By the month of July, Monmouth’s rebellion had been put down, and he himself had been executed upon his parliamentary attainder without the trouble of a trial: but all the jails in the West of England were crowded with his adherents, and, instead of Colonel Kirke doing military execution on more of them than had already suffered from his “lambs,” it was resolved that they should all perish by the flaming sword of justice—which, on such an occasion, there was only one man fit to wield.
No assizes had been held this summer on the western circuit; but for all the counties upon it a special commission to try criminals was now appointed, at the head of which Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys was put; and by a second commission, he, singly, was invested with the authority of commander-in-chief over all his majesty’s forces within the same limits.
On entering Hampshire he was met by a brigade of soldiers, by whom he was guarded to Winchester. During the rest of his progress he never moved without a military escort;he daily gave the word; orders for going the rounds, and for the general disposal of the troops, were dictated by him—sentinels mounting guard at his lodgings, and the officers on duty sending him their reports.
I desire at once to save my readers from the apprehension that I am about to shock their humane feelings by a detailed statement of the atrocities of this bloody campaign in the west, the character of which is familiar to every Englishman. But, as a specimen of it, I must present a short account of the treatment experienced by Lady Lisle, with whose murder it commenced.
She was the widow of Major Lisle, who had sat in judgment on Charles I., had been a lord commissioner of the great seal under Cromwell, and, flying on the restoration, had been assassinated at Lausanne. She remained in England, and was remarkable for her loyalty as well as piety. Jeffreys’s malignant spite against her is wholly inexplicable; for he had never had any personal quarrel with her, she did not stand in the way of his promotion, and the circumstance of her being the widow of a regicide cannot account for his vindictiveness. Perhaps without any personal dislike to the individual, he merely wished to strike terror into the west by his first operation.
The charge against her, which was laid capitally, was that after the battle of Sedgemoor she had harbored in her house one Hickes, who had been in arms with the Duke of Monmouth—she knowing of his treason. In truth she had received him into her house, thinking merely that he was persecuted as a non-conformist minister, and the moment she knew whence he came, she (conveying to him a hint that he should escape) sent her servant to a justice of peace to giveinformation concerning him. There was the greatest difficulty even to show that Hickes had been in the rebellion, and the judge was worked up to a pitch of fury by being obliged himself to cross-examine a Presbyterian witness, who had showed a leaning against the prosecution. But the principal traitor had not been convicted, and there was not a particle of evidence to show thescienter,i. e., that the supposed accomplice, at the time of the harboring was acquainted with the treason. Not allowed the benefit of counsel, she herself, prompted by natural good sense, took the legal objection that the principal traitor ought first to have been convicted, “because, peradventure, he might afterwards be acquitted as innocent after she had been condemned for harboring him;” and she urged with great force to the jury, “that at the time of the alleged offence she had been entirely ignorant of any suspicion of Hickes having participated in the rebellion; that she had strongly disapproved of it, and that she had sent her only son into the field to fight under the royal banner to suppress it.”
It is said by almost all the contemporary authorities, that thrice did the jury refuse to find a verdict of guilty, and thrice did Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys send them back to reconsider their verdict. In the account of the proceeding in the State Trials, which has the appearance of having been taken in short hand, and of being authentic, the repeated sending back of the jury is not mentioned; but enough appears to stamp eternal infamy on Jeffreys, if there were nothing more extant against him. After a most furious summing up, “the jury withdrew, and staying out a while, the Lord Jeffreys expressed a great deal of impatience, and said he wondered that in so plain a case they would go from the bar, and would have sent for them, with an intimation that, if they did not come quickly,he would adjourn, and let them lie by it all night; but, after about half an hour’s stay, the jury returned, and the foreman addressed himself to the court thus: ‘My lord, we have one thing to beg of your lordship some directions in before we can give our verdict: we have some doubt whether there be sufficient evidence that she knew Hickes to have been in the army.’L. C. J.—‘There is as full proof as proof can be; but you are judges of the proof; for my part, I thought there was no difficulty in it.’Foreman.—‘My lord, we are in some doubt of it.’L. C. J.—‘I cannot help your doubts; was there not proved a discourse of the battle and the army at supper time?’Foreman.—‘But, my lord, we are not satisfied that she had notice that Hickes was in the army.’L. C. J.—‘I cannot tell what would satisfy you. Did she not inquire of Dunne whether Hickes had been in the army? and when he told her he did not know, she did not say she would refuse him if he had been there, but ordered him to come by night, by which it is evident she suspected it.... But if there was no such proof, the circumstances and management of the thing is as full a proof as can be. I wonder what it is you doubt of.’Lady Lisle.—‘My lord, I hope——.’L. C. J.—‘You must not speak now.’ The jury laid their heads together near a quarter of an hour, and then pronounced a verdict of guilty.L. C. J.—‘Gentlemen, I did not think I should have had any occasion to speak after your verdict; but finding some hesitancy and doubt among you, I cannot but say I wonder it should come about; for I think in my conscience the evidence was as full and plain as could be, and if I had been among you, and she had been my own mother, I should have found her guilty.’”
He passed sentence upon her with greatsang froid, and, Ireally believe, would have done the same had she been the mother that bore him—“That you be conveyed from hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence you are to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where your body is to be burnt alive till you be dead. And the Lord have mercy on your soul.”
The king refused the most earnest applications to save her life, saying that he had promised Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys not to pardon her; but, by a mild exercise of the prerogative, he changed the punishment of burning into that of beheading, which she actually underwent. After the Revolution, her attainder was reversed by act of Parliament, on the ground that “the verdict was injuriously extorted by the menaces and violence and other illegal practices of George Lord Jeffreys, Baron of Wem, then lord chief justice of the King’s Bench.”
From Winchester, the “lord general judge” proceeded to Salisbury, where he was obliged to content himself with whippings and imprisonments for indiscreet words, the Wiltshire men not having actually joined in the insurrection. But when he got into Dorsetshire, the county in which Monmouth had landed, and where many had joined his standard, he was fatigued, if not satiated, with shedding blood. Great alarm was excited, and not without reason, by his being seen to laugh in church, both during the prayers and sermon which preceded the commencement of business in the hall—his smile being construed into a sign that he was about “to breathe death like a destroying angel, and to sanguine his very ermine in blood.” His charge to the grand jury threw the whole county into a state of consternation; for he said he was determined to exercise the utmost rigor of the law, not only against principal traitors, but all aiders and abettors, who, by any expression,had encouraged the rebellion, or had favored the escape of any engaged in it, however nearly related to them, unless it were the harboring of a husband by a wife, which the wisdom of our ancestors permitted, because she had sworn to obey him.
