Chapter X: Reign of James II (2)

It was reported that the soldiers were left, by the reckless incapacity of the general, to drink cider and preserve little watch; and Monmouth, who saw that they lay in a very unconnected condition, conceived that by a skilful night attack he could easily surprise them. The gormandising incapacity of Louis Duras, now Lord Feversham, a foreigner who had been advanced by Charles II., was notorious, and the transcendent military talents of Churchill, who was in subordinate command, were yet little known. Preparations were therefore instantly made for the surprise. Scouts were sent out to reconnoitre the ground, who reported that two deep ditches full of mud and water lay between them and the hostile camp, which would have to be passed. At eleven o'clock at night the troops, with "Soho" for their watchword, marched out of Bridgewater in profound silence, taking a circuitous route, which would make the march about six miles. It was a moonlight night, but the moor lay enveloped in a thick fog, and about one in the morning the troops of Monmouth approached the royal camp. Their guides conducted the soldiers by a causeway over each of the two ditches, and Monmouth drew up his men for the attack, but by accident a pistol went off; the sentinels of the division of the army--the Foot Guards--which lay in front of them, were alarmed, and, listening, became aware of the trampling of the rebels as they were forming in rank. They fired their carbines and flew to rouse the camp. There was an instant galloping and running in all directions. Feversham and the chief officers were aroused, and drums beat to arms, and the men ran to get into rank. No time was to be lost, and Monmouth ordered Grey to dash forward with the cavalry, but he was suddenly brought to a halt by a third dyke, of which they had no information. The Foot Guards on the other side of the dyke demanded who was there, and on the cry of "King Monmouth!" they discharged a volley of musketry with such effect, that the untrained horses of Grey's cavalry became at once unmanageable; the men, thrown into confusion, were seized with panic and fled wherever they could find a way or their horses chose to carry them. Grey, as usual, was in the van of the fugitives. But, on the other hand, Monmouth came now rushing forward with his infantry, and, in his turn, finding himself stopped by the muddy dyke, he fired across it at the enemy, and a fierce fight took place, which was maintained for three-quarters of an hour. Nothing could be more brave and determined than Monmouth and his peasant soldiers. But day was now breaking, the cavalry of Feversham, and the infantry of Churchill, were bearing down on their flanks from different quarters, and Monmouth, then seeing that his defeat was inevitable, forgot the hero and rode off to save his life, leaving his brave, misguided followers to their fate. If anything could have added to the base ignominy of Monmouth's desertion of his adherents, it was the undaunted courage which they showed even when abandoned. They stood boldly to their charge; they cut down the horsemen with their scythes, or knocked them from their saddles with the butt end of their guns; they repulsed the vigorous attack of Oglethorpe, and left Sarsfield for dead on the field. But, unfortunately, their powder failed, and they cried out for fresh supplies in vain. The men with the ammunition waggons had followed the flight of the cavalry, and driven far away from the field. Still the brave peasantry and soldiers fought desperately with their scythes and gunstocks, till the cannon was brought to bear on them, and mowed them down in heaps. As they began to give way the royal cavalry charged upon them from the flank, the infantry poured across the ditch, the stout men, worthy of a better fate and leader, were overwhelmed and broke, but not before a thousand of them lay dead on the moor, or before they had killed or wounded more than three hundred of the king's troops.

The unfortunate rebels were pursued with fury, and hunted through the day out of the neighbouring villages, whither they had flown for concealment. The road towards Bridgewater was crowded with flying men and infuriated troopers following and cutting them down. Many of those who rushed frantically into the streets of Bridgewater fell and died there of their wounds, for the soldiers, who were treated by the farmers to hogsheads of cider, were drunk with drinking, with blood and fury. A vast number of prisoners were secured, for they were a profitable article of merchandise in the Plantations; five hundred were crowded into the single church of Weston Zoyland, and the battle and pursuit being over, the conqueror commenced that exhibition of vengeance which was always so dear to James. Gibbets were erected by the wayside, leading from the battle-field to Bridgewater, and no less than twenty of the prisoners were hanging on them. The peasantry were compelled to bury the slain, and those most suspected of favouring the rebels were set to quarter the victims who were to be suspended in chains. Meanwhile Monmouth, Grey, and Buyse, the Brandenburger, were flying for their lives. They took the north road, hoping to escape into Wales. At Chedzoy Monmouth drew up a moment to hide his George and procure a fresh horse. From the summit of a hill they turned and saw the final defeat and slaughter of their deluded followers. They pushed forward for the Mendip Hills, and then directed their course towards the New Forest, hoping to obtain some vessel on that coast to convey them to the Continent. On Cranborne Chase their horses were completely exhausted; they therefore turned them loose, hid their saddles and bridles, and proceeded on foot. But the news of the defeat of the rebels had travelled as fast as they, and in the neighbourhood of Ringwood and Poole parties of cavalry were out scouring the country, in hopes of the reward of five thousand pounds for Monmouth. Lord Lumley and Sir William Portman, the commanders, agreed to divide the sum among their parties if successful, and early on the morning of the 7th, Grey and the guide were taken at the junction of the two cross roads. This gave proof that the more important prize was not far off. The officers enclosed a wide circle of land, within which they imagined Monmouth and Buyse must yet be concealed; and at five the next morning the Brandenburger was discovered. He confessed that he had parted from Monmouth only four hours before, and the search was renewed with redoubled eagerness. The place was a network of small enclosures, partly cultivated and covered with growing crops of pease, beans, and corn, partly overrun with fern and brambles. The crops and thickets were trodden and beaten down systematically in the search, and at seven o'clock Monmouth himself was discovered in a ditch covered with fern.

