery; that they and Lawrence Hyde, and Seymour, ought to be removed from the king's council, and that till then no money could be voted; and, moreover, that any one lending the king money upon any branch of the revenue, should be adjudged an enemy of the country. As they were going on voting still further resolutions of a like kind, Charles prorogued Parliament, and then by proclamation dissolved it, ordering another to assemble at the end of two months at Oxford.

The very naming of the place of meeting struck the Opposition with alarm. In London they had a great protection in a strongly sympathising population; but Oxford was notorious for its Royalist and Tory feeling; and there Charles, amid a fiery mob of fortune-seeking gownsmen, and a strong body of soldiery, might overawe Parliament, and direct particular attacks against the Opposition leaders. These fears were well founded. But the king had, in the interim, also strengthened himself in another manner. He had first set to work every one of the duke's friends that he possibly could, to induce him at least to appear to conform to the demands of Parliament, but finding this utterly unavailing, he had turned to his old friend Louis. The French monarch, who never liked to leave Charles at the mercy of his Parliament, again gratified his desire, and agreed to pay him two millions of livres this year, and half a million of crowns in each of the two following years, on condition that he should leave the Spaniards to his overbearing encroachments. The many hints thrown out of secret treaties between Charles and Louis had not been lost, and no written contract of this agreement was made, but it was treated as a matter of honour, and only the two monarchs, with Barillon on the one side, and Hyde on the other, were included in the secret.

Being thus made independent of his Parliament, Charles disregarded the strongest remonstrances against holding the Parliament in Oxford, and on the day appointed appeared there, attended by a troop of Horse Guards, besides crowds of armed courtiers, and the Opposition members and their party, likewise armed, and attended by armed followers. It appeared more like a preparation for war than for peaceful debate. Charles addressed the assembled hearers in the tone of a man who had money in his pocket. He spoke strongly of the factious proceedings of the last Parliament, and of his determination neither to exercise arbitrary power himself, nor to suffer it in others; but to show that he had every disposition to consult the wishes of his subjects, he proposed to grant them almost everything they had solicited. He then offered the substance of the Bill of Limitations proposed by Halifax, that James should be banished five hundred miles from the British shores during the king's life; that, on succeeding, though he should have the title of king, the powers of government should be vested in a regent, and this regent, in the first instance, be his daughter, the Princess Mary of Orange, and after her her sister Anne; that if James should have a son educated in the Protestant faith, the regency should continue only till he reached his majority; that, besides this, all Catholics of incomes of more than one hundred pounds per annum should be banished, the fraudulent conveyance of their estates be pronounced void, and their children taken from them, and educated in Protestantism.

This was a sweeping concession; short of expelling James altogether, nothing more could be expected, and it was scarcely to be expected that Charles would concede that. On this one point he had always displayed unusual firmness, and it was a firmness highly honourable to him, for by it he maintained the rights of a brother, at the expense of the aggrandisement of his own son. Nothing would have been easier than to have, by a little finesse, conveyed the crown to Monmouth, the favourite of the Protestant bulk of the nation, and for whom he had a real affection. But the Whigs lost their opportunity; they were blinded to their own interest by the idea of their strength, and thought that, having so much offered, they were about to gain all. This was the culminating point of their success; but they rejected the offer, and from that hour the tide of their power ebbed, and their ruin was determined.

There was another attempt to spur on the country to carry the Exclusion Bill, by making use of a miserable pretence of a plot got up by two low adventurers, Everard and Fitzharris. First these fellows pretended that the king was leagued with the duke to establish Popery; but when Fitzharris was thrown into Newgate, he got up another story, that he had been offered ten thousand pounds by the Duchess of Modena to murder the king, and that a foreign invasion was to assist the Catholic attempt. The Opposition were ready to seize on this man as another Dangerfield, to move the country by the disclosure of these plots. But Charles was beforehand with them, cut off all intercourse with the prisoner, and ordered the Attorney-General to proceed against him. The Commons claimed to deal with him, and sent up an impeachment to the Lords; the Lords refused to entertain it, and voted that he should be tried as the king directed, by common law. The Commons were exasperated, and declared that this was a denial of justice, a violation of the rights of Parliament, and any inferior court interfering would be guilty of a high breach of the privileges of their House. They were going on with the reading of the Exclusion Bill, when suddenly the king summoned them to the House of Lords, and dissolved Parliament. He had, on hearing of their proceedings, privately put the crown and robes of State into a sedan-chair, and hastened to the House. The astonishment and rage of the Opposition were inconceivable. Shaftesbury called on the members not to leave the House, but it was in vain; they gradually withdrew: the king rode off, attended by a detachment of his Guards, to Windsor, and thus, after the session of a week, ended his fifth and last Parliament.