Bills of indictment for high treason were found by the hundred, often without evidence, the grand jury being afraid that, if they were at all scrupulous, they themselves might be brought in “aiders and abettors.” It happened, curiously enough, that as he was about to arraign the prisoners, he received news, by express, that the Lord Keeper Guilford had breathed his last at Wroxton, in Oxfordshire. He had little doubt that he should himself be the successor, and very soon after, by a messenger from Windsor, he received assurances to that effect, with orders “to finish the king’s business in the west.” Although he had no ground for serious misgivings, he could not but feel a little uneasy at the thought of the intrigues which in his absence might spring up against him in a corrupt court, and he was impatient to take possession of his new dignity. But what a prospect before him, if all the prisoners against whom there might be indictments, here and at other places, should plead not guilty, andseriatimtake their trials! He resorted to an expedient worthy of his genius by openly proclaiming, in terms of vague promise but certain denunciation, that “if any of those indicted would relent from their conspiracies, and plead guilty, they should find him to be a merciful judge; but that those who put themselves on their trials, (which the law mercifully gave them all in strictness a right to do,) if found guilty, would have very little time to live; and, therefore, that such as were conscious they had no defence, had better spare him the trouble of trying them.”
He was at first disappointed. The prisoners knew the sternness of the judge, and had some hope from the mercy of their countrymen on the jury. The result of this boldness is soon told. He began on a Saturday morning, with a batch of thirty. Of these, only one was acquitted for want of evidence, and the same evening he signed a warrant to hang thirteen of those convicted on the Monday morning, and the rest the following day. An impressive defence was made by the constable of Chardstock, charged with supplying the Duke of Monmouth’s soldiers with money; whereas they had actually robbed him of a considerable sum which he had in his hands for the use of the militia. The prisoner having objected to the competency of a witness called against him, “Villain! rebel!” exclaimed the judge, “methinks I see thee already with a halter about thy neck.” And he was specially ordered to be hanged the first, my lord jeeringly declaring “that if any with a knowledge of the law came in his way, he should take care toprefer them!”
On the Monday morning, the court sitting rather late on account of the executions, the judge, on taking his place, found many applications to withdraw the plea of not guilty, and the prisoners pleaded guilty in great numbers; but his ire was kindled, and he would not even affect any semblance of mercy. Two hundred and ninety-two more received judgment to die, and of these seventy-four actually suffered—some being sent to be executed in every town, and almost in every village, for many miles round. While the whole county was covered with the gibbeted quarters of human beings, the towns resounded with the cries of men, and even of women and children, who were cruelly whipped for sedition, on the ground that by words or looks they had favored the insurrection.
Jeffreys next proceeded to Exeter, where one John Foweracres, the first prisoner arraigned, had the temerity to plead not guilty, and being speedily convicted, was sent to instant execution. This had the desired effect; for all the others confessed, and his lordship was saved the trouble of trying them. Only thirty-seven suffered capitally in the county of Devon, the rest of the two hundred and forty-three against whom indictments were found being transported, whipped, or imprisoned.
Somersetshire afforded a much finer field for indulging the propensities of the chief justice, as in this county there had not only been a considerable rising of armed men for Monmouth, but processions, in which women and children had joined, carrying ribbons, boughs, and garlands to his honor. There were five hundred prisoners for trial at Taunton alone. Jeffreys said in his charge to the grand jury, “it would not be his fault if he did not purify the place.” The first person tried before him here was Simon Hamling, a dissenter of a class to whom the judge bore a particular enmity. In reality, the accused had only come to Taunton, during the rebellion, to warn his son, who resided there, to remain neuter. Conscious of his innocence, he insisted on pleading not guilty; he called witnesses, and made a resolute defence, which was considered great presumption. The committing magistrate, who was sitting on the bench, at last interposed and said, “There must certainly be some mistake about the individual.”Jeffreys.—“You have brought him here, and, if he be innocent, his blood be upon your head.” The prisoner was found guilty, and ordered for execution next morning. Few afterwards gave his lordship the trouble of trying them, and one hundred and forty-three are said here to have been orderedfor execution, and two hundred and eighty-four to have been sentenced to transportation for life. He particularly piqued himself upon hisbon motin passing sentence on one Hucher, who pleaded, in mitigation, that, though he had joined the Duke of Monmouth, he had sent important information to the king’s general, the Earl of Feversham. “You deserve a double death,” said the impartial judge; “one for rebelling against your sovereign, and the other for betraying your friends.”
He showed great ingenuity in revenging himself upon such as betrayed any disapprobation of his severities. Among these was Lord Stawell, who was so much shocked with what he had heard of the chief justice, that he refused to see him. Immediately after, there came forth an order that Colonel Bovet, of Taunton, a friend to whom this cavalier nobleman had been much attached, should be executed at Cotheleston, close by the house where he and Lady Stawell and his children then resided.
A considerable harvest here arose from compositions levied upon the friends of twenty-six young virgins who presented the invader with colors, which they had embroidered with their own hands. The fund was ostensibly for the benefit of “the queen’s maids of honor,” but a strong suspicion arose that the chief justice participated in bribes for these as well as other pardons. He thought that hispeculiumwas encroached upon by a letter from Lord Sunderland, informing him of “the king’s pleasure to bestow one thousand convicts on several courtiers, and one hundred on a favorite of the queen—security being given that the prisoners should be enslaved for ten years in some West India island.” In his remonstrance he said that “these convicts would be worth tenor fifteen pounds apiece,” and, with a view to his own claim, returned thanks for his majesty’s gracious acceptance of his services. However, he was obliged to submit to the royal distribution of the spoil.
Where the king did not personally interfere, Jeffreys was generally inexorable if he did not himself receive the bribe for a pardon. Kiffin, a Nonconformist merchant, had agreed to give three thousand pounds to a courtier for the pardon of two youths, his grandsons, who had been in Monmouth’s army; but the chief justice would listen to no circumstances of mitigation, as another was to pocket the price of mercy. Yet, to a buffoon who attended him on the circuit and made sport by his mimicry, in an hour of revelry at Taunton, he tossed the pardon of a rich culprit, expressing a hope “that it might turn to good account.”
The jails at Taunton being incapable of containing all the prisoners, it was necessary to adjourn the commission to Wells, where the same horrible scenes were again acted, notwithstanding the humane exertions of that most honorable man, Bishop Ken, who afterwards, having been one of the seven bishops prosecuted by King James, resigned his see at the Revolution, rather than sign the new tests.
