The elder
sufferer
was placed near to the advancing
flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify the younger into
submission.
flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify the younger into
submission.
Macaulay
They were undoubtedly competent to
inflict whipping; nor had the law assigned a limit to the number of
stripes. But the spirit of the law clearly was that no misdemeanour
should be punished more severely than the most atrocious felonies.
The worst felon could only be hanged. The judges, as they believed,
sentenced Oates to be scourged to death. That the law was defective is
not a sufficient excuse: for defective laws should be altered by the
legislature, and not strained by the tribunals; and least of all should
the law be strained for the purpose of inflicting torture and destroying
life. That Oates was a bad man is not a sufficient excuse; for the
guilty are almost always the first to suffer those hardships which are
afterwards used as precedents against the innocent. Thus it was in the
present case. Merciless flogging soon became an ordinary punishment for
political misdemeanours of no very aggravated kind. Men were sentenced,
for words spoken against the government, to pains so excruciating that
they, with unfeigned earnestness, begged to be brought to trial on
capital charges, and sent to the gallows. Happily the progress of this
great evil was speedily stopped by the Revolution, and by that article
of the Bill of Rights which condemns all cruel and unusual punishments.
The villany of Dangerfield had not, like that of Oates, destroyed
many innocent victims; for Dangerfield had not taken up the trade of
a witness till the plot had been blown upon and till juries had become
incredulous. [277] He was brought to trial, not for perjury, but for the
less heinous offense of libel. He had, during the agitation caused by
the Exclusion Bill, put forth a narrative containing some false and
odious imputations on the late and on the present King. For this
publication he was now, after the lapse of five years, suddenly taken
up, brought before the Privy Council, committed, tried, convicted, and
sentenced to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate to
Tyburn. The wretched man behaved with great effrontery during the trial;
but, when he heard his doom, he went into agonies of despair, gave
himself up for dead, and chose a text for his funeral sermon. His
forebodings were just. He was not, indeed, scourged quite so severely as
Oates had been; but he had not Oates's iron strength of body and mind.
After the execution Dangerfield was put into a hackney coach and was
taken back to prison. As he passed the corner of Hatton Garden, a Tory
gentleman of Gray's Inn, named Francis, stopped the carriage, and cried
out with brutal levity, "Well, friend, have you had your heat this
morning? " The bleeding prisoner, maddened by this insult, answered with
a curse. Francis instantly struck him in the face with a cane which
injured the eye. Dangerfield was carried dying into Newgate. This
dastardly outrage roused the indignation of the bystanders. They seized
Francis, and were with difficulty restrained from tearing him to
pieces. The appearance of Dangerfield's body, which had been frightfully
lacerated by the whip, inclined many to believe that his death was
chiefly, if not wholly, caused by the stripes which he had received. The
government and the Chief Justice thought it convenient to lay the whole
blame on Francis, who; though he seems to have been at worst guilty only
of aggravated manslaughter, was tried and executed for murder. His dying
speech is one of the most curious monuments of that age. The savage
spirit which had brought him to the gallows remained with him to the
last. Boasts of his loyalty and abuse of the Whigs were mingled with the
parting ejaculations in which he commended his soul to the divine
mercy. An idle rumour had been circulated that his wife was in love with
Dangerfield, who was eminently handsome and renowned for gallantry.
The fatal blow, it was said, had been prompted by jealousy. The dying
husband, with an earnestness, half ridiculous, half pathetic, vindicated
the lady's character. She was, he said, a virtuous woman: she came of
a loyal stock, and, if she had been inclined to break her marriage vow,
would at least have selected a Tory and a churchman for her paramour.
[278]
About the same time a culprit, who bore very little resemblance to Oates
or Dangerfield, appeared on the floor of the Court of King's Bench. No
eminent chief of a party has ever passed through many years of civil
and religious dissension with more innocence than Richard Baxter. He
belonged to the mildest and most temperate section of the Puritan body.
He was a young man when the civil war broke out. He thought that the
right was on the side of the Houses; and he had no scruple about acting
as chaplain to a regiment in the parliamentary army: but his clear
and somewhat sceptical understanding, and his strong sense of justice,
preserved him from all excesses. He exerted himself to check the
fanatical violence of the soldiery. He condemned the proceedings of
the High Court of Justice. In the days of the Commonwealth he had the
boldness to express, on many occasions, and once even in Cromwell's
presence, love and reverence for the ancient institutions of the
country. While the royal family was in exile, Baxter's life was chiefly
passed at Kidderminster in the assiduous discharge of parochial duties.
He heartily concurred in the Restoration, and was sincerely desirous to
bring about an union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. For, with
a liberty rare in his time, he considered questions of ecclesiastical
polity as of small account when compared with the great principles of
Christianity, and had never, even when prelacy was most odious to the
ruling powers, joined in the outcry against Bishops. The attempt to
reconcile the contending factions failed. Baxter cast in his lot with
his proscribed friends, refused the mitre of Hereford, quitted the
parsonage of Kidderminster, and gave himself up almost wholly to study.
His theological writings, though too moderate to be pleasing to the
bigots of any party, had an immense reputation. Zealous Churchmen called
him a Roundhead; and many Nonconformists accused him of Erastianism and
Arminianism. But the integrity of his heart, the purity of his life,
the vigour of his faculties, and the extent of his attainments were
acknowledged by the best and wisest men of every persuasion. His
political opinions, in spite of the oppression which he and his brethren
had suffered, were moderate. He was friendly to that small party which
was hated by both Whigs and Tories. He could not, he said, join in
cursing the Trimmers, when he remembered who it was that had blessed the
peacemakers. [279]
In a Commentary on the New Testament he had complained, with some
bitterness, of the persecution which the Dissenters suffered. That men
who, for not using the Prayer Book, had been driven from their homes,
stripped of their property, and locked up in dungeons, should dare to
utter a murmur, was then thought a high crime against the State and the
Church. Roger Lestrange, the champion of the government and the oracle
of the clergy, sounded the note of war in the Observator. An information
was filed. Baxter begged that he might be allowed some time to prepare
for his defence. It was on the day on which Oates was pilloried in
Palace Yard that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed by age
and infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to make this request. Jeffreys
burst into a storm of rage. "Not a minute," he cried, "to save his life.
I can deal with saints as well as with sinners. There stands Oates on
one side of the pillory; and, if Baxter stood on the other, the two
greatest rogues in the kingdom would stand together. "
When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved and
honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor William
Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist divines. Two
Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop, appeared for the
defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his address to the jury, when
the Chief Justice broke forth: "Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a
mark on you. You are the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue,
a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy.
He would have nothing but longwinded cant without book;" and then
his Lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing
through his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style
of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear
people. " Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late Majesty
had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the old
blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it? " His fury now
rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it would
be no more than justice to whip such a villain through the whole City.
Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. "You are in all
these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop," said the Judge. "Gentlemen of the long
robe ought to be ashamed to assist such factious knaves. " The advocate
made another attempt to obtain a hearing, but to no purpose. "If you do
not know your duty," said Jeffreys, "I will teach it you. "
Wallop sate down; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word. But
the Chief Justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of ribaldry and
invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. "My Lord," said the old
man, "I have been much blamed by Dissenters for speaking respectfully of
Bishops. " "Baxter for Bishops! " cried the Judge, "that's a merry
conceit indeed. I know what you mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself,
Kidderminster Bishops, factious snivelling Presbyterians! " Again Baxter
essayed to speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed "Richard, Richard, dost
thou think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old
knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book as
full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace of God, I'll
look after thee. I see a great many of your brotherhood waiting to know
what will befall their mighty Don. And there," he continued, fixing his
savage eye on Bates, "there is a Doctor of the party at your elbow. But,
by the grace of God Almighty, I will crush you all. "
Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for the defence
made a last effort, and undertook to show that the words of which
complaint was made would not bear the construction put on them by the
information. With this view he began to read the context. In a moment
he was roared down. "You sha'n't turn the court into a conventicle. "
The noise of weeping was heard from some of those who surrounded Baxter.
"Snivelling calves! " said the Judge.
Witnesses to character were in attendance, and among them were several
clergymen of the Established Church. But the Chief Justice would hear
nothing. "Does your Lordship think," said Baxter, "that any jury will
convict a man on such a trial as this? " "I warrant you, Mr. Baxter,"
said Jeffreys: "don't trouble yourself about that. " Jeffreys was right.
The Sheriffs were the tools of the government. The jurymen, selected
by the Sheriffs from among the fiercest zealots of the Tory party,
conferred for a moment, and returned a verdict of Guilty. "My Lord,"
said Baxter, as he left the court, "there was once a Chief Justice who
would have treated me very differently. " He alluded to his learned
and virtuous friend Sir Matthew Hale. "There is not an honest man in
England," answered Jeffreys, "but looks on thee as a knave. " [280]
The sentence was, for those times, a lenient one. What passed in
conference among the judges cannot be certainly known. It was believed
among the Nonconformists, and is highly probable, that the Chief Justice
was overruled by his three brethren. He proposed, it is said, that
Baxter should be whipped through London at the cart's tail. The majority
thought that an eminent divine, who, a quarter of a century before, had
been offered a mitre, and who was now in his seventieth year, would be
sufficiently punished for a few sharp words by fine and imprisonment.