If the Whigs had not been blinded by their passions and their fancied success, they might have seen the reaction that was taking place. The long series of pretended plots had gradually opened the eyes of the people; they began to wonder how they could have believed them, and have consented to the spilling of so much blood on the evidence of such despicable characters. At the execution of Lord Stafford, instead of those yells of rage with which they had received some of the previous victims, they cried that they believed him, and prayed God to bless him. They might have seen this change still more clearly in what now followed. Charles issued a Declaration of his reasons for dissolving this Parliament;--that he had offered them everything that reasonable men could desire, for which he had received only expressions of discontent, and endeavours to usurp his authority; that they had arrested Englishmen for offences with which Parliament had nothing to do; had declared the most distinguished persons enemies to the king on mere suspicion; had forbade any one to lend the king money in anticipation of his revenue; had insisted on excluding the heir apparent from the succession, notwithstanding all possible guarantees; and that they were endeavouring to create a quarrel between the two Houses, because the Lords would not interfere with the king's prerogative. This Declaration, which was read in the churches, produced a strong effect. The king was regarded as unreasonably treated, and addresses of support were sent up from all quarters. The University of Cambridge went the length of saying that "our kings derive not their titles from the people, but from God, and that to Him only they are accountable. They had an hereditary right of succession, which no religion, no law, no fault, no forfeiture can alter or diminish." The Whigs published a counter-address, but, still drawing their arguments from Oates's plot, it failed to tell; this delusion had gone by, and the opposite one of Divine Right was moving now, in consequence, with an exaggerated impetus. The king persisted in bringing Fitzharris to trial; the Whigs endeavoured to defend him by pleading that, being impeached by the Commons, no other court than Parliament could try him; but this was overruled, he was tried, condemned, and hanged.

At the same time suffered the titular Archbishop of Armagh; the last victim of the Popish plot, and perhaps the most hardly and unjustly used. Oliver Plunket, the archbishop, was imprisoned merely for receiving orders in the Catholic Church, contrary to the law; but whilst in prison some of the Irish informers charged him with being concerned in the Popish plot; but instead of trying him in Ireland, where he was well known and could produce his witnesses, he was brought to England, and before his evidence could arrive, was tried and executed (July 1, 1681). A more shameful proceeding has never been recorded. The Earl of Essex, who had been Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, solicited his pardon, saying to Charles, that from his own knowledge, the charge against him was undoubtedly false. "Then," retorted the king, "on your head, my lord, be his blood. You might have saved him if you would. I cannot pardon him, because I dare not." The storm, in fact, was about to burst on the heads of those who had raised it. There was no Parliament to defend them, and the Government now proceeded to retaliate. The miscreants who had served Shaftesbury in running down his victims now perceived the change of public opinion, and either slunk away or offered their services to Government against their former employers.

The first to be arrested were Shaftesbury himself, College, surnamed the "Protestant joiner," and Rouse, the leader of the mob from Wapping. Lord Howard was already in the Tower on the denunciation of Fitzharris. The Grand Jury refused to find the Bill of Indictment against Lord Howard; they did the same in the case of Rouse, but College was tried, and the same witnesses who had been deemed worthy enough to condemn the Catholics were brought against him. But the jury now refused to believe them against a Protestant, and acquitted him. College, however, was not permitted to escape so easily. He was a noisy and determined leader of the people, sang songs and distributed prints, ridiculing the king and Court, and was celebrated as the inventor of the Protestant flail. It was found that some of his misdemeanours had been committed in Oxfordshire, and he was sent down and tried there, where the Tory feeling was not likely to let him off again. There the miserable wretches, whose concocted evidence had doomed to death so many charged by them as participators in the Popish plot, were now arrayed against each other. Dugdale, Tuberville, and Smith swore against College; Oates, Bolron, and others committed the political blunder of contradicting them, and representing them in colours that in truth belonged to the whole crew. For this proceeding Oates was deprived of his pension and turned out of Whitehall; but College was condemned amid roars of applause from the gownsmen. The execution of College was the commencement of a murderous retaliation on the Whigs, as savage as had been theirs on the Catholics. Shaftesbury, through the influence of the sheriffs, and the vehement demonstrations of the City made in his favour, was saved for the present by the jury ignoring the indictment, amid the acclamations of the people, and the event was celebrated by bonfires, ringing of bells, and shouts of "Monmouth!" "Shaftesbury!" and "Buckingham!"

But the arrest of Shaftesbury had led to consequences which were fatal to him, and most disastrous to the Whig party generally. Amongst his papers were found, in particular, two which roused the indignation of the Tory and Catholic parties to a perfect fury. One was the form of an Association for excluding James and all Catholics from the throne, and from political power, and including a vow to pursue to the death all who should oppose this great purpose. The other contained two lists of the leading persons in every county, ranged under the heads of "worthy men," and "men worthy," the latter phrase being supposed to mean worthy to be hanged. When this was published, the "men worthy" sent up the most ardent addresses of loyalty, and readiness to support the Crown in all its views; and many of the "worthy men" even hastened to escape from the invidious distinction. The king lost no time in taking advantage of this ferment. He availed himself of the information contained in these lists, and struck out the most prominent "worthy men" in office and commission. As the Dissenters had supported Shaftesbury and his party, he let loose the myrmidons of persecution against them, and they were fined, distrained upon, and imprisoned as remorselessly as ever. He determined to punish the City for its partisanship, and by a _quo warranto_ to inquire into its many different privileges.

