Their
maternal
grandfather was named Kiffin.
Macaulay
[438]
Kirke was also, in his own coarse and ferocious way, a man of pleasure;
and nothing is more probable than that he employed his power for the
purpose of gratifying his licentious appetites. It was reported that he
conquered the virtue of a beautiful woman by promising to spare the
life of one to whom she was strongly attached, and that, after she had
yielded, he showed her suspended on the gallows the lifeless remains of
him for whose sake she had sacrificed her honour. This tale an impartial
judge must reject. It is unsupported by proof. The earliest authority
for it is a poem written by Pomfret. The respectable historians of that
age, while they speak with just severity of the crimes of Kirke, either
omit all mention of this most atrocious crime, or mention it as a thing
rumoured but not proved. Those who tell the story tell it with such
variations as deprive it of all title to credit. Some lay the scene at
Taunton, some at Exeter. Some make the heroine of the tale a maiden,
some a married woman. The relation for whom the shameful ransom was paid
is described by some as her father, by some as her brother, and by some
as her husband. Lastly the story is one which, long before Kirke was
born, had been told of many other oppressors, and had become a favourite
theme of novelists and dramatists. Two politicians of the fifteenth
century, Rhynsault, the favourite of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and
Oliver le Dain, the favourite of Lewis the Eleventh of France, had been
accused of the same crime. Cintio had taken it for the subject of a
romance. Whetstone had made out of Cintio's narrative the rude play of
Promos and Cassandra; and Shakspeare had borrowed from Whetstone the
plot of the noble tragicomedy of Measure for Measure. As Kirke was not
the first so he was not the last, to whom this excess of wickedness
was popularly imputed. During the reaction which followed the Jacobin
tyranny in France, a very similar charge was brought against Joseph
Lebon, one of the most odious agents of the Committee of Public
Safety, and, after enquiry, was admitted even by his prosecutors to be
unfounded. [439]
The government was dissatisfied with Kirke, not on account of the
barbarity with which he had treated his needy prisoners, but on account
of the interested lenity which he had shown to rich delinquents. [440]
He was soon recalled from the West. A less irregular and more cruel
massacre was about to be perpetrated. The vengeance was deferred during
some weeks. It was thought desirable that the Western Circuit should not
begin till the other circuits had terminated. In the meantime the gaols
of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire were filled with thousands of captives.
The chief friend and protector of these unhappy men in their extremity
was one who abhorred their religious and political opinions, one whose
order they hated, and to whom they had done unprovoked wrong, Bishop
Ken. That good prelate used all his influence to soften the gaolers, and
retrenched from his own episcopal state that he might be able to make
some addition to the coarse and scanty fare of those who had defaced his
beloved Cathedral. His conduct on this occasion was of a piece with his
whole life. His intellect was indeed darkened by many superstitions and
prejudices: but his moral character, when impartially reviewed, sustains
a comparison with any in ecclesiastical history, and seems to approach,
as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Christian
virtue. [441]
His labour of love was of no long duration. A rapid and effectual gaol
delivery was at hand. Early in September, Jeffreys, accompanied by four
other judges, set out on that circuit of which the memory will last as
long as our race and language. The officers who commanded the troops
in the districts through which his course lay had orders to furnish him
with whatever military aid he might require. His ferocious temper needed
no spur; yet a spur was applied. The health and spirits of the Lord
Keeper had given way. He had been deeply mortified by the coldness
of the King and by the insolence of the Chief Justice, and could find
little consolation in looking back on a life, not indeed blackened
by any atrocious crime, but sullied by cowardice, selfishness, and
servility. So deeply was the unhappy man humbled that, when he appeared
for the last time in Westminster Hall he took with him a nosegay to hide
his face, because, as he afterwards owned, he could not bear the eyes of
the bar and of the audience. The prospect of his approaching end seems
to have inspired him with unwonted courage. He determined to discharge
his conscience, requested an audience of the King, spoke earnestly
of the dangers inseparable from violent and arbitrary counsels, and
condemned the lawless cruelties which the soldiers had committed in
Somersetshire. He soon after retired from London to die. He breathed
his last a few days after the Judges set out for the West. It was
immediately notified to Jeffreys that he might expect the Great Seal as
the reward of faithful and vigorous service. [442]
At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission. Hampshire
had not been the theatre of war; but many of the vanquished rebels
had, like their leader, fled thither. Two of them, John Hickes, a
Nonconformist divine, and Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer who had been
outlawed for taking part in the Rye House plot, had sought refuge at
the house of Alice, widow of John Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the Long
Parliament and in the High Court of Justice, had been a commissioner of
the Great Seal in the days of the Commonwealth and had been created
a Lord by Cromwell. The titles given by the Protector had not been
recognised by any government which had ruled England since the downfall
of his house; but they appear to have been often used in conversation
even by Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore commonly known as
the Lady Alice. She was related to many respectable, and to some noble,
families; and she was generally esteemed even by the Tory gentlemen of
her country. For it was well known to them that she had deeply regretted
some violent acts in which her husband had borne a part, that she had
shed bitter tears for Charles the First, and that she had protected and
relieved many Cavaliers in their distress. The same womanly kindness,
which had led her to befriend the Royalists in their time of trouble,
would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a hiding place to the wretched
men who now entreated her to protect them. She took them into her house,
set meat and drink before them, and showed them where they might take
rest. The next morning her dwelling was surrounded by soldiers. Strict
search was made. Hickes was found concealed in the malthouse, and
Nelthorpe in the chimney. If Lady Alice knew her guests to have been
concerned in the insurrection, she was undoubtedly guilty of what in
strictness was a capital crime. For the law of principal and accessory,
as respects high treason, then was, and is to this day, in a state
disgraceful to English jurisprudence. In cases of felony, a distinction
founded on justice and reason, is made between the principal and the
accessory after the fact. He who conceals from justice one whom he knows
to be a murderer is liable to punishment, but not to the punishment of
murder. He, on the other hand, who shelters one whom he knows to be a
traitor is, according to all our jurists, guilty of high treason. It
is unnecessary to point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law which
includes under the same definition, and visits with the same penalty,
offences lying at the opposite extremes of the scale of guilt. The
feeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from the thought of
giving up to a shameful death the rebel who, vanquished, hunted down,
and in mortal agony, begs for a morsel of bread and a cup of water, may
be a weakness; but it is surely a weakness very nearly allied to
virtue, a weakness which, constituted as human beings are, we can hardly
eradicate from the mind without eradicating many noble and benevolent
sentiments. A wise and good ruler may not think it right to sanction
this weakness; but he will generally connive at it, or punish it very
tenderly. In no case will he treat it as a crime of the blackest dye.
Whether Flora Macdonald was justified in concealing the attainted heir
of the Stuarts, whether a brave soldier of our own time was justified in
assisting the escape of Lavalette, are questions on which casuists
may differ: but to class such actions with the crimes of Guy Faux and
Fieschi is an outrage to humanity and common sense. Such, however, is
the classification of our law. It is evident that nothing but a lenient
administration could make such a state of the law endurable. And it is
just to say that, during many generations, no English government,
save one, has treated with rigour persons guilty merely of harbouring
defeated and flying insurgents. To women especially has been granted,
by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging in the midst of
havoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the most endearing of
all their charms. Since the beginning of the great civil war, numerous
rebels, some of them far more important than Hickes or Nelthorpe, have
been protected from the severity of victorious governments by female
adroitness and generosity. But no English ruler who has been thus
baffled, the savage and implacable James alone excepted, has had the
barbarity even to think of putting a lady to a cruel and shameful death
for so venial and amiable a transgression.
Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of destroying
Alice Lisle. She could not, according to the doctrine laid down by the
highest authority, be convicted till after the conviction of the rebels
whom she had harboured. [443] She was, however, set to the bar before
either Hickes or Nelthorpe had been tried. It was no easy matter in such
a case to obtain a verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated.
The jury, consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire, shrank
from the thought of sending a fellow creature to the stake for conduct
which seemed deserving rather of praise than of blame. Jeffreys was
beside himself with fury. This was the first case of treason on the
circuit; and there seemed to be a strong probability that his prey would
escape him. He stormed, cursed, and swore in language which no wellbred
man would have used at a race or a cockfight. One witness named Dunne,
partly from concern for Lady Alice, and partly from fright at the
threats and maledictions of the Chief Justice, entirely lost his head,
and at last stood silent. "Oh how hard the truth is," said Jeffreys, "to
come out of a lying Presbyterian knave. " The witness, after a pause
of some minutes, stammered a few unmeaning words. "Was there ever,"
exclaimed the judge, with an oath, "was there ever such a villain on
the face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a God? Dost thou
believe in hell fire. Of all the witnesses that I ever met with I never
saw thy fellow. " Still the poor man, scared out of his senses, remained
mute; and again Jeffreys burst forth. "I hope, gentlemen of the jury,
that you take notice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How can
one help abhorring both these men and their religion? A Turk is a saint
to such a fellow as this. A Pagan would be ashamed of such villany. Oh
blessed Jesus! What a generation of vipers do we live among! " "I cannot
tell what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne. The judge again broke forth
into a volley of oaths. "Was there ever," he cried, "such an impudent
rascal? Hold the candle to him that we may see his brazen face. You,
gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown, see that an information
for perjury be preferred against this fellow. " After the witnesses had
been thus handled, the Lady Alice was called on for her defence. She
began by saying, what may possibly have been true, that though she
knew Hickes to be in trouble when she took him in, she did not know or
suspect that he had been concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine,
a man of peace. It had, therefore, never occurred to her that he could
have borne arms against the government; and she had supposed that he
wished to conceal himself because warrants were out against him for
field preaching. The Chief Justice began to storm. "But I will tell you.
There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians but,
one way or another, had a hand in the rebellion. Presbytery has all
manner of villany in it. Nothing but Presbytery could have made Dunne
such a rogue. Show me a Presbyterian; and I'll show thee a lying knave. "
He summed up in the same style, declaimed during an hour against Whigs
and Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the prisoner's husband had
borne a part in the death of Charles the First, a fact which had not
been proved by any testimony, and which, if it had been proved, would
have been utterly irrelevant to the issue. The jury retired, and
remained long in consultation. The judge grew impatient. He could not
conceive, he said, how, in so plain a case, they should even have
left the box. He sent a messenger to tell them that, if they did not
instantly return, he would adjourn the court and lock them up all night.
Thus put to the torture, they came, but came to say that they doubted
whether the charge had been made out. Jeffreys expostulated with them
vehemently, and, after another consultation, they gave a reluctant
verdict of Guilty.
On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jeffreys gave
directions that Alice Lisle should be burned alive that very afternoon.
This excess of barbarity moved the pity and indignation even of the
class which was most devoted to the crown. The clergy of Winchester
Cathedral remonstrated with the Chief Justice, who, brutal as he was,
was not mad enough to risk a quarrel on such a subject with a body so
much respected by the Tory party. He consented to put off the execution
five days. During that time the friends of the prisoner besought James
to be merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham, whose
recent victory had increased his influence at court, and who, it is
said, had been bribed to take the compassionate side, spoke in her
favour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law, pleaded her cause. But all
was vain. The utmost that could be obtained was that her sentence
should be commuted from burning to beheading. She was put to death on a
scaffold in the marketplace of Winchester, and underwent her fate with
serene courage. [444]
In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day following
her execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the principal town of the
county in which Monmouth had landed; and the judicial massacre began.
The court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; and
this innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose.
It was also rumoured that, when the clergyman who preached the assize
sermon enforced the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge was
distorted by an ominous grin. These things made men augur ill of what
was to follow. [445]
More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work seemed
heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light. He let it be
understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was to
plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons, who put themselves on their country
and were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. The
remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two
received sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire
amounted to seventy-four.
From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barely
grazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore, comparatively few
persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire, the chief seat of the
rebellion, had been reserved for the last and most fearful vengeance.
In this county two hundred and thirty-three prisoners were in a few
days hanged, drawn, and quartered. At every spot where two roads met,
on every marketplace, on the green of every large village which had
furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind,
or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the
traveller sick with horror. In many parishes the peasantry could not
assemble in the house of God without seeing the ghastly face of a
neighbour grinning at them over the porch. The Chief Justice was all
himself. His spirits rose higher and higher as the work went on. He
laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that many thought him
drunk from morning to night. But in him it was not easy to distinguish
the madness produced by evil passions from the madness produced by
brandy. A prisoner affirmed that the witnesses who appeared against him
were not entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, and
another a prostitute. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge, "to
reflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see thee already
with the halter round thy neck. " Another produced testimony that he was
a good Protestant. "Protestant! " said Jeffreys; "you mean Presbyterian.
I'll hold you a wager of it. I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles. "
One wretched man moved the pity even of bitter Tories. "My Lord,"
they said, "this poor creature is on the parish. " "Do not trouble
yourselves," said the Judge, "I will ease the parish of the burden. " It
was not only against the prisoners that his fury broke forth. Gentlemen
and noblemen of high consideration and stainless loyalty, who ventured
to bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance, were almost sure
to receive what he called, in the coarse dialect which he had learned in
the pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick with the rough side of his tongue.
Lord Stawell, a Tory peer, who could not conceal his horror at the
remorseless manner in which his poor neighbours were butchered, was
punished by having a corpse suspended in chains at his park gate. [446]
In such spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told
over the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of Somersetshire.
Within the last forty years, peasants, in some districts, well knew the
accursed spots, and passed them unwillingly after sunset. [447]
Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his
predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the number
of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very
much exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have been
put to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of
1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more
formidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has
not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or
after the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of
clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together will
appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgraced
the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on
this circuit was three hundred and twenty. [448]
Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had been
generally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of blameless
life, and of high religious profession. They were regarded by
themselves, and by a large proportion of their neighbours, not as
wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with blood the truth of the
Protestant religion. Very few of the convicts professed any repentance
for what they had done. Many, animated by the old Puritan spirit, met
death, not merely with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain
that the ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt
of rebellion and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim of
the King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of the
clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved the bitter
scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed hymns in the
dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang while
they were undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Zion
and to make war on Babylon, would set up his standard, would blow his
trumpet, and would requite his foes tenfold for all the evil which had
been inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noted
down: their farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way,
with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious
supplement to the Marian martyrology. [449]
A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired officer
of the parliamentary army, and one of those zealots who would own no
king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor. His arm had been
frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle; and, as no surgeon was
at hand, the stout old soldier amputated it himself. He was carried
up to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make no
submission. "I am an aged man," he said, "and what remains to me of life
is not worth a falsehood or a baseness. I have always been a republican;
and I am so still. " He was sent back to the West and hanged. The people
remarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to
the gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not
that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way sword
in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals.
"Stop, gentlemen," he cried: "let me go on foot. There is more in this
than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not
see. " He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a
smile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist
and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology
for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but one arm. "
[450]
Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young Templar
of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an agreeable provincial
town proud of its taste and refinement, was regarded by all as the
model of a fine gentleman. Great interest was made to save him. It was
believed through the West of England that he was engaged to a young lady
of gentle blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at
the feet of Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from
him with a jest so hideous that to repeat it would be an offence
against decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and
courageously. [451]
A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant brothers,
William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young, handsome, accomplished,
and well connected.
