" "I cannot
tell what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne.
tell what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne.
Macaulay
The
stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck was not severed,
and the body continued to move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the
crowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a curse. "I cannot do it," he said;
"my heart fails me. " "Take up the axe, man," cried the sheriff. "Fling
him over the rails," roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two
more blows extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used
to separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up to
such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being torn
in pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong guard. [431]
In the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke's blood; for
by a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a martyr who had
died for the Protestant religion. The head and body were placed in a
coffin covered with black velvet, and were laid privately under the
communion table of Saint Peter's Chapel in the Tower. Within four years
the pavement of the chancel was again disturbed, and hard by the remains
of Monmouth were laid the remains of Jeffreys. In truth there is no
sadder spot on the earth than that little cemetery. Death is there
associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with genius and
virtue, with public veneration and imperishable renown; not, as in
our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most
endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is
darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of
implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice
of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted
fame. Thither have been carried, through successive ages, by the rude
hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics
of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties,
the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne,
before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse of
Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector of
the realm, reposes there by the brother whom he murdered. There has
mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester
and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better
age and to have died in a better cause. There are laid John Dudley,
Duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and Thomas Cromwell, Earl of
Essex, Lord High Treasurer. There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature
and fortune had lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour,
grace, genius, royal favour, popular applause, conducted to an early
and ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the great house
of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh Earl of
Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and aspiring
statesmen, lie more delicate sufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, the last
of the proud name of Plantagenet; and those two fair Queens who perished
by the jealous rage of Henry. Such was the dust with which the dust of
Monmouth mingled. [432]
Yet a few months, and the quiet village of Toddington, in Bedfordshire,
witnessed a still sadder funeral. Near that village stood an ancient
and stately hall, the seat of the Wentworths. The transept of the parish
church had long been their burial place. To that burial place, in the
spring which followed the death of Monmouth, was borne the coffin of the
young Baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede. Her family reared a sumptuous
mausoleum over her remains: but a less costly memorial of her was long
contemplated with far deeper interest. Her name, carved by the hand of
him whom she loved too well, was, a few years ago, still discernible on
a tree in the adjoining park.
It was not by Lady Wentworth alone that the memory of Monmouth was
cherished with idolatrous fondness. His hold on the hearts of the people
lasted till the generation which had seen him had passed away. Ribands,
buckles, and other trifling articles of apparel which he had worn, were
treasured up as precious relics by those who had fought under him at
Sedgemoor. Old men who long survived him desired, when they were dying,
that these trinkets might be buried with them. One button of gold thread
which narrowly escaped this fate may still be seen at a house which
overlooks the field of battle. Nay, such was the devotion of the people
to their unhappy favourite that, in the face of the strongest evidence
by which the fact of a death was ever verified, many continued to
cherish a hope that he was still living, and that he would again appear
in arms. A person, it was said, who was remarkably like Monmouth,
had sacrificed himself to save the Protestant hero. The vulgar long
continued, at every important crisis, to whisper that the time was at
hand, and that King Monmouth would soon show himself. In 1686, a knave
who had pretended to be the Duke, and had levied contributions in
several villages of Wiltshire, was apprehended, and whipped from Newgate
to Tyburn. In 1698, when England had long enjoyed constitutional freedom
under a new dynasty, the son of an innkeeper passed himself on the
yeomanry of Sussex as their beloved Monmouth, and defrauded many who
were by no means of the lowest class. Five hundred pounds were collected
for him. The farmers provided him with a horse. Their wives sent him
baskets of chickens and ducks, and were lavish, it was said, of favours
of a more tender kind; for in gallantry at least, the counterfeit was
a not unworthy representative of the original. When this impostor
was thrown into prison for his fraud, his followers maintained him in
luxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to countenance him when he
was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion last
that, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne,
Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the
man in the iron mask was the Duke of Monmouth. [433]
It is, perhaps, a fact scarcely less remarkable that, to this day,
the inhabitants of some parts of the West of England, when any bill
affecting their interest is before the House of Lords, think themselves
entitled to claim the help of the Duke of Buccleuch, the descendant of
the unfortunate leader for whom their ancestors bled.
The history of Monmouth would alone suffice to refute the Imputation
of inconstancy which is so frequently thrown on the common people. The
common people are sometimes inconstant; for they are human beings. But
that they are inconstant as compared with the educated classes, with
aristocracies, or with princes, may be confidently denied. It would be
easy to name demagogues whose popularity has remained undiminished while
sovereigns and parliaments have withdrawn their confidence from a long
succession of statesmen. When Swift had survived his faculties many
years, the Irish populace still continued to light bonfires on his
birthday, in commemoration of the services which they fancied that he
had rendered to his country when his mind was in full vigour. While
seven administrations were raised to power and hurled from it in
consequence of court intrigues or of changes in the sentiments of the
higher classes of society, the profligate Wilkes retained his hold on
the selections of a rabble whom he pillaged and ridiculed. Politicians,
who, in 1807, had sought to curry favour with George the Third by
defending Caroline of Brunswick, were not ashamed, in 1820, to curry
favour with George the Fourth by persecuting her. But in 1820, as in
1807, the whole body of working men was fanatically devoted to her
cause. So it was with Monmouth. In 1680, he had been adored alike by the
gentry and by the peasantry of the West. In 1685 he came again. To the
gentry he had become an object of aversion: but by the peasantry he
was still loved with a love strong as death, with a love not to be
extinguished by misfortunes or faults, by the flight from Sedgemoor, by
the letter from Ringwood, or by the tears and abject supplications at
Whitehall. The charge which may with justice be brought against the
common people is, not that they are inconstant, but that they almost
invariably choose their favourite so ill that their constancy is a vice
and not a virtue.
While the execution of Monmouth occupied the thoughts of the Londoners,
the counties which had risen against the government were enduring all
that a ferocious soldiery could inflict. Feversham had been summoned to
the court, where honours and rewards which he little deserved awaited
him. He was made a Knight of the Garter and Captain of the first and
most lucrative troop of Life Guards: but Court and City laughed at his
military exploits; and the wit of Buckingham gave forth its last feeble
flash at the expense of the general who had won a battle in bed. [434]
Feversham left in command at Bridgewater Colonel Percy Kirke, a military
adventurer whose vices had been developed by the worst of all schools,
Tangier. Kirke had during some years commanded the garrison of that
town, and had been constantly employed in hostilities against tribes of
foreign barbarians, ignorant of the laws which regulate the warfare of
civilized and Christian nations. Within the ramparts of his fortress
he was a despotic prince. The only check on his tyranny was the fear of
being called to account by a distant and a careless government. He might
therefore safely proceed to the most audacious excesses of rapacity,
licentiousness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless dissoluteness, and
procured by extortion the means of indulgence. No goods could be sold
till Kirke had had the refusal of them. No question of right could be
decided till Kirke had been bribed. Once, merely from a malignant whim,
he staved all the wine in a vintner's cellar. On another occasion he
drove all the Jews from Tangier. Two of them he sent to the Spanish
Inquisition, which forthwith burned them. Under this iron domination
scarce a complaint was heard; for hatred was effectually kept down by
terror. Two persons who had been refractory were found murdered; and it
was universally believed that they had been slain by Kirke's order. When
his soldiers displeased him he flogged them with merciless severity: but
he indemnified them by permitting them to sleep on watch, to reel
drunk about the streets, to rob, beat, and insult the merchants and the
labourers.