At this critical moment William of Orange proposed to pay a visit to his uncles, which his loving father-in-law, James, strenuously opposed, but which the easy Charles permitted. It was soon seen that William, though his ostensible object was to induce Charles to enter into a league against France--whose king continued, in spite of treaties, to press on his encroachments,--yet was courted by the Exclusionists, even by Monmouth, as well as Lord William Russell and other Whigs. With all his habitual caution he could not avoid letting it be seen that he was proud of the courtship. He even consented to accept an invitation from the City to dinner, to the great disgust of the Court, which was in high dudgeon at the conduct of the sheriffs, and William soon returned. His object was to ascertain the strength of the Whig party, and though the tide was rapidly running against it at that moment, he went back with the conviction that some violent change was not very far off. Though Charles promised William to join the alliance against France, and call a Parliament, no sooner was the prince gone than he assured Louis that he was his friend, and received a fresh bribe of a million of livres to allow France to attack Luxembourg, one of the main keys of Holland.

James, during these months, had been distinguishing himself in Scotland in a manner which promised but a poor prospect to Protestantism should he ever come to the throne. After the battle of Bothwell Bridge, the Covenanting party seemed for awhile to have sunk into the earth and disappeared; but ere long there was seen emerging again from their hiding-places the more determined and enthusiastic section which followed Donald Cargill and Richard Cameron. These so-called Cameronians believed that Charles Stuart, by renouncing the Solemn League and Covenant, had renounced all right to rule over them; and Cameron, with some twenty of his adherents, affixed (June, 1680) on the cross of Sanquhar "a declaration and testimony of the true Presbyterian, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, and persecuted party in Scotland." In this bold paper they disowned Charles Stuart, who ought, they said, to have been denuded years before of being king, ruler, or magistrate, on account of his tyranny. They declared war on him as a tyrant and usurper; they also disowned all power of James, Duke of York, in Scotland, and declared that they would treat their enemies as they had hitherto treated them.

The host of Israel, as they styled themselves, consisted of six-and-twenty horse and forty foot. At Aird's Moss, this knot of men, who spoke such loud things, were surprised by three troops of dragoons, and Cameron, as bold in action as in word, rushed on this unequal number, crying, "Lord, take the ripest, spare the greenest." He fell with his brother and seven others (July 20, 1680). Rathillet, who was there, was wounded and taken prisoner, but Cargill escaped. Rathillet was tried and executed for the murder of Archbishop Sharp. His hands were first cut off at the foot of the gallows; after hanging, his head was cut off, and fixed on a spike at Cupar, and his body was hung in chains at Magus Moor. Cargill reappeared in September, 1680, at Torwood, in Stirlingshire, and there preached; and then, after the sermon, pronounced this extraordinary excommunication:--"I, being a minister of Jesus Christ, and having authority from Him, do, in His name and by His spirit, excommunicate, cast out of the true Church, and deliver up to Satan, Charles II., King of Scotland, for his mocking of God, his perjury, his uncleanness of adultery and incest, his drunkenness, and his dissembling with God and man." He also excommunicated the Duke of York for idolatry, Monmouth for his slaughter of the Lord's people at Bothwell Bridge, Lauderdale for blasphemy, apostasy, and adultery, and other offences.

The Government thought it time to hunt out this nest of enthusiasts, and put to death, as a terror, the prisoners taken at Aird's Moss. Two of these were women, Isabel Alison and Marian Harvey, who went to the gallows rejoicing. The Duke of York offered to pardon some of them if they would only say, "God save the king," but they refused, and congratulated each other that they should that night sup in Paradise. Cargill and four followers were hanged in July, 1681.