[281]
The manner in which Baxter was treated by a judge, who was a member of
the cabinet and a favourite of the Sovereign, indicated, in a manner
not to be mistaken, the feeling with which the government at this time
regarded the Protestant Nonconformists. But already that feeling had
been indicated by still stronger and more terrible signs. The Parliament
of Scotland had met. James had purposely hastened the session of this
body, and had postponed the session of the English Houses, in the
hope that the example set at Edinburgh would produce a good effect
at Westminster. For the legislature of his northern kingdom was as
obsequious as those provincial Estates which Lewis the Fourteenth still
suffered to play at some of their ancient functions in Britanny and
Burgundy. None but an Episcopalian could sit in the Scottish Parliament,
or could even vote for a member, and in Scotland an Episcopalian was
always a Tory or a timeserver. From an assembly thus constituted, little
opposition to the royal wishes was to be apprehended; and even
the assembly thus constituted could pass no law which had not been
previously approved by a committee of courtiers.
All that the government asked was readily granted. In a financial point
of view, indeed, the liberality of the Scottish Estates was of little
consequence. They gave, however, what their scanty means permitted. They
annexed in perpetuity to the crown the duties which had been granted
to the late King, and which in his time had been estimated at forty
thousand pounds sterling a year. They also settled on James for life
an additional annual income of two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds
Scots, equivalent to eighteen thousand pounds sterling. The whole Sum
which they were able to bestow was about sixty thousand a year, little
more than what was poured into the English Exchequer every fortnight.
[282]
Having little money to give, the Estates supplied the defect by loyal
professions and barbarous statutes. The King, in a letter which was
read to them at the opening of their session, called on them in vehement
language to provide new penal laws against the refractory Presbyterians,
and expressed his regret that business made it impossible for him to
propose such laws in person from the throne. His commands were obeyed.
A statute framed by his ministers was promptly passed, a statute which
stands forth even among the statutes of that unhappy country at that
unhappy period, preeminent in atrocity. It was enacted, in few but
emphatic words, that whoever should preach in a conventicle under a
roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as hearer, a conventicle
in the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation of
property. [283]
This law, passed at the King's instance by an assembly devoted to his
will, deserves especial notice. For he has been frequently represented
by ignorant writers as a prince rash, indeed, and injudicious in his
choice of means, but intent on one of the noblest ends which a ruler
can pursue, the establishment of entire religious liberty. Nor can it be
denied that some portions of his life, when detached from the rest and
superficially considered, seem to warrant this favourable view of his
character.
While a subject he had been, during many years, a persecuted man; and
persecution had produced its usual effect on him. His mind, dull and
narrow as it was, had profited under that sharp discipline. While he was
excluded from the Court, from the Admiralty, and from the Council, and
was in danger of being also excluded from the throne, only because he
could not help believing in transubstantiation and in the authority
of the see of Rome, he made such rapid progress in the doctrines of
toleration that he left Milton and Locke behind. What, he often said,
could be more unjust, than to visit speculations with penalties which
ought to be reserved for acts? What more impolitic than to reject the
services of good soldiers, seamen, lawyers, diplomatists, financiers,
because they hold unsound opinions about the number of the sacraments or
the pluripresence of saints? He learned by rote those commonplaces which
all sects repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppression, and
forget so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed
his lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this subject
gave him credit for much more sense and much readier elocution than he
really possessed. His professions imposed on some charitable persons,
and perhaps imposed on himself. But his zeal for the rights of
conscience ended with the predominance of the Whig party. When fortune
changed, when he was no longer afraid that others would persecute him,
when he had it in his power to persecute others, his real propensities
began to show themselves. He hated the Puritan sects with a manifold
hatred, theological and political, hereditary and personal. He regarded
them as the foes of Heaven, as the foes of all legitimate authority in
Church and State, as his great-grandmother's foes and his grandfather's,
his father's and his mother's, his brother's and his own. He, who had
complained so fondly of the laws against Papists, now declared himself
unable to conceive how men could have the impudence to propose the
repeal of the laws against Puritans. [284] He, whose favourite theme had
been the injustice of requiring civil functionaries to take religious
tests, established in Scotland, when he resided there as Viceroy, the
most rigorous religious test that has ever been known in the empire.
[285] He, who had expressed just indignation when the priests of his own
faith were hanged and quartered, amused himself with hearing Covenanters
shriek and seeing them writhe while their knees were beaten flat in the
boots. [286] In this mood he became King; and he immediately demanded
and obtained from the obsequious Estates of Scotland as the surest
pledge of their loyalty, the most sanguinary law that has ever in our
island been enacted against Protestant Nonconformists.
With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in perfect
harmony. The fiery persecution, which had raged when he ruled Scotland
as vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever from the day on which he became
sovereign. Those shires in which the Covenanters were most numerous
were given up to the license of the army. With the army was mingled a
militia, composed of the most violent and profligate of those who called
themselves Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which oppressed
and wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons commanded by John
Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men used in their
revels to play at the torments of hell, and to call each other by the
names of devils and damned souls. [287] The chief of this Tophet, a
soldier of distinguished courage and professional skill, but rapacious
and profane, of violent temper and of obdurate heart, has left a name
which, wherever the Scottish race is settled on the face of the globe,
is mentioned with a peculiar energy of hatred. To recapitulate all the
crimes, by which this man, and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the
Western Lowlands into madness, would be an endless task. A few instances
must suffice; and all those instances shall be taken from the history
of a single fortnight, that very fortnight in which the Scottish
Parliament, at the urgent request of James, enacted a new law of
unprecedented severity against Dissenters.
John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular piety,
commonly called the Christian carrier. Many years later, when Scotland
enjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious freedom, old men who remembered
the evil days described him as one versed in divine things, blameless
in life, and so peaceable that the tyrants could find no offence in
him except that he absented himself from the public worship of the
Episcopalians. On the first of May he was cutting turf, when he was
seized by Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted of
nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even among the
soldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. For the wife of the
poor man was present; she led one little child by the hand: it was easy
to see that she was about to give birth to another; and even those wild
and hardhearted men, who nicknamed one another Beelzebub and Apollyon,
shrank from the great wickedness of butchering her husband before her
face. The prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the near
prospect of eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, till
Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by credible
witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well, sir, well; the
day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer replied, "To man I
can answer for what I have done; and as for God, I will take him into
mine own hand. " Yet it was rumoured that even on his seared conscience
and adamantine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim made an
impression which was never effaced. [288]
On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce, were
tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting of fifteen soldiers.
The indictment is still extant. The prisoners were charged, not with any
act of rebellion, but with holding the same pernicious doctrines which
had impelled others to rebel, and with wanting only opportunity to act
upon those doctrines. The proceeding was summary. In a few hours the two
culprits were convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole under
the gallows. [289]
The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great crime.
Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of reprobation drawn the
consequence that to pray for any person who had been predestined to
perdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal decrees of the
Supreme Being. Three poor labouring men, deeply imbued with this
unamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer in the neighbourhood
of Glasgow. They were asked whether they would pray for King James the
Seventh. They refused to do so except under the condition that he was
one of the elect. A file of musketeers was drawn out. The prisoners
knelt down; they were blindfolded; and within an hour after they had
been arrested, their blood was lapped up by the dogs. [290]
While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible was
perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenanters, overcome by
sickness, had found shelter in the house of a respectable widow, and
had died there. The corpse was discovered by the Laird of Westerhall, a
petty tyrant who had, in the days of the Covenant, professed inordinate
zeal for the Presbyterian Church, who had, since the Restoration,
purchased the favour of the government by apostasy, and who felt towards
the party which he had deserted the implacable hatred of an apostate.
This man pulled down the house of the poor woman, carried away her
furniture, and, leaving her and her younger children to wander in the
fields, dragged her son Andrew, who was still a lad, before Claverhouse,
who happened to be marching through that part of the country.
Claverhouse was just then strangely lenient. Some thought that he had
not been quite himself since the death of the Christian carrier, ten
days before. But Westerhall was eager to signalise his loyalty, and
extorted a sullen consent. The guns were loaded, and the youth was told
to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and stood confronting his
murderers with the Bible in his hand. "I can look you in the face," he
said; "I have done nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will you
look in that day when you shall be judged by what is written in this
book? " He fell dead, and was buried in the moor. [291]
On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Margaret Wilson, the
former an aged widow, the latter a maiden of eighteen, suffered death
for their religion in Wigtonshire. They were offered their lives if they
would consent to abjure the cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to
attend the Episcopal worship. They refused; and they were sentenced to
be drowned. They were carried to a spot which the Solway overflows twice
a day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand between high and
low water mark.
The elder sufferer was placed near to the advancing
flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify the younger into
submission. The sight was dreadful. But the courage of the survivor
was sustained by an enthusiasm as lofty as any that is recorded in
martyrology. She saw the sea draw nearer and nearer, but gave no sign
of alarm. She prayed and sang verses of psalms till the waves choked her
voice. After she had tasted the bitterness of death, she was, by a cruel
mercy unbound and restored to life. When she came to herself, pitying
friends and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say,
God save the King! " The poor girl, true to her stern theology, gasped
out, "May God save him, if it be God's will! " Her friends crowded round
the presiding officer. "She has said it; indeed, sir, she has said it. "
"Will she take the abjuration? " he demanded. "Never! " she exclaimed.