When Tangier was abandoned, Kirke returned to England. He still
continued to command his old soldiers, who were designated sometimes as
the First Tangier Regiment, and sometimes as Queen Catharine's Regiment.
As they had been levied for the purpose of waging war on an infidel
nation, they bore on their flag a Christian emblem, the Paschal Lamb.
In allusion to this device, and with a bitterly ironical meaning, these
men, the rudest and most ferocious in the English army, were called
Kirke's Lambs. The regiment, now the second of the line, still
retains this ancient badge, which is however thrown into the shade by
decorations honourably earned in Egypt, in Spain, and in the heart of
Asia. [435]
Such was the captain and such the soldiers who were now let loose on the
people of Somersetshire. From Bridgewater Kirke marched to Taunton. He
was accompanied by two carts filled with wounded rebels whose gashes
had not been dressed, and by a long drove of prisoners on foot, who were
chained two and two Several of these he hanged as soon as he reached
Taunton, without the form of a trial. They were not suffered even to
take leave of their nearest relations. The signpost of the White Hart
Inn served for a gallows. It is said that the work of death went on in
sight of the windows where the officers of the Tangier regiment were
carousing, and that at every health a wretch was turned off. When the
legs of the dying man quivered in the last agony, the colonel ordered
the drums to strike up. He would give the rebels, he said music to
their dancing. The tradition runs that one of the captives was not even
allowed the indulgence of a speedy death. Twice he was suspended from
the signpost, and twice cut down. Twice he was asked if he repented of
his treason, and twice he replied that, if the thing were to do again,
he would do it. Then he was tied up for the last time. So many dead
bodies were quartered that the executioner stood ankle deep in blood.
He was assisted by a poor man whose loyalty was suspected, and who was
compelled to ransom his own life by seething the remains of his friends
in pitch. The peasant who had consented to perform this hideous office
afterwards returned to his plough. But a mark like that of Cain was
upon him. He was known through his village by the horrible name of Tom
Boilman. The rustics long continued to relate that, though he had, by
his sinful and shameful deed, saved himself from the vengeance of the
Lambs, he had not escaped the vengeance of a higher power. In a great
storm he fled for shelter under an oak, and was there struck dead by
lightning. [436]
The number of those who were thus butchered cannot now be ascertained.
Nine were entered in the parish registers of Taunton: but those
registers contained the names of such only as had Christian burial.
Those who were hanged in chains, and those whose heads and limbs were
sent to the neighbouring villages, must have been much more numerous. It
was believed in London, at the time, that Kirke put a hundred captives
to death during the week which followed the battle. [437]
Cruelty, however, was not this man's only passion. He loved money; and
was no novice in the arts of extortion. A safe conduct might be bought
of him for thirty or forty pounds; and such a safe conduct, though of
no value in law, enabled the purchaser to pass the post of the Lambs
without molestation, to reach a seaport, and to fly to a foreign
country. The ships which were bound for New England were crowded at
this juncture with so many fugitives from Sedgemoor that there was great
danger lest the water and provisions should fail. [438]
Kirke was also, in his own coarse and ferocious way, a man of pleasure;
and nothing is more probable than that he employed his power for the
purpose of gratifying his licentious appetites. It was reported that he
conquered the virtue of a beautiful woman by promising to spare the
life of one to whom she was strongly attached, and that, after she had
yielded, he showed her suspended on the gallows the lifeless remains of
him for whose sake she had sacrificed her honour. This tale an impartial
judge must reject. It is unsupported by proof. The earliest authority
for it is a poem written by Pomfret. The respectable historians of that
age, while they speak with just severity of the crimes of Kirke, either
omit all mention of this most atrocious crime, or mention it as a thing
rumoured but not proved. Those who tell the story tell it with such
variations as deprive it of all title to credit. Some lay the scene at
Taunton, some at Exeter. Some make the heroine of the tale a maiden,
some a married woman. The relation for whom the shameful ransom was paid
is described by some as her father, by some as her brother, and by some
as her husband. Lastly the story is one which, long before Kirke was
born, had been told of many other oppressors, and had become a favourite
theme of novelists and dramatists. Two politicians of the fifteenth
century, Rhynsault, the favourite of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and
Oliver le Dain, the favourite of Lewis the Eleventh of France, had been
accused of the same crime. Cintio had taken it for the subject of a
romance. Whetstone had made out of Cintio's narrative the rude play of
Promos and Cassandra; and Shakspeare had borrowed from Whetstone the
plot of the noble tragicomedy of Measure for Measure. As Kirke was not
the first so he was not the last, to whom this excess of wickedness
was popularly imputed. During the reaction which followed the Jacobin
tyranny in France, a very similar charge was brought against Joseph
Lebon, one of the most odious agents of the Committee of Public
Safety, and, after enquiry, was admitted even by his prosecutors to be
unfounded. [439]
The government was dissatisfied with Kirke, not on account of the
barbarity with which he had treated his needy prisoners, but on account
of the interested lenity which he had shown to rich delinquents. [440]
He was soon recalled from the West. A less irregular and more cruel
massacre was about to be perpetrated. The vengeance was deferred during
some weeks. It was thought desirable that the Western Circuit should not
begin till the other circuits had terminated. In the meantime the gaols
of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire were filled with thousands of captives.