FROM THE PAINTING BY W. RAINEY, R.I.]

Monmouth, though mild and agreeable in his manners, had never displayed any high moral qualities. Indeed, if we bear in mind the frivolous and debauched character of the Court in which he had grown up, whether it were the Court of the exile or of the restored king, it would have been wonderful if he had. He was handsome, gay, good-natured, but dissolute and unprincipled. He was ready to conspire against his father or his uncle, to profess the utmost contrition when defeated, and to forget it as soon as forgiven. He has been properly described as the Absalom of modern times. If he merely deserted his miserable followers on the battle-field, he now more meanly deserted his own dignity. He continued, from the moment of his capture to that when he ascended the scaffold, prostrating himself in the dust of abasement, and begging for his life in the most unmanly terms. He wrote to James instantly from Ringwood, so that his humble and agonised entreaties for forgiveness would arrive with the news of his arrest. James admitted the crawling supplicant to the desired interview, but it was in the hope of the promised word of wondrous revelation, not with any intention of pardoning him. He got him to sign a declaration that his father had assured him that he was never married to his mother, and then coolly told him that his crime was of too grave a dye to be forgiven. The queen, who was the only person present besides James and the two Secretaries of State, Sunderland and Middleton, is said to have insulted him in a most merciless and unwomanly manner. When, therefore, Monmouth saw that nothing but his death would satisfy the king and queen, he appeared to resume his courage and fortitude, and rising with an air of dignity, he was taken away. But his apparent firmness lasted only till he was out of their presence. On his way to the Tower he entreated Lord Dartmouth to intercede for him--"I know, my lord," he said, "that you loved my father; for his sake, for God's sake, endeavour to obtain mercy for me." But Dartmouth replied that there could be no pardon for one who had assumed the royal title. Grey displayed a much more manly behaviour. In the presence of the king he admitted his guilt, but did not even ask forgiveness. As Monmouth was under attainder, no trial was deemed necessary, and it was determined that he should be executed on Wednesday morning, the next day but one. On the fatal morning of the 15th he was visited by Dr. Tenison, afterwards archbishop, who discoursed with him, but not very profitably, on the errors of his ways. Before setting out for the scaffold, his wife and children came to take leave of him. Lady Monmouth was deeply moved; Monmouth himself spoke kindly to her, but was cold and passionless. When the hour arrived, he went to execution with the same courage that he had always gone into battle. He was no more the cringing, weeping supplicant, but a man who had made up his mind to die. A disgusting scene of butchery followed, owing to the nervousness of the executioner. The populace were so enraged at the man's clumsiness, that they would have torn him to pieces if they could have got at him. Many rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in Monmouth's blood, and the barbarous circumstances of his execution and the unfeeling persecution of the prelates, did not a little to restore his fame as a martyr to liberty and Protestantism.

Whilst these things were going on in London, the unfortunate people in the West were suffering a dreadful penalty for their adherence to Monmouth. Feversham was called to town, and covered with honours and rewards, though it was notorious that he had done nothing towards the victory. Buckingham even declared that he had won the battle of Sedgemoor in bed. In his place was left one of the most ferocious and unprincipled monsters that ever disgraced the name of soldier. This was Colonel Kirke, who had been governor of Tangier until it was abandoned, and now practised the cruelties that he had learned in his unrestrained command there. In that Settlement, left to do his licentious will on those in his power, he acquired a name for arbitrary, oppressive, and dissolute conduct, which in ordinary times would have insured his death. He now commanded the demoralised soldiers that he had brought back with him, and who, whilst they were capable of every atrocity, were called "Kirke's lambs," because, as a Christian regiment sent against the heathen, they bore on their banner the desecrated sign of the Lamb. His debauched myrmidons were let loose on the inhabitants of Somersetshire, and such as they could not extort money from, they accused on the evidence of the most abandoned miscreants, and hanged and quartered, boiling the quarters in pitch, to make them longer endure the weather on their gibbets. The most horrible traditions still remain of Kirke and his lambs. He and his officers are said to have caused the unhappy wretches brought in, who were not able to pay a heavy ransom, to be hanged on the sign-post of the inn where they messed, and to have caused the drums to beat as they were in the agonies of death, saying they would give them music to their dancing. To prolong their sufferings, Kirke would occasionally have them cut down alive, and then hung up again; and such numbers were quartered, that the miserable peasants compelled to do that revolting work, were said to stand ankle deep in blood. All this was duly reported to the king in London, who directed Lord Sunderland to assure Kirke that "he was very well satisfied with his proceedings." It was asserted in London that in the single week following the battle, Kirke butchered a hundred of his victims, besides pocketing large sums for the ransom of others, yet he declared that he had not gone to the lengths to which he was ordered. On the 10th of August he was sent for to Court, to state personally the condition of the West, James being apprehensive that he had let the rich delinquents escape for money, and the system of butchery was left to Colonel Trelawny, who continued it without intermission, soldiers pillaging the wretched inhabitants, or dragging them away to execution under the forms of martial law. But a still more sweeping and systematic slaughter was speedily initiated under a different class of exterminators--butchers in ermine.

Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, the most diabolical judge that ever sat on the bench--now rendered furious by nightly debauch and daily commission of cruelties; in his revels hugging in mawkish and disgusting fondness his brutal companions; in his discharge of his judicial duties passing the most barbarous sentences in the most blackguard and vituperative language; in whose blazing eye, distorted visage, and bellowing voice raged the unmitigated fiend,--was sent forth by his delighted master to consummate his vengeance on the unhappy people whom the soldiers had left alive and cooped up in prison. He was already created Baron of Wem, dubbed by the people Earl of Flint, and, the Lord Keeper just now dying, he was promised the Great Seal if he shed blood enough to satisfy his ruthless king. Four other judges were associated with him, rather for form than for anything else, for Jeffreys was the hardened, daring, and unscrupulous instrument on whom James confidently relied.

Jeffreys' Bloody Assize, as it was then and always has been termed, both from its wholesale slaughter and from the troops which accompanied him throughout the circuit--a name constantly used by the unfeeling king himself--was opened at Winchester on the 27th of August, and commenced with a case of hitherto unexampled ruthlessness. Mrs. Alice Lisle--or, as she was generally called, Lady Alice, her husband, one of the judges of Charles I., having been created a lord by Cromwell--was now an infirm and aged woman, deaf and lethargic. Her husband had been murdered, as we have related, by the Royalists, as he was entering the church at Lausanne. Lady Alice was known far and wide for her benevolence. Though her husband was on the other side, she had always shown active kindness to the followers of the king during the Civil War, and on this account, after her husband's death, his estate had been granted to her. During the rebellion of Monmouth her son had served in the king's army against the invader; yet this poor old lady was now accused of having given a night's shelter to Hicks, a Nonconformist minister, and Nelthorpe, a lawyer, outlawed for his concern in the Rye House Plot. They were fugitives from Sedgemoor, and the law of treason was that he who harbours a traitor is liable to death, the punishment of a traitor. Mrs. Lisle had no counsel, and pleaded that though she knew that Hicks was a Presbyterian minister, she did not know that he and Nelthorpe were concerned in the rebellion, and there was no direct proof of the fact.

Jeffreys terrified the witnesses, and then came the turn of the jury. They retired to consult, but not coming to a speedy conclusion, for they were afraid of the judge, and yet loth to condemn the prisoner, Jeffreys sent them word that if they did not agree he would lock them up all night. They then came into court and expressed their doubts of Mrs. Lisle knowing that Hicks had been with Monmouth. Jeffreys told them that their doubt was altogether groundless, and sent them back to agree. Again they returned, unable to get rid of their doubt. Then Jeffreys thundered against them in his fiercest style, and declared that were he on the jury, he would have found her guilty had she been his own mother. At length the jury gave way and brought in a verdict of guilty. The next morning Jeffreys pronounced sentence upon her amid a storm of vituperation against the Presbyterians, to whom he supposed Mrs. Lisle belonged. He ordered her, according to the rigour of the old law of treason, to be burned alive that very afternoon.

This monstrous sentence thoroughly roused the inhabitants of the place; and the clergy of the cathedral, the staunchest supporters of the king's beloved arbitrary power, remonstrated with Jeffreys in such a manner, that he consented to a respite of five days, in order that application might be made to the king. The clergy sent a deputation to James, earnestly interceding for the life of the aged woman, on the ground of her generous conduct on all occasions to the king's friends. Ladies of high rank, amongst them the Ladies St. John and Abergavenny, pleaded tenderly for her life. Feversham, moved by a bribe of a thousand pounds, joined in the entreaty, but nothing could move that obdurate heart, and all the favour that James would grant her was that she should be beheaded instead of burnt. Her execution, accordingly, took place at Winchester on the 2nd of September, and James II. won the unenviable notoriety of being the only tyrant in England, however implacable, who had ever dyed his hands in woman's blood for the merciful deed of attempting to save the lives of the unfortunate. What made this case worse was, that neither Hicks nor Nelthorpe had yet been tried, so that the trial of Mrs. Lisle was altogether illegal, and the forcing of the jury completed one of the most diabolical instances of judicial murder on record.