The Cornishmen had all remained loyal, and the city of Bristol[131]only remained to be visited by the commission. There were not many cases of treason here, but Jeffreys had a particular spite against the corporation magistrates, because they were supposed to favor dissenters, and he had them very much in his power by a discovery he made, that they hadbeen in the habit of having in turn assigned to them prisoners charged with felony, whom they sold for their own benefit to be transported to Barbadoes. In addressing the grand jury, (while he complained of a fit of the stone, and was seemingly under the excitement of liquor,) he said,—
“I find a special commission is an unusual thing here, and relishes very ill; nay, the very women storm at it, for fear we should take the upper hand of them too; for by-the-bye, gentlemen, I hear it is much in fashion in this city for the women to govern and bear sway.” Having praised the mild and paternal rule of King James, he thus proceeded: “On the other hand, up starts a puppet prince, who seduces the mobile into rebellion, into which they are easily bewitched; for I say rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft. This man, who had as little title to the crown as the least of you, (for I hope you are all legitimate,) being overtaken by justice, and by the goodness of his prince brought to the scaffold, he has the confidence, (good God, that men should be so impudent!) to say that God Almighty did know with what joyfulness he did die, (a traitor!) Great God of heaven and earth! what reason have men to rebel? But, as I told you, rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft: Fear God and honor the king is rejected for no other reason, as I can find, but that it is written in St. Peter. Gentlemen, I must tell you I am afraid that this city hath too many of these people in it, and it is your duty to find them out. Gentlemen, I shall not stand complimenting with you; I shall talk with some of you before you and I part, I tell you; I tell you I have brought a besom, and I will sweep every man’s door, whether great or small. Certainly, here are a great many of those men whom they call Trimmers; a Whig is but a mere fool to those; for a Whig is some sort of asubject in comparison of these; for a Trimmer is but a cowardly and base-spirited Whig; for the Whig is but the journeyman prentice that is hired and set over the rebellion, whilst the Trimmer is afraid to appear in the cause.” He then opens his charge against the aldermen for the sale of convicts, and thus continues: “Good God! where am I?—in Bristol? This city it seems claims the privilege of hanging and drawing among themselves. I find you have more need of a special commission once a month at least. The very magistrates, that should be the ministers of justice, fall out with one another to that degree they will scarcely dine together; yet I find they can agree for their interest if there be but akidin the case; for I hear the trade ofkidnappingis much in request in this city. You can discharge a felon or a traitor, provided they will go to Mr. Alderman’s plantation in the West Indies. Come, come, I find you stink for want of rubbing. It seems the dissenters and fanatics fare well amongst you, by reason of the favor of the magistrates; for example, if a dissenter who is a notorious and obstinate offender comes before them, one alderman or another stands up and says,He is a good man, (though three parts a rebel.) Well, then, for the sake of Mr. Alderman, he shall be fined but five shillings. Then comes another, and up stands another goodman alderman, and says,I know him to be an honest man, (though rather worse than the former.) Well, for Mr. Alderman’s sake, he shall be fined but half a crown; somanus manum fricat; you play the knave for me now, and I will play the knave for you by and by. I am ashamed of these things; but, by God’s grace, I will mend them; for, as I have told you, I have brought a brush in my pocket, and I shall be sure to rub the dirt wherever it is, or on whomsoever it sticks.” “Thereupon,”says Roger North, “he turns to the mayor, accoutred with his scarlet and furs, and gave him all the ill names that scolding eloquence could supply; and so, with rating and staring, as his way was, never left till he made him quit the bench and go down to the criminal’s post at the bar; and there he pleaded for himself as a common rogue or thief must have done; and when the mayor hesitated a little, or slackened his pace, he bawled at him, and stamping, called for his guards, for he was still general by commission. Thus the citizens saw their scarlet chief magistrate at the bar, to their infinite terror and amazement.”
Only three were executed for treason at Bristol; but Jeffreys looking at the end of his campaign to the returns of the enemy killed, had the satisfaction to find that they amounted to three hundred and thirty, besides eight hundred prisoners ordered to be transported.[132]
He now hastened homewards to pounce upon the great seal. In his way through Somersetshire, with a regiment of dragoons as his life-guards, the mayor took the liberty to say that there were two Spokes who had been convicted, and that one of these left for execution was not the one intended to suffer, the other having contrived to make his escape, and that favor might perhaps still be shown to him whom it was intended to pardon. “No!” said the general-judge; “his family owe a life; he shall die for his namesake!” To render such narratives credible, we must recollect that his mind was often greatly disturbed by fits of the stone, and still more by intemperance. Burnet, speaking of his behavior at thistime, says, “He was perpetually either drunk or in a rage, liker a fury than the zeal of a judge.”
I shall conclude my sketch of Jeffreys as a criminal judge with his treatment of a prisoner whom he was eager to hang, but who escaped with life. This was Prideaux, a gentleman of fortune in the west of England, who had been apprehended on the landing of Monmouth, for no other reason than that his father had been attorney general under Cromwell. A reward of five hundred pounds, with a free pardon, was offered to any witnesses who would give evidence against him; but none could be found, and he was discharged. Afterwards, two convicts were prevailed upon to say that they had seen him take some part in the insurrection, and he was again cast into prison. His friends, alarmed for his safety, though convinced of his innocence, tried to procure a pardon for him, when they were told “that nothing could be done for him, as the king had given him to the chief justice,” (the familiar phrase for the grant of an estate about to be forfeited.) A negotiation was then opened with Jennings, the avowed agent of Jeffreys for the sale of pardons, and the sum of fifteen thousand pounds was actually paid to him by a banker for the deliverance of a man whose destruction could not be effected by any perversion of the formalities of law.[133]
There is to be found only one defender of these atrocities. “I have indeed sometimes thought,” says the author of A Caveat against the Whigs, “that in Jeffreys’s western circuit justice went too far before mercy was remembered, though there was not above a fourth part executed of what wereconvicted. But when I consider in what manner several of those lives then spared were afterwards spent, I cannot but think a little morehempmight have been usefully employed upon that occasion.”[134]
A great controversy has arisen, “who is chiefly to be blamed—Jeffreys or James?” Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, declares that “the king never forgave the cruelty of the judge in executing such multitudes in the west against his express orders.” And reliance is placed by Hume on the assertion of Roger North, that his brother, the lord keeper, going to the king and moving him “to put a stop to the fury which was in no respect for his service, and would be counted acarnage, not law or justice, orders went to mitigate the proceedings.”
I have already demonstrated that this last assertion is a mere invention,[135]and though it is easy to fix deep guilt on the judge, it is impossible to exculpate the monarch. Burnet says that James “had a particular account of his proceedings writ to him every day, and he took pleasure to relate them in the drawing-room to foreign ministers, and at his table, calling it Jeffreys’s campaign; speaking of all he had done in a style that neither became the majesty nor the mercifulness of a great prince.” Jeffreys himself, (certainly a very suspicious witness,) when in the Tower, declared to Tutchin that “his instructions were much more severe than the execution of them; and that at his return he was snubbed at court for being too merciful.” And to Dr. Scott, the divine who attended him on his death bed, he said, “Whatever I did then I did by express orders; and I have this further to say for myself, that I was not half bloody enough for him who sent me thither.” We certainly know from a letter written to him by the Earl of Sunderland at Dorchester, that “the king approved entirely of all his proceedings.” And though we cannot believe that he stopped short of any severity which he thought would be of service to himself, there seems no reason to doubt (if that be any palliation) that throughout the whole of these proceedings his object was to please his master, whose disposition was now most vindictive, and who thought that, by such terrible examples, he should secure to himself a long and quiet reign.[136]
The two were equally criminal,[137]and both had their reward. But in the first instance, and till the consequences of such wickedness and folly began to appear, they met each other with mutual joy and congratulations. Jeffreys returning from the west, by royal command stopped at Windsor Castle. He arrived there on the 28th of September; and after a most gracious reception, the great seal was immediately delivered to him with the title of lord chancellor.