The chief friend and protector of these unhappy men in their extremity
was one who abhorred their religious and political opinions, one whose
order they hated, and to whom they had done unprovoked wrong, Bishop
Ken. That good prelate used all his influence to soften the gaolers, and
retrenched from his own episcopal state that he might be able to make
some addition to the coarse and scanty fare of those who had defaced his
beloved Cathedral. His conduct on this occasion was of a piece with his
whole life. His intellect was indeed darkened by many superstitions and
prejudices: but his moral character, when impartially reviewed, sustains
a comparison with any in ecclesiastical history, and seems to approach,
as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Christian
virtue. [441]
His labour of love was of no long duration. A rapid and effectual gaol
delivery was at hand. Early in September, Jeffreys, accompanied by four
other judges, set out on that circuit of which the memory will last as
long as our race and language. The officers who commanded the troops
in the districts through which his course lay had orders to furnish him
with whatever military aid he might require. His ferocious temper needed
no spur; yet a spur was applied. The health and spirits of the Lord
Keeper had given way. He had been deeply mortified by the coldness
of the King and by the insolence of the Chief Justice, and could find
little consolation in looking back on a life, not indeed blackened
by any atrocious crime, but sullied by cowardice, selfishness, and
servility. So deeply was the unhappy man humbled that, when he appeared
for the last time in Westminster Hall he took with him a nosegay to hide
his face, because, as he afterwards owned, he could not bear the eyes of
the bar and of the audience. The prospect of his approaching end seems
to have inspired him with unwonted courage. He determined to discharge
his conscience, requested an audience of the King, spoke earnestly
of the dangers inseparable from violent and arbitrary counsels, and
condemned the lawless cruelties which the soldiers had committed in
Somersetshire. He soon after retired from London to die. He breathed
his last a few days after the Judges set out for the West. It was
immediately notified to Jeffreys that he might expect the Great Seal as
the reward of faithful and vigorous service. [442]
At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission. Hampshire
had not been the theatre of war; but many of the vanquished rebels
had, like their leader, fled thither. Two of them, John Hickes, a
Nonconformist divine, and Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer who had been
outlawed for taking part in the Rye House plot, had sought refuge at
the house of Alice, widow of John Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the Long
Parliament and in the High Court of Justice, had been a commissioner of
the Great Seal in the days of the Commonwealth and had been created
a Lord by Cromwell. The titles given by the Protector had not been
recognised by any government which had ruled England since the downfall
of his house; but they appear to have been often used in conversation
even by Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore commonly known as
the Lady Alice. She was related to many respectable, and to some noble,
families; and she was generally esteemed even by the Tory gentlemen of
her country. For it was well known to them that she had deeply regretted
some violent acts in which her husband had borne a part, that she had
shed bitter tears for Charles the First, and that she had protected and
relieved many Cavaliers in their distress. The same womanly kindness,
which had led her to befriend the Royalists in their time of trouble,
would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a hiding place to the wretched
men who now entreated her to protect them. She took them into her house,
set meat and drink before them, and showed them where they might take
rest. The next morning her dwelling was surrounded by soldiers. Strict
search was made. Hickes was found concealed in the malthouse, and
Nelthorpe in the chimney. If Lady Alice knew her guests to have been
concerned in the insurrection, she was undoubtedly guilty of what in
strictness was a capital crime. For the law of principal and accessory,
as respects high treason, then was, and is to this day, in a state
disgraceful to English jurisprudence. In cases of felony, a distinction
founded on justice and reason, is made between the principal and the
accessory after the fact. He who conceals from justice one whom he knows
to be a murderer is liable to punishment, but not to the punishment of
murder. He, on the other hand, who shelters one whom he knows to be a
traitor is, according to all our jurists, guilty of high treason. It
is unnecessary to point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law which
includes under the same definition, and visits with the same penalty,
offences lying at the opposite extremes of the scale of guilt. The
feeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from the thought of
giving up to a shameful death the rebel who, vanquished, hunted down,
and in mortal agony, begs for a morsel of bread and a cup of water, may
be a weakness; but it is surely a weakness very nearly allied to
virtue, a weakness which, constituted as human beings are, we can hardly
eradicate from the mind without eradicating many noble and benevolent
sentiments. A wise and good ruler may not think it right to sanction
this weakness; but he will generally connive at it, or punish it very
tenderly. In no case will he treat it as a crime of the blackest dye.
Whether Flora Macdonald was justified in concealing the attainted heir
of the Stuarts, whether a brave soldier of our own time was justified in
assisting the escape of Lavalette, are questions on which casuists
may differ: but to class such actions with the crimes of Guy Faux and
Fieschi is an outrage to humanity and common sense. Such, however, is
the classification of our law. It is evident that nothing but a lenient
administration could make such a state of the law endurable. And it is
just to say that, during many generations, no English government,
save one, has treated with rigour persons guilty merely of harbouring
defeated and flying insurgents. To women especially has been granted,
by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging in the midst of
havoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the most endearing of
all their charms. Since the beginning of the great civil war, numerous
rebels, some of them far more important than Hickes or Nelthorpe, have
been protected from the severity of victorious governments by female
adroitness and generosity. But no English ruler who has been thus
baffled, the savage and implacable James alone excepted, has had the
barbarity even to think of putting a lady to a cruel and shameful death
for so venial and amiable a transgression.
Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of destroying
Alice Lisle. She could not, according to the doctrine laid down by the
highest authority, be convicted till after the conviction of the rebels
whom she had harboured. [443] She was, however, set to the bar before
either Hickes or Nelthorpe had been tried. It was no easy matter in such
a case to obtain a verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated.
The jury, consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire, shrank
from the thought of sending a fellow creature to the stake for conduct
which seemed deserving rather of praise than of blame. Jeffreys was
beside himself with fury. This was the first case of treason on the
circuit; and there seemed to be a strong probability that his prey would
escape him. He stormed, cursed, and swore in language which no wellbred
man would have used at a race or a cockfight. One witness named Dunne,
partly from concern for Lady Alice, and partly from fright at the
threats and maledictions of the Chief Justice, entirely lost his head,
and at last stood silent. "Oh how hard the truth is," said Jeffreys, "to
come out of a lying Presbyterian knave. " The witness, after a pause
of some minutes, stammered a few unmeaning words. "Was there ever,"
exclaimed the judge, with an oath, "was there ever such a villain on
the face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a God? Dost thou
believe in hell fire. Of all the witnesses that I ever met with I never
saw thy fellow. " Still the poor man, scared out of his senses, remained
mute; and again Jeffreys burst forth. "I hope, gentlemen of the jury,
that you take notice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How can
one help abhorring both these men and their religion? A Turk is a saint
to such a fellow as this. A Pagan would be ashamed of such villany. Oh
blessed Jesus! What a generation of vipers do we live among!
" "I cannot
tell what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne. The judge again broke forth
into a volley of oaths. "Was there ever," he cried, "such an impudent
rascal? Hold the candle to him that we may see his brazen face. You,
gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown, see that an information
for perjury be preferred against this fellow. " After the witnesses had
been thus handled, the Lady Alice was called on for her defence. She
began by saying, what may possibly have been true, that though she
knew Hickes to be in trouble when she took him in, she did not know or
suspect that he had been concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine,
a man of peace. It had, therefore, never occurred to her that he could
have borne arms against the government; and she had supposed that he
wished to conceal himself because warrants were out against him for
field preaching. The Chief Justice began to storm. "But I will tell you.
There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians but,
one way or another, had a hand in the rebellion. Presbytery has all
manner of villany in it. Nothing but Presbytery could have made Dunne
such a rogue. Show me a Presbyterian; and I'll show thee a lying knave. "
He summed up in the same style, declaimed during an hour against Whigs
and Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the prisoner's husband had
borne a part in the death of Charles the First, a fact which had not
been proved by any testimony, and which, if it had been proved, would
have been utterly irrelevant to the issue. The jury retired, and
remained long in consultation. The judge grew impatient. He could not
conceive, he said, how, in so plain a case, they should even have
left the box. He sent a messenger to tell them that, if they did not
instantly return, he would adjourn the court and lock them up all night.
Thus put to the torture, they came, but came to say that they doubted
whether the charge had been made out. Jeffreys expostulated with them
vehemently, and, after another consultation, they gave a reluctant
verdict of Guilty.
On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jeffreys gave
directions that Alice Lisle should be burned alive that very afternoon.