From Winchester Jeffreys proceeded to Dorchester. He came surrounded by still more troops, and, in fact, rather like a general to take bloody vengeance, than as a judge to make a just example of the guilty, mingled with mercy, on account of the ignorance of the offenders. The ferocious tyrant was rendered more ferocious, from his temper being exasperated by the agonies of the stone which his drunken habits had inflicted on him. He had the court hung with scarlet, as if to announce his sanguinary determination. When the clergyman who preached before him recommended mercy in his sermon, he was seen to make a horrible grimace, expressive of his savage disdain of such a sentiment. It was whilst preparing to judge the three hundred prisoners collected there, that he received the news of his elevation to the woolsack. He had received orders from James to make effectual work with the rebels, and he now adopted a mode of despatching the unhappy wretches in wholesale style. As it would be a very tedious work to try all that number one by one, he devised a more expeditious plan. He sent two officers to them into the prison, offering them mercy or certain death. All who chose to make confession of their guilt should be treated with clemency, all who refused should be led to immediate execution. His clemency amounted to a respite of a day or two--he hanged them all the same. Writing to Sunderland, Jeffreys said on the 16th of September:--"This day I began with the rebels, and have despatched ninety-eight." Of the three hundred, two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death. Eighty only were hanged, the rest were, for the most part, sent to the Plantations as slaves.

From Dorchester he went to Exeter, where two hundred and forty-three prisoners awaited their doom. He proceeded in the same way, and condemned the whole body in a batch, and as they saved him much trouble, he did not hang so many of them. Taunton, the capital of Somersetshire, the county where the rebellion was the strongest, presented him with no fewer than a thousand prisoners. Here he perfectly revelled in his bloody task. The work seemed to have the effect of brandy or champagne upon him. He grew every day more exuberant and riotous. He was in such a state of excitement from morning to night, that many thought him drunk the whole time. He laughed like a maniac, bellowed, scolded, cut his filthy jokes on the astounded prisoners, and was more like an exulting demon than a man. There were two hundred and thirty-three prisoners hanged, drawn, and quartered in a few days. The whole number hanged in this bloody campaign has been variously stated at from three to seven hundred. Probably the medium is the most correct. But so many were hung in chains, or their jointed quarters and limbs displayed on the highways, village greens, and in the market-places, that the whole country was infected with the intolerable stench. Some of their heads were nailed on the porches of parish churches; the whole district was a perfect Golgotha. It was in vain that the most distinguished people endeavoured to check the infuriated judge's rage; he only turned his evil diatribes on them, and gave them what he called "a lick with the rough side of his tongue." Because Lord Stowell, a Royalist, complained of the remorseless butchery of the poor people of his neighbourhood, he gibbeted a corpse at his park gate.

The fate of the transported prisoners was worse than death itself. They were eight hundred and forty in number, and were granted as favours to the courtiers. Jeffreys estimated that they were, on an average, worth from ten pounds to fifteen pounds apiece to the grantee. They were not to be shipped to New England or New Jersey, because the Puritan inhabitants might have a sympathy with them on account of their religion, and mitigate the hardship of their lot. They were to go to the West Indies, where they were to be slaves, and not acquire their freedom for ten years. They were transported in small vessels with all the horrors of the slave trade. They were crowded so that they had not room for lying down all at once; were never allowed to go on deck; and in darkness, starvation, and pestiferous stench, they died daily in such quantities that the loss of one-fifth of them was calculated on. The rest reached the Plantations, ghastly, emaciated, and all but lifeless. Even the innocent school girls, many under ten years of age, at Taunton, who had gone in procession to present a banner to Monmouth, at the command of their mistress, were not excused. The queen, who had never preferred a single prayer to her husband for mercy to the victims of this unprecedented proscription, was eager to participate in the profit, and had a hundred sentenced men awarded to her, the profit on which was calculated at one thousand pounds. Her maids of honour solicited a share of this blood-money, and had a fine of seven thousand pounds on these poor girls assigned to them.

The only persons who escaped from this sea of blood were Grey, Sir John Cochrane, who had been in Argyll's expedition, Storey, who had been commissary to Monmouth's army, Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson. All these owed their escape to money or their secret services in giving information against their old friends, except Ferguson, who by some means escaped to the Continent. On the other hand, Bateman, the surgeon who had bled Oates in Newgate after his scourging, and by his attentions saved his life, was, for a mere duty of his profession, arrested, tried, hanged, and quartered.

James now seemed at the summit of his ambition. He had established an actual reign of terror. The dreadful massacre of the West struck dumb the most courageous, and this gloomy tyrant gave full play to his love of cruelty. The Nonconformists were everywhere beset by informers, who imprisoned, robbed, and abused them at pleasure. They could only meet for worship in the most obscure places and in the most secret manner. Their houses were broken into and searched on pretence of discovering conventicles. Their ministers were seized and thrust into prison. Baxter was there; Howe was obliged to escape abroad. Never, even in the time of Laud, had the oppression been so universal and crushing. All spirit of resistance appeared to be quenched in terror. The close of the year 1685 was long remembered as one of indescribable and unexampled depression and speechless misery.