We learn from Evelyn that it had been three weeks in the king’s personal custody. “About six o’clock came Sir Dudley North and his brother Roger North, and brought the great seal from my lord keeper, who died the day before. The king went immediately to council, every body guessing who was most likely to succeed this great officer; most believed it would be no other than Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, who had so rigorously prosecuted the late rebels, and was now gonethe western circuit to punish the rest that were secured in the several counties, and was now near upon his return.”
The London Gazette of October 1, 1685, contains the following notice:
“Windsor, Sept. 28.
“His majesty taking into his royal consideration the many eminent and faithful services which the Right Honorable George Lord Jeffreys, of Wem, lord chief justice of England, has rendered the crown, as well in the reign of the late king, of ever blessed memory, as since his majesty’s accession to the throne, was pleased this day to commit to him the custody of the great seal of England, with the title of lord chancellor.”
The new lord chancellor, having brought the great seal with him from Windsor to London, had near a month to prepare for the business of the term.
He had had only a very slender acquaintance with Chancery proceedings, and he was by no means thoroughly grounded in common-law learning; but he now fell to the study of equity pleading and practice, and though exceedingly inferior to his two immediate predecessors in legal acquirements, his natural shrewdness was such that, when entirely sober, he contrived to gloss over his ignorance of technicalities, and to arrive at a right decision. He was seldom led into temptation by the occurrence of cases in which the interests of political parties, or religious sects, were concerned; and, as an equity judge, the multitude rather regarded him with favor.
The public and the profession were much shocked to see such a man at the head of the law; but as soon as he was installed in his office, there were plenty ready enough to gather round him, and, suppressing their real feelings, to load him with flattery and to solicit him for favors.
Evelyn, who upon his appointment as chief justice, describes him as “most ignorant, but most daring,” now assiduously cultivated his notice; and, having succeeded in getting an invitation to dine with him, thus speaks of him:
“31st Oct., 1685.
“I dined at our great Lord Chancellor Jeffreys’s, who used me with much respect. This was the late chief justice, who had newly been the western circuit to try the Monmouth conspirators, and had formerly done such severe justice amongst the obnoxious in Westminster Hall, for which his majesty dignified him by creating him first a baron, and now lord chancellor; is of an assured and undaunted spirit, and has served the court interest on all hardiest occasions; is of nature civil, and a slave of the court.”
The very first measure which James proposed to his new chancellor was, literally, the hanging of an alderman. He was still afraid of the mutinous spirit of the city, which, without some fresh terrors, might again break out, although the charters were destroyed; and no sufficient atonement had yet been made for the hostility constantly manifested by the metropolis to the policy of his family for half a century. His majesty proposed that Alderman Clayton, a very troublesome agitator, should be selected as the victim. The chancellor agreed that “it was very fit an example should be made, as his majesty had graciously proposed; but if it were the same thing to his majesty, he would venture to suggest a different choice. Alderman Clayton was a bad subject, but Alderman Cornish was still more troublesome, and more dangerous.” The king readily acquiesced, and Alderman Cornish was immediately brought to trial before a packed jury, and executed on a gibbet erected in Cheapside, on pretence that someyears before he had been concerned in the Ryehouse plot. The apologists of Jeffreys say (and as it is the only alleged instance of his gratitude I have met with, I have great pleasure in recording it) that he was induced to save Sir Robert Clayton from recollecting that this alderman had been his pot companion, and had greatly assisted him in obtaining the office of common serjeant.
Monmouth’s rebellion in England, and Argyle’s in Scotland, being put down, and the city of London reduced to subjection, James expressed an opinion, in which the chancellor concurred, that there was no longer any occasion to disguise the plan of governing by military force, and of violating at pleasure the solemn acts of the legislature. Parliament reassembled on the 9th of November, when Jeffreys took his seat on the woolsack. The king alone (as had been concerted) addressed the two houses, and plainly told them that he could rely upon “nothing but a good force of well disciplined troops in constant pay,” and that he was determined to employ “officers in the army, not qualified by the late tests, for their employments.”
When the king had withdrawn, Lord Halifax rose, and said, sarcastically, “They had now more reason than ever to give thanks to his majesty, since he had dealt so plainly with them, and discovered what he would be at.”
This the chancellor thought fit to take as a serious motion, and immediately put the question, as proposed by a noble lord, “that an humble address be presented to his majesty to thank him for his gracious speech from the throne.” No one ventured to offer any remark, and it was immediately carried,nemine dissentiente. The king returned a grave answer to the address, “That he was much satisfied to find their lordshipswere so well pleased with what he said, and that he would never offer any thing to their house that he should not be convinced was for the true interest of the kingdom.”
But the lords very soon discovered the false position in which they had placed themselves, and the bishops were particularly scandalized at the thought that they were supposed to have thanked the king for announcing a principle upon which Papists and Dissenters might be introduced into every civil office, and even into ecclesiastical benefices.
Accordingly, Compton, Bishop of London, moved “that a day might be appointed for taking his majesty’s speech into consideration,” and said “that he spoke the united sentiments of the Episcopal bench when he pronounced the test act the chief security of the established church.” This raised a very long and most animated debate, at which King James, to his great mortification, was present. Sunderland, and the popishly inclined ministers, objected to the regularity of the proceeding, urging that, having given thanks for the speech, they must be taken to have already considered it, and precluded themselves from finding fault with any part of it. The lords Halifax, Nottingham, and Mordaunt, on the other side, treated with scorn the notion that the constitution was to be sacrificed to a point of form, and, entering into the merits of the question, showed that if the power which the sovereign now, for the first time, had openly claimed were conceded to him, the rights, privileges, and property of the nation lay at his mercy.
At last the lord chancellor left the woolsack, and not only bitterly attacked the regularity of the motion after a unanimous vote of thanks to the king for his speech, but gallantly insisted on the legality and expediency of the power of the sovereign to dispense with laws for the safety and benefit ofthe state. No lord chancellor ever made such an unfortunate exhibition. He assumed the same arrogant and overbearing tone with which he had been accustomed from the bench to browbeat juries, counsel, witnesses, and prisoners, and he launched out into the most indecent personalities against his opponents. He was soon taught to know his place, and that frowns, noise, and menaces would not pass for arguments there. While he spoke he was heard with marked disgust by all parts of the house; when he sat down, being required to retract his words by those whom he had assailed, and finding all the sympathies of the House against him, he made to each of them an abject apology, “and he proved by his behavior that insolence, when checked, naturally sinks into meanness and cowardice.”
The ministerialists being afraid to divide the House, Monday following, the 23d of November, was fixed for taking the king’s speech into consideration. But a similar disposition having been shown by the other House, before that day Parliament was prorogued, and no other national council met till the Convention Parliament, after the landing of King William.