This excess of barbarity moved the pity and indignation even of the
class which was most devoted to the crown. The clergy of Winchester
Cathedral remonstrated with the Chief Justice, who, brutal as he was,
was not mad enough to risk a quarrel on such a subject with a body so
much respected by the Tory party. He consented to put off the execution
five days. During that time the friends of the prisoner besought James
to be merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham, whose
recent victory had increased his influence at court, and who, it is
said, had been bribed to take the compassionate side, spoke in her
favour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law, pleaded her cause. But all
was vain. The utmost that could be obtained was that her sentence
should be commuted from burning to beheading. She was put to death on a
scaffold in the marketplace of Winchester, and underwent her fate with
serene courage. [444]
In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day following
her execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the principal town of the
county in which Monmouth had landed; and the judicial massacre began.
The court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; and
this innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose.
It was also rumoured that, when the clergyman who preached the assize
sermon enforced the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge was
distorted by an ominous grin. These things made men augur ill of what
was to follow. [445]
More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work seemed
heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light. He let it be
understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was to
plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons, who put themselves on their country
and were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. The
remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two
received sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire
amounted to seventy-four.
From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barely
grazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore, comparatively few
persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire, the chief seat of the
rebellion, had been reserved for the last and most fearful vengeance.
In this county two hundred and thirty-three prisoners were in a few
days hanged, drawn, and quartered. At every spot where two roads met,
on every marketplace, on the green of every large village which had
furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind,
or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the
traveller sick with horror. In many parishes the peasantry could not
assemble in the house of God without seeing the ghastly face of a
neighbour grinning at them over the porch. The Chief Justice was all
himself. His spirits rose higher and higher as the work went on. He
laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that many thought him
drunk from morning to night. But in him it was not easy to distinguish
the madness produced by evil passions from the madness produced by
brandy. A prisoner affirmed that the witnesses who appeared against him
were not entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, and
another a prostitute. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge, "to
reflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see thee already
with the halter round thy neck. " Another produced testimony that he was
a good Protestant. "Protestant! " said Jeffreys; "you mean Presbyterian.
I'll hold you a wager of it. I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles. "
One wretched man moved the pity even of bitter Tories. "My Lord,"
they said, "this poor creature is on the parish. " "Do not trouble
yourselves," said the Judge, "I will ease the parish of the burden. " It
was not only against the prisoners that his fury broke forth. Gentlemen
and noblemen of high consideration and stainless loyalty, who ventured
to bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance, were almost sure
to receive what he called, in the coarse dialect which he had learned in
the pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick with the rough side of his tongue.
Lord Stawell, a Tory peer, who could not conceal his horror at the
remorseless manner in which his poor neighbours were butchered, was
punished by having a corpse suspended in chains at his park gate. [446]
In such spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told
over the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of Somersetshire.
Within the last forty years, peasants, in some districts, well knew the
accursed spots, and passed them unwillingly after sunset. [447]
Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his
predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the number
of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very
much exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have been
put to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of
1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more
formidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has
not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or
after the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of
clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together will
appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgraced
the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on
this circuit was three hundred and twenty. [448]
Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had been
generally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of blameless
life, and of high religious profession. They were regarded by
themselves, and by a large proportion of their neighbours, not as
wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with blood the truth of the
Protestant religion. Very few of the convicts professed any repentance
for what they had done. Many, animated by the old Puritan spirit, met
death, not merely with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain
that the ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt
of rebellion and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim of
the King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of the
clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved the bitter
scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed hymns in the
dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang while
they were undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Zion
and to make war on Babylon, would set up his standard, would blow his
trumpet, and would requite his foes tenfold for all the evil which had
been inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noted
down: their farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way,
with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious
supplement to the Marian martyrology. [449]
A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired officer
of the parliamentary army, and one of those zealots who would own no
king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor. His arm had been
frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle; and, as no surgeon was
at hand, the stout old soldier amputated it himself. He was carried
up to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make no
submission. "I am an aged man," he said, "and what remains to me of life
is not worth a falsehood or a baseness. I have always been a republican;
and I am so still. " He was sent back to the West and hanged. The people
remarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to
the gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not
that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way sword
in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals.
"Stop, gentlemen," he cried: "let me go on foot. There is more in this
than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not
see. " He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a
smile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist
and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology
for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but one arm. "
[450]
Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young Templar
of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an agreeable provincial
town proud of its taste and refinement, was regarded by all as the
model of a fine gentleman. Great interest was made to save him. It was
believed through the West of England that he was engaged to a young lady
of gentle blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at
the feet of Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from
him with a jest so hideous that to repeat it would be an offence
against decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and
courageously. [451]
A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant brothers,
William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young, handsome, accomplished,
and well connected. Their maternal grandfather was named Kiffin. He was
one of the first merchants in London, and was generally considered as
the head of the Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling
on the trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather,"
he said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you. " The poor lad, who
was only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and fortitude,
that an officer of the army who attended the execution, and who had made
himself remarkable by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, and
said, "I do not believe that my Lord Chief Justice himself could be
proof against this. " Hopes were entertained that Benjamin would be
pardoned. One victim of tender years was surely enough for one house to
furnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. The
truth was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations,
and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated
intercessors pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was allowed
for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to Whitehall
with a petition. Many courtiers wished her success; and Churchill, among
whose numerous faults cruelty had no place, obtained admittance for her.
"I wish well to your suit with all my heart," he said, as they stood
together in the antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes.
This marble,"--and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece,--"is not
harder than the King. " The prediction proved true. James was inexorable.
Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst lamentations in
which the soldiers who kept guard round the gallows could not refrain
from joining. [452]
Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than
some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable to
bring home the charge of high treason were convicted of misdemeanours,
and were sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that which Oates
had undergone. A woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered by
half the women in the districts where the war had raged, was condemned
to be whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. She
suffered part of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to London;
but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers, with the humane
connivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the responsibility
of sparing her any further torture. A still more frightful sentence was
passed on a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious words. He
was, as usual, interrupted in his defence by ribaldry and scurrility
from the judgment seat. "You are a rebel; and all your family have been
rebels Since Adam. They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses
with you. " The sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven
years, and should, during that period, be flogged through every market
town in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst into
tears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My Lord,"
said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many market towns in
our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortnight for seven
years. " "If he is a young man," said Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue.
Ladies, you do not know the villain as well as I do. The punishment is
not half bad enough for him. All the interest in England shall not alter
it. " Tutchin in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity,
that he might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this
conjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it seemed
highly improbable that the sentence would ever be executed, the Chief
Justice consented to remit it, in return for a bribe which reduced the
prisoner to poverty. The temper of Tutchin, not originally very mild,
was exasperated to madness by what he had undergone. He lived to be
known as one of the most acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the
House of Stuart and of the Tory party. [453]
The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and
forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffered
death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed
favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts
should be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be
emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should
be some West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed for
the purpose of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England or
New Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them
and a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was
therefore determined that they should be sent to colonies where a
Puritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a labourer born
in the temperate zone could hope to enjoy little health. Such was the
state of the slave market that these bondmen, long as was the passage,
and sickly as they were likely to prove, were still very valuable. It
was estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average, each of them, after all
charges were paid, would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There was
therefore much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the West
conceived that they had, by their exertions and sufferings during the
insurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which had been
eagerly snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The courtiers,
however, were victorious. [454]
The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who are now
carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best information which
is at present accessible that more than one fifth of those who were
shipped were flung to the sharks before the end of the voyage. The human
cargoes were stowed close in the holds of small vessels. So little space
was allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented by
unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on one
another. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was
constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses.