James now professed great leniency and liberality. Instead of persecuting the Cameronians, he drafted them off into a Scottish regiment which was serving abroad in Flanders, in the pay of Spain. He put a stop to many of Lauderdale's embezzlements, and turned out some of the worst of his official blood-suckers. He promised to maintain episcopacy, and to put down conventicles, and brought into Parliament a new Test Act, which was to swear every one to the king's supremacy, and to passive obedience. His leniency was then soon at an end, and the object he was driving at was too palpable to escape the slightest observation. But Fletcher of Saltoun, Lord Stair, and some other bold patriots, opposed the design, and carried a clause in the Test Act for the defence of the Protestant religion, which was so worded as to make it mean Presbyterianism of the Confession of Faith of 1560. This so little suited James that he was impelled to add another clause, excusing the princes of the blood from taking his own test. But Lord Belhaven boldly declared that the object of it was to bind a Popish successor. At this frank avowal, James's assumed liberality deserted him, and he sent Lord Belhaven prisoner to Edinburgh castle, and ordered the Attorney-General to impeach him. He removed Lord Stair from his office of President of the Court of Session, and commenced prosecutions against both him and Fletcher of Saltoun. The Earl of Argyll, however, whose father had been executed by Charles soon after his restoration, made a decided speech against the Test, and James called upon him at the Council board to take it. Argyll took it with certain qualifications, whereupon James appeared to be satisfied, and invited Argyll to sit beside him at the Council board, and repeatedly took the opportunity of whispering in his ear, as if he bestowed his highest confidence on him. But this was but the fawning of the tiger ere he made his spring. Two days after he sent him to the castle on a charge of treason for limiting the Test. James, however, when some of the courtiers surmised that his life and fortune must pay for his treason, exclaimed, "Life and fortune! God forbid!" Yet on the 20th of November, 1681, instructions arrived from England to accuse him of high treason, and on the 12th of December he was brought to trial. To show what was to be expected from such a trial, the Marquis of Montrose, the grandson of the celebrated Montrose, whom the father of Argyll and the Covenanters hanged, and who was, in consequence, the implacable enemy of the present earl and all his house, was made foreman of the jury, and delivered the sentence of guilty. The whole Council were called on to endorse this sentence; even the bishops were not allowed to be exempt, according to their privilege, from being concerned in a doom of blood; and the earl's own friends and adherents had not the firmness to refuse selling their names. Argyll, however, disappointed his enemies, by escaping from his cell in Edinburgh Castle in the disguise of a page to his daughter-in-law, Lady Lindsay, and made his way to England, and thence to Holland, where, like many other fugitives from England and Scotland, he took refuge with William of Orange.

James now, whilst the Parliament was terror-stricken by this example of royal vengeance, brought in a Bill making it high treason in any one to maintain the lawfulness of excluding him from the throne, either on account of his religion or for any other reason whatever. By this he showed to the Exclusionists that they must expect a civil war with Scotland if they attempted to bar his way to the throne of England. Deeming himself now secure, he gave way to his natural cruelty of temper, and indulged in tortures and barbarities which seemed almost to cast the atrocities of Lauderdale into the shade. It was his custom to have the prisoners for religion so tortured in the Privy Council, that even the old hardened courtiers who had witnessed the merciless doings of Lauderdale and Middleton, escaped from the board as soon as the iron boots were introduced. But James not only seemed to enjoy the agonies of the sentenced with a peculiar satisfaction, but he made an order that the whole of the Privy Council should remain during these more than inquisitorial horrors. He was thus employing himself, when he was summoned to England by Charles, who assured him that he should be allowed soon to return permanently, on condition that he made over part of his Parliamentary allowance to the French mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth.

The duke being allowed to return, and being restored to the office of Lord High Admiral, and lodged in St. James's Palace, Monmouth, who had been assured that James should be retained in Scotland, also returned from abroad, in spite of the positive command of the king. On the Duke of York's return, the Tories, who regarded it as a proof of the ascendency of their principles, framed an address of congratulation, and of abhorrence of Shaftesbury's scheme of Association. When Monmouth arrived, the Whig party received him with still more boisterous enthusiasm. The City was in a turmoil of delight, but in the blaze of his popularity, Monmouth, conceiving that the Whig influence was on the decline, endeavoured to follow the example of Sunderland, who had made his peace with the king, and the Duke was readmitted to the Cabinet. But Monmouth was too narrowly watched, and though he had sent offers of reconciliation through his wife, the reproaches of Shaftesbury, Russell, and his other partisans, made him draw back, and under pretence of paying a visit to the Earl of Macclesfield, he set out, as in 1680, on a tour through the provinces.

Nothing could exceed Monmouth's folly in this progress. Had he been the undoubted heir apparent to the crown, he could not have assumed more airs of royalty; and at a moment when the eyes of both the king and James were following him with jealous vigilance, this folly was the more egregious. Wherever he came he was met by the nobles and great landowners at the head of their tenantry, most of whom were armed, and conducted in royal state to their houses. He was thus received by the Lords Macclesfield, Brandon, Rivers, Colchester, Delamere, and Grey, as well as by the leading gentry. He travelled attended by a hundred men on horseback, one half of whom preceded, and the other followed him. As he approached a town, he quitted his coach and mounted his horse, on which he rode alone in the centre of the procession. On entering the town, the nobles, gentry, and city officials took their places in front, the tenantry and common people fell in behind, shouting, "A Monmouth! a Monmouth! and no York!" Wherever he dined he ordered two hundred covers to be laid for the guests, and the people, conducted by proper officers, passed through the room in at one door and out at another, in order to see him, as if he were a king. At Liverpool he did not hesitate to touch for the king's evil. Wherever there were fairs, races, or other public assemblies, he was sure to appear, and ingratiate himself with the populace, not only by his flattering bows and smiles, but by entering into their sports. He was a man of amazing agility, and ran races on foot with the most celebrated pedestrians, and after beating them in his shoes, he would run again in his boots against them in their shoes, and win still. The prizes that he thus gained he gave away at christenings in the evening.