James, on the contrary, never was so triumphant. He believed that he had now struck effectual terror into the country, and might rule at will. He had increased the army, and openly declared the necessity of increasing it further. He had in many instances dispensed with the Test Act in giving many commissions in the army to Catholics, and he resolved to abolish both that Act and the Habeas Corpus Act. His great design was to restore the Roman religion to full liberty in England; he believed that he was able now to accomplish that daring deed. Parliament was to meet in the beginning of November, and he announced to his Cabinet his intention to have the Test Act repealed by it, or, if it refused, to dispense with it by his own authority. This declaration produced the utmost consternation. Halifax, however, was the only member who dared to warn him of the consequences, and avowed that he would be compelled to oppose the measure. James endeavoured to win him over to his views, but finding it vain, determined to dismiss him from office. His more prudent Councillors cautioned him against such an act on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, on the ground that Halifax possessed great influence, and might head a dangerous opposition. But James was the last man to see danger ahead, and Halifax ceased to be President of the Council. The news was received with astonishment in England, with exultation in Paris, and with discontent at the Hague.

The dismissal of Halifax produced a great sensation out of doors. The Opposition gathered new courage. Danby and his party showed themselves early to coalesce with the adherents of Halifax. The whispered assurance that Halifax was dismissed for refusing to betray the Test and Habeas Corpus Acts created general alarm, and even the leading officers of the army did not hesitate to express their disapprobation. Just at this crisis, only a week before Parliament would assemble, came the news of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. This Edict had been issued under the ministry of Richelieu, and had closed the long and bloody war between Catholic France and its Protestant subjects. Under certain restrictions the Huguenots were tolerated, and were contented. But Louis, urged by the Jesuits, had long been infringing on the conditions of the treaty. He had dismissed all Huguenots from his service, had forbade them to be admitted to the profession of the law, and compelled Protestant children to be educated by Catholics. Now at length he abolished the Edict altogether, by which the Huguenots were once more at the mercy of dragoons and ruffian informers and constables. Their ministers were banished, their children torn from them, and sent to be educated in convents. The unhappy people seeing nothing but destruction before them, fled out of the kingdom on all sides. No less than fifty thousand families were said to have quitted France, some of them of high rank and name, the bulk of them weavers in silk and stuffs, hatters, and artificers of various kinds. Many settled in London, where they introduced silk weaving, and where their descendants yet remain, still bearing their French names, in Bethnal Green and Spitalfields. Others carried their manufacturing industry to Saxony, and others emigrated to the Cape as vine growers. France, by this blind act of bigotry, lost a host of her best citizens, and had her arts carried to her rivals.

This was a terrible blow to the scheme of James for restoring Romanism to power in England. The people justly said, if a politic monarch like Louis could not refrain at such a serious cost from persecuting Protestants, what was England to expect should Romanism gain the ascendency here, under a bigoted and narrow-minded king like James? James himself saw the full extent of the, to him, inopportune occurrence, and professed to join heartily in the universal outcry of Europe, not excepting the very Pope himself, and Spain, the land of Jesuits and inquisitions; for those parties who were suffering from the aggressions of Louis found it, like James, convenient to make an outcry. What more irritated James was an address which the French clergy in a body had presented to Louis, applauding the deed and declaring that the pious king of England was looking to Louis for his aid in reducing his heretical subjects. This address was read with astonishment and terror by the English people, and James hastened to condemn the revocation of the Edict, and to promote and contribute to the relief of the refugees who had sought shelter here. This affected sympathy did not last long.