In the dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease
and death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one vessel,
twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage was
performed with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived at their
house of bondage were mere skeletons. During some weeks coarse biscuit
and fetid water had been doled out to them in such scanty measure that
any one of them could easily have consumed the ration which was assigned
to five. They were, therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whom
they had been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling
them. [455]
Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death, and
of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the tropical sun,
was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By law
a subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this law
was enforced after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once cruel
and ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of the
labouring men whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon by
the agents of the Treasury to explain what had become of a basket, of a
goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of beans, of
a truss of hay. [456] While the humbler retainers of the government were
pillaging the families of the slaughtered peasants, the Chief Justice
was fast accumulating a fortune out of the plunder of a higher class of
Whigs. He traded largely in pardons. His most lucrative transaction of
this kind was with a gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that
Prideaux had not been in arms against the government; and it is probable
that his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his
father, an eminent lawyer who had been high in office under the
Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the crown.
Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they would bear
evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay long in gaol and
at length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to pay fifteen
thousand pounds for his liberation. This great sum was received by
Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which the people gave the name
of Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased with the price
of innocent blood. [457]
He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of parasites
who were in the habit of drinking and laughing with him. The office
of these men was to drive hard bargains with convicts under the strong
terrors of death, and with parents trembling for the lives of children.
A portion of the spoil was abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To one
of his boon companions, it is said he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor
across the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse to any
intercession except that of his creatures, for he guarded his profitable
monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even suspected that he sent
some persons to the gibbet solely because they had applied for the royal
clemency through channels independent of him. [458]
Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of this
traffic. The ladies of the Queen's household distinguished themselves
preeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of the disgrace which
they incurred falls on their mistress: for it was solely on account of
the relation in which they stood to her that they were able to enrich
themselves by so odious a trade; and there can be no question that
she might with a word or a look have restrained them. But in truth she
encouraged them by her evil example, if not by her express approbation.
She seems to have been one of that large class of persons who bear
adversity better than prosperity. While her husband was a subject and an
exile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent danger of being
deprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her manners
conciliated the kindness even of those who most abhorred her religion.
But when her good fortune came her good nature disappeared. The meek and
affable Duchess turned out an ungracious and haughty Queen. [459] The
misfortunes which she subsequently endured have made her an object of
some interest; but that interest would be not a little heightened if it
could be shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or even
tried to save, one single victim from the most frightful proscription
that England has ever seen. Unhappily the only request that she is known
to have preferred touching the rebels was that a hundred of those who
were sentenced to transportation might be given to her. [460] The profit
which she cleared on the cargo, after making large allowance for those
who died of hunger and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated
at less than a thousand guineas.
stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck was not severed,
and the body continued to move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the
crowd. Ketch flung down the axe with a curse. "I cannot do it," he said;
"my heart fails me. " "Take up the axe, man," cried the sheriff. "Fling
him over the rails," roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two
more blows extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used
to separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd was wrought up to
such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being torn
in pieces, and was conveyed away under a strong guard. [431]
In the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke's blood; for
by a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a martyr who had
died for the Protestant religion. The head and body were placed in a
coffin covered with black velvet, and were laid privately under the
communion table of Saint Peter's Chapel in the Tower. Within four years
the pavement of the chancel was again disturbed, and hard by the remains
of Monmouth were laid the remains of Jeffreys. In truth there is no
sadder spot on the earth than that little cemetery. Death is there
associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with genius and
virtue, with public veneration and imperishable renown; not, as in
our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most
endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is
darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of
implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice
of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted
fame. Thither have been carried, through successive ages, by the rude
hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the bleeding relics
of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties,
the oracles of senates, and the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne,
before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled corpse of
Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector of
the realm, reposes there by the brother whom he murdered. There has
mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester
and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better
age and to have died in a better cause. There are laid John Dudley,
Duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and Thomas Cromwell, Earl of
Essex, Lord High Treasurer. There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature
and fortune had lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour,
grace, genius, royal favour, popular applause, conducted to an early
and ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the great house
of Howard, Thomas, fourth Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh Earl of
Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and aspiring
statesmen, lie more delicate sufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, the last
of the proud name of Plantagenet; and those two fair Queens who perished
by the jealous rage of Henry. Such was the dust with which the dust of
Monmouth mingled. [432]
Yet a few months, and the quiet village of Toddington, in Bedfordshire,
witnessed a still sadder funeral. Near that village stood an ancient
and stately hall, the seat of the Wentworths. The transept of the parish
church had long been their burial place. To that burial place, in the
spring which followed the death of Monmouth, was borne the coffin of the
young Baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede. Her family reared a sumptuous
mausoleum over her remains: but a less costly memorial of her was long
contemplated with far deeper interest. Her name, carved by the hand of
him whom she loved too well, was, a few years ago, still discernible on
a tree in the adjoining park.
It was not by Lady Wentworth alone that the memory of Monmouth was
cherished with idolatrous fondness. His hold on the hearts of the people
lasted till the generation which had seen him had passed away. Ribands,
buckles, and other trifling articles of apparel which he had worn, were
treasured up as precious relics by those who had fought under him at
Sedgemoor. Old men who long survived him desired, when they were dying,
that these trinkets might be buried with them. One button of gold thread
which narrowly escaped this fate may still be seen at a house which
overlooks the field of battle. Nay, such was the devotion of the people
to their unhappy favourite that, in the face of the strongest evidence
by which the fact of a death was ever verified, many continued to
cherish a hope that he was still living, and that he would again appear
in arms. A person, it was said, who was remarkably like Monmouth,
had sacrificed himself to save the Protestant hero. The vulgar long
continued, at every important crisis, to whisper that the time was at
hand, and that King Monmouth would soon show himself. In 1686, a knave
who had pretended to be the Duke, and had levied contributions in
several villages of Wiltshire, was apprehended, and whipped from Newgate
to Tyburn. In 1698, when England had long enjoyed constitutional freedom
under a new dynasty, the son of an innkeeper passed himself on the
yeomanry of Sussex as their beloved Monmouth, and defrauded many who
were by no means of the lowest class. Five hundred pounds were collected
for him. The farmers provided him with a horse. Their wives sent him
baskets of chickens and ducks, and were lavish, it was said, of favours
of a more tender kind; for in gallantry at least, the counterfeit was
a not unworthy representative of the original. When this impostor
was thrown into prison for his fraud, his followers maintained him in
luxury. Several of them appeared at the bar to countenance him when he
was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion last
that, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne,
Voltaire thought it necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the
man in the iron mask was the Duke of Monmouth. [433]
It is, perhaps, a fact scarcely less remarkable that, to this day,
the inhabitants of some parts of the West of England, when any bill
affecting their interest is before the House of Lords, think themselves
entitled to claim the help of the Duke of Buccleuch, the descendant of
the unfortunate leader for whom their ancestors bled.