Whilst he was thus exciting the wonder of the common people by his popular acts, accomplishments, and condescensions, the spies of Chiffinch, his father's old agent for secret purposes, were constantly around him, and sent up hourly reports to Court. Jeffreys, who was now Chief Justice of Chester, and himself addicted to much low company, buffoonery, and drunkenness off the bench, and the wildest and most insulting conduct upon it, seized the opportunity of some slight disturbances, which occurred during Monmouth's stay there, to win favour with the Duke of York, by taking into custody and punishing some of his followers. At Stafford Monmouth had engaged to dine in the public streets with the whole population; but as he was walking towards the appointed place, a king's messenger appeared, and arrested him on a charge of "passing through the kingdom with multitudes of riotous people, to the disturbance of the peace and the terror of the king's subjects." Shaftesbury was not there, or Monmouth might have been advised to throw himself on the protection of the people, and the rebellion which he stirred up a few years later might have occurred then, for Shaftesbury was now advising all the leaders of his party to rise; but Monmouth surrendered without resistance, and was conveyed to the capital, where he was admitted to bail himself in a bond of ten thousand pounds, and his sureties in two thousand pounds each. The king, with that affection which he always showed for this vain and foolish young man, appeared satisfied with having cut short his mock-heroic progress.

But though the British Absalom for the present escaped thus easily, the war of royalty and reassured Toryism on the long triumphant Whigs was beginning in earnest. Shaftesbury, since his discharge from the Tower, had seen with terror the rapid rising of the Tory influence, the vindictive addresses from every part of the country against him, and the undisguised cry of passive obedience. The circumstances seemed not only to irritate his temper, but to have destroyed the cool steadiness of his judgment. He felt assured that it would not be long before he would be singled out for royal vengeance; and he busied himself with his subordinate agents in planning schemes for raising the country. These agents and associates were Walcot, formerly an officer under the Commonwealth in the Irish army; Rumsey, another military adventurer, who had been in the war in Portugal; Ferguson, a Scottish minister, who deemed both the king and the duke apostates and tyrants, to be got rid of by almost any means; and West, a lawyer. These men had their agents and associates of the like views, and they assured Shaftesbury they could raise the City at any time.

But the tug of war was actually beginning between the Court and the City, and the prospect was so little flattering to the City, that Halifax said there would soon be hanging, and Shaftesbury even thought of attempting a reconciliation with the duke. He made an overture, to which James replied, that though Lord Shaftesbury had been the most bitter of his enemies, all his offences should be forgotten whenever he became a dutiful subject of his Majesty. But second thoughts did not encourage Shaftesbury to trust to the smooth speech of the man who never forgot or forgave.

So long as the Whigs were in the ascendant, their sheriffs could secure juries to condemn their opponents and save their friends. Charles and James determined, whilst the Tory feeling ran so high, to force the government of the City from the Whigs, and to hold the power in their own hands. Sir John Moore, the then Lord Mayor, was brought over to their interest, and they availed themselves of an old but disused custom to get sheriffs nominated to their own minds. Thus the Government had a complete triumph in the City; and they pursued their advantage. A prosecution was commenced against Pilkington, one of the late sheriffs, who in his vexation unguardedly said, "The Duke of York fired the City at the burning of London, and now he is coming to cut our throats." Damages were laid at one hundred thousand pounds, and awarded by a jury at Hertford. Pilkington, whose sentence amounted to imprisonment for life, and Shute, his late colleague, Sir Patience Ward, Cornel, Ford, Lord Grey, and others were tried, Ward for perjury, the rest for riot and assault on the Lord Mayor, and convicted. In all these proceedings Mr. Serjeant Jeffreys was an active instrument to promote the Government objects.

But these triumphs were only temporary. The Court determined to establish a permanent power over the City. It therefore proceeded by a writ of _quo warranto_ to deprive the City of its franchise. The case was tried before Sir Edward Sanders and the other judges of the King's Bench. The Attorney-General pleaded that the City had perpetrated two illegal acts--they had imposed an arbitrary tax on merchandise brought into the public market, and had accused the king, by adjourning Parliament, of having interrupted the necessary business of the nation. After much contention and delay, in the hope that the City would voluntarily lay itself at the feet of the monarch, judgment was pronounced that "the City of London should be taken and seized with the king's hands." When the authorities prayed the non-carrying out of the sentence, the Lord Chancellor North candidly avowed the real object of the proceeding,--that the king was resolved to put an end to the opposition of the City, by having a veto on the appointment of the Lord Mayor and sheriffs; that he did not wish to interfere in their affairs or liberties further, but this power he was determined to possess, and therefore the judgment was confirmed June 20th, 1683, and London was reduced to an absolute slavery to the king's will. It was equally determined to proceed by the same means of a _quo warranto_ to suppress the charters of the other corporations in the kingdom.