James, far from abandoning his plans, was more resolute to carry them into effect. The Earl of Rochester, his own brother-in-law, and others who had hitherto stood by him, having in vain remonstrated against his madness, resigned their offices; but Jeffreys still recklessly pushed him forward in his headlong career. In open violation of the test act, four Catholic lords were introduced into the cabinet, and one of them, Lord Bellasis, was placed at the head of the treasury in the room of the Protestant Earl of Rochester. Among such colleagues the lord chancellor was contented to sit incouncil, and the wonder is that he did not follow the example of Sunderland and other renegades, who at this time, to please the king, professed to change their religion, and were reconciled to the church of Rome. Perhaps, with his peculiar sagacity, Jeffreys thought it would be a greater sacrifice in the king’s eyes to appear to be daily wounding his conscience by submitting to measures which he must be supposed inwardly to condemn.
As a grandcoup d’état, he undertook to obtain a solemn decision of the judges in favor of the dispensing power,[138]and for this purpose a fictitious action was brought against Sir Edward Hales, the lieutenant of the Tower, an avowed Roman Catholic, in the name of his coachman, for holding an office in the army without having taken the oath of supremacy, or received the sacrament according to the rites of the church of England, or signed the declaration against transubstantiation. Jeffreys had put the great seal to letters patent, authorizing him to hold the office without these tests, “non obstante” the act of Parliament. This dispensation was pleaded in bar of the action, and upon a demurrer to the plea, after a sham argument by counsel, all the judges except one (Baron Street) held the plea to be sufficient, and pronounced judgment for the defendant. It was now proclaimed at court that the law was not any longer an obstacle to any scheme that might be thought advisable.
The Earl of Castlemaine was sent to Rome, regularly commissioned as ambassador to his holiness the pope, a papal nuncio being reciprocally received at St. James’s. But assuming that religion was not embraced in the negotiations between the two courts, however impolitic the proceeding might be, I do not think that the king and the chancellor are liable to be blamed, as they have been by recent historians, for having in this instance violated acts of Parliament. If all those are examined which had passed from the commencement of the reformation down to the “Bill of Rights,” it will probably be found that none of them can be applied to a mere diplomatic intercourse with the pope, however stringent their provisions may be against receiving bulls or doing any thing in derogation of the king’s supremacy.[139]
There can be no doubt of the illegality of the next measure of the king and the chancellor. The Court of High Commission was revived with some slight modification, although it had been abolished in the reign of Charles I. by an act of Parliament, which forbade the erection of any similar court; and Jeffreys, having deliberately put the great seal to the patent creating this new arbitrary tribunal, undertook to preside in it. The commissioners were vested with unlimited jurisdiction over the church of England, and were empowered, even in cases of suspicion, to proceed inquisitorially, like the abolished court, “notwithstanding any law or statute to the contrary.” The object was to have all ecclesiastics undercomplete control, lest any of them should oppose the intended innovations in religion.[140]
Jeffreys selected as his first victims, Sharp, rector of St. Giles’s, called the “railing parson,” who had made himself very obnoxious to the government by inveighing against the errors of Popery—and Compton, Bishop of London, his diocesan, who had raised the storm against the dispensing power in the House of Lords. A mandate was issued to the bishop to suspend the rector, and this being declined on the ground that no man can be lawfully condemned till he has been heard in his defence, both were summoned before the high commission.
The bishop appearing, and being asked by the chancellor why he had not obeyed the king’s orders by suspending Dr. Sharp, prayed time to prepare his defence, as his counsel were on the circuit, and he begged to have a copy of the commission. A week’s time was given; but as to the commission, he was told “all the coffee-houses had it for a penny.” On the eighth day the business was resumed; but the bishop still said he was unprepared, having great difficulty to procure a copy of the commission; when the chancellor made him a bantering apology. “My lord, in telling you our commission was to be seen in every coffee-house, I did not speak with any design to reflect on your lordship, as if you were a haunter of coffee-houses. I abhor the thoughts of it!” A further indulgence of a fortnight was granted.
At the day appointed, the bishop again appeared with fourdoctors of the civil law, who were so frightened, that they hardly dared to say a word for him; but he himself firmly, though mildly, argued, “that he had actedjurisperitorum consilio, and could not have had any bad motive; that he should not have been justified in obeying an illegal order; that he had privately recommended to Dr. Sharp not to preach; that this advice had been followed, so that the king’s wish was complied with; and that if he had committed any fault, he ought to be tried for it before his archbishop and brother bishops.”
Several of the commissioners were inclined to let him off with an admonition; but Jeffreys obtained and pronounced sentence ofsuspension during the king’s pleasure, both on the bishop and the rector.[141]
There was another political trial where justice was done to the accused, although Jeffreys presided at it. A charge was brought against Lord Delamere, the head of an ancient family in Cheshire, that he had tried to excite an insurrection in that county in aid of Monmouth’s rebellion. An indictment for high treason being found against him, he was brought to trial upon it before Jeffreys, as lord high steward, and thirty peers-triers. The king was present, and was very desirous of a conviction, as Lord Delamere, when a member of the House of Commons, had taken an active part in supporting the exclusion bill.
Jeffreys did his best to gratify this wish. According tothe habit he had lately acquired in the west, he at first tried to induce the noble prisoner to confess, in the hope of pardon “from the king’s known clemency.” “My lord,” said he, “if you are conscious to yourself that you are guilty of this heinous crime, give glory to God, make amends to his vicegerent the king, by a plain and full discovery of your guilt, and do not, by an obstinate persisting in the denial of it, provoke the just indignation of your prince, who has made it appear to the world that his inclinations are rather to show mercy than inflict punishment.”
Lord Delamere, to ease his mind from the anxiety to know whether the man who so spoke was to pronounce upon his guilt or innocence, said, “I beg your grace would please to satisfy me whether your grace be one of my judges in concurrence with the rest of the lords.”L. H. Steward.—“No, my lord, I am judge of the court, but I am none of your triers.”[142]
A plea to the jurisdiction being put in, Lord Delamere requested his grace to advise with the other peers upon it, as it was a matter of privilege.L. H. Steward.—“Good my lord, I hope you that are a prisoner at the bar are not to give me direction who I should advise with, or how I should demean myself here.”
This plea was properly overruled, and not guilty pleaded, when his grace, to prejudice the peers-triers against the noble prisoner as a notorious exclusionist, delivered an inflammatory address to them before any evidence was given.
To create a further prejudice, poor Lord Howard was called to repeat once more his oft-told tale of the ryehouse plot, with which it was not pretended that the prisoner had any connection. The charge in the indictment was only supported by one witness, who himself had been in the rebellion, and who swore that Lord Delamere, at a time and place which he specified, had sent a message by him to Monmouth, asking a supply of money to maintain ten thousand men to be levied in Cheshire against King James. Analibiwas clearly proved. Yet his grace summed up for a conviction, and took pains, “for the sake of the numerous and great auditory, that a mistake in point of law might not go unrectified, which seemed to be urged with some earnestness by the noble lord at the bar,that there is a necessity there should be two positive witnesses to convict a man of treason.”