On the 9th of November James met his Parliament. He congratulated them on the suppression of the rebellion in the West, but observed that it had shown how little dependence could be placed on the militia. It would be necessary to maintain a strong regular force, and that would, of course, require proportionate funds. He had, he observed, admitted some officers to commissions who had not taken the test, but they were such as he could rely on, and he was resolved to continue them there. On their return to their House the Lords tamely voted him an address of thanks, but with the Commons a demur on this head arose, and a delay of three days was voted before considering an address. This was ominous, and during the interval the ambassadors of Austria and the Pope advised James not to quarrel with the Parliament. Barillon, on the contrary, urged him towards the fatality, for which he required little stimulus. If he quarrelled with his Parliament, he must become Louis's slave, and leave Austria, Spain, and Italy at his mercy. When the Parliament resumed the question, the members, both Whigs and Tories, who were alike opposed to James's projected aggressions, carefully avoided any irritating topic except that of the army. They took no notice of the atrocities committed in the west; they did not revert to the illegal practices by which members in the interest of Government had been returned, but they skilfully proposed improvements in the militia, so as to supersede the necessity of a standing army. When the vote for Supply was proposed, the House carried a motion for bringing in a Bill for rendering the militia more effective, and on this motion Seymour of Exeter, a Tory, as well as Sir William Temple, and Sir John Maynard, who had taken a leading part in the Parliamentary struggle against Charles I., and was now upwards of eighty years of age, took part: several officers of the army, including Charles Fox, Paymaster of the Forces, voted on the popular side of the question. Of course they were dismissed. But the House now having broken the ice, voted an address to the king on the subject of maintaining inviolate the Test Act. When they went into Committee for the Supply, the king demanded one million two hundred thousand pounds, the House proposed four hundred thousand pounds. They were afterwards willing to advance the sum to seven hundred thousand pounds, but the Ministers put the motion for the original sum to the vote, and were defeated. The next day the Commons went in procession to Whitehall, with their address regarding the test. James received them sullenly, and told them that whatever they pleased to do, he would abide by all his promises. This was saying that he would violate the Test Act as he had done. On returning to their House, John Coke of Derby said he hoped they were all Englishmen, and were not to be frightened from their duty by a few high words. As the House had been careful to avoid any expressions disrespectful to the king, they resented this manly but incautious speech, and committed Coke to the Tower. The Court took courage at this proceeding, but though the Commons had not all at once recovered their independent tone, the discontent was strongly fermenting, and though Seymour had at first in vain called on them to examine the abuses of the franchise during the last election, they now took up the question, and Sir John Lowther of Cumberland, another Tory member, headed this movement. The same spirit in the same day broke out in the Lords. Though they had voted thanks for the address, Halifax now contended that that was merely formal, and the Earl of Devonshire, William Cavendish, the bosom friend of Lord William Russell, and Viscount Mordaunt, afterwards the celebrated Earl of Peterborough, proposed to consider the king's speech, and vehemently denounced a standing army. What was still more significant was, that Compton, the Bishop of London, a Royalist, and the son of a Royalist--that Earl of Northampton who had fought for Charles I.,--and who had, moreover, been the educator of the two princesses, not only spoke for himself, but for the whole bench and Church, and declared that the constitution, civil and ecclesiastic, was in danger. Here was a quick end of the doctrine of Non-resistance. Jeffreys endeavoured to reply to these ominous harangues, but the bully of the bench, where he had it all his own way, here cut a very different figure. He was scarified in a style of refined sarcasm, against which his coarse Billingsgate was worse than harmless; it recoiled upon his own head, and this brutal monster, cowardly as he was insolent, sank prostrate before the whole House, and even gave way to a dastardly flood of tears of shame. James, astonished and enraged, but not warned by this first breath of the rising tempest, the next morning hurried to the House of Lords and prorogued Parliament till the 10th of February; but it never met again, being repeatedly prorogued, till the national spirit arose which drove him from the throne.

The prorogation of Parliament was followed by the trial of three Whig leaders of eminence. These were Gerard, Lord Brandon, the eldest son of the Earl of Macclesfield, Hampden, the grandson of the patriot, and Henry Booth, Lord Delamere. Hampden and Gerard were accused afresh of having been concerned in the Rye House Plot, Delamere of having been in league with Monmouth. Grey, Earl of Stamford, had been on the eve of being tried by the Peers on a similar charge of concern in the Rye House Plot, but the prorogation defeated that, and he was soon after liberated. These were the men against whom Grey had been induced to give information, and who, with Wade and Goodenough, were witnesses. Hampden and Gerard were tried at the Old Bailey and condemned. But Grey had stipulated that their lives should be safe, and they were redeemed by their relatives at a heavy price. Delamere, as a peer of the realm, was tried by a High Court of Peers, and as he was accused of having been engaged with Monmouth, his life was in danger. Jeffreys was appointed Lord High Steward, and he selected thirty peers as triers, all of whom in politics were opposed to Delamere, and half of them ministers and members of the royal household. He did not stop there, but as he had a personal spite against Delamere for having complained of him to Parliament when Chief Justice of Chester, and called him a "drunken jackpudding," he did his best personally to condemn him. But in spite of the murderous bias with which the villainous judge had contrived the prisoner's death, the Lords Triers unanimously acquitted him. This was a fact that equally electrified James and the country. Both saw that there was a spirit abroad that was no longer to be trifled with. The people openly rejoiced; the infatuated tyrant raged, but took no warning. The very Tories who had carried the Crown hitherto through every attempt, the Established Church which had preached Non-resistance, saw the gulf, to the edge of which their principles had brought them. Their loyalty paused at the threshold of Romanism, and the destruction of the safeguards of the liberty of the subject. The deadly artifices which an abandoned judge and a lawless monarch had employed against the life of Delamere, might soon be practised against every one of them. The spell of despotism, therefore, was broken. The spirit of an unconquerable suspicion had reached the very cabinet and the household of the Romish king, and his power was at an end.