"I am Christ's: let me go! " And the waters closed over her for the last
time. [292]
Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignorant men have
represented as a friend of religious liberty, whose misfortune it was to
be too wise and too good for the age in which he lived. Nay, even
those laws which authorised him to govern thus were in his judgment
reprehensibly lenient. While his officers were committing the murders
which have just been related, he was urging the Scottish Parliament
to pass a new Act compared with which all former Acts might be called
merciful.
In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by ancient
and noble laws which even the Tories would not patiently have seen him
infringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before military tribunals,
or enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them swoon in the boots. Here
he could not drown young girls for refusing to take the abjuration, or
shoot poor countrymen for doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yet
even in England he continued to persecute the Puritans as far as his
power extended, till events which will hereafter be related induced him
to form the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition for
the humiliation and spoliation of the established Church.
One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early period
of his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the Society of Friends.
His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be attributed to
religious sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the divine mission of
Jesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ most widely. It may seem
paradoxical to say that this very circumstance constituted a tie between
the Roman Catholic and the Quaker; yet such was really the case. For
they deviated in opposite directions so far from what the great body of
the nation regarded as right, that even liberal men generally considered
them both as lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration. Thus the
two extreme sects, precisely because they were extreme sects, had a
common interest distinct from the interest of the intermediate sects.
The Quakers were also guiltless of all offence against James and his
House. They had not been in existence as a community till the war
between his father and the Long Parliament was drawing towards a
close. They had been cruelly persecuted by some of the revolutionary
governments. They had, since the Restoration, in spite of much ill
usage, submitted themselves meekly to the royal authority. For they
had, though reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded as
heterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion,
that no excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify active
resistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the government had ever
been traced to a Quaker. [293] In no conspiracy against the government
had a Quaker been implicated. The society had not joined in the clamour
for the Exclusion Bill, and had solemnly condemned the Rye House plot as
a hellish design and a work of the devil. [294] Indeed, the friends then
took very little part in civil contentions; for they were not, as now,
congregated in large towns, but were generally engaged in agriculture,
a pursuit from which they have been gradually driven by the vexations
consequent on their strange scruple about paying tithe. They were,
therefore, far removed from the scene of political strife. They
also, even in domestic privacy, avoided on principle all political
conversation. For such conversation was, in their opinion, unfavourable
to their spirituality of mind, and tended to disturb the austere
composure of their deportment. The yearly meetings of that age
repeatedly admonished the brethren not to hold discourse touching
affairs of state. [295] Even within the memory of persons now living
those grave elders who retained the habits of an earlier generation
systematically discouraged such worldly talk. [296] It was natural that
James should make a wide distinction between these harmless people and
those fierce and reckless sects which considered resistance to tyranny
as a Christian duty which had, in Germany, France, and Holland, made
war on legitimate princes, and which had, during four generations, borne
peculiar enmity to the House of Stuart.
It happened, moreover, that it was possible to grant large relief to the
Roman Catholic and to the Quaker without mitigating the sufferings of
the Puritan sects. A law was in force which imposed severe penalties on
every person who refused to take the oath of supremacy when required to
do so. This law did not affect Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists;
for they were all ready to call God to witness that they renounced all
spiritual connection with foreign prelates and potentates. But the Roman
Catholic would not swear that the Pope had no jurisdiction in England,
and the Quaker would not swear to anything. On the other hand, neither
the Roman Catholic nor the Quaker was touched by the Five Mile Act,
which, of all the laws in the Statute Book, was perhaps the most
annoying to the Puritan Nonconformists. [297]
The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate at court. Though, as
a class, they mixed little with the world, and shunned politics as a
pursuit dangerous to their spiritual interests, one of them, widely
distinguished from the rest by station and fortune, lived in the
highest circles, and had constant access to the royal ear. This was the
celebrated William Penn. His father had held great naval commands,
had been a Commissioner of the Admiralty, had sate in Parliament, had
received the honour of knighthood, and had been encouraged to expect a
peerage. The son had been liberally educated, and had been designed
for the profession of arms, but had, while still young, injured his
prospects and disgusted his friends by joining what was then generally
considered as a gang of crazy heretics. He had been sent sometimes to
the Tower, and sometimes to Newgate. He had been tried at the Old Bailey
for preaching in defiance of the law. After a time, however, he had been
reconciled to his family, and had succeeded in obtaining such powerful
protection that, while all the gaols of England were filled with his
brethren, he was permitted, during many years, to profess his opinions
without molestation. Towards the close of the late reign he had
obtained, in satisfaction of an old debt due to him from the crown, the
grant of an immense region in North America. In this tract, then peopled
only by Indian hunters, he had invited his persecuted friends to settle.
His colony was still in its infancy when James mounted the throne.
Between James and Penn there had long been a familiar acquaintance. The
Quaker now became a courtier, and almost a favourite. He was every
day summoned from the gallery into the closet, and sometimes had long
audiences while peers were kept waiting in the antechambers. It was
noised abroad that he had more real power to help and hurt than many
nobles who filled high offices. He was soon surrounded by flatterers and
suppliants. His house at Kensington was sometimes thronged, at his
hour of rising, by more than two hundred suitors. [298] He paid dear,
however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked coldly
on him, and requited his services with obloquy. He was loudly accused of
being a Papist, nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed that he had been educated
at St. Omers, and others that he had been ordained at Rome. These
calumnies, indeed, could find credit only with the undiscerning
multitude; but with these calumnies were mingled accusations much better
founded.
To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which requires some
courage; for he is rather a mythical than a historical person. Rival
nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising him. England is
proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards him
with a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus,
and the Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society of which he was a
member honours him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he
is generally regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhile
admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The French
philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as
his superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for priests,
and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all races
and to all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civilised
countries, a synonyme for probity and philanthropy.
Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was without doubt
a man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of religious duty and a
fervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind. On one or two points
of high importance, he had notions more correct than were, in his day,
common even among men of enlarged minds: and as the proprietor and
legislator of a province which, being almost uninhabited when it came
into his possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments,
he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into
practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to existing
institutions. He will always be mentioned with honour as a founder of
a colony, who did not, in his dealings with a savage people, abuse the
strength derived from civilisation, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of
persecution, made religious liberty the cornerstone of a polity. But his
writings and his life furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man of
strong sense. He had no skill in reading the characters of others. His
confidence in persons less virtuous than himself led him into great
errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle sometimes
impelled him to violate other great principles which he ought to
have held sacred. Nor was his rectitude altogether proof against the
temptations to which it was exposed in that splendid and polite, but
deeply corrupted society, with which he now mingled. The whole court was
in a ferment with intrigues of gallantry and intrigues of ambition. The
traffic in honours, places, and pardons was incessant. It was natural
that a man who was daily seen at the palace, and who was known to have
free access to majesty, should be frequently importuned to use his
influence for purposes which a rigid morality must condemn. The
integrity of Penn had stood firm against obloquy and persecution.
But now, attacked by royal smiles, by female blandishments, by the
insinuating eloquence and delicate flattery of veteran diplomatists and
courtiers, his resolution began to give way. Titles and phrases against
which he had often borne his testimony dropped occasionally from his
lips and his pen. It would be well if he had been guilty of nothing
worse than such compliances with the fashions of the world. Unhappily
it cannot be concealed that he bore a chief part in some transactions
condemned, not merely by the rigid code of the society to which he
belonged, but by the general sense of all honest men. He afterwards
solemnly protested that his hands were pure from illicit gain, and
that he had never received any gratuity from those whom he had obliged,
though he might easily, while his influence at court lasted, have made a
hundred and twenty thousand pounds. [299] To this assertion full credit
is due. But bribes may be offered to vanity as well as to cupidity; and
it is impossible to deny that Penn was cajoled into bearing a part in
some unjustifiable transactions of which others enjoyed the profits.
The first use which he made of his credit was highly commendable. He
strongly represented the sufferings of his brethren to the new King,
who saw with pleasure that it was possible to grant indulgence to these
quiet sectaries and to the Roman Catholics, without showing similar
favour to other classes which were then under persecution. A list was
framed of prisoners against whom proceedings had been instituted for
not taking the oaths, or for not going to church, and of whose loyalty
certificates had been produced to the government. These persons were
discharged, and orders were given that no similar proceeding should be
instituted till the royal pleasure should be further signified. In this
way about fifteen hundred Quakers, and a still greater number of Roman
Catholics, regained their liberty. [300]
And now the time had arrived when the English Parliament was to meet.