Shaftesbury had seen the progress of this enormous change with the deepest alarm. He retired to his house in Aldersgate Street, and not feeling himself secure there, hid himself successively in different parts of the City, striving, through his agents, to move Monmouth, Essex, and Grey to rise, and break this progress of despotism. He boasted that he had ten thousand link-boys yet in the City, who would rise at the lifting of his finger. It was proposed by Monmouth that he should engage the Lords Macclesfield, Brandon, and Delamere to rise in Cheshire and Lancashire. Lord William Russell corresponded with Sir Francis Drake in the west of England, Trenchard engaged to raise the people of Taunton. But Monmouth had more than half betrayed the scheme to the king, and the progress of events in the City grew formidable. Shaftesbury was struck with despair, and fled in November, 1682. He escaped to Harwich in the guise of a Presbyterian minister, and got thence over to Holland. He took up his residence at Amsterdam, where he was visited by Oates and Waller; but his mortification at the failure of his grand scheme of "walking the king leisurely out of his dominions, and making the Duke of York a vagabond like Cain on the face of the earth," broke his spirits and his constitution. The gout fixed itself in his stomach, and on the 21st of January, 1683, he expired, only two months after his quitting England.

The fall of this extraordinary man and of his cause is a grand lesson in history. His cause was the best in the world--that of maintaining the liberties of England against the designs of one of the most profligate and despotic Courts that ever existed. But by following crooked by-paths and dishonest schemes, and by employing the most villainous of mankind for accomplishing his object, he ruined it. Had he and his fellows, who had more or less of genuine patriotism in them, combined to rouse their country by high, direct, and honourable means, they would have won the confidence of their country, and saved it, or have perished with honour. As it was, the great national achievement was reserved for others.

The flight and death of Shaftesbury struck terror into the Whig party. Many gave up the cause in despair; others of a timid nature went over to the enemy, and others, spurred on by their indignation, rushed forward into more rash and fatal projects; and at this moment one of the extraordinary revelations took place which rapidly brought to the gallows and the block nearly the whole of Shaftesbury's agents, coadjutors, and colleagues, including Lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney.

We have seen that Shaftesbury and his party had been seriously contemplating an insurrection to compel Charles to adopt measures for securing a Protestant succession which they could not persuade him to, and that the efforts of the arch-agitator and his agents, West, Ferguson, Rouse, Rumsey, Walcot, and others, to excite the nobles of the Whig party to action, had proved abortive and induced Shaftesbury to fly. Unfortunately, the royal party being now in the full tide of retribution, the more contemptible portion of those who had been most active in carrying on the Whig aggressions began to consider what was to be gained by betraying their associates. On the 1st of June a Scotsman was arrested on suspicion at Newcastle, and on him was found a letter, which indicated agreement between the Opposition parties in Scotland and England. A quick inquiry was set on foot after further traces of the alarming facts; and on the 12th, the very day on which judgment was pronounced against the City, Josiah Keeling, a man who had been extremely prominent in the late contests about the sheriffs, and who had displayed his zeal by actually laying hands on the Lord Mayor Moore, for his support of the Government, now waited on Lord Dartmouth, the Duke of York's close friend, and informed him of particulars of the late schemes, as if they were yet actively in operation against the king's life. Dartmouth took the informer to Sir Leoline Jenkins, Secretary of State, who had been extremely active in the proceedings against the City. The story which Keeling laid before Sir Leoline was to the following appalling purport:--That in the month of March last, when the king and Duke of York were about to proceed to Newmarket, to the races, Goodenough, the late Under Sheriff, one of Shaftesbury's most busy men in the City, lamenting the slavery to which the City was fast being reduced, asked him how many men he could engage to kill the king and the duke too; that he had repeated the same question to him whilst the king and the duke were there; and that he then consented to join the plot, and to endeavour to procure accomplices. Accordingly, he engaged Burton, a cheesemonger, Thompson, a carver, and Barber, an instrument-maker of Wapping. They then met with one Rumbold, a maltster at the "Mitre" Tavern, without Aldgate, where it was settled to go down to a house that Rumbold had, called the Rye House, on the River Lea, near Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire, and there execute their design. This house lay conveniently by the wayside, and a number of men concealed under a fence could easily shoot down the king's postilion and horses, and then kill him and the duke, and the four guards with them. If they failed to stop the carriage, a man placed with a cart and horse in a cross lane a few paces farther on was to run his horse and cart athwart the road, and there stop it, till they had completed their design. From this circumstance the plot obtained the name of the Rye House Plot.

At a subsequent meeting at the "Dolphin," behind the Exchange, there was a disagreement as to the time when the king would return, and thus they missed the opportunity, for Rumbold, who went down, said the king and duke passed the place with only five Life-Guards. Various other plans were then laid--one to cut off the king between Windsor and Hampton Court.

Secretary Jenkins, after listening to this recital, told Keeling that it would require another witness to establish a charge of treason against the conspirators, and Keeling fetched his brother John, who swore with him to these and many other particulars--namely, that Goodenough had organised a plan for raising twenty districts in the City, and that twenty thousand pounds were to be distributed amongst the twenty managers of these districts; that the Duke of Monmouth was to head the insurrection, a person called the colonel was to furnish one thousand pounds, and different men in different parts of the country were to raise their own neighbourhoods; that the murder was now to come off at the next bull-feast in Red Lion Fields. Two days afterwards they added that Goodenough had informed them that Lord William Russell would enter heart and soul into the design of killing the king and the Duke of York.