To the honor of the peerage of England, there was a unanimous verdict of acquittal. James himself even allowed this to be right, wreaking all his vengeance on the witness for not having given better evidence, and swearing that he would have him first convicted of perjury, and then hanged for treason. Jeffreys seems to have struggled hard to behave with moderation on this trial; but his habitual arrogance from time to time broke out, and must have created a disgust among the peers-triers very favorable to the prisoner.
Jeffreys, still pretending to be a strong Protestant, eagerly assisted the king in his mad attempt to open the church and the universities to the intrusion of the Catholics. The fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, having disobeyed the royal mandate to elect, as head of their college, Anthony Farmer, who was not qualified by the statutes, and was a man of infamous character, and having chosen the pious and learnedHough, were summoned before the Court of Ecclesiastical Commission. Jeffreys observed that Dr. Fairfax, one of their number, had not signed the answer of the college to the charge of disregarding the king’s recommendation. Fairfax asking leave to explain his reasons for declining to sign the answer, Jeffreys thought that he was willing to conform, and exclaimed, “Ay, this looks like a man of sense, and a good subject. Let’s hear what he will say.”Fairfax.—“I don’t object to the answer, because it is the vindication of my college: I go further; and as, according to the rules of the ecclesiastical courts, a libel is given to the party that he may know the grounds of his accusation, I demand that libel; for I do not know otherwise wherefore I am called here, and besides, this affair should be discussed in Westminster Hall.”Jeffreys.—“You are a doctor ofdivinity, not oflaw.”Fairfax.—“By what authority do you sit here?”Jeffreys.—“Pray, what commission have you to be so impudent in court? This man ought to be kept in a dark room. Why do you suffer him without a guardian? Why did you not bring him to me? Pray let my officers seize him.”
Three members of the ecclesiastical commission were sent to Oxford to represent that formidable body, and they annulled the election of Hough, expelled the refractory fellows, and made Magdalen College, for a time, a Popish establishment—the court in London, under the presidency of Jeffreys, confirming all their proceedings.
The lord chancellor next involved the king in the prosecution of the seven bishops, which, more than any other act of misrule during his reign, led to his downfall.[143]On the 25thof April, 1688, a new “declaration of indulgence” came out under the great seal; and, that it might be the more generally known and obeyed, an order was sent from the council to all bishops in England, enjoining that it should be read by the clergy in all churches and chapels within their dioceses during divine service. A petition, signed by Sancroft, the archbishop, and six other prelates, was laid before the king, praying in respectful language that the clergy might be excused from reading the declaration; not because they were wanting in duty to the sovereign, or in tenderness to the dissenters, but because it was founded upon the dispensing power, which had often been declared illegal in Parliament, and on that account they could not, in prudence, honor, or conscience, be such parties to it as the reading of it in the church would imply.
Even the Earl of Sunderland and Father Peter represented to the king the danger of arraying the whole church of England against the authority of the crown, and advised him that the bishops should merely be admonished to be more compliant. But with the concurrence of Jeffreys he resolved to visit them with condign punishment, and they were ordered to appear before the council, with a view to obtain evidence against them, as the petition had been privately presented to the king. When they entered the council chamber, Jeffreys said to them, “Do you own the petition?” After some hesitation, the archbishop confessed that he wrote it, and the bishops, that they signed it.Jeffreys.—“Did you publish it?” They, thinking he referred to theprintingof it, of which the king had loudly complained, denied this very resolutely; but they admitted that they had delivered it to the king at Whitehall palace, in the county of Middlesex. Thiswas considered enough to fix them with a publication, in point of law, of the supposed libel; and Jeffreys, after lecturing them on their disloyalty, required them to enter into a recognizance to appear before the Court of King’s Bench, and answer the high misdemeanor of which they were guilty. They insisted that, according to the privileges of the House of Peers, of which they were members, they could not lawfully be committed, and were not bound to enter into the required recognizance. Jeffreys threatened to commit them to the Tower as public delinquents.Archbishop.—“We are ready to go whithersoever his majesty may be pleased to send us. We hope the King of kings will be our protector and our judge. We fear nought from man; and having acted according to law and our consciences, no punishment shall ever be able to shake our resolutions.”
If this struggle could have been foreseen, even Jeffreys would have shrunk from the monstrous impolicy of sending these men to jail, on what would be considered the charge of temperately exercising a constitutional right in defence of the Protestant faith, so dear to the great bulk of the nation; but he thought it was too late to resile. He therefore, with his own hand, drew a warrant for their commitment, which he signed, and handed round the board. It was signed by all the councillors present, except Father Peter, whose signature the king excused, to avoid the awkward appearance of Protestant bishops being sent to jail by a Jesuit.
An account of their trial will be found in the next chapter; but there are some circumstances connected with their acquittal in which Jeffreys personally appears.
Seeing how he had acquired such immense favor, there were other lawyers who tried to undermine him by his ownarts. One of the most formidable of these was Sir John Trevor, master of the rolls, who, some authors say, certainly would have got the great seal had James remained longer on the throne, but whom Jeffreys had hitherto kept down by reversing his decrees. The chancellor’s alarm was now excited by a report that Sir William Williams (who, from being Speaker of the last Westminster Parliament, and fined ten thousand pounds on the prosecution of the Duke of York, was become the caressed solicitor general to James II.) had a positive promise of the great seal if he could obtain a conviction of the seven bishops.[144]His brutal conduct to them during the whole trial, which was no doubt reported to Jeffreys, would confirm the rumor and increase his apprehensions. The jury having sat up all night without food, fire, or candle, to consider of their verdict, the lord chancellor had, while they were still enclosed, come down to Westminster Hall next morning, and taken his seat in court. When he heard the immense shout arise which soon made the king tremble on Hounslow Heath, he smiled and hid his face in his nosegay, “as much,” observes the relater of the anecdote, “as to say, Mr. Solicitor, I keep my seal.”
However, the part he had taken in sending the bishops to the Tower had caused such scandal, that the University of Oxford would not have him for their chancellor, although, in the prospect of a vacancy, he had received many promises of support. The moment the news arrived of the death of theold Duke of Ormond, his grandson was elected to succeed him; and next day a mandate coming from court to elect Lord Jeffreys, an answer was returned that an election had already taken place, which could not be revoked.
Suspecting that things were now taking an unfavorable turn, he began privately to censure the measures of the court, and to insinuate that the king had acted against his advice, saying, “It will be found that I have done the part of an honest man, but as for the judges they are most of them rogues.”
About this time he was present at an event which was considered more than a counterpoise to recent discomfitures, but which greatly precipitated the crisis by taking away the hope of relief by the rightful succession of a Protestant heir. Being suddenly summoned to Whitehall, he immediately repaired thither, and found that the queen had been taken in labor. Other councillors and many ladies of quality soon arrived, and they were all admitted into her bedchamber. Her majesty seems to have been much annoyed by the presence of the lord chancellor. The king calling for him, he came forward and stood on the step of the bed to show that he was there. She then begged her consort to cover her face with his head and periwig; for she declared “she could not be brought to bed, and have so many men look on her.” However, the fright may have shortened her sufferings; for James III., or “the old pretender,” very speedily made his appearance, and the midwife having made the concerted signal that the child was of the wished-for sex, the company retreated.