The members of the House of Commons who had repaired to the capital were
so numerous that there was much doubt whether their chamber, as it was
then fitted up, would afford sufficient accommodation for them. They
employed the days which immediately preceded the opening of the session
in talking over public affairs with each other and with the agents
of the government. A great meeting of the loyal party was held at the
Fountain Tavern in the Strand; and Roger Lestrange, who had recently
been knighted by the King, and returned to Parliament by the city of
Winchester, took a leading part in their consultations. [301]
It soon appeared that a large portion of the Commons had views which did
not altogether agree with those of the Court. The Tory country gentlemen
were, with scarcely one exception, desirous to maintain the Test Act and
the Habeas Corpus Act; and some among them talked of voting the revenue
only for a term of years. But they were perfectly ready to enact severe
laws against the Whigs, and would gladly have seen all the supporters
of the Exclusion Bill made incapable of holding office. The King, on the
other hand, desired to obtain from the Parliament a revenue for life,
the admission of Roman Catholics to office, and the repeal of the Habeas
Corpus Act. On these three objects his heart was set; and he was by no
means disposed to accept as a substitute for them a penal law against
Exclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have been positively unpleasing
to him; for one class of Exclusionists stood high in his favour, that
class of which Sunderland was the representative, that class which had
joined the Whigs in the days of the plot, merely because the Whigs were
predominant, and which had changed with the change of fortune. James
justly regarded these renegades as the most serviceable tools that he
could employ. It was not from the stouthearted Cavaliers, who had
been true to him in his adversity, that he could expect abject and
unscrupulous obedience in his prosperity. The men who, impelled, not
by zeal for liberty or for religion, but merely by selfish cupidity and
selfish fear, had assisted to oppress him when he was weak, were the
very men who, impelled by the same cupidity and the same fear, would
assist him to oppress his people now that he was strong. [302] Though
vindictive, he was not indiscriminately vindictive. Not a single
instance can be mentioned in which he showed a generous compassion
to those who had opposed him honestly and on public grounds. But he
frequently spared and promoted those whom some vile motive had induced
to injure him. For that meanness which marked them out as fit implements
of tyranny was so precious in his estimation that he regarded it with
some indulgence even when it was exhibited at his own expense.
The King's wishes were communicated through several channels to the Tory
members of the Lower House. The majority was easily persuaded to forego
all thoughts of a penal law against the Exclusionists, and to consent
that His Majesty should have the revenue for life. But about the Test
Act and the Habeas Corpus Act the emissaries of the Court could obtain
no satisfactory assurances. [303]
On the nineteenth of May the session was opened. The benches of the
Commons presented a singular spectacle. That great party, which, in
the last three Parliaments, had been predominant, had now dwindled to a
pitiable minority, and was indeed little more than a fifteenth part of
the House. Of the five hundred and thirteen knights and burgesses only
a hundred and thirty-five had ever sate in that place before. It is
evident that a body of men so raw and inexperienced must have been, in
some important qualities, far below the average of our representative
assemblies. [304]
The management of the House was confided by James to two peers of the
kingdom of Scotland. One of them, Charles Middleton, Earl of Middleton,
after holding high office at Edinburgh, had, shortly before the death
of the late King, been sworn of the English Privy Council, and appointed
one of the Secretaries of State. With him was joined Richard Graham,
Viscount Preston, who had long held the post of Envoy at Versailles.
The first business of the Commons was to elect a Speaker. Who should
be the man, was a question which had been much debated in the cabinet.
Guildford had recommended Sir Thomas Meres, who, like himself, ranked
among the Trimmers. Jeffreys, who missed no opportunity of crossing the
Lord Keeper, had pressed the claims of Sir John Trevor. Trevor had been
bred half a pettifogger and half a gambler, had brought to political
life sentiments and principles worthy of both his callings, had become
a parasite of the Chief Justice, and could, on occasion, imitate, not
unsuccessfully, the vituperative style of his patron. The minion of
Jeffreys was, as might have been expected, preferred by James, was
proposed by Middleton, and was chosen without opposition. [305]
Thus far all went smoothly. But an adversary of no common prowess was
watching his time. This was Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy Castle,
member for the city of Exeter. Seymour's birth put him on a level with
the noblest subjects in Europe. He was the right heir male of the body
of that Duke of Somerset who had been brother-in-law of King Henry the
Eighth, and Protector of the realm of England. In the limitation of the
dukedom of Somerset, the elder Son of the Protector had been postponed
to the younger son. From the younger son the Dukes of Somerset were
descended. From the elder son was descended the family which dwelt at
Berry Pomeroy. Seymour's fortune was large, and his influence in the
West of England extensive. Nor was the importance derived from descent
and wealth the only importance which belonged to him. He was one of the
most skilful debaters and men of business in the kingdom. He had sate
many years in the House of Commons, had studied all its rules and
usages, and thoroughly understood its peculiar temper. He had been
elected speaker in the late reign under circumstances which made that
distinction peculiarly honourable. During several generations none
but lawyers had been called to the chair; and he was the first country
gentleman whose abilities and acquirements had enabled him to break that
long prescription. He had subsequently held high political office, and
had sate in the Cabinet. But his haughty and unaccommodating temper had
given so much disgust that he had been forced to retire. He was a Tory
and a Churchman: he had strenuously opposed the Exclusion Bill: he had
been persecuted by the Whigs in the day of their prosperity; and he
could therefore safely venture to hold language for which any person
suspected of republicanism would have been sent to the Tower. He had
long been at the head of a strong parliamentary connection, which
was called the Western Alliance, and which included many gentlemen of
Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Cornwall. [306]
In every House of Commons, a member who unites eloquence, knowledge, and
habits of business, to opulence and illustrious descent, must be highly
considered. But in a House of Commons from which many of the most
eminent orators and parliamentary tacticians of the age were excluded,
and which was crowded with people who had never heard a debate, the
influence of such a man was peculiarly formidable. Weight of moral
character was indeed wanting to Edward Seymour. He was licentious,
profane, corrupt, too proud to behave with common politeness, yet not
too proud to pocket illicit gain. But he was so useful an ally, and so
mischievous an enemy that he was frequently courted even by those who
most detested him. [307]
He was now in bad humour with the government. His interest had been
weakened in some places by the remodelling of the western boroughs: his
pride had been wounded by the elevation of Trevor to the chair; and he
took an early opportunity of revenging himself.
On the twenty-second of May the Commons were summoned to the bar of the
Lords; and the King, seated on his throne, made a speech to both Houses.
He declared himself resolved to maintain the established government
in Church and State. But he weakened the effect of this declaration
by addressing an extraordinary admonition to the Commons. He was
apprehensive, he said, that they might be inclined to dole out money to
him from time to time, in the hope that they should thus force him to
call them frequently together. But he must warn them that he was not to
be so dealt with, and that, if they wished him to meet them often they
must use him well. As it was evident that without money the government
could not be carried on, these expressions plainly implied that, if they
did not give him as much money as he wished, he would take it. Strange
to say, this harangue was received with loud cheers by the Tory
gentlemen at the bar. Such acclamations were then usual. It has now
been, during many years, the grave and decorous usage of Parliaments
to hear, in respectful silence, all expressions, acceptable or
unacceptable, which are uttered from the throne. [308]
It was then the custom that, after the King had concisely explained his
reasons for calling Parliament together, the minister who held the Great
Seal should, at more length, explain to the Houses the state of public
affairs. Guildford, in imitation of his predecessors, Clarendon,
Bridgeman, Shaftesbury, and Nottingham, had prepared an elaborate
oration, but found, to his great mortification, that his services were
not wanted. [309]
As soon as the Commons had returned to their own chamber, it was
proposed that they should resolve themselves into a Committee, for the
purpose of settling a revenue on the King.
Then Seymour stood up. How he stood, looking like what he was, the chief
of a dissolute and high spirited gentry, with the artificial ringlets
clustering in fashionable profusion round his shoulders, and a mingled
expression of voluptuousness and disdain in his eye and on his lip, the
likenesses of him which still remain enable us to imagine. It was not,
the haughty Cavalier said, his wish that the Parliament should withhold
from the crown the means of carrying on the government. But was there
indeed a Parliament? Were there not on the benches many men who had, as
all the world knew, no right to sit there, many men whose elections
were tainted by corruption, many men forced by intimidation on reluctant
voters, and many men returned by corporations which had no legal
existence? Had not constituent bodies been remodelled, in defiance
of royal charters and of immemorial prescription? Had not returning
officers been everywhere the unscrupulous agents of the Court? Seeing
that the very principle of representation had been thus systematically
attacked, he knew not how to call the throng of gentlemen which he saw
around him by the honourable name of a House of Commons. Yet never was
there a time when it more concerned the public weal that the character
of Parliament should stand high. Great dangers impended over the
ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the realm. It was matter of
vulgar notoriety, it was matter which required no proof, that the Test
Act, the rampart of religion, and the Habeas Corpus Act, the rampart
of liberty, were marked out for destruction. "Before we proceed to
legislate on questions so momentous, let us at least ascertain whether
we really are a legislature. Let our first proceeding be to enquire into
the manner in which the elections have been conducted. And let us look
to it that the enquiry be impartial. For, if the nation shall find that
no redress is to be obtained by peaceful methods, we may perhaps ere
long suffer the justice which we refuse to do. " He concluded by
moving that, before any supply was granted, the House would take into
consideration petitions against returns, and that no member whose right
to sit was disputed should be allowed to vote.
Not a cheer was heard. Not a member ventured to second the motion.
Indeed, Seymour had said much that no other man could have said with
impunity. The proposition fell to the ground, and was not even entered
on the journals. But a mighty effect had been produced. Barillon
informed his master that many who had not dared to applaud that
remarkable speech had cordially approved of it, that it was the
universal subject of conversation throughout London, and that the
impression made on the public mind seemed likely to be durable. [310]
The Commons went into committee without delay, and voted to the King,
for life, the whole revenue enjoyed by his brother.
inflict whipping; nor had the law assigned a limit to the number of
stripes. But the spirit of the law clearly was that no misdemeanour
should be punished more severely than the most atrocious felonies.