Their maternal grandfather was named Kiffin. He was
one of the first merchants in London, and was generally considered as
the head of the Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling
on the trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather,"
he said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you. " The poor lad, who
was only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and fortitude,
that an officer of the army who attended the execution, and who had made
himself remarkable by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, and
said, "I do not believe that my Lord Chief Justice himself could be
proof against this. " Hopes were entertained that Benjamin would be
pardoned. One victim of tender years was surely enough for one house to
furnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. The
truth was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations,
and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated
intercessors pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was allowed
for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to Whitehall
with a petition. Many courtiers wished her success; and Churchill, among
whose numerous faults cruelty had no place, obtained admittance for her.
"I wish well to your suit with all my heart," he said, as they stood
together in the antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes.
This marble,"--and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece,--"is not
harder than the King. " The prediction proved true. James was inexorable.
Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst lamentations in
which the soldiers who kept guard round the gallows could not refrain
from joining. [452]
Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than
some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable to
bring home the charge of high treason were convicted of misdemeanours,
and were sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that which Oates
had undergone. A woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered by
half the women in the districts where the war had raged, was condemned
to be whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. She
suffered part of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to London;
but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers, with the humane
connivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the responsibility
of sparing her any further torture. A still more frightful sentence was
passed on a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious words. He
was, as usual, interrupted in his defence by ribaldry and scurrility
from the judgment seat. "You are a rebel; and all your family have been
rebels Since Adam. They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses
with you. " The sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven
years, and should, during that period, be flogged through every market
town in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst into
tears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My Lord,"
said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many market towns in
our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortnight for seven
years. " "If he is a young man," said Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue.
Ladies, you do not know the villain as well as I do. The punishment is
not half bad enough for him. All the interest in England shall not alter
it. " Tutchin in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity,
that he might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this
conjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it seemed
highly improbable that the sentence would ever be executed, the Chief
Justice consented to remit it, in return for a bribe which reduced the
prisoner to poverty. The temper of Tutchin, not originally very mild,
was exasperated to madness by what he had undergone. He lived to be
known as one of the most acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the
House of Stuart and of the Tory party. [453]
The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and
forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffered
death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed
favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts
should be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be
emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should
be some West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed for
the purpose of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England or
New Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them
and a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was
therefore determined that they should be sent to colonies where a
Puritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a labourer born
in the temperate zone could hope to enjoy little health. Such was the
state of the slave market that these bondmen, long as was the passage,
and sickly as they were likely to prove, were still very valuable. It
was estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average, each of them, after all
charges were paid, would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There was
therefore much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the West
conceived that they had, by their exertions and sufferings during the
insurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which had been
eagerly snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The courtiers,
however, were victorious. [454]
The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who are now
carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best information which
is at present accessible that more than one fifth of those who were
shipped were flung to the sharks before the end of the voyage. The human
cargoes were stowed close in the holds of small vessels. So little space
was allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented by
unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on one
another. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was
constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses.
In the dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease
and death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one vessel,
twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage was
performed with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived at their
house of bondage were mere skeletons. During some weeks coarse biscuit
and fetid water had been doled out to them in such scanty measure that
any one of them could easily have consumed the ration which was assigned
to five. They were, therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whom
they had been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling
them. [455]
Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death, and
of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the tropical sun,
was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By law
a subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this law
was enforced after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once cruel
and ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of the
labouring men whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon by
the agents of the Treasury to explain what had become of a basket, of a
goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of beans, of
a truss of hay. [456] While the humbler retainers of the government were
pillaging the families of the slaughtered peasants, the Chief Justice
was fast accumulating a fortune out of the plunder of a higher class of
Whigs. He traded largely in pardons. His most lucrative transaction of
this kind was with a gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that
Prideaux had not been in arms against the government; and it is probable
that his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his
father, an eminent lawyer who had been high in office under the
Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the crown.
Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they would bear
evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay long in gaol and
at length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to pay fifteen
thousand pounds for his liberation. This great sum was received by
Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which the people gave the name
of Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased with the price
of innocent blood. [457]
He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of parasites
who were in the habit of drinking and laughing with him. The office
of these men was to drive hard bargains with convicts under the strong
terrors of death, and with parents trembling for the lives of children.
A portion of the spoil was abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To one
of his boon companions, it is said he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor
across the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse to any
intercession except that of his creatures, for he guarded his profitable
monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even suspected that he sent
some persons to the gibbet solely because they had applied for the royal
clemency through channels independent of him. [458]
Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of this
traffic. The ladies of the Queen's household distinguished themselves
preeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of the disgrace which
they incurred falls on their mistress: for it was solely on account of
the relation in which they stood to her that they were able to enrich
themselves by so odious a trade; and there can be no question that
she might with a word or a look have restrained them. But in truth she
encouraged them by her evil example, if not by her express approbation.
She seems to have been one of that large class of persons who bear
adversity better than prosperity. While her husband was a subject and an
exile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent danger of being
deprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her manners
conciliated the kindness even of those who most abhorred her religion.
But when her good fortune came her good nature disappeared. The meek and
affable Duchess turned out an ungracious and haughty Queen. [459] The
misfortunes which she subsequently endured have made her an object of
some interest; but that interest would be not a little heightened if it
could be shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or even
tried to save, one single victim from the most frightful proscription
that England has ever seen. Unhappily the only request that she is known
to have preferred touching the rebels was that a hundred of those who
were sentenced to transportation might be given to her. [460] The profit
which she cleared on the cargo, after making large allowance for those
who died of hunger and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated
at less than a thousand guineas. We cannot wonder that her attendants
should have imitated her unprincely greediness and her unwomanly
cruelty. They exacted a thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, a merchant
of Bridgewater; who had contributed to the military chest of the rebel
army. But the prey on which they pounced most eagerly was one which it
might have been thought that even the most ungentle natures would have
spared. Already some of the girls who had presented the standard to
Monmouth at Taunton had cruelly expiated their offence. One of them had
been thrown into prison where an infectious malady was raging. She had
sickened and died there. Another had presented herself at the bar before
Jeffreys to beg for mercy. "Take her, gaoler," vociferated the Judge,
with one of those frowns which had often struck terror into stouter
hearts than hers. She burst into tears, drew her hood over her face,
followed the gaoler out of the court, fell ill of fright, and in a few
hours was a corpse. Most of the young ladies, however, who had walked
in the procession were still alive. Some of them were under ten years
of age. All had acted under the orders of their schoolmistress, without
knowing that they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honour
asked the royal permission to wring money out of the parents of the
poor children; and the permission was granted. An order was sent down to
Taunton that all these little girls should be seized and imprisoned.
Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, the Tory member for Bridgewater, was
requested to undertake the office of exacting the ransom. He was charged
to declare in strong language that the maids of honour would not endure
delay, that they were determined to prosecute to outlawry, unless a
reasonable sum were forthcoming, and that by a reasonable sum was meant
seven thousand pounds. Warre excused himself from taking any part in a
transaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested William
Penn to act for them; and Penn accepted the commission. Yet it should
seem that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity which he had often
shown about taking off his hat would not have been altogether out of
place on this occasion. He probably silenced the remonstrances of his
conscience by repeating to himself that none of the money which he
extorted would go into his own pocket; that if he refused to be
the agent of the ladies they would find agents less humane; that by
complying he should increase his influence at the court, and that his
influence at the court had already enabled him, and still might enable
him, to render great services to his oppressed brethren. The maids of
honour were at last forced to content themselves with less than a third
part of what they had demanded. [461]
No English sovereign has ever given stronger proof of a cruel nature
than James the Second. Yet his cruelty was not more odious than his
mercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his mercy and his
cruelty were such that each reflects infamy on the other. Our horror at
the fate of the simple clowns, the young lads, the delicate women, to
whom he was inexorably severe, is increased when we find to whom and for
what considerations he granted his pardon.