Considering the surmises which had been propagated ever since the queen’s pregnancy was announced, that it was feigned, and that a suppositious child was to be palmed uponthe world, Jeffreys was lamentably deficient in duty to the king in not having recommended steps to convince the public from the beginning, beyond all possibility of controversy, of the genuineness of the birth. When the story of the “warming-pan” had taken hold of the public mind, many witnesses were examined before the Privy Council to disprove it, but it continued an article of faith with thorough anti-Jacobites during the two succeeding reigns.[145]
The birth of a son, which the king had so ardently longed for, led to his speedy overthrow. Instead of the intrigues between the discontented at home and the Prince and Princess of Orange, hitherto regarded as his successors, being put an end to, they immediately assumed a far more formidable aspect. William, who had hoped in the course of a few years to wield the energies of Britain against the dangerous ambition of Louis XIV., saw that if he remained quiet he should with difficulty even retain the circumscribed power of Stadtholder of the United Provinces. He therefore gladly listened to the representations of those who had fled to Holland to escape from the tyranny exercised in their native country, or who sent secret emissaries to implore his aid; and he boldly resolved to come to England—not as a military conqueror, but for their deliverance, and to obtain the crown with the assent of the nation. That he and his adherents might be protected against any sudden effort to crush them, a formidable fleet was equipped in the Dutch ports, and a considerable army, which had been assembled professedly for adifferent purpose, was ready on a short notice to be embarked in it.
James, who had been amusing himself by making the pope godfather to his son, and had listened with absolute incredulity to the rumors of the coming invasion, suddenly became sensible of his danger, and to avert it was willing to make any sacrifice to please his people. The slender merit of the tardy, forced, and ineffectual concessions which were offered is claimed respectively by the apologists of the king, of Jeffreys, and of the Earl of Sunderland, but seems due to the last of the three. James’s infatuation was so transcendent,—he was so struck with judicial blindness,—being doomed to destruction, he was so demented,—that, if let alone, he probably would have trusted with confidence to his divine right and the protection of the Virgin, even when William had landed at Torbay. As far as I can discover, from the time when Jeffreys received the great seal, he never originated any measures, wise or wicked, and without remonstrance, he heartily coöperated in all those suggested by the king, however illegal or mischievous they might be. I do not find the slightest foundation for the assertion that, with all his faults, he had a regard for the Protestant religion, which made him stand up in its defence. The “Declaration of Indulgence,” to which he put the great seal, might be imputed to a love of toleration, (to which he was a stranger,) but what can be said of the active part he took in the High Commission Court, and in introducing Roman Catholics into the universities and into the church? The Earl of Sunderland, though utterly unprincipled, was a man of great discernment and courage; he could speak boldly to the king, and he had joined in objecting to the precipitate measures for giving ascendancy to his newreligion, which had produced this crisis. His seemingly forced removal from office he himself probably suggested, along with the other steps now taken to appease the people.
Whoever might first propose the altered policy, Jeffreys was the instrument for carrying it into effect, and thereby it lost all its grace and virtue. He took off the suspension of the Bishop of London, and, by asupersedeasunder the great seal, abolished the High Commission Court. He annulled all the proceedings respecting Magdalen College, and issued the necessary process for reinstating Dr. Hough and the Protestant fellows. He put the great seal to a general pardon.
But the reaction was hoped for, above all, from the restoration of the city charters. On the 2d of October he sent a flattering message to the mayor and aldermen to come to Whitehall in the evening, that they might be presented at court by “their old recorder.” Here the king told them that he was mightily concerned for the welfare of their body, and that at a time when invasion threatened the kingdom, he was determined to show them his confidence in their loyalty by restoring the rights of the city to the state in which they were before the unfortunatequo warrantoproceedings had been instituted in the late reign. Accordingly, on the following day a meeting of the Common Council was called at Guildhall, and the lord chancellor proceeded thither in his state carriage, attended by his purse-bearer, mace-bearer, and other officers, and after a florid speech, delivered them letters patent under the great seal, which waived all forfeitures, revived all charters, and confirmed all liberties the city had ever enjoyed under the king or any of his ancestors. Great joy was manifested; but the citizens could not refrain from showing their abhorrence of the man who brought these glad tidings, andon his return they hissed him and hooted him, and gave him a foretaste of the violence he was soon to experience from an English mob.
The forfeited and surrendered charters were likewise restored to the other corporations in England. These popular acts, however, were generally ascribed to fear, and the coalition of all parties, including the preachers of passive obedience, to obtain a permanent redress of grievances by force, continued resolute and unshaken.
When William landed, the frightful severities of Jeffreys in the west had the effect of preventing the populace from flocking to his standard, but he met with no opposition, and soon persons of great consideration and influence sent in their adhesion to him.
When we read in history of civil commotions and foreign invasions, we are apt to suppose that all the ordinary business of life was suspended. But on inquiry, we find that it went on pretty much as usual, unless where interrupted by actual violence. While the Prince of Orange was advancing to the capital, and James was marching out to give him battle, if his army would have stood true, the Court of Chancery sat regularly to hear “exceptions” and “motions for time to plead;” and on the very day on which the Princess Anne fled to Nottingham, and her unhappy father exclaimed, in the extremity of his agony, “God help me! my own children have forsaken me,” the lord chancellor decided that “if an administrator pays a debt due by bond before a debt due by a decree in equity, he is still liable to pay the debt due by the decree.”[146]
Change of dynasty was not yet talked of, and the cry was for “a free Parliament.” To meet this, the king resolved to call one in his own name; and the last use which Jeffreys made of the great seal was by sealing writs for the election of members of the House of Commons, who were ordered to meet on the 15th of January following.
This movement only infused fresh vigor into the Prince of Orange, who now resolved to bring matters to a crisis; and James, finding himself almost universally deserted, as the most effectual way, in his judgment, of annoying his enemies, very conveniently for them, determined to leave the kingdom. Preparatory to this, he had a parting interview with Jeffreys, to whom he did not confide his secret; but he obtained from him all the parliamentary writs which had not been issued to the sheriffs, amounting to a considerable number, and these, with his own hand, he threw into the fire, so that a lawful Parliament might not be assembled when he was gone. To increase the confusion, he required Jeffreys to surrender the great seal to him,—having laid the plan of destroying it,—in the belief that without it the government could not be conducted.
All things being prepared, and Father Peter and the Earl of Melfort having been informed of his intentions, which he still concealed from Jeffreys, on the night of the 10th of December, James, disguised, left Whitehall, accompanied by Sir Edward Hales, whom he afterwards created Earl of Tenterden. London Bridge (which they durst not cross) being theonly one then over the Thames, they drove in a hackney-coach to the Horse Ferry, Westminster, and as they crossed the river with a pair of oars, the king threw the great seal into the water, and thought he had sunk with it forever the fortunes of the Prince of Orange. At Vauxhall they found horses in readiness for them, and they rode swiftly to Feversham, where they embarked for France.