The history of Monmouth would alone suffice to refute the Imputation
of inconstancy which is so frequently thrown on the common people. The
common people are sometimes inconstant; for they are human beings. But
that they are inconstant as compared with the educated classes, with
aristocracies, or with princes, may be confidently denied. It would be
easy to name demagogues whose popularity has remained undiminished while
sovereigns and parliaments have withdrawn their confidence from a long
succession of statesmen. When Swift had survived his faculties many
years, the Irish populace still continued to light bonfires on his
birthday, in commemoration of the services which they fancied that he
had rendered to his country when his mind was in full vigour. While
seven administrations were raised to power and hurled from it in
consequence of court intrigues or of changes in the sentiments of the
higher classes of society, the profligate Wilkes retained his hold on
the selections of a rabble whom he pillaged and ridiculed. Politicians,
who, in 1807, had sought to curry favour with George the Third by
defending Caroline of Brunswick, were not ashamed, in 1820, to curry
favour with George the Fourth by persecuting her. But in 1820, as in
1807, the whole body of working men was fanatically devoted to her
cause. So it was with Monmouth. In 1680, he had been adored alike by the
gentry and by the peasantry of the West. In 1685 he came again. To the
gentry he had become an object of aversion: but by the peasantry he
was still loved with a love strong as death, with a love not to be
extinguished by misfortunes or faults, by the flight from Sedgemoor, by
the letter from Ringwood, or by the tears and abject supplications at
Whitehall. The charge which may with justice be brought against the
common people is, not that they are inconstant, but that they almost
invariably choose their favourite so ill that their constancy is a vice
and not a virtue.
While the execution of Monmouth occupied the thoughts of the Londoners,
the counties which had risen against the government were enduring all
that a ferocious soldiery could inflict. Feversham had been summoned to
the court, where honours and rewards which he little deserved awaited
him. He was made a Knight of the Garter and Captain of the first and
most lucrative troop of Life Guards: but Court and City laughed at his
military exploits; and the wit of Buckingham gave forth its last feeble
flash at the expense of the general who had won a battle in bed. [434]
Feversham left in command at Bridgewater Colonel Percy Kirke, a military
adventurer whose vices had been developed by the worst of all schools,
Tangier. Kirke had during some years commanded the garrison of that
town, and had been constantly employed in hostilities against tribes of
foreign barbarians, ignorant of the laws which regulate the warfare of
civilized and Christian nations. Within the ramparts of his fortress
he was a despotic prince. The only check on his tyranny was the fear of
being called to account by a distant and a careless government. He might
therefore safely proceed to the most audacious excesses of rapacity,
licentiousness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless dissoluteness, and
procured by extortion the means of indulgence. No goods could be sold
till Kirke had had the refusal of them. No question of right could be
decided till Kirke had been bribed. Once, merely from a malignant whim,
he staved all the wine in a vintner's cellar. On another occasion he
drove all the Jews from Tangier. Two of them he sent to the Spanish
Inquisition, which forthwith burned them. Under this iron domination
scarce a complaint was heard; for hatred was effectually kept down by
terror. Two persons who had been refractory were found murdered; and it
was universally believed that they had been slain by Kirke's order. When
his soldiers displeased him he flogged them with merciless severity: but
he indemnified them by permitting them to sleep on watch, to reel
drunk about the streets, to rob, beat, and insult the merchants and the
labourers.
When Tangier was abandoned, Kirke returned to England. He still
continued to command his old soldiers, who were designated sometimes as
the First Tangier Regiment, and sometimes as Queen Catharine's Regiment.
As they had been levied for the purpose of waging war on an infidel
nation, they bore on their flag a Christian emblem, the Paschal Lamb.
In allusion to this device, and with a bitterly ironical meaning, these
men, the rudest and most ferocious in the English army, were called
Kirke's Lambs. The regiment, now the second of the line, still
retains this ancient badge, which is however thrown into the shade by
decorations honourably earned in Egypt, in Spain, and in the heart of
Asia. [435]
Such was the captain and such the soldiers who were now let loose on the
people of Somersetshire. From Bridgewater Kirke marched to Taunton. He
was accompanied by two carts filled with wounded rebels whose gashes
had not been dressed, and by a long drove of prisoners on foot, who were
chained two and two Several of these he hanged as soon as he reached
Taunton, without the form of a trial. They were not suffered even to
take leave of their nearest relations. The signpost of the White Hart
Inn served for a gallows. It is said that the work of death went on in
sight of the windows where the officers of the Tangier regiment were
carousing, and that at every health a wretch was turned off. When the
legs of the dying man quivered in the last agony, the colonel ordered
the drums to strike up. He would give the rebels, he said music to
their dancing. The tradition runs that one of the captives was not even
allowed the indulgence of a speedy death. Twice he was suspended from
the signpost, and twice cut down. Twice he was asked if he repented of
his treason, and twice he replied that, if the thing were to do again,
he would do it. Then he was tied up for the last time. So many dead
bodies were quartered that the executioner stood ankle deep in blood.
He was assisted by a poor man whose loyalty was suspected, and who was
compelled to ransom his own life by seething the remains of his friends
in pitch. The peasant who had consented to perform this hideous office
afterwards returned to his plough. But a mark like that of Cain was
upon him. He was known through his village by the horrible name of Tom
Boilman. The rustics long continued to relate that, though he had, by
his sinful and shameful deed, saved himself from the vengeance of the
Lambs, he had not escaped the vengeance of a higher power. In a great
storm he fled for shelter under an oak, and was there struck dead by
lightning. [436]
The number of those who were thus butchered cannot now be ascertained.
Nine were entered in the parish registers of Taunton: but those
registers contained the names of such only as had Christian burial.