A proclamation was immediately issued for the arrest of Rumbold, Colonel Rumsey, Walcot, Wade, Nelthorp, Thompson, Burton, and Hone; but it was supposed that John Keeling, who had been reluctantly dragged into the affair by Josiah, had given them warning, and they had all got out of the way. Barber, the instrument-maker of Wapping, however, was taken, and declared that he had never understood that the design was against the king, but only against the duke. West soon surrendered himself, and, in hope of pardon, gave most extensive evidence against Ferguson and a dozen others; like Oates and Bedloe, continually adding fresh facts and dragging in fresh people. He said Ferguson had brought money to buy arms; that Wildman had been furnished with means to buy arms; that Lord Howard of Escrick had gone deeply into it; that Algernon Sidney and Wildman were in close correspondence with the conspirators in Scotland; that at meetings held at the "Devil Tavern," it was projected to shoot the king in a narrow street as he was returning from the theatre; that they had hinted something of their design to the Duke of Monmouth, but not the killing part of it, but that he had sternly replied they must look on him as a son; and then the relations of this wretched turncoat lawyer assumed all the wildness of a Bluebeard story. Ferguson would hear of nothing but killing. The new Lord Mayor, the new sheriffs Rich and North, were to be killed, and their skins stuffed and hung up in Guildhall; the judges were to be flayed, too, and their skins suspended in Westminster Hall and other great traitors were to have their skins hung up in the Parliament House.

Next, Rumsey turned informer, and, improving as he went on, he also accused Lord William Russell, Mr. Trenchard, Roe, the Sword-Bearer of Bristol, the Duke of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Armstrong, Lord Grey, and Ferguson. He had, he said, met most of these persons at Shepherd's, a wine-merchant, near Lombard Street, and nothing less was intended by most of them than killing the king and his brother. Trenchard had promised a thousand foot and three hundred horse in the West, and Ferguson had engaged to raise twelve hundred Scots who had fled to England after the battle of Bothwell Bridge. Shepherd, the wine-merchant, was called, and said that Shaftesbury, before going to Holland, the Duke of Monmouth, Lords William Russell and Grey, Armstrong, Rumsey, and Ferguson had met at his house, and, he was informed, had talked about securing his Majesty's Guards, and had walked about the Court end of the town at night, and reported a very remiss state of the Guards on duty. He added that as the design had not obtained sufficient support, so far as he knew, it was laid aside.

On the 26th of June a proclamation was issued for the apprehension of Monmouth, Grey, Russell, Armstrong, Walcot, and others. Monmouth, Grey, Armstrong, and Ferguson escaped; Lord William Russell, Sidney, Essex, Wildman, Howard of Escrick, Walcot, and others were taken, then or soon after. Russell was the first secured. He was found quietly seated in his library, and though the messengers had walked to and fro for some time before his door, as if wishing him to get away, he took no steps towards it, but as soon as the officer had shown his warrant, he went with him as though he had been backed by a troop. When examined before the Council, he is said, even by his own party, to have made but a feeble defence. He admitted having been at Shepherd's, but only to buy wines. He understood that some of those whom he had seen there were a crowd of dangerous designers; he should not, therefore, mention them, but only the Duke of Monmouth, against whom there could be no such charge. He denied that he had heard there anything about a rising in the West or in Scotland, but only that in the latter country there were many people in distress, ministers and others, whom it would be a great charity to relieve. He was committed to the Tower, and on entering it he said he was sworn against, and they would have his life. His servant replied that he hoped matters were not so bad as that, but he rejoined, "Yes! the devil is loose!" He saw the course things were taking; the spirit that was in the ascendant; he knew that he had entered into revolutionary schemes sufficiently for his condemnation, and that the Duke of York, who had an old hatred for him, would never let him escape.

Lord Howard was one of the last arrested. He went about after the arrest of several of the others, declaring that there really was no plot; that he knew of none; yet after that it is asserted, and strong evidence adduced for it, that to save his own life he had made several offers to the Court to betray his kinsman Russell. Four days before Russell's trial, a serjeant-at-arms, attended by a troop of horse, was sent to Howard's house at Knightsbridge, and after a long search discovered him in his shirt in the chimney of his room. His conduct when taken was most cowardly and despicable, and fully justified the character that he had of being one of the most perfidious and base of men. He wept, trembled, and entreated, and begging a private interview with the king and duke, he betrayed his associates to save himself. Russell had always had a horror and suspicion of him, but he had managed to captivate Sidney by his vehement professions of Republicanism, and by Sidney and Essex he had been induced to tolerate the traitor. The Earl of Essex was taken at his house at Cassiobury, and was escorted to town by a party of horse. He might have escaped through the assistance of his friends, but he deemed that his flight would tend to condemn his friend Russell, and he refused.