Instead of narrating the adventures of the monarch, when he was intercepted at Feversham, we must confine ourselves to what befell the unhappy ex-chancellor. He heard early next morning of the royal flight, and was thrown into a state of the greatest consternation. He was afraid of punishment from the new government which was now to be established, and being asked by a courtier if he had heard “what theheadsof the Prince’s declaration were,” he answered, “I am sure thatmy headis one, whatever the rest may be.” He dreaded still more the fury of the mob, of which the most alarming accounts were soon brought him. In the existing state of anarchy, almost the whole population of the metropolis crowded into the streets in quest of intelligence; the excitement was unexampled; there was an eager desire to prevent the king’s evil councillors from escaping along with him; and many bad characters, under a pretence of a regard for the Protestant religion, took the opportunity to gratify their love of violence and plunder.
The first object of vengeance was Father Peter; but it was found that, in consequence of the information of the king’s intentions conveyed to him and the Earl of Melfort, they had secretly withdrawn the day before, and were now in safety. The pope’s nuncio was rescued from imminent peril by the interposition of the lords of the Council, who had met, and,exercising temporarily the powers of government, were striving to preserve the public tranquillity.
The next victim demanded was Jeffreys, who (no one knowing that the great seal had been taken from him) still went by the name of “the chancellor,” and who, of all professing Protestants, was the most obnoxious to the multitude. He retired early in the day from his house in Duke Street to the obscure dwelling of a dependent in Westminster, near the river side, and here, lying concealed, he caused preparations to be made for his escape from the kingdom. It was arranged that a coal ship which had delivered her cargo should clear out at the custom house as for her return to Newcastle, and should land him at Hamburg.
To avoid, as he thought, all chance of being recognised by those who had seen him in ermine or gold-embroidered robes, with a long white band under the chin, his collar of S. S. round his neck, and on his head a full-bottom wig, which had recently become the attribute of judicial dignity, instead of the old-fashioned coif or black velvet cap,—he cut off his bushy eyebrows, wont to inspire such terror, he put on the worn-out dress of a common sailor, and he covered his head with an old tarred hat that seemed to have weathered many a blast.
Thus disguised, as soon as it was dusk he got into a boat; and the state of the tide enabling him to shoot London Bridge without danger, he safely reached the coal ship lying off Wapping. Here he was introduced to the captain and the mate, on whose secrecy he was told he might rely; but, as they could not sail till next day, when he had examined his berth, he went on board another vessel that lay at a little distance, there to pass the night. If he had not taken this precaution, hewould have been almost immediately in the power of his enemies. The mate, without waiting to see what became of him, hurried on shore, and treacherously gave information to some persons who had been in pursuit of him, that he was concealed in the Newcastle collier. They applied to justices of the peace in the neighborhood for a warrant to arrest him, which was refused, on the ground that no specific charge was sworn against him. They then went to the lords of the council, whom they found sitting, and who actually gave them a warrant to apprehend him for high treason, under the belief that the safety of the state required his detention. Armed with this, they returned to the coal ship in which he had taken his passage, but he was not there, and the captain, a man of honor, baffled all their inquiries.
He slept securely in the vessel in which he had sought refuge; and had it not been for the most extraordinary imprudence, leading to the belief that he was fated speedily to expiate his crimes, he might have effected his escape. Probably with a view of indulging more freely his habit of intemperance, he next morning came ashore, and made his appearance at a little alehouse bearing the sign of “The Red Cow,” in Anchor and Hope Alley, near King Edward’s Stairs, Wapping, and called for a pot of ale. When he had nearly finished it, still wearing his sailor’s attire, with his hat on his head, he was so rashly confident as to put his head out from an open window to look at the passengers in the street.
I must prepare my readers for the scene which follows by relating, in the words of Roger North, an anecdote of the behavior of Jeffreys to a suitor in the heyday of his power and arrogance. “There was a scrivener of Wapping broughtto hearing for relief against abummery bond.[147]The contingency of losing all being showed, the bill was going to be dismissed;[148]but one of the plaintiff’s counsel said that the scrivener was a strange fellow, and sometimes went to church, sometimes to conventicles, and none could tell what to make of him; and it was thought he was a trimmer. At that the chancellor fired; and ‘A trimmer!’ said he; ‘I have heard much of that monster, but never saw one. Come forth, Mr. Trimmer, turn you round, and let us see your shape,’ and at that rate talked so long that the poor fellow was ready to drop under him; but at last the bill was dismissed with costs, and he went his way. In the hall one of his friends asked him how he came off. ‘Came off’ said he; ‘I am escaped from the terrors of that man’s face, which I would scarce undergo again to save my life, and I shall certainly have the frightful impression of it as long as I live.’”[149]
It happened, by a most extraordinary coincidence, that thisvery scrivener was then walking through Anchor and Hope Alley on the opposite side of the way, and immediately looking towards “The Red Cow,” thought he recollected the features of the sailor who was gazing across towards him. The conviction then flashed upon his mind that this could be no other than the lord chancellor who had so frightened him out of his wits before pronouncing a decree in his favor about the “bummery bond.” But hardly believing his own senses, he entered the tap-room of the alehouse to examine the countenance more deliberately. Upon his entrance, Jeffreys must have recognized the “trimmer,” for he coughed, turned to the wall, and put the quart pot before his face. An immense multitude of persons were in a few minutes collected round the door by the proclamation of the scrivener that the pretended sailor was indeed the wicked Lord Chancellor Jeffreys. He was now in the greatest jeopardy, for, unlike the usual character of the English mob, who are by no means given to cruelty, the persons here assembled were disposed at first to tear him limb from limb, and he was only saved by the interposition of some of the more considerate, who suggested that the proper course would be to take him before the lord mayor.
The cry was raised, “To the lord mayor’s!” but before he could be secured in a carriage to be conveyed thither, they assaulted and pelted him, and might have proceeded to greater extremities if a party of the train-bands had not rescued him from their fury. They still pursued him all the way with whips, and halters, and cries of “Vengeance! justice! justice!” Although he lay back in the coach, he could still be discovered in his blue jacket, and with his sailor’s hat flapped down upon his face. The lord mayor, Sir John Chapman, anervous, timid man, who had stood in tremendous awe of the lord chancellor, could not now see him, disguised as a sailor, without trepidation; and instead of ordering him to stand at the bar of his justice room, with much bowing and scraping, and many apologies for the liberty he was using, requested that his lordship would do him the honor to dine with him, as, it being now past twelve o’clock, he and the lady mayoress were about to sit down to dinner. Jeffreys, though probably with little appetite, was going to accept the invitation, when a gentleman in the room exclaimed, “The lord chancellor is the lord mayor’s prisoner, not his guest, and now to harbor him is treason, for which any one, however high, may have to answer with his own blood.” The lord mayor swooned away, and died (it is said of apoplexy) soon after.