The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be guided in
selecting rebels for punishment is perfectly obvious. The ringleaders,
the men of rank, fortune, and education, whose power and whose artifices
have led the multitude into error, are the proper objects of severity.
The deluded populace, when once the slaughter on the field of battle
is over, can scarcely be treated too leniently. This rule, so evidently
agreeable to justice and humanity, was not only not observed: it was
inverted. While those who ought to have been spared were slaughtered by
hundreds, the few who might with propriety have been left to the utmost
rigour of the law were spared. This eccentric clemency has perplexed
some writers, and has drawn forth ludicrous eulogies from others. It was
neither at all mysterious nor at all praiseworthy. It may be distinctly
traced in every case either to a sordid or to a malignant motive, either
to thirst for money or to thirst for blood.
In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. His parts and
knowledge, the rank which he had inherited in the state, and the high
command which he had borne in the rebel army, would have pointed him out
to a just government as a much fitter object of punishment than Alice
Lisle, than William Hewling, than any of the hundreds of ignorant
peasants whose skulls and quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. But
Grey's estate was large and was strictly entailed. He had only a life
interest in his property; and he could forfeit no more interest than he
had. If he died, his lands at once devolved on the next heir. If he
were pardoned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was therefore
suffered to redeem himself by giving a bond for forty thousand pounds to
the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other courtiers. [462]
Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the same rank which
had been held by Grey in the West of England. That Cochrane should be
forgiven by a prince vindictive beyond all example, seemed incredible.
But Cochrane was the younger son of a rich family; it was therefore only
by sparing him that money could be made out of him. His father, Lord
Dundonald, offered a bribe of five thousand pounds to the priests of the
royal household; and a pardon was granted. [463]
Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Commissary to the
rebel army, and who had inflamed the ignorant populace of Somersetshire
by vehement harangues in which James had been described as an incendiary
and a poisoner, was admitted to mercy. For Storey was able to give
important assistance to Jeffreys in wringing fifteen thousand pounds out
of Prideaux. [464]
None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade,
Goodenough, and Ferguson. These three chiefs of the rebellion had fled
together from the field of Sedgemoor, and had reached the coast in
safety. But they had found a frigate cruising near the spot where they
had hoped to embark. They had then separated. Wade and Goodenough
were soon discovered and brought up to London. Deeply as they had been
implicated in the Rye House plot, conspicuous as they had been among the
chiefs of the Western insurrection, they were suffered to live, because
they had it in their power to give information which enabled the King
to slaughter and plunder some persons whom he hated, but to whom he had
never yet been able to bring home any crime. [465]
How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all the enemies of
the government he was, without doubt, the most deeply criminal. He was
the original author of the plot for assassinating the royal brothers.
He had written that Declaration which, for insolence, malignity, and
mendacity, stands unrivalled even among the libels of those stormy
times. He had instigated Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and then
to usurp the crown. It was reasonable to expect that a strict search
would be made for the archtraitor, as he was often called; and such a
search a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely have
eluded. It was confidently reported in the coffee houses of London
that Ferguson was taken, and this report found credit with men who had
excellent opportunities of knowing the truth. The next thing that was
heard of him was that he was safe on the Continent. It was strongly
suspected that he had been in constant communication with the government
against which he was constantly plotting, that he had, while urging his
associates to every excess of rashness sent to Whitehall just so much
information about their proceedings as might suffice to save his own
neck, and that therefore orders had been given to let him escape. [466]
And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his reward. He
arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving carnage, mourning, and terror
behind him. The hatred with which he was regarded by the people of
Somersetshire has no parallel in our history. It was not to be quenched
by time or by political changes, was long transmitted from generation to
generation, and raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. When he
had been many years dead, when his name and title were extinct, his
granddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret, travelling along the western
road, was insulted by the populace, and found that she could not safely
venture herself among the descendants of those who had witnessed the
Bloody Assizes. [467]
But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge after
his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with interest and
delight. In his drawingroom and at his table he had frequently talked of
the havoc which was making among his disaffected subjects with a glee
at which the foreign ministers stood aghast. With his own hand he had
penned accounts of what he facetiously called his Lord Chief Justice's
campaign in the West. Some hundreds of rebels, His Majesty wrote to the
Hague, had been condemned. Some of them had been hanged: more should
be hanged: and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It was to no
purpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people, and
described with pathetic eloquence the frightful state of his diocese.
He complained that it was impossible to walk along the highways without
seeing some terrible spectacle, and that the whole air of Somersetshire
was tainted with death. The King read, and remained, according to the
saying of Churchill, hard as the marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. At
Windsor the great seal of England was put into the hands of Jeffreys and
in the next London Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour
was the reward of the many eminent and faithful services which he had
rendered to the crown. [468]
At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror of
the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King attempted to
vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other. Jeffreys, in
the Tower, protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond
his master's express orders, nay, that he had fallen short of them.
James, at Saint Germain's would willingly have had it believed that his
own inclinations had been on the side of clemency, and that unmerited
obloquy had been brought on him by the violence of his minister. But
neither of these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of the
other. The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand to
be false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it be true in fact, is
utterly worthless.
The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was about to
begin. The government was peculiarly desirous to find victims among the
great Whig merchants of the City. They had, in the last reign, been a
formidable part of the strength of the opposition. They were wealthy;
and their wealth was not, like that of many noblemen and country
gentlemen, protected by entail against forfeiture. In the case of Grey
and of men situated like him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty and
rapacity at once; but a rich trader might be both hanged and plundered.
The commercial grandees, however, though in general hostile to Popery
and to arbitrary power, had yet been too scrupulous or too timid to
incur the guilt of high treason. One of the most considerable among them
was Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the old charter of
the City, and had filled the office of Sheriff when the question of the
Exclusion Bill occupied the public mind. In politics he was a Whig: his
religious opinions leaned towards Presbyterianism: but his temper was
cautious and moderate. It is not proved by trustworthy evidence that he
ever approached the verge of treason. He had, indeed, when Sheriff, been
very unwilling to employ as his deputy a man so violent and unprincipled
as Goodenough. When the Rye House plot was discovered, great hopes
were entertained at Whitehall that Cornish would appear to have been
concerned: but these hopes were disappointed. One of the conspirators,
indeed, John Rumsey, was ready to swear anything: but a single witness
was not sufficient; and no second witness could be found. More than two
years had since elapsed. Cornish thought himself safe; but the eye of
the tyrant was upon him. Goodenough, terrified by the near prospect
of death, and still harbouring malice on account of the unfavourable
opinion which had always been entertained of him by his old master,
consented to supply the testimony which had hitherto been wanting.
Cornish was arrested while transacting business on the Exchange, was
hurried to gaol, was kept there some days in solitary confinement, and
was brought altogether unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The case
against him rested wholly on the evidence of Rumsey and Goodenough. Both
were, by their own confession accomplices in the plot with which they
charged the prisoner. Both were impelled by the strongest pressure of
hope end fear to criminate him. Evidence was produced which proved that
Goodenough was also under the influence of personal enmity. Rumsey's
story was inconsistent with the story which he had told when he appeared
as a witness against Lord Russell. But these things were urged in vain.
On the bench sate three judges who had been with Jeffreys in the West;
and it was remarked by those who watched their deportment that they had
come back from the carnage of Taunton in a fierce and excited state. It
is indeed but too true that the taste for blood is a taste which even
men not naturally cruel may, by habit, speedily acquire.