He was a man of a melancholy temperament, but he bore up bravely till he was shut up in the Tower, in the same cell where his wife's grandfather, the Earl of Northumberland, in the reign of Elizabeth, had died by his own hands or those of an assassin, and from which his father, the Lord Capel, had been led to execution under the Commonwealth. He now became greatly depressed. The rest of the prisoners--Sidney, Hampden, Armstrong, Baillie of Jerviswood, and others, both Scottish and English--displayed the most firm bearing before the Council, and refused to answer the questions put to them. Sidney told the king and his ministers that if they wished to incriminate him, it was not from himself that they would get their information.

Lord William Russell was brought to trial on the 13th of July, at the Old Bailey. He was charged with conspiring the death of the king, and consulting to levy war upon him. Intense interest was attached to this trial, in consequence of the high character of the prisoner, and because it must decide how far the Whig leaders were concerned in the designs of lower conspirators. He requested a delay till afternoon or next morning, because material witnesses had not arrived, but the Attorney-General, Sir Robert Sawyer, replied, "You would not have given the king an hour's notice for saving his life; the trial must proceed." He then requested the use of pen, ink, and paper, and for permission to avail himself of the documents he had with him. These requests were granted, and he then asked for some one to help him to take notes; and the court replied that he might have the service of any of his servants for that purpose. "My lord," said Russell, addressing Chief Justice Pemberton, "my wife is here to do it." This observation, and the lady herself then rising up to place herself at her husband's side to perform this office, produced a lively sensation in the crowd of spectators. The daughter of the excellent and popular Lord Southampton thus devoting herself to assist her husband in his last extremity, was an incident not likely to lose its effect on the mind of Englishmen, and the image

"Of that sweet saint who sat by Russell's side"

has ever since formed a favourite theme for the painter and the poet.

The witnesses first produced against him were Rumsey and Shepherd. Rumsey deposed that the prisoner had attended a meeting at Shepherd's for concerting a plan to surprise the king's Guards at the Savoy and the Mews, and Shepherd confirmed this evidence. Russell admitted the being at Shepherd's, and meeting the persons alleged, but denied the object stated so far as he himself was concerned, or so far as he had heard or understood. The last and most infamous witness was Lord Howard of Escrick, a man of ability and address, but a thorough profligate, and generally despised, and by Russell himself long suspected. Yet even he seemed to feel the infamy of his position, and to give his evidence with shame. Whilst in the midst of it, the Court was electrified by the news that the Earl of Essex had that moment committed suicide in his cell. He had called for a razor, shut himself up in a closet, and cut his throat so effectually that he had nearly severed his head from his body. When the news, however, reached the court of the Old Bailey, the sensation was intense. The witness himself was greatly agitated by it, and Jeffreys, who was counsel for the Crown, seized upon it to damage the cause of the prisoner at the bar. He argued that the very act showed the conscious guilt of Essex, who had been constantly mixed up in the proceedings of Russell.

Howard swore that he had heard from Monmouth, Walcot, and others, that Russell had been deeply concerned with the conspirators, and especially their head, Lord Shaftesbury. He alleged that Russell had taken part in two discussions at Hampden's, where they had arranged the treasonable correspondence with the Earl of Argyll and his adherents in Scotland; and was aware of the agent, one Aaron Smith, being sent to Scotland for the purpose of organising their co-operation. Being pressed to say whether Lord William took an active part in these discussions, he did not plainly assert that he did, as he said he was well known to be cautious and reserved in his discourse, but that all was understood, and he appeared to consent to everything. Russell admitted having been at those meetings, but again denied any knowledge of any such designs, and declared that Lord Howard's evidence was mere hearsay evidence, and of no legal weight whatever; and that, moreover, Howard had positively declared repeatedly that there was no plot, and had sworn to his (Russell's) innocence. On this Howard was recalled, and explained that it was before his arrest that he had ridiculed and denied the plot--which, under the circumstances, was natural enough--and he had sworn to Lord William's innocence only as far as regarded a design of assassination of the king and duke, but not as regarded his participation in the general plot. West and the serjeant-at-arms, who had the Scottish prisoners in custody, were also called to prove the reality of the plot, and of their looking chiefly to Lord William Russell to head it.

On his part the prisoner contended that none of the witnesses were to be relied on, because they were swearing against him in order to save their own lives. He also argued that, according to the statute of 25 Edward III., the statute decided not the design to levy war, but the overt act, to constitute treason. But the Attorney-General replied that not only to levy war, but to conspire to levy war against the king, to kill, depose, or constrain him, was treason by the statute. Before the jury retired, Russell addressed them, saying, "Gentlemen, I am now in your hands eternally; my honour, my life, and all; and I hope the heats and animosities that are amongst you will not so bias you as to make you in the least inclined to find an innocent man guilty. I call heaven and earth to witness that I never had a design against the king's life. I am in your hands, so God direct you." They returned a verdict of guilty, and Treby, the Recorder of London, who had been an active Exclusionist, pronounced the sentence of death. In spite of the efforts of his relatives, the sentence was carried out on the 21st of July, 1683.