But the greater the danger the more recklessly the bigotry-blinded monarch rushed upon it. His father had been bent on destroying the Constitution, but stood firm to the Anglican Church; James was resolved to root out both Church and Constitution together; but to his narrow intellect it never occurred that if his father lost his head in attempting half of this impossible enterprise, his danger was double in aiming at the whole. At the very beginning of the year 1686 he took a sudden stride in the direction of avowed Romanism, and during the whole year he marched forward with an insane hardihood that struck the boldest and most adventurous of his friends with consternation. The fact as to whether Charles II. had died a Catholic or a Protestant was still a matter of dispute. A few knew the truth, more surmised, but the bulk of the people still believed him to have been a Protestant. James determined to sweep away the remaining delusion. He therefore brought forth the two papers from Charles's strong box, and challenged the whole bench of bishops to refute them. He especially called on Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to do it; but as the Primate from policy declined it, James took it for granted that they were secretly admitted to be unanswerable. He therefore had them printed in magnificent style, and appended to them his own signature, asserting that they were his late brother's own composition, and left in his own handwriting. He had this proof of Charles's Romanism distributed liberally to his courtiers, to the prelates and dignitaries of the Church, and amongst the people, even delivering them out of his coach window to the crowds as he drove about. He thus at once made known that his late brother had been secretly a Romanist, and that he was himself an open and uncompromising one.

His next step was to throw all the power of the Government into the hands of the most unscrupulous Catholics. His brother-in-law, Rochester, the Lord Treasurer, was nominally his Prime Minister, but Sunderland and a knot of Catholics were the really ruling junto. Sunderland, one of the basest men that ever crawled in the dust of a Court's corruption, was the head of this secret cabal. Sunderland, in the last reign, had been a violent Exclusionist. He had intrigued with the Duchess of Portsmouth, through her, if possible, to bring Charles to consent to this measure; but so soon as James was on the throne, he became his most servile tool, declaring that as he had nothing to hope but from the king's clemency and his own efforts to make compensation for the past, James could have no more efficient servant. James, who was a mean soul himself, did not spurn this meanness, but made use of it, and truly Sunderland earned his dirty bread. Avarice was his master vice, and he would have sold two souls for money if he had them. He retained the post of President of the Council, and held with it his old one of Secretary of State; whilst observing the course which James was taking, he did not despair to wrest from the staunch Protestant Rochester his still more lucrative office of Lord Treasurer. He had not the foresight to perceive that the project which James entertained to restore Romanism must bring speedy destruction on them all. This sordid minister was, at the same time, in the pay of Louis, at the rate of six thousand pounds a year, to betray all his master's most secret counsels to him.

With Sunderland were associated in the secret Romish junto--Sunderland himself not being an avowed Catholic, but a private professor--some of those Catholic lords who had been imprisoned on account of the Popish plots--Arundel, Bellasis, and William Herbert, Earl of Powis. To these were added Castlemaine, the man who for a title and revenue had sold his wife to Charles II. He had been imprisoned, too, on account of the Popish plot, and was ready to take vengeance by assisting to destroy his Protestant enemies and their Church together. With him were associated two of the most profligate and characterless men of that profligate age--Jermyn, celebrated for his duels and his licentious intrigues, and lately created by James Lord Dover, and a man familiarly named Dick Talbot--whom James had also for these crimes, which were merits in James's eyes, made Earl of Tyrconnel. These merits were, that Talbot was ready for any service of unmanly villainy that his master could desire. Like another prime favourite and associate of James, Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, Tyrconnel was notorious for his drinking, gambling, lying, swearing, bullying, and debauchery. He was equally ready to lie away a woman's character or to assassinate a better man than himself. In the last reign, when it was desired by the Court to ruin the character of James's wife, Anne Hyde, that she might be got rid of, he joined with Colonel Berkeley in the infamous assertion that they had had the most familiar intrigues with her. When they did not succeed with James, they as readily confessed that the whole was a lie. A man with the least spark of honour in him would have remembered this unpardonable villainy to his now deceased wife, and have banished the wretch from Court. James promoted him, and made him one of his most intimate companions. Tyrconnel offered to murder the Duke of Ormond, and was rewarded for his readiness by being made commander of the forces in Ireland; but his services were chiefly at present demanded at Court.

To this precious cabal was added Father Petre, the Jesuit Provincial, brother of Lord Petre, and the organ of the Jesuits at Court. The Pope, too, had his agents at Court, Adda, his nuncio, and a vicar-apostolic; but these advocated cautious measures, for Innocent XI. had a difficult card to play in the Popedom. Louis, the greatest of the Catholic kings, was the most dangerous enemy of the temporal power of the Pope, as of every other temporal power, and the Jesuits were all at variance with him, because he leaned toward the Jansenist party, which at this time was in the ascendency, through the triumphant attacks on the Jesuits by Pascal in his "_Lettres Provinciales_." The Jesuits, on the contrary, advocated all James's views. These generally subtle men seemed driven, by their falling estimation all over Europe, to clutch at a hope of power in England, and they had at all times been famed for their sly policy of insinuation rather than for their caution and moderation when successful. For their high-handed proceedings they had then, as they have since, been driven again and again from almost every Christian country. They did not display more than their ordinary foresight in the affairs of James.