The worst felon could only be hanged. The judges, as they believed,
sentenced Oates to be scourged to death. That the law was defective is
not a sufficient excuse: for defective laws should be altered by the
legislature, and not strained by the tribunals; and least of all should
the law be strained for the purpose of inflicting torture and destroying
life. That Oates was a bad man is not a sufficient excuse; for the
guilty are almost always the first to suffer those hardships which are
afterwards used as precedents against the innocent. Thus it was in the
present case. Merciless flogging soon became an ordinary punishment for
political misdemeanours of no very aggravated kind. Men were sentenced,
for words spoken against the government, to pains so excruciating that
they, with unfeigned earnestness, begged to be brought to trial on
capital charges, and sent to the gallows. Happily the progress of this
great evil was speedily stopped by the Revolution, and by that article
of the Bill of Rights which condemns all cruel and unusual punishments.
The villany of Dangerfield had not, like that of Oates, destroyed
many innocent victims; for Dangerfield had not taken up the trade of
a witness till the plot had been blown upon and till juries had become
incredulous. [277] He was brought to trial, not for perjury, but for the
less heinous offense of libel. He had, during the agitation caused by
the Exclusion Bill, put forth a narrative containing some false and
odious imputations on the late and on the present King. For this
publication he was now, after the lapse of five years, suddenly taken
up, brought before the Privy Council, committed, tried, convicted, and
sentenced to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate to
Tyburn. The wretched man behaved with great effrontery during the trial;
but, when he heard his doom, he went into agonies of despair, gave
himself up for dead, and chose a text for his funeral sermon. His
forebodings were just. He was not, indeed, scourged quite so severely as
Oates had been; but he had not Oates's iron strength of body and mind.
After the execution Dangerfield was put into a hackney coach and was
taken back to prison. As he passed the corner of Hatton Garden, a Tory
gentleman of Gray's Inn, named Francis, stopped the carriage, and cried
out with brutal levity, "Well, friend, have you had your heat this
morning? " The bleeding prisoner, maddened by this insult, answered with
a curse. Francis instantly struck him in the face with a cane which
injured the eye. Dangerfield was carried dying into Newgate. This
dastardly outrage roused the indignation of the bystanders. They seized
Francis, and were with difficulty restrained from tearing him to
pieces. The appearance of Dangerfield's body, which had been frightfully
lacerated by the whip, inclined many to believe that his death was
chiefly, if not wholly, caused by the stripes which he had received. The
government and the Chief Justice thought it convenient to lay the whole
blame on Francis, who; though he seems to have been at worst guilty only
of aggravated manslaughter, was tried and executed for murder. His dying
speech is one of the most curious monuments of that age. The savage
spirit which had brought him to the gallows remained with him to the
last. Boasts of his loyalty and abuse of the Whigs were mingled with the
parting ejaculations in which he commended his soul to the divine
mercy. An idle rumour had been circulated that his wife was in love with
Dangerfield, who was eminently handsome and renowned for gallantry.
The fatal blow, it was said, had been prompted by jealousy. The dying
husband, with an earnestness, half ridiculous, half pathetic, vindicated
the lady's character. She was, he said, a virtuous woman: she came of
a loyal stock, and, if she had been inclined to break her marriage vow,
would at least have selected a Tory and a churchman for her paramour.
[278]
About the same time a culprit, who bore very little resemblance to Oates
or Dangerfield, appeared on the floor of the Court of King's Bench. No
eminent chief of a party has ever passed through many years of civil
and religious dissension with more innocence than Richard Baxter. He
belonged to the mildest and most temperate section of the Puritan body.
He was a young man when the civil war broke out. He thought that the
right was on the side of the Houses; and he had no scruple about acting
as chaplain to a regiment in the parliamentary army: but his clear
and somewhat sceptical understanding, and his strong sense of justice,
preserved him from all excesses. He exerted himself to check the
fanatical violence of the soldiery. He condemned the proceedings of
the High Court of Justice. In the days of the Commonwealth he had the
boldness to express, on many occasions, and once even in Cromwell's
presence, love and reverence for the ancient institutions of the
country. While the royal family was in exile, Baxter's life was chiefly
passed at Kidderminster in the assiduous discharge of parochial duties.
He heartily concurred in the Restoration, and was sincerely desirous to
bring about an union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. For, with
a liberty rare in his time, he considered questions of ecclesiastical
polity as of small account when compared with the great principles of
Christianity, and had never, even when prelacy was most odious to the
ruling powers, joined in the outcry against Bishops. The attempt to
reconcile the contending factions failed. Baxter cast in his lot with
his proscribed friends, refused the mitre of Hereford, quitted the
parsonage of Kidderminster, and gave himself up almost wholly to study.
His theological writings, though too moderate to be pleasing to the
bigots of any party, had an immense reputation. Zealous Churchmen called
him a Roundhead; and many Nonconformists accused him of Erastianism and
Arminianism. But the integrity of his heart, the purity of his life,
the vigour of his faculties, and the extent of his attainments were
acknowledged by the best and wisest men of every persuasion. His
political opinions, in spite of the oppression which he and his brethren
had suffered, were moderate. He was friendly to that small party which
was hated by both Whigs and Tories. He could not, he said, join in
cursing the Trimmers, when he remembered who it was that had blessed the
peacemakers. [279]
In a Commentary on the New Testament he had complained, with some
bitterness, of the persecution which the Dissenters suffered. That men
who, for not using the Prayer Book, had been driven from their homes,
stripped of their property, and locked up in dungeons, should dare to
utter a murmur, was then thought a high crime against the State and the
Church. Roger Lestrange, the champion of the government and the oracle
of the clergy, sounded the note of war in the Observator. An information
was filed. Baxter begged that he might be allowed some time to prepare
for his defence. It was on the day on which Oates was pilloried in
Palace Yard that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed by age
and infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to make this request. Jeffreys
burst into a storm of rage. "Not a minute," he cried, "to save his life.
I can deal with saints as well as with sinners. There stands Oates on
one side of the pillory; and, if Baxter stood on the other, the two
greatest rogues in the kingdom would stand together. "
When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved and
honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor William
Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist divines. Two
Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop, appeared for the
defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his address to the jury, when
the Chief Justice broke forth: "Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a
mark on you. You are the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue,
a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy.
He would have nothing but longwinded cant without book;" and then
his Lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing
through his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style
of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear
people. " Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late Majesty
had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the old
blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it? " His fury now
rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it would
be no more than justice to whip such a villain through the whole City.
Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. "You are in all
these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop," said the Judge. "Gentlemen of the long
robe ought to be ashamed to assist such factious knaves. " The advocate
made another attempt to obtain a hearing, but to no purpose. "If you do
not know your duty," said Jeffreys, "I will teach it you. "
Wallop sate down; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word. But
the Chief Justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of ribaldry and
invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. "My Lord," said the old
man, "I have been much blamed by Dissenters for speaking respectfully of
Bishops. " "Baxter for Bishops! " cried the Judge, "that's a merry
conceit indeed. I know what you mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself,
Kidderminster Bishops, factious snivelling Presbyterians! " Again Baxter
essayed to speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed "Richard, Richard, dost
thou think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old
knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book as
full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace of God, I'll
look after thee. I see a great many of your brotherhood waiting to know
what will befall their mighty Don. And there," he continued, fixing his
savage eye on Bates, "there is a Doctor of the party at your elbow. But,
by the grace of God Almighty, I will crush you all. "
Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for the defence
made a last effort, and undertook to show that the words of which
complaint was made would not bear the construction put on them by the
information. With this view he began to read the context. In a moment
he was roared down. "You sha'n't turn the court into a conventicle. "
The noise of weeping was heard from some of those who surrounded Baxter.
"Snivelling calves! " said the Judge.
Witnesses to character were in attendance, and among them were several
clergymen of the Established Church. But the Chief Justice would hear
nothing. "Does your Lordship think," said Baxter, "that any jury will
convict a man on such a trial as this? " "I warrant you, Mr. Baxter,"
said Jeffreys: "don't trouble yourself about that. " Jeffreys was right.
The Sheriffs were the tools of the government. The jurymen, selected
by the Sheriffs from among the fiercest zealots of the Tory party,
conferred for a moment, and returned a verdict of Guilty. "My Lord,"
said Baxter, as he left the court, "there was once a Chief Justice who
would have treated me very differently. " He alluded to his learned
and virtuous friend Sir Matthew Hale. "There is not an honest man in
England," answered Jeffreys, "but looks on thee as a knave. " [280]
The sentence was, for those times, a lenient one. What passed in
conference among the judges cannot be certainly known. It was believed
among the Nonconformists, and is highly probable, that the Chief Justice
was overruled by his three brethren. He proposed, it is said, that
Baxter should be whipped through London at the cart's tail. The majority
thought that an eminent divine, who, a quarter of a century before, had
been offered a mitre, and who was now in his seventieth year, would be
sufficiently punished for a few sharp words by fine and imprisonment.