Kirke was also, in his own coarse and ferocious way, a man of pleasure;
and nothing is more probable than that he employed his power for the
purpose of gratifying his licentious appetites. It was reported that he
conquered the virtue of a beautiful woman by promising to spare the
life of one to whom she was strongly attached, and that, after she had
yielded, he showed her suspended on the gallows the lifeless remains of
him for whose sake she had sacrificed her honour. This tale an impartial
judge must reject. It is unsupported by proof. The earliest authority
for it is a poem written by Pomfret. The respectable historians of that
age, while they speak with just severity of the crimes of Kirke, either
omit all mention of this most atrocious crime, or mention it as a thing
rumoured but not proved. Those who tell the story tell it with such
variations as deprive it of all title to credit. Some lay the scene at
Taunton, some at Exeter. Some make the heroine of the tale a maiden,
some a married woman. The relation for whom the shameful ransom was paid
is described by some as her father, by some as her brother, and by some
as her husband. Lastly the story is one which, long before Kirke was
born, had been told of many other oppressors, and had become a favourite
theme of novelists and dramatists. Two politicians of the fifteenth
century, Rhynsault, the favourite of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and
Oliver le Dain, the favourite of Lewis the Eleventh of France, had been
accused of the same crime. Cintio had taken it for the subject of a
romance. Whetstone had made out of Cintio's narrative the rude play of
Promos and Cassandra; and Shakspeare had borrowed from Whetstone the
plot of the noble tragicomedy of Measure for Measure. As Kirke was not
the first so he was not the last, to whom this excess of wickedness
was popularly imputed. During the reaction which followed the Jacobin
tyranny in France, a very similar charge was brought against Joseph
Lebon, one of the most odious agents of the Committee of Public
Safety, and, after enquiry, was admitted even by his prosecutors to be
unfounded. [439]
The government was dissatisfied with Kirke, not on account of the
barbarity with which he had treated his needy prisoners, but on account
of the interested lenity which he had shown to rich delinquents. [440]
He was soon recalled from the West. A less irregular and more cruel
massacre was about to be perpetrated. The vengeance was deferred during
some weeks. It was thought desirable that the Western Circuit should not
begin till the other circuits had terminated. In the meantime the gaols
of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire were filled with thousands of captives.
The chief friend and protector of these unhappy men in their extremity
was one who abhorred their religious and political opinions, one whose
order they hated, and to whom they had done unprovoked wrong, Bishop
Ken. That good prelate used all his influence to soften the gaolers, and
retrenched from his own episcopal state that he might be able to make
some addition to the coarse and scanty fare of those who had defaced his
beloved Cathedral. His conduct on this occasion was of a piece with his
whole life. His intellect was indeed darkened by many superstitions and
prejudices: but his moral character, when impartially reviewed, sustains
a comparison with any in ecclesiastical history, and seems to approach,
as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Christian
virtue. [441]
His labour of love was of no long duration. A rapid and effectual gaol
delivery was at hand. Early in September, Jeffreys, accompanied by four
other judges, set out on that circuit of which the memory will last as
long as our race and language. The officers who commanded the troops
in the districts through which his course lay had orders to furnish him
with whatever military aid he might require. His ferocious temper needed
no spur; yet a spur was applied. The health and spirits of the Lord
Keeper had given way. He had been deeply mortified by the coldness
of the King and by the insolence of the Chief Justice, and could find
little consolation in looking back on a life, not indeed blackened
by any atrocious crime, but sullied by cowardice, selfishness, and
servility. So deeply was the unhappy man humbled that, when he appeared
for the last time in Westminster Hall he took with him a nosegay to hide
his face, because, as he afterwards owned, he could not bear the eyes of
the bar and of the audience. The prospect of his approaching end seems
to have inspired him with unwonted courage. He determined to discharge
his conscience, requested an audience of the King, spoke earnestly
of the dangers inseparable from violent and arbitrary counsels, and
condemned the lawless cruelties which the soldiers had committed in
Somersetshire. He soon after retired from London to die. He breathed
his last a few days after the Judges set out for the West. It was
immediately notified to Jeffreys that he might expect the Great Seal as
the reward of faithful and vigorous service. [442]
At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission. Hampshire
had not been the theatre of war; but many of the vanquished rebels
had, like their leader, fled thither. Two of them, John Hickes, a
Nonconformist divine, and Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer who had been
outlawed for taking part in the Rye House plot, had sought refuge at
the house of Alice, widow of John Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the Long
Parliament and in the High Court of Justice, had been a commissioner of
the Great Seal in the days of the Commonwealth and had been created
a Lord by Cromwell. The titles given by the Protector had not been
recognised by any government which had ruled England since the downfall
of his house; but they appear to have been often used in conversation
even by Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore commonly known as
the Lady Alice. She was related to many respectable, and to some noble,
families; and she was generally esteemed even by the Tory gentlemen of
her country. For it was well known to them that she had deeply regretted
some violent acts in which her husband had borne a part, that she had
shed bitter tears for Charles the First, and that she had protected and
relieved many Cavaliers in their distress. The same womanly kindness,
which had led her to befriend the Royalists in their time of trouble,
would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a hiding place to the wretched
men who now entreated her to protect them. She took them into her house,
set meat and drink before them, and showed them where they might take
rest. The next morning her dwelling was surrounded by soldiers. Strict
search was made. Hickes was found concealed in the malthouse, and
Nelthorpe in the chimney. If Lady Alice knew her guests to have been
concerned in the insurrection, she was undoubtedly guilty of what in
strictness was a capital crime. For the law of principal and accessory,
as respects high treason, then was, and is to this day, in a state
disgraceful to English jurisprudence. In cases of felony, a distinction
founded on justice and reason, is made between the principal and the
accessory after the fact. He who conceals from justice one whom he knows
to be a murderer is liable to punishment, but not to the punishment of
murder. He, on the other hand, who shelters one whom he knows to be a
traitor is, according to all our jurists, guilty of high treason. It
is unnecessary to point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law which
includes under the same definition, and visits with the same penalty,
offences lying at the opposite extremes of the scale of guilt. The
feeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from the thought of
giving up to a shameful death the rebel who, vanquished, hunted down,
and in mortal agony, begs for a morsel of bread and a cup of water, may
be a weakness; but it is surely a weakness very nearly allied to
virtue, a weakness which, constituted as human beings are, we can hardly
eradicate from the mind without eradicating many noble and benevolent
sentiments. A wise and good ruler may not think it right to sanction
this weakness; but he will generally connive at it, or punish it very
tenderly. In no case will he treat it as a crime of the blackest dye.
Whether Flora Macdonald was justified in concealing the attainted heir
of the Stuarts, whether a brave soldier of our own time was justified in
assisting the escape of Lavalette, are questions on which casuists
may differ: but to class such actions with the crimes of Guy Faux and
Fieschi is an outrage to humanity and common sense. Such, however, is
the classification of our law. It is evident that nothing but a lenient
administration could make such a state of the law endurable. And it is
just to say that, during many generations, no English government,
save one, has treated with rigour persons guilty merely of harbouring
defeated and flying insurgents. To women especially has been granted,
by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging in the midst of
havoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the most endearing of
all their charms. Since the beginning of the great civil war, numerous
rebels, some of them far more important than Hickes or Nelthorpe, have
been protected from the severity of victorious governments by female
adroitness and generosity. But no English ruler who has been thus
baffled, the savage and implacable James alone excepted, has had the
barbarity even to think of putting a lady to a cruel and shameful death
for so venial and amiable a transgression.
Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of destroying
Alice Lisle. She could not, according to the doctrine laid down by the
highest authority, be convicted till after the conviction of the rebels
whom she had harboured. [443] She was, however, set to the bar before
either Hickes or Nelthorpe had been tried. It was no easy matter in such
a case to obtain a verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated.
The jury, consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire, shrank
from the thought of sending a fellow creature to the stake for conduct
which seemed deserving rather of praise than of blame. Jeffreys was
beside himself with fury. This was the first case of treason on the
circuit; and there seemed to be a strong probability that his prey would
escape him. He stormed, cursed, and swore in language which no wellbred
man would have used at a race or a cockfight. One witness named Dunne,
partly from concern for Lady Alice, and partly from fright at the
threats and maledictions of the Chief Justice, entirely lost his head,
and at last stood silent. "Oh how hard the truth is," said Jeffreys, "to
come out of a lying Presbyterian knave. " The witness, after a pause
of some minutes, stammered a few unmeaning words. "Was there ever,"
exclaimed the judge, with an oath, "was there ever such a villain on
the face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a God? Dost thou
believe in hell fire. Of all the witnesses that I ever met with I never
saw thy fellow. " Still the poor man, scared out of his senses, remained
mute; and again Jeffreys burst forth. "I hope, gentlemen of the jury,
that you take notice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How can
one help abhorring both these men and their religion? A Turk is a saint
to such a fellow as this. A Pagan would be ashamed of such villany. Oh
blessed Jesus! What a generation of vipers do we live among! " "I cannot
tell what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne. The judge again broke forth
into a volley of oaths. "Was there ever," he cried, "such an impudent
rascal? Hold the candle to him that we may see his brazen face. You,
gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown, see that an information
for perjury be preferred against this fellow. " After the witnesses had
been thus handled, the Lady Alice was called on for her defence. She
began by saying, what may possibly have been true, that though she
knew Hickes to be in trouble when she took him in, she did not know or
suspect that he had been concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine,
a man of peace. It had, therefore, never occurred to her that he could
have borne arms against the government; and she had supposed that he
wished to conceal himself because warrants were out against him for
field preaching. The Chief Justice began to storm. "But I will tell you.
There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians but,
one way or another, had a hand in the rebellion. Presbytery has all
manner of villany in it. Nothing but Presbytery could have made Dunne
such a rogue. Show me a Presbyterian; and I'll show thee a lying knave. "
He summed up in the same style, declaimed during an hour against Whigs
and Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the prisoner's husband had
borne a part in the death of Charles the First, a fact which had not
been proved by any testimony, and which, if it had been proved, would
have been utterly irrelevant to the issue. The jury retired, and
remained long in consultation. The judge grew impatient. He could not
conceive, he said, how, in so plain a case, they should even have
left the box. He sent a messenger to tell them that, if they did not
instantly return, he would adjourn the court and lock them up all night.
Thus put to the torture, they came, but came to say that they doubted
whether the charge had been made out. Jeffreys expostulated with them
vehemently, and, after another consultation, they gave a reluctant
verdict of Guilty.
On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jeffreys gave
directions that Alice Lisle should be burned alive that very afternoon.
This excess of barbarity moved the pity and indignation even of the
class which was most devoted to the crown. The clergy of Winchester
Cathedral remonstrated with the Chief Justice, who, brutal as he was,
was not mad enough to risk a quarrel on such a subject with a body so
much respected by the Tory party. He consented to put off the execution
five days. During that time the friends of the prisoner besought James
to be merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham, whose
recent victory had increased his influence at court, and who, it is
said, had been bribed to take the compassionate side, spoke in her
favour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law, pleaded her cause. But all
was vain. The utmost that could be obtained was that her sentence
should be commuted from burning to beheading. She was put to death on a
scaffold in the marketplace of Winchester, and underwent her fate with
serene courage. [444]
In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day following
her execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the principal town of the
county in which Monmouth had landed; and the judicial massacre began.
The court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; and
this innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose.
It was also rumoured that, when the clergyman who preached the assize
sermon enforced the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge was
distorted by an ominous grin. These things made men augur ill of what
was to follow. [445]
More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work seemed
heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light. He let it be
understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was to
plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons, who put themselves on their country
and were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. The
remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two
received sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire
amounted to seventy-four.
From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barely
grazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore, comparatively few
persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire, the chief seat of the
rebellion, had been reserved for the last and most fearful vengeance.
In this county two hundred and thirty-three prisoners were in a few
days hanged, drawn, and quartered. At every spot where two roads met,
on every marketplace, on the green of every large village which had
furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind,
or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the
traveller sick with horror. In many parishes the peasantry could not
assemble in the house of God without seeing the ghastly face of a
neighbour grinning at them over the porch. The Chief Justice was all
himself. His spirits rose higher and higher as the work went on. He
laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that many thought him
drunk from morning to night. But in him it was not easy to distinguish
the madness produced by evil passions from the madness produced by
brandy. A prisoner affirmed that the witnesses who appeared against him
were not entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, and
another a prostitute. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge, "to
reflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see thee already
with the halter round thy neck. " Another produced testimony that he was
a good Protestant. "Protestant! " said Jeffreys; "you mean Presbyterian.
I'll hold you a wager of it. I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles. "
One wretched man moved the pity even of bitter Tories. "My Lord,"
they said, "this poor creature is on the parish. " "Do not trouble
yourselves," said the Judge, "I will ease the parish of the burden. " It
was not only against the prisoners that his fury broke forth. Gentlemen
and noblemen of high consideration and stainless loyalty, who ventured
to bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance, were almost sure
to receive what he called, in the coarse dialect which he had learned in
the pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick with the rough side of his tongue.
Lord Stawell, a Tory peer, who could not conceal his horror at the
remorseless manner in which his poor neighbours were butchered, was
punished by having a corpse suspended in chains at his park gate. [446]
In such spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told
over the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of Somersetshire.
Within the last forty years, peasants, in some districts, well knew the
accursed spots, and passed them unwillingly after sunset. [447]
Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his
predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the number
of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very
much exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have been
put to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of
1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more
formidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has
not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or
after the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of
clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together will
appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgraced
the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on
this circuit was three hundred and twenty. [448]
Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had been
generally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of blameless
life, and of high religious profession. They were regarded by
themselves, and by a large proportion of their neighbours, not as
wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with blood the truth of the
Protestant religion. Very few of the convicts professed any repentance
for what they had done. Many, animated by the old Puritan spirit, met
death, not merely with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain
that the ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt
of rebellion and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim of
the King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of the
clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved the bitter
scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed hymns in the
dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang while
they were undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Zion
and to make war on Babylon, would set up his standard, would blow his
trumpet, and would requite his foes tenfold for all the evil which had
been inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noted
down: their farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way,
with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious
supplement to the Marian martyrology. [449]
A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired officer
of the parliamentary army, and one of those zealots who would own no
king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor. His arm had been
frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle; and, as no surgeon was
at hand, the stout old soldier amputated it himself. He was carried
up to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make no
submission. "I am an aged man," he said, "and what remains to me of life
is not worth a falsehood or a baseness. I have always been a republican;
and I am so still. " He was sent back to the West and hanged. The people
remarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to
the gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not
that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way sword
in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals.
"Stop, gentlemen," he cried: "let me go on foot. There is more in this
than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not
see. " He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a
smile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist
and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology
for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but one arm. "
[450]
Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young Templar
of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an agreeable provincial
town proud of its taste and refinement, was regarded by all as the
model of a fine gentleman. Great interest was made to save him. It was
believed through the West of England that he was engaged to a young lady
of gentle blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at
the feet of Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from
him with a jest so hideous that to repeat it would be an offence
against decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and
courageously. [451]
A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant brothers,
William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young, handsome, accomplished,
and well connected.