But we should not possess a complete view of the position and character of James's Court if we did not take in a few other actors--the French king's agents, and the king's mistresses. To Barillon, who had so long been ambassador at the English Court, and the agent of Louis's bribes, the French king had sent over Bonrepaux; and whilst Barillon attached himself to Sunderland and the secret Catholic cabal, Bonrepaux devoted his attentions to Rochester and his section of the ministry, so that Louis learned the minutest movements and opinions of both parties. These parties, in their turn, made use of the king's mistresses; for James, although in disposition the very opposite of Charles, was, with all his morose profession of zealous piety, just as loose in his adulteries.

With the aid of the Council of his Catholic cabal, James now began in earnest to put down Protestantism in this kingdom, and restore Romanism. As there was no hope of money from Parliament, he made his peace with the King of France, stooped his shoulder to the burden, and became once more a servant unto tribute. He abandoned all the best interests of England, apologised to Louis for having received the Huguenots, and took measures to defeat the very subscription in their favour which he had commenced and recommended. He arrested John Claude, one of the refugees who had published an account of the persecutions of the Huguenots by Louis, and caused his book to be publicly burnt. In spite of this and his open discouragement, the subscription amounted to forty thousand pounds, but he took good care that the unfortunate Huguenots should never get the money, by ordering every one who applied for it to first take the Sacrament according to the Anglican ritual, which he knew differed so much from their own mode, as to form an effectual bar, which it did. And this was the man who complained of the Test Act as a violation of conscience. He had himself dispensed with this Act in defiance of the law, but he now sought to obtain a sanction from the judges for the breach of the Act. To Parliament he durst not appeal; he therefore called on the twelve judges to declare that he possessed this dispensing power as part of his prerogative. The judges to a man refused; he dismissed them and appointed more pliant ones. But the law officers of the Crown were equally stubborn. Sawyer, the Attorney-General, told the king that he dared not do it, for it was not to abolish a statute, but the whole statute law from the accession of Elizabeth. Sawyer was too useful to be dismissed, but Heneage Finch, the Solicitor-General, was turned out, and Powis, a barrister of no mark, was put in his place. A case was immediately tried in the Court of King's Bench, to obtain the judges' sanction. Sir Edward Hales was formally prosecuted for holding a commission in the army, being a Catholic; but the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Herbert, took the opinion of the new judges upon it, which was, that the king possessed the power to dispense with the Act, and judgment was given accordingly. No sooner was James in possession of this decision of the King's Bench, than he appointed the four Catholic lords of his secret cabal members of the Privy Council--namely, Arundel, Bellasis, Powis, and Dover.

Having perpetrated this daring act in the Council, James hastened to exercise the same power in the Church. Encouraged by the known opinions and intentions of the king, several clergymen who had outwardly conformed to the Church of England and held livings, now threw off the mask and proclaimed themselves of the Catholic Church, and applied to James to authorise them still to hold their livings. These were Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, Oxford; Boyce, Dean, and Bernard, fellows of different colleges; and Edward Sclater, curate of Putney and Esher. The king granted them dispensations to hold their livings, despite their avowed conversion to the doctrines of another Church, on the plea that he would not oppress their consciences. But to support men in holding livings in a Church which they had abandoned was so outrageous a violation of that Church's conscience, that it was impossible long to be submitted to. James, in his very contracted mind, imagined that, because the bishops and ministers had so zealously advocated absolute submission to his will, they would practise it. How little could he have read human nature. Of these sudden converts, Sclater and Walker as suddenly reconverted themselves at the Revolution.

James having now his hand in, went on boldly. He had permitted professed converts to Catholicism to retain their Protestant livings, he next appointed a Catholic to a Church dignity. John Massey, a Fellow of Merton, who had gone over to Rome, was, in violation of every local and national statute, appointed Dean of Christ Church. Massey at once erected an altar and celebrated Mass in the cathedral of Christ Church, and James told the Pope's nuncio that this should soon be the case in Cambridge. It remained now only to fill the sees of the Church with Catholic bishops as they fell vacant; and to enable him to do that, it was necessary, in the first place, to possess himself of a power in the Church like that which he had assumed in the State. He must have a tribunal before which he could summon any refractory clergy, as he could now by his pliant judges control any appeal to the bench. He therefore determined to revive the Court of High Commission, that terrible engine of the Tudors and the Stuarts, which the Long Parliament had put down. This court had power not only to cite any clergyman before it who dared to preach or publish anything reflecting on the views or measures of the king, but "to correct, amend, and alter the statutes of the universities, churches, and schools," or where the statutes were bad to make new ones, and the powers of the Commission were declared to be effectual for these purposes, "notwithstanding any law or statute to the contrary." In fact, all the powers of the High Commission were revived, and the old device and motto were adopted on the seal.