[281]
The manner in which Baxter was treated by a judge, who was a member of
the cabinet and a favourite of the Sovereign, indicated, in a manner
not to be mistaken, the feeling with which the government at this time
regarded the Protestant Nonconformists. But already that feeling had
been indicated by still stronger and more terrible signs. The Parliament
of Scotland had met. James had purposely hastened the session of this
body, and had postponed the session of the English Houses, in the
hope that the example set at Edinburgh would produce a good effect
at Westminster. For the legislature of his northern kingdom was as
obsequious as those provincial Estates which Lewis the Fourteenth still
suffered to play at some of their ancient functions in Britanny and
Burgundy. None but an Episcopalian could sit in the Scottish Parliament,
or could even vote for a member, and in Scotland an Episcopalian was
always a Tory or a timeserver. From an assembly thus constituted, little
opposition to the royal wishes was to be apprehended; and even
the assembly thus constituted could pass no law which had not been
previously approved by a committee of courtiers.
All that the government asked was readily granted. In a financial point
of view, indeed, the liberality of the Scottish Estates was of little
consequence. They gave, however, what their scanty means permitted. They
annexed in perpetuity to the crown the duties which had been granted
to the late King, and which in his time had been estimated at forty
thousand pounds sterling a year. They also settled on James for life
an additional annual income of two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds
Scots, equivalent to eighteen thousand pounds sterling. The whole Sum
which they were able to bestow was about sixty thousand a year, little
more than what was poured into the English Exchequer every fortnight.
[282]
Having little money to give, the Estates supplied the defect by loyal
professions and barbarous statutes. The King, in a letter which was
read to them at the opening of their session, called on them in vehement
language to provide new penal laws against the refractory Presbyterians,
and expressed his regret that business made it impossible for him to
propose such laws in person from the throne. His commands were obeyed.
A statute framed by his ministers was promptly passed, a statute which
stands forth even among the statutes of that unhappy country at that
unhappy period, preeminent in atrocity. It was enacted, in few but
emphatic words, that whoever should preach in a conventicle under a
roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as hearer, a conventicle
in the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation of
property. [283]
This law, passed at the King's instance by an assembly devoted to his
will, deserves especial notice. For he has been frequently represented
by ignorant writers as a prince rash, indeed, and injudicious in his
choice of means, but intent on one of the noblest ends which a ruler
can pursue, the establishment of entire religious liberty. Nor can it be
denied that some portions of his life, when detached from the rest and
superficially considered, seem to warrant this favourable view of his
character.
While a subject he had been, during many years, a persecuted man; and
persecution had produced its usual effect on him. His mind, dull and
narrow as it was, had profited under that sharp discipline. While he was
excluded from the Court, from the Admiralty, and from the Council, and
was in danger of being also excluded from the throne, only because he
could not help believing in transubstantiation and in the authority
of the see of Rome, he made such rapid progress in the doctrines of
toleration that he left Milton and Locke behind. What, he often said,
could be more unjust, than to visit speculations with penalties which
ought to be reserved for acts? What more impolitic than to reject the
services of good soldiers, seamen, lawyers, diplomatists, financiers,
because they hold unsound opinions about the number of the sacraments or
the pluripresence of saints? He learned by rote those commonplaces which
all sects repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppression, and
forget so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed
his lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this subject
gave him credit for much more sense and much readier elocution than he
really possessed. His professions imposed on some charitable persons,
and perhaps imposed on himself. But his zeal for the rights of
conscience ended with the predominance of the Whig party. When fortune
changed, when he was no longer afraid that others would persecute him,
when he had it in his power to persecute others, his real propensities
began to show themselves. He hated the Puritan sects with a manifold
hatred, theological and political, hereditary and personal. He regarded
them as the foes of Heaven, as the foes of all legitimate authority in
Church and State, as his great-grandmother's foes and his grandfather's,
his father's and his mother's, his brother's and his own. He, who had
complained so fondly of the laws against Papists, now declared himself
unable to conceive how men could have the impudence to propose the
repeal of the laws against Puritans. [284] He, whose favourite theme had
been the injustice of requiring civil functionaries to take religious
tests, established in Scotland, when he resided there as Viceroy, the
most rigorous religious test that has ever been known in the empire.
[285] He, who had expressed just indignation when the priests of his own
faith were hanged and quartered, amused himself with hearing Covenanters
shriek and seeing them writhe while their knees were beaten flat in the
boots. [286] In this mood he became King; and he immediately demanded
and obtained from the obsequious Estates of Scotland as the surest
pledge of their loyalty, the most sanguinary law that has ever in our
island been enacted against Protestant Nonconformists.
With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in perfect
harmony. The fiery persecution, which had raged when he ruled Scotland
as vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever from the day on which he became
sovereign. Those shires in which the Covenanters were most numerous
were given up to the license of the army. With the army was mingled a
militia, composed of the most violent and profligate of those who called
themselves Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which oppressed
and wasted these unhappy districts were the dragoons commanded by John
Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men used in their
revels to play at the torments of hell, and to call each other by the
names of devils and damned souls. [287] The chief of this Tophet, a
soldier of distinguished courage and professional skill, but rapacious
and profane, of violent temper and of obdurate heart, has left a name
which, wherever the Scottish race is settled on the face of the globe,
is mentioned with a peculiar energy of hatred. To recapitulate all the
crimes, by which this man, and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the
Western Lowlands into madness, would be an endless task. A few instances
must suffice; and all those instances shall be taken from the history
of a single fortnight, that very fortnight in which the Scottish
Parliament, at the urgent request of James, enacted a new law of
unprecedented severity against Dissenters.
John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular piety,
commonly called the Christian carrier. Many years later, when Scotland
enjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious freedom, old men who remembered
the evil days described him as one versed in divine things, blameless
in life, and so peaceable that the tyrants could find no offence in
him except that he absented himself from the public worship of the
Episcopalians. On the first of May he was cutting turf, when he was
seized by Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined, convicted of
nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even among the
soldiers, it was not easy to find an executioner. For the wife of the
poor man was present; she led one little child by the hand: it was easy
to see that she was about to give birth to another; and even those wild
and hardhearted men, who nicknamed one another Beelzebub and Apollyon,
shrank from the great wickedness of butchering her husband before her
face. The prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the near
prospect of eternity, prayed loud and fervently as one inspired, till
Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by credible
witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well, sir, well; the
day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer replied, "To man I
can answer for what I have done; and as for God, I will take him into
mine own hand. " Yet it was rumoured that even on his seared conscience
and adamantine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim made an
impression which was never effaced. [288]
On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce, were
tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal consisting of fifteen soldiers.
The indictment is still extant. The prisoners were charged, not with any
act of rebellion, but with holding the same pernicious doctrines which
had impelled others to rebel, and with wanting only opportunity to act
upon those doctrines. The proceeding was summary. In a few hours the two
culprits were convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole under
the gallows. [289]
The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great crime.
Some rigid Calvinists had from the doctrine of reprobation drawn the
consequence that to pray for any person who had been predestined to
perdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal decrees of the
Supreme Being. Three poor labouring men, deeply imbued with this
unamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer in the neighbourhood
of Glasgow. They were asked whether they would pray for King James the
Seventh. They refused to do so except under the condition that he was
one of the elect. A file of musketeers was drawn out. The prisoners
knelt down; they were blindfolded; and within an hour after they had
been arrested, their blood was lapped up by the dogs. [290]
While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible was
perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed Covenanters, overcome by
sickness, had found shelter in the house of a respectable widow, and
had died there. The corpse was discovered by the Laird of Westerhall, a
petty tyrant who had, in the days of the Covenant, professed inordinate
zeal for the Presbyterian Church, who had, since the Restoration,
purchased the favour of the government by apostasy, and who felt towards
the party which he had deserted the implacable hatred of an apostate.
This man pulled down the house of the poor woman, carried away her
furniture, and, leaving her and her younger children to wander in the
fields, dragged her son Andrew, who was still a lad, before Claverhouse,
who happened to be marching through that part of the country.
Claverhouse was just then strangely lenient. Some thought that he had
not been quite himself since the death of the Christian carrier, ten
days before. But Westerhall was eager to signalise his loyalty, and
extorted a sullen consent. The guns were loaded, and the youth was told
to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and stood confronting his
murderers with the Bible in his hand. "I can look you in the face," he
said; "I have done nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will you
look in that day when you shall be judged by what is written in this
book? " He fell dead, and was buried in the moor. [291]
On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Margaret Wilson, the
former an aged widow, the latter a maiden of eighteen, suffered death
for their religion in Wigtonshire. They were offered their lives if they
would consent to abjure the cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to
attend the Episcopal worship. They refused; and they were sentenced to
be drowned. They were carried to a spot which the Solway overflows twice
a day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand between high and
low water mark.
The elder sufferer was placed near to the advancing
flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify the younger into
submission. The sight was dreadful. But the courage of the survivor
was sustained by an enthusiasm as lofty as any that is recorded in
martyrology. She saw the sea draw nearer and nearer, but gave no sign
of alarm. She prayed and sang verses of psalms till the waves choked her
voice. After she had tasted the bitterness of death, she was, by a cruel
mercy unbound and restored to life. When she came to herself, pitying
friends and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say,
God save the King! " The poor girl, true to her stern theology, gasped
out, "May God save him, if it be God's will! " Her friends crowded round
the presiding officer. "She has said it; indeed, sir, she has said it. "
"Will she take the abjuration? " he demanded. "Never! " she exclaimed.