Their maternal grandfather was named Kiffin. He was
one of the first merchants in London, and was generally considered as
the head of the Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling
on the trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather,"
he said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you. " The poor lad, who
was only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and fortitude,
that an officer of the army who attended the execution, and who had made
himself remarkable by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, and
said, "I do not believe that my Lord Chief Justice himself could be
proof against this. " Hopes were entertained that Benjamin would be
pardoned. One victim of tender years was surely enough for one house to
furnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. The
truth was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations,
and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated
intercessors pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was allowed
for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to Whitehall
with a petition. Many courtiers wished her success; and Churchill, among
whose numerous faults cruelty had no place, obtained admittance for her.
"I wish well to your suit with all my heart," he said, as they stood
together in the antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes.
This marble,"--and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece,--"is not
harder than the King. " The prediction proved true. James was inexorable.
Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst lamentations in
which the soldiers who kept guard round the gallows could not refrain
from joining. [452]
Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than
some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable to
bring home the charge of high treason were convicted of misdemeanours,
and were sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that which Oates
had undergone. A woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered by
half the women in the districts where the war had raged, was condemned
to be whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. She
suffered part of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to London;
but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers, with the humane
connivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the responsibility
of sparing her any further torture. A still more frightful sentence was
passed on a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious words. He
was, as usual, interrupted in his defence by ribaldry and scurrility
from the judgment seat. "You are a rebel; and all your family have been
rebels Since Adam. They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses
with you. " The sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven
years, and should, during that period, be flogged through every market
town in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst into
tears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My Lord,"
said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many market towns in
our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortnight for seven
years. " "If he is a young man," said Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue.
Ladies, you do not know the villain as well as I do. The punishment is
not half bad enough for him. All the interest in England shall not alter
it. " Tutchin in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity,
that he might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this
conjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it seemed
highly improbable that the sentence would ever be executed, the Chief
Justice consented to remit it, in return for a bribe which reduced the
prisoner to poverty. The temper of Tutchin, not originally very mild,
was exasperated to madness by what he had undergone. He lived to be
known as one of the most acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the
House of Stuart and of the Tory party. [453]
The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and
forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffered
death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed
favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts
should be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be
emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should
be some West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed for
the purpose of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England or
New Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them
and a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was
therefore determined that they should be sent to colonies where a
Puritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a labourer born
in the temperate zone could hope to enjoy little health. Such was the
state of the slave market that these bondmen, long as was the passage,
and sickly as they were likely to prove, were still very valuable. It
was estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average, each of them, after all
charges were paid, would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There was
therefore much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the West
conceived that they had, by their exertions and sufferings during the
insurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which had been
eagerly snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The courtiers,
however, were victorious. [454]
The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who are now
carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best information which
is at present accessible that more than one fifth of those who were
shipped were flung to the sharks before the end of the voyage. The human
cargoes were stowed close in the holds of small vessels. So little space
was allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented by
unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on one
another. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was
constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses.
In the dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease
and death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one vessel,
twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage was
performed with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived at their
house of bondage were mere skeletons. During some weeks coarse biscuit
and fetid water had been doled out to them in such scanty measure that
any one of them could easily have consumed the ration which was assigned
to five. They were, therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whom
they had been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling
them. [455]
Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death, and
of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the tropical sun,
was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By law
a subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this law
was enforced after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once cruel
and ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of the
labouring men whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon by
the agents of the Treasury to explain what had become of a basket, of a
goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of beans, of
a truss of hay. [456] While the humbler retainers of the government were
pillaging the families of the slaughtered peasants, the Chief Justice
was fast accumulating a fortune out of the plunder of a higher class of
Whigs. He traded largely in pardons. His most lucrative transaction of
this kind was with a gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that
Prideaux had not been in arms against the government; and it is probable
that his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his
father, an eminent lawyer who had been high in office under the
Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the crown.
Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they would bear
evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay long in gaol and
at length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to pay fifteen
thousand pounds for his liberation. This great sum was received by
Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which the people gave the name
of Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased with the price
of innocent blood. [457]
He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of parasites
who were in the habit of drinking and laughing with him. The office
of these men was to drive hard bargains with convicts under the strong
terrors of death, and with parents trembling for the lives of children.
A portion of the spoil was abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To one
of his boon companions, it is said he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor
across the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse to any
intercession except that of his creatures, for he guarded his profitable
monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even suspected that he sent
some persons to the gibbet solely because they had applied for the royal
clemency through channels independent of him. [458]
Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of this
traffic. The ladies of the Queen's household distinguished themselves
preeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of the disgrace which
they incurred falls on their mistress: for it was solely on account of
the relation in which they stood to her that they were able to enrich
themselves by so odious a trade; and there can be no question that
she might with a word or a look have restrained them. But in truth she
encouraged them by her evil example, if not by her express approbation.
She seems to have been one of that large class of persons who bear
adversity better than prosperity. While her husband was a subject and an
exile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent danger of being
deprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her manners
conciliated the kindness even of those who most abhorred her religion.
But when her good fortune came her good nature disappeared. The meek and
affable Duchess turned out an ungracious and haughty Queen. [459] The
misfortunes which she subsequently endured have made her an object of
some interest; but that interest would be not a little heightened if it
could be shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or even
tried to save, one single victim from the most frightful proscription
that England has ever seen. Unhappily the only request that she is known
to have preferred touching the rebels was that a hundred of those who
were sentenced to transportation might be given to her. [460] The profit
which she cleared on the cargo, after making large allowance for those
who died of hunger and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated
at less than a thousand guineas. We cannot wonder that her attendants
should have imitated her unprincely greediness and her unwomanly
cruelty. They exacted a thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, a merchant
of Bridgewater; who had contributed to the military chest of the rebel
army. But the prey on which they pounced most eagerly was one which it
might have been thought that even the most ungentle natures would have
spared. Already some of the girls who had presented the standard to
Monmouth at Taunton had cruelly expiated their offence. One of them had
been thrown into prison where an infectious malady was raging. She had
sickened and died there. Another had presented herself at the bar before
Jeffreys to beg for mercy. "Take her, gaoler," vociferated the Judge,
with one of those frowns which had often struck terror into stouter
hearts than hers. She burst into tears, drew her hood over her face,
followed the gaoler out of the court, fell ill of fright, and in a few
hours was a corpse. Most of the young ladies, however, who had walked
in the procession were still alive. Some of them were under ten years
of age. All had acted under the orders of their schoolmistress, without
knowing that they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honour
asked the royal permission to wring money out of the parents of the
poor children; and the permission was granted. An order was sent down to
Taunton that all these little girls should be seized and imprisoned.
Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, the Tory member for Bridgewater, was
requested to undertake the office of exacting the ransom. He was charged
to declare in strong language that the maids of honour would not endure
delay, that they were determined to prosecute to outlawry, unless a
reasonable sum were forthcoming, and that by a reasonable sum was meant
seven thousand pounds. Warre excused himself from taking any part in a
transaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested William
Penn to act for them; and Penn accepted the commission. Yet it should
seem that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity which he had often
shown about taking off his hat would not have been altogether out of
place on this occasion. He probably silenced the remonstrances of his
conscience by repeating to himself that none of the money which he
extorted would go into his own pocket; that if he refused to be
the agent of the ladies they would find agents less humane; that by
complying he should increase his influence at the court, and that his
influence at the court had already enabled him, and still might enable
him, to render great services to his oppressed brethren. The maids of
honour were at last forced to content themselves with less than a third
part of what they had demanded. [461]
No English sovereign has ever given stronger proof of a cruel nature
than James the Second. Yet his cruelty was not more odious than his
mercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his mercy and his
cruelty were such that each reflects infamy on the other. Our horror at
the fate of the simple clowns, the young lads, the delicate women, to
whom he was inexorably severe, is increased when we find to whom and for
what considerations he granted his pardon.