"I am Christ's: let me go! " And the waters closed over her for the last
time. [292]
Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignorant men have
represented as a friend of religious liberty, whose misfortune it was to
be too wise and too good for the age in which he lived. Nay, even
those laws which authorised him to govern thus were in his judgment
reprehensibly lenient. While his officers were committing the murders
which have just been related, he was urging the Scottish Parliament
to pass a new Act compared with which all former Acts might be called
merciful.
In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by ancient
and noble laws which even the Tories would not patiently have seen him
infringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before military tribunals,
or enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them swoon in the boots. Here
he could not drown young girls for refusing to take the abjuration, or
shoot poor countrymen for doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yet
even in England he continued to persecute the Puritans as far as his
power extended, till events which will hereafter be related induced him
to form the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition for
the humiliation and spoliation of the established Church.
One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early period
of his reign, regarded with some tenderness, the Society of Friends.
His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be attributed to
religious sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the divine mission of
Jesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ most widely. It may seem
paradoxical to say that this very circumstance constituted a tie between
the Roman Catholic and the Quaker; yet such was really the case. For
they deviated in opposite directions so far from what the great body of
the nation regarded as right, that even liberal men generally considered
them both as lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration. Thus the
two extreme sects, precisely because they were extreme sects, had a
common interest distinct from the interest of the intermediate sects.
The Quakers were also guiltless of all offence against James and his
House. They had not been in existence as a community till the war
between his father and the Long Parliament was drawing towards a
close. They had been cruelly persecuted by some of the revolutionary
governments. They had, since the Restoration, in spite of much ill
usage, submitted themselves meekly to the royal authority. For they
had, though reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded as
heterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion,
that no excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify active
resistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the government had ever
been traced to a Quaker. [293] In no conspiracy against the government
had a Quaker been implicated. The society had not joined in the clamour
for the Exclusion Bill, and had solemnly condemned the Rye House plot as
a hellish design and a work of the devil. [294] Indeed, the friends then
took very little part in civil contentions; for they were not, as now,
congregated in large towns, but were generally engaged in agriculture,
a pursuit from which they have been gradually driven by the vexations
consequent on their strange scruple about paying tithe. They were,
therefore, far removed from the scene of political strife. They
also, even in domestic privacy, avoided on principle all political
conversation. For such conversation was, in their opinion, unfavourable
to their spirituality of mind, and tended to disturb the austere
composure of their deportment. The yearly meetings of that age
repeatedly admonished the brethren not to hold discourse touching
affairs of state. [295] Even within the memory of persons now living
those grave elders who retained the habits of an earlier generation
systematically discouraged such worldly talk. [296] It was natural that
James should make a wide distinction between these harmless people and
those fierce and reckless sects which considered resistance to tyranny
as a Christian duty which had, in Germany, France, and Holland, made
war on legitimate princes, and which had, during four generations, borne
peculiar enmity to the House of Stuart.
It happened, moreover, that it was possible to grant large relief to the
Roman Catholic and to the Quaker without mitigating the sufferings of
the Puritan sects. A law was in force which imposed severe penalties on
every person who refused to take the oath of supremacy when required to
do so. This law did not affect Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists;
for they were all ready to call God to witness that they renounced all
spiritual connection with foreign prelates and potentates. But the Roman
Catholic would not swear that the Pope had no jurisdiction in England,
and the Quaker would not swear to anything. On the other hand, neither
the Roman Catholic nor the Quaker was touched by the Five Mile Act,
which, of all the laws in the Statute Book, was perhaps the most
annoying to the Puritan Nonconformists. [297]
The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate at court. Though, as
a class, they mixed little with the world, and shunned politics as a
pursuit dangerous to their spiritual interests, one of them, widely
distinguished from the rest by station and fortune, lived in the
highest circles, and had constant access to the royal ear. This was the
celebrated William Penn. His father had held great naval commands,
had been a Commissioner of the Admiralty, had sate in Parliament, had
received the honour of knighthood, and had been encouraged to expect a
peerage. The son had been liberally educated, and had been designed
for the profession of arms, but had, while still young, injured his
prospects and disgusted his friends by joining what was then generally
considered as a gang of crazy heretics. He had been sent sometimes to
the Tower, and sometimes to Newgate. He had been tried at the Old Bailey
for preaching in defiance of the law. After a time, however, he had been
reconciled to his family, and had succeeded in obtaining such powerful
protection that, while all the gaols of England were filled with his
brethren, he was permitted, during many years, to profess his opinions
without molestation. Towards the close of the late reign he had
obtained, in satisfaction of an old debt due to him from the crown, the
grant of an immense region in North America. In this tract, then peopled
only by Indian hunters, he had invited his persecuted friends to settle.
His colony was still in its infancy when James mounted the throne.
Between James and Penn there had long been a familiar acquaintance. The
Quaker now became a courtier, and almost a favourite. He was every
day summoned from the gallery into the closet, and sometimes had long
audiences while peers were kept waiting in the antechambers. It was
noised abroad that he had more real power to help and hurt than many
nobles who filled high offices. He was soon surrounded by flatterers and
suppliants. His house at Kensington was sometimes thronged, at his
hour of rising, by more than two hundred suitors. [298] He paid dear,
however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked coldly
on him, and requited his services with obloquy. He was loudly accused of
being a Papist, nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed that he had been educated
at St. Omers, and others that he had been ordained at Rome. These
calumnies, indeed, could find credit only with the undiscerning
multitude; but with these calumnies were mingled accusations much better
founded.
To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which requires some
courage; for he is rather a mythical than a historical person. Rival
nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising him. England is
proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards him
with a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus,
and the Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society of which he was a
member honours him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he
is generally regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhile
admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The French
philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as
his superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for priests,
and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all races
and to all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civilised
countries, a synonyme for probity and philanthropy.
Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was without doubt
a man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of religious duty and a
fervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind. On one or two points
of high importance, he had notions more correct than were, in his day,
common even among men of enlarged minds: and as the proprietor and
legislator of a province which, being almost uninhabited when it came
into his possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments,
he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into
practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to existing
institutions. He will always be mentioned with honour as a founder of
a colony, who did not, in his dealings with a savage people, abuse the
strength derived from civilisation, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of
persecution, made religious liberty the cornerstone of a polity. But his
writings and his life furnish abundant proofs that he was not a man of
strong sense. He had no skill in reading the characters of others. His
confidence in persons less virtuous than himself led him into great
errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle sometimes
impelled him to violate other great principles which he ought to
have held sacred. Nor was his rectitude altogether proof against the
temptations to which it was exposed in that splendid and polite, but
deeply corrupted society, with which he now mingled. The whole court was
in a ferment with intrigues of gallantry and intrigues of ambition. The
traffic in honours, places, and pardons was incessant. It was natural
that a man who was daily seen at the palace, and who was known to have
free access to majesty, should be frequently importuned to use his
influence for purposes which a rigid morality must condemn. The
integrity of Penn had stood firm against obloquy and persecution.
But now, attacked by royal smiles, by female blandishments, by the
insinuating eloquence and delicate flattery of veteran diplomatists and
courtiers, his resolution began to give way. Titles and phrases against
which he had often borne his testimony dropped occasionally from his
lips and his pen. It would be well if he had been guilty of nothing
worse than such compliances with the fashions of the world. Unhappily
it cannot be concealed that he bore a chief part in some transactions
condemned, not merely by the rigid code of the society to which he
belonged, but by the general sense of all honest men. He afterwards
solemnly protested that his hands were pure from illicit gain, and
that he had never received any gratuity from those whom he had obliged,
though he might easily, while his influence at court lasted, have made a
hundred and twenty thousand pounds. [299] To this assertion full credit
is due. But bribes may be offered to vanity as well as to cupidity; and
it is impossible to deny that Penn was cajoled into bearing a part in
some unjustifiable transactions of which others enjoyed the profits.
The first use which he made of his credit was highly commendable. He
strongly represented the sufferings of his brethren to the new King,
who saw with pleasure that it was possible to grant indulgence to these
quiet sectaries and to the Roman Catholics, without showing similar
favour to other classes which were then under persecution. A list was
framed of prisoners against whom proceedings had been instituted for
not taking the oaths, or for not going to church, and of whose loyalty
certificates had been produced to the government. These persons were
discharged, and orders were given that no similar proceeding should be
instituted till the royal pleasure should be further signified. In this
way about fifteen hundred Quakers, and a still greater number of Roman
Catholics, regained their liberty. [300]
And now the time had arrived when the English Parliament was to meet.
The members of the House of Commons who had repaired to the capital were
so numerous that there was much doubt whether their chamber, as it was
then fitted up, would afford sufficient accommodation for them. They
employed the days which immediately preceded the opening of the session
in talking over public affairs with each other and with the agents
of the government. A great meeting of the loyal party was held at the
Fountain Tavern in the Strand; and Roger Lestrange, who had recently
been knighted by the King, and returned to Parliament by the city of
Winchester, took a leading part in their consultations. [301]
It soon appeared that a large portion of the Commons had views which did
not altogether agree with those of the Court. The Tory country gentlemen
were, with scarcely one exception, desirous to maintain the Test Act and
the Habeas Corpus Act; and some among them talked of voting the revenue
only for a term of years. But they were perfectly ready to enact severe
laws against the Whigs, and would gladly have seen all the supporters
of the Exclusion Bill made incapable of holding office. The King, on the
other hand, desired to obtain from the Parliament a revenue for life,
the admission of Roman Catholics to office, and the repeal of the Habeas
Corpus Act. On these three objects his heart was set; and he was by no
means disposed to accept as a substitute for them a penal law against
Exclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have been positively unpleasing
to him; for one class of Exclusionists stood high in his favour, that
class of which Sunderland was the representative, that class which had
joined the Whigs in the days of the plot, merely because the Whigs were
predominant, and which had changed with the change of fortune. James
justly regarded these renegades as the most serviceable tools that he
could employ. It was not from the stouthearted Cavaliers, who had
been true to him in his adversity, that he could expect abject and
unscrupulous obedience in his prosperity. The men who, impelled, not
by zeal for liberty or for religion, but merely by selfish cupidity and
selfish fear, had assisted to oppress him when he was weak, were the
very men who, impelled by the same cupidity and the same fear, would
assist him to oppress his people now that he was strong. [302] Though
vindictive, he was not indiscriminately vindictive. Not a single
instance can be mentioned in which he showed a generous compassion
to those who had opposed him honestly and on public grounds. But he
frequently spared and promoted those whom some vile motive had induced
to injure him. For that meanness which marked them out as fit implements
of tyranny was so precious in his estimation that he regarded it with
some indulgence even when it was exhibited at his own expense.
The King's wishes were communicated through several channels to the Tory
members of the Lower House. The majority was easily persuaded to forego
all thoughts of a penal law against the Exclusionists, and to consent
that His Majesty should have the revenue for life. But about the Test
Act and the Habeas Corpus Act the emissaries of the Court could obtain
no satisfactory assurances. [303]
On the nineteenth of May the session was opened. The benches of the
Commons presented a singular spectacle. That great party, which, in
the last three Parliaments, had been predominant, had now dwindled to a
pitiable minority, and was indeed little more than a fifteenth part of
the House. Of the five hundred and thirteen knights and burgesses only
a hundred and thirty-five had ever sate in that place before. It is
evident that a body of men so raw and inexperienced must have been, in
some important qualities, far below the average of our representative
assemblies. [304]
The management of the House was confided by James to two peers of the
kingdom of Scotland. One of them, Charles Middleton, Earl of Middleton,
after holding high office at Edinburgh, had, shortly before the death
of the late King, been sworn of the English Privy Council, and appointed
one of the Secretaries of State. With him was joined Richard Graham,
Viscount Preston, who had long held the post of Envoy at Versailles.
The first business of the Commons was to elect a Speaker. Who should
be the man, was a question which had been much debated in the cabinet.
Guildford had recommended Sir Thomas Meres, who, like himself, ranked
among the Trimmers. Jeffreys, who missed no opportunity of crossing the
Lord Keeper, had pressed the claims of Sir John Trevor. Trevor had been
bred half a pettifogger and half a gambler, had brought to political
life sentiments and principles worthy of both his callings, had become
a parasite of the Chief Justice, and could, on occasion, imitate, not
unsuccessfully, the vituperative style of his patron. The minion of
Jeffreys was, as might have been expected, preferred by James, was
proposed by Middleton, and was chosen without opposition. [305]
Thus far all went smoothly. But an adversary of no common prowess was
watching his time. This was Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy Castle,
member for the city of Exeter. Seymour's birth put him on a level with
the noblest subjects in Europe. He was the right heir male of the body
of that Duke of Somerset who had been brother-in-law of King Henry the
Eighth, and Protector of the realm of England. In the limitation of the
dukedom of Somerset, the elder Son of the Protector had been postponed
to the younger son. From the younger son the Dukes of Somerset were
descended. From the elder son was descended the family which dwelt at
Berry Pomeroy. Seymour's fortune was large, and his influence in the
West of England extensive. Nor was the importance derived from descent
and wealth the only importance which belonged to him. He was one of the
most skilful debaters and men of business in the kingdom. He had sate
many years in the House of Commons, had studied all its rules and
usages, and thoroughly understood its peculiar temper. He had been
elected speaker in the late reign under circumstances which made that
distinction peculiarly honourable. During several generations none
but lawyers had been called to the chair; and he was the first country
gentleman whose abilities and acquirements had enabled him to break that
long prescription. He had subsequently held high political office, and
had sate in the Cabinet. But his haughty and unaccommodating temper had
given so much disgust that he had been forced to retire. He was a Tory
and a Churchman: he had strenuously opposed the Exclusion Bill: he had
been persecuted by the Whigs in the day of their prosperity; and he
could therefore safely venture to hold language for which any person
suspected of republicanism would have been sent to the Tower. He had
long been at the head of a strong parliamentary connection, which
was called the Western Alliance, and which included many gentlemen of
Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Cornwall. [306]
In every House of Commons, a member who unites eloquence, knowledge, and
habits of business, to opulence and illustrious descent, must be highly
considered. But in a House of Commons from which many of the most
eminent orators and parliamentary tacticians of the age were excluded,
and which was crowded with people who had never heard a debate, the
influence of such a man was peculiarly formidable. Weight of moral
character was indeed wanting to Edward Seymour. He was licentious,
profane, corrupt, too proud to behave with common politeness, yet not
too proud to pocket illicit gain. But he was so useful an ally, and so
mischievous an enemy that he was frequently courted even by those who
most detested him. [307]
He was now in bad humour with the government. His interest had been
weakened in some places by the remodelling of the western boroughs: his
pride had been wounded by the elevation of Trevor to the chair; and he
took an early opportunity of revenging himself.
On the twenty-second of May the Commons were summoned to the bar of the
Lords; and the King, seated on his throne, made a speech to both Houses.
He declared himself resolved to maintain the established government
in Church and State. But he weakened the effect of this declaration
by addressing an extraordinary admonition to the Commons. He was
apprehensive, he said, that they might be inclined to dole out money to
him from time to time, in the hope that they should thus force him to
call them frequently together. But he must warn them that he was not to
be so dealt with, and that, if they wished him to meet them often they
must use him well. As it was evident that without money the government
could not be carried on, these expressions plainly implied that, if they
did not give him as much money as he wished, he would take it. Strange
to say, this harangue was received with loud cheers by the Tory
gentlemen at the bar. Such acclamations were then usual. It has now
been, during many years, the grave and decorous usage of Parliaments
to hear, in respectful silence, all expressions, acceptable or
unacceptable, which are uttered from the throne. [308]
It was then the custom that, after the King had concisely explained his
reasons for calling Parliament together, the minister who held the Great
Seal should, at more length, explain to the Houses the state of public
affairs. Guildford, in imitation of his predecessors, Clarendon,
Bridgeman, Shaftesbury, and Nottingham, had prepared an elaborate
oration, but found, to his great mortification, that his services were
not wanted. [309]
As soon as the Commons had returned to their own chamber, it was
proposed that they should resolve themselves into a Committee, for the
purpose of settling a revenue on the King.
Then Seymour stood up. How he stood, looking like what he was, the chief
of a dissolute and high spirited gentry, with the artificial ringlets
clustering in fashionable profusion round his shoulders, and a mingled
expression of voluptuousness and disdain in his eye and on his lip, the
likenesses of him which still remain enable us to imagine. It was not,
the haughty Cavalier said, his wish that the Parliament should withhold
from the crown the means of carrying on the government. But was there
indeed a Parliament? Were there not on the benches many men who had, as
all the world knew, no right to sit there, many men whose elections
were tainted by corruption, many men forced by intimidation on reluctant
voters, and many men returned by corporations which had no legal
existence? Had not constituent bodies been remodelled, in defiance
of royal charters and of immemorial prescription? Had not returning
officers been everywhere the unscrupulous agents of the Court? Seeing
that the very principle of representation had been thus systematically
attacked, he knew not how to call the throng of gentlemen which he saw
around him by the honourable name of a House of Commons. Yet never was
there a time when it more concerned the public weal that the character
of Parliament should stand high. Great dangers impended over the
ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the realm. It was matter of
vulgar notoriety, it was matter which required no proof, that the Test
Act, the rampart of religion, and the Habeas Corpus Act, the rampart
of liberty, were marked out for destruction. "Before we proceed to
legislate on questions so momentous, let us at least ascertain whether
we really are a legislature. Let our first proceeding be to enquire into
the manner in which the elections have been conducted. And let us look
to it that the enquiry be impartial. For, if the nation shall find that
no redress is to be obtained by peaceful methods, we may perhaps ere
long suffer the justice which we refuse to do. " He concluded by
moving that, before any supply was granted, the House would take into
consideration petitions against returns, and that no member whose right
to sit was disputed should be allowed to vote.
Not a cheer was heard. Not a member ventured to second the motion.
Indeed, Seymour had said much that no other man could have said with
impunity. The proposition fell to the ground, and was not even entered
on the journals. But a mighty effect had been produced. Barillon
informed his master that many who had not dared to applaud that
remarkable speech had cordially approved of it, that it was the
universal subject of conversation throughout London, and that the
impression made on the public mind seemed likely to be durable. [310]
The Commons went into committee without delay, and voted to the King,
for life, the whole revenue enjoyed by his brother.