The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be guided in
selecting rebels for punishment is perfectly obvious. The ringleaders,
the men of rank, fortune, and education, whose power and whose artifices
have led the multitude into error, are the proper objects of severity.
The deluded populace, when once the slaughter on the field of battle
is over, can scarcely be treated too leniently. This rule, so evidently
agreeable to justice and humanity, was not only not observed: it was
inverted. While those who ought to have been spared were slaughtered by
hundreds, the few who might with propriety have been left to the utmost
rigour of the law were spared. This eccentric clemency has perplexed
some writers, and has drawn forth ludicrous eulogies from others. It was
neither at all mysterious nor at all praiseworthy. It may be distinctly
traced in every case either to a sordid or to a malignant motive, either
to thirst for money or to thirst for blood.
In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. His parts and
knowledge, the rank which he had inherited in the state, and the high
command which he had borne in the rebel army, would have pointed him out
to a just government as a much fitter object of punishment than Alice
Lisle, than William Hewling, than any of the hundreds of ignorant
peasants whose skulls and quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. But
Grey's estate was large and was strictly entailed. He had only a life
interest in his property; and he could forfeit no more interest than he
had. If he died, his lands at once devolved on the next heir. If he
were pardoned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was therefore
suffered to redeem himself by giving a bond for forty thousand pounds to
the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other courtiers. [462]
Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the same rank which
had been held by Grey in the West of England. That Cochrane should be
forgiven by a prince vindictive beyond all example, seemed incredible.
But Cochrane was the younger son of a rich family; it was therefore only
by sparing him that money could be made out of him. His father, Lord
Dundonald, offered a bribe of five thousand pounds to the priests of the
royal household; and a pardon was granted. [463]
Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Commissary to the
rebel army, and who had inflamed the ignorant populace of Somersetshire
by vehement harangues in which James had been described as an incendiary
and a poisoner, was admitted to mercy. For Storey was able to give
important assistance to Jeffreys in wringing fifteen thousand pounds out
of Prideaux. [464]
None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade,
Goodenough, and Ferguson. These three chiefs of the rebellion had fled
together from the field of Sedgemoor, and had reached the coast in
safety. But they had found a frigate cruising near the spot where they
had hoped to embark. They had then separated. Wade and Goodenough
were soon discovered and brought up to London. Deeply as they had been
implicated in the Rye House plot, conspicuous as they had been among the
chiefs of the Western insurrection, they were suffered to live, because
they had it in their power to give information which enabled the King
to slaughter and plunder some persons whom he hated, but to whom he had
never yet been able to bring home any crime. [465]
How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all the enemies of
the government he was, without doubt, the most deeply criminal. He was
the original author of the plot for assassinating the royal brothers.
He had written that Declaration which, for insolence, malignity, and
mendacity, stands unrivalled even among the libels of those stormy
times. He had instigated Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and then
to usurp the crown. It was reasonable to expect that a strict search
would be made for the archtraitor, as he was often called; and such a
search a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely have
eluded. It was confidently reported in the coffee houses of London
that Ferguson was taken, and this report found credit with men who had
excellent opportunities of knowing the truth. The next thing that was
heard of him was that he was safe on the Continent. It was strongly
suspected that he had been in constant communication with the government
against which he was constantly plotting, that he had, while urging his
associates to every excess of rashness sent to Whitehall just so much
information about their proceedings as might suffice to save his own
neck, and that therefore orders had been given to let him escape. [466]
And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his reward. He
arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving carnage, mourning, and terror
behind him. The hatred with which he was regarded by the people of
Somersetshire has no parallel in our history. It was not to be quenched
by time or by political changes, was long transmitted from generation to
generation, and raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. When he
had been many years dead, when his name and title were extinct, his
granddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret, travelling along the western
road, was insulted by the populace, and found that she could not safely
venture herself among the descendants of those who had witnessed the
Bloody Assizes. [467]
But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge after
his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with interest and
delight. In his drawingroom and at his table he had frequently talked of
the havoc which was making among his disaffected subjects with a glee
at which the foreign ministers stood aghast. With his own hand he had
penned accounts of what he facetiously called his Lord Chief Justice's
campaign in the West. Some hundreds of rebels, His Majesty wrote to the
Hague, had been condemned. Some of them had been hanged: more should
be hanged: and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It was to no
purpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people, and
described with pathetic eloquence the frightful state of his diocese.
He complained that it was impossible to walk along the highways without
seeing some terrible spectacle, and that the whole air of Somersetshire
was tainted with death. The King read, and remained, according to the
saying of Churchill, hard as the marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. At
Windsor the great seal of England was put into the hands of Jeffreys and
in the next London Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour
was the reward of the many eminent and faithful services which he had
rendered to the crown. [468]
At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror of
the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King attempted to
vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other. Jeffreys, in
the Tower, protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond
his master's express orders, nay, that he had fallen short of them.
James, at Saint Germain's would willingly have had it believed that his
own inclinations had been on the side of clemency, and that unmerited
obloquy had been brought on him by the violence of his minister. But
neither of these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of the
other. The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand to
be false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it be true in fact, is
utterly worthless.
The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was about to
begin. The government was peculiarly desirous to find victims among the
great Whig merchants of the City. They had, in the last reign, been a
formidable part of the strength of the opposition. They were wealthy;
and their wealth was not, like that of many noblemen and country
gentlemen, protected by entail against forfeiture. In the case of Grey
and of men situated like him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty and
rapacity at once; but a rich trader might be both hanged and plundered.
The commercial grandees, however, though in general hostile to Popery
and to arbitrary power, had yet been too scrupulous or too timid to
incur the guilt of high treason. One of the most considerable among them
was Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the old charter of
the City, and had filled the office of Sheriff when the question of the
Exclusion Bill occupied the public mind. In politics he was a Whig: his
religious opinions leaned towards Presbyterianism: but his temper was
cautious and moderate. It is not proved by trustworthy evidence that he
ever approached the verge of treason. He had, indeed, when Sheriff, been
very unwilling to employ as his deputy a man so violent and unprincipled
as Goodenough. When the Rye House plot was discovered, great hopes
were entertained at Whitehall that Cornish would appear to have been
concerned: but these hopes were disappointed. One of the conspirators,
indeed, John Rumsey, was ready to swear anything: but a single witness
was not sufficient; and no second witness could be found. More than two
years had since elapsed. Cornish thought himself safe; but the eye of
the tyrant was upon him. Goodenough, terrified by the near prospect
of death, and still harbouring malice on account of the unfavourable
opinion which had always been entertained of him by his old master,
consented to supply the testimony which had hitherto been wanting.
Cornish was arrested while transacting business on the Exchange, was
hurried to gaol, was kept there some days in solitary confinement, and
was brought altogether unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The case
against him rested wholly on the evidence of Rumsey and Goodenough. Both
were, by their own confession accomplices in the plot with which they
charged the prisoner. Both were impelled by the strongest pressure of
hope end fear to criminate him. Evidence was produced which proved that
Goodenough was also under the influence of personal enmity. Rumsey's
story was inconsistent with the story which he had told when he appeared
as a witness against Lord Russell. But these things were urged in vain.
On the bench sate three judges who had been with Jeffreys in the West;
and it was remarked by those who watched their deportment that they had
come back from the carnage of Taunton in a fierce and excited state. It
is indeed but too true that the taste for blood is a taste which even
men not naturally cruel may, by habit, speedily acquire.