Those who were hanged in chains, and those whose heads and limbs were
sent to the neighbouring villages, must have been much more numerous. It
was believed in London, at the time, that Kirke put a hundred captives
to death during the week which followed the battle. [437]
Cruelty, however, was not this man's only passion. He loved money; and
was no novice in the arts of extortion. A safe conduct might be bought
of him for thirty or forty pounds; and such a safe conduct, though of
no value in law, enabled the purchaser to pass the post of the Lambs
without molestation, to reach a seaport, and to fly to a foreign
country. The ships which were bound for New England were crowded at
this juncture with so many fugitives from Sedgemoor that there was great
danger lest the water and provisions should fail. [438]
Kirke was also, in his own coarse and ferocious way, a man of pleasure;
and nothing is more probable than that he employed his power for the
purpose of gratifying his licentious appetites. It was reported that he
conquered the virtue of a beautiful woman by promising to spare the
life of one to whom she was strongly attached, and that, after she had
yielded, he showed her suspended on the gallows the lifeless remains of
him for whose sake she had sacrificed her honour. This tale an impartial
judge must reject. It is unsupported by proof. The earliest authority
for it is a poem written by Pomfret. The respectable historians of that
age, while they speak with just severity of the crimes of Kirke, either
omit all mention of this most atrocious crime, or mention it as a thing
rumoured but not proved. Those who tell the story tell it with such
variations as deprive it of all title to credit. Some lay the scene at
Taunton, some at Exeter. Some make the heroine of the tale a maiden,
some a married woman. The relation for whom the shameful ransom was paid
is described by some as her father, by some as her brother, and by some
as her husband. Lastly the story is one which, long before Kirke was
born, had been told of many other oppressors, and had become a favourite
theme of novelists and dramatists. Two politicians of the fifteenth
century, Rhynsault, the favourite of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and
Oliver le Dain, the favourite of Lewis the Eleventh of France, had been
accused of the same crime. Cintio had taken it for the subject of a
romance. Whetstone had made out of Cintio's narrative the rude play of
Promos and Cassandra; and Shakspeare had borrowed from Whetstone the
plot of the noble tragicomedy of Measure for Measure. As Kirke was not
the first so he was not the last, to whom this excess of wickedness
was popularly imputed. During the reaction which followed the Jacobin
tyranny in France, a very similar charge was brought against Joseph
Lebon, one of the most odious agents of the Committee of Public
Safety, and, after enquiry, was admitted even by his prosecutors to be
unfounded. [439]
The government was dissatisfied with Kirke, not on account of the
barbarity with which he had treated his needy prisoners, but on account
of the interested lenity which he had shown to rich delinquents. [440]
He was soon recalled from the West. A less irregular and more cruel
massacre was about to be perpetrated. The vengeance was deferred during
some weeks. It was thought desirable that the Western Circuit should not
begin till the other circuits had terminated. In the meantime the gaols
of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire were filled with thousands of captives.
The chief friend and protector of these unhappy men in their extremity
was one who abhorred their religious and political opinions, one whose
order they hated, and to whom they had done unprovoked wrong, Bishop
Ken. That good prelate used all his influence to soften the gaolers, and
retrenched from his own episcopal state that he might be able to make
some addition to the coarse and scanty fare of those who had defaced his
beloved Cathedral. His conduct on this occasion was of a piece with his
whole life. His intellect was indeed darkened by many superstitions and
prejudices: but his moral character, when impartially reviewed, sustains
a comparison with any in ecclesiastical history, and seems to approach,
as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Christian
virtue. [441]
His labour of love was of no long duration. A rapid and effectual gaol
delivery was at hand. Early in September, Jeffreys, accompanied by four
other judges, set out on that circuit of which the memory will last as
long as our race and language. The officers who commanded the troops
in the districts through which his course lay had orders to furnish him
with whatever military aid he might require. His ferocious temper needed
no spur; yet a spur was applied. The health and spirits of the Lord
Keeper had given way. He had been deeply mortified by the coldness
of the King and by the insolence of the Chief Justice, and could find
little consolation in looking back on a life, not indeed blackened
by any atrocious crime, but sullied by cowardice, selfishness, and
servility. So deeply was the unhappy man humbled that, when he appeared
for the last time in Westminster Hall he took with him a nosegay to hide
his face, because, as he afterwards owned, he could not bear the eyes of
the bar and of the audience. The prospect of his approaching end seems
to have inspired him with unwonted courage. He determined to discharge
his conscience, requested an audience of the King, spoke earnestly
of the dangers inseparable from violent and arbitrary counsels, and
condemned the lawless cruelties which the soldiers had committed in
Somersetshire. He soon after retired from London to die. He breathed
his last a few days after the Judges set out for the West. It was
immediately notified to Jeffreys that he might expect the Great Seal as
the reward of faithful and vigorous service. [442]
At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission. Hampshire
had not been the theatre of war; but many of the vanquished rebels
had, like their leader, fled thither. Two of them, John Hickes, a
Nonconformist divine, and Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer who had been
outlawed for taking part in the Rye House plot, had sought refuge at
the house of Alice, widow of John Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the Long
Parliament and in the High Court of Justice, had been a commissioner of
the Great Seal in the days of the Commonwealth and had been created
a Lord by Cromwell. The titles given by the Protector had not been
recognised by any government which had ruled England since the downfall
of his house; but they appear to have been often used in conversation
even by Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore commonly known as
the Lady Alice. She was related to many respectable, and to some noble,
families; and she was generally esteemed even by the Tory gentlemen of
her country. For it was well known to them that she had deeply regretted
some violent acts in which her husband had borne a part, that she had
shed bitter tears for Charles the First, and that she had protected and
relieved many Cavaliers in their distress. The same womanly kindness,
which had led her to befriend the Royalists in their time of trouble,
would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a hiding place to the wretched
men who now entreated her to protect them. She took them into her house,
set meat and drink before them, and showed them where they might take
rest. The next morning her dwelling was surrounded by soldiers. Strict
search was made. Hickes was found concealed in the malthouse, and
Nelthorpe in the chimney. If Lady Alice knew her guests to have been
concerned in the insurrection, she was undoubtedly guilty of what in
strictness was a capital crime. For the law of principal and accessory,
as respects high treason, then was, and is to this day, in a state
disgraceful to English jurisprudence. In cases of felony, a distinction
founded on justice and reason, is made between the principal and the
accessory after the fact. He who conceals from justice one whom he knows
to be a murderer is liable to punishment, but not to the punishment of
murder. He, on the other hand, who shelters one whom he knows to be a
traitor is, according to all our jurists, guilty of high treason. It
is unnecessary to point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law which
includes under the same definition, and visits with the same penalty,
offences lying at the opposite extremes of the scale of guilt. The
feeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from the thought of
giving up to a shameful death the rebel who, vanquished, hunted down,
and in mortal agony, begs for a morsel of bread and a cup of water, may
be a weakness; but it is surely a weakness very nearly allied to
virtue, a weakness which, constituted as human beings are, we can hardly
eradicate from the mind without eradicating many noble and benevolent
sentiments. A wise and good ruler may not think it right to sanction
this weakness; but he will generally connive at it, or punish it very
tenderly. In no case will he treat it as a crime of the blackest dye.
Whether Flora Macdonald was justified in concealing the attainted heir
of the Stuarts, whether a brave soldier of our own time was justified in
assisting the escape of Lavalette, are questions on which casuists
may differ: but to class such actions with the crimes of Guy Faux and
Fieschi is an outrage to humanity and common sense. Such, however, is
the classification of our law. It is evident that nothing but a lenient
administration could make such a state of the law endurable. And it is
just to say that, during many generations, no English government,
save one, has treated with rigour persons guilty merely of harbouring
defeated and flying insurgents. To women especially has been granted,
by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging in the midst of
havoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the most endearing of
all their charms. Since the beginning of the great civil war, numerous
rebels, some of them far more important than Hickes or Nelthorpe, have
been protected from the severity of victorious governments by female
adroitness and generosity. But no English ruler who has been thus
baffled, the savage and implacable James alone excepted, has had the
barbarity even to think of putting a lady to a cruel and shameful death
for so venial and amiable a transgression.
Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of destroying
Alice Lisle. She could not, according to the doctrine laid down by the
highest authority, be convicted till after the conviction of the rebels
whom she had harboured. [443] She was, however, set to the bar before
either Hickes or Nelthorpe had been tried. It was no easy matter in such
a case to obtain a verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated.
The jury, consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire, shrank
from the thought of sending a fellow creature to the stake for conduct
which seemed deserving rather of praise than of blame. Jeffreys was
beside himself with fury. This was the first case of treason on the
circuit; and there seemed to be a strong probability that his prey would
escape him. He stormed, cursed, and swore in language which no wellbred
man would have used at a race or a cockfight. One witness named Dunne,
partly from concern for Lady Alice, and partly from fright at the
threats and maledictions of the Chief Justice, entirely lost his head,
and at last stood silent. "Oh how hard the truth is," said Jeffreys, "to
come out of a lying Presbyterian knave. " The witness, after a pause
of some minutes, stammered a few unmeaning words. "Was there ever,"
exclaimed the judge, with an oath, "was there ever such a villain on
the face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a God? Dost thou
believe in hell fire. Of all the witnesses that I ever met with I never
saw thy fellow. " Still the poor man, scared out of his senses, remained
mute; and again Jeffreys burst forth. "I hope, gentlemen of the jury,
that you take notice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How can
one help abhorring both these men and their religion? A Turk is a saint
to such a fellow as this. A Pagan would be ashamed of such villany. Oh
blessed Jesus! What a generation of vipers do we live among!
" "I cannot
tell what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne. The judge again broke forth
into a volley of oaths. "Was there ever," he cried, "such an impudent
rascal? Hold the candle to him that we may see his brazen face. You,
gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown, see that an information
for perjury be preferred against this fellow. " After the witnesses had
been thus handled, the Lady Alice was called on for her defence. She
began by saying, what may possibly have been true, that though she
knew Hickes to be in trouble when she took him in, she did not know or
suspect that he had been concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine,
a man of peace. It had, therefore, never occurred to her that he could
have borne arms against the government; and she had supposed that he
wished to conceal himself because warrants were out against him for
field preaching. The Chief Justice began to storm. "But I will tell you.
There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians but,
one way or another, had a hand in the rebellion. Presbytery has all
manner of villany in it. Nothing but Presbytery could have made Dunne
such a rogue. Show me a Presbyterian; and I'll show thee a lying knave. "
He summed up in the same style, declaimed during an hour against Whigs
and Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the prisoner's husband had
borne a part in the death of Charles the First, a fact which had not
been proved by any testimony, and which, if it had been proved, would
have been utterly irrelevant to the issue. The jury retired, and
remained long in consultation. The judge grew impatient. He could not
conceive, he said, how, in so plain a case, they should even have
left the box. He sent a messenger to tell them that, if they did not
instantly return, he would adjourn the court and lock them up all night.
Thus put to the torture, they came, but came to say that they doubted
whether the charge had been made out. Jeffreys expostulated with them
vehemently, and, after another consultation, they gave a reluctant
verdict of Guilty.
On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jeffreys gave
directions that Alice Lisle should be burned alive that very afternoon.
This excess of barbarity moved the pity and indignation even of the
class which was most devoted to the crown. The clergy of Winchester
Cathedral remonstrated with the Chief Justice, who, brutal as he was,
was not mad enough to risk a quarrel on such a subject with a body so
much respected by the Tory party. He consented to put off the execution
five days. During that time the friends of the prisoner besought James
to be merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham, whose
recent victory had increased his influence at court, and who, it is
said, had been bribed to take the compassionate side, spoke in her
favour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law, pleaded her cause. But all
was vain. The utmost that could be obtained was that her sentence
should be commuted from burning to beheading. She was put to death on a
scaffold in the marketplace of Winchester, and underwent her fate with
serene courage. [444]
In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day following
her execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the principal town of the
county in which Monmouth had landed; and the judicial massacre began.
The court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; and
this innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose.
It was also rumoured that, when the clergyman who preached the assize
sermon enforced the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge was
distorted by an ominous grin. These things made men augur ill of what
was to follow. [445]
More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work seemed
heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light. He let it be
understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was to
plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons, who put themselves on their country
and were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. The
remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two
received sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire
amounted to seventy-four.
From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barely
grazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore, comparatively few
persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire, the chief seat of the
rebellion, had been reserved for the last and most fearful vengeance.
In this county two hundred and thirty-three prisoners were in a few
days hanged, drawn, and quartered. At every spot where two roads met,
on every marketplace, on the green of every large village which had
furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind,
or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the
traveller sick with horror. In many parishes the peasantry could not
assemble in the house of God without seeing the ghastly face of a
neighbour grinning at them over the porch. The Chief Justice was all
himself. His spirits rose higher and higher as the work went on. He
laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that many thought him
drunk from morning to night. But in him it was not easy to distinguish
the madness produced by evil passions from the madness produced by
brandy. A prisoner affirmed that the witnesses who appeared against him
were not entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, and
another a prostitute. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge, "to
reflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see thee already
with the halter round thy neck. " Another produced testimony that he was
a good Protestant. "Protestant! " said Jeffreys; "you mean Presbyterian.
I'll hold you a wager of it. I can smell a Presbyterian forty miles. "
One wretched man moved the pity even of bitter Tories. "My Lord,"
they said, "this poor creature is on the parish. " "Do not trouble
yourselves," said the Judge, "I will ease the parish of the burden. " It
was not only against the prisoners that his fury broke forth. Gentlemen
and noblemen of high consideration and stainless loyalty, who ventured
to bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance, were almost sure
to receive what he called, in the coarse dialect which he had learned in
the pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick with the rough side of his tongue.
Lord Stawell, a Tory peer, who could not conceal his horror at the
remorseless manner in which his poor neighbours were butchered, was
punished by having a corpse suspended in chains at his park gate. [446]
In such spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told
over the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of Somersetshire.
Within the last forty years, peasants, in some districts, well knew the
accursed spots, and passed them unwillingly after sunset. [447]
Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his
predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the number
of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very
much exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have been
put to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of
1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more
formidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has
not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or
after the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of
clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together will
appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgraced
the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on
this circuit was three hundred and twenty. [448]
Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had been
generally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of blameless
life, and of high religious profession. They were regarded by
themselves, and by a large proportion of their neighbours, not as
wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with blood the truth of the
Protestant religion. Very few of the convicts professed any repentance
for what they had done. Many, animated by the old Puritan spirit, met
death, not merely with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain
that the ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt
of rebellion and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim of
the King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of the
clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved the bitter
scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed hymns in the
dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang while
they were undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Zion
and to make war on Babylon, would set up his standard, would blow his
trumpet, and would requite his foes tenfold for all the evil which had
been inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noted
down: their farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way,
with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious
supplement to the Marian martyrology. [449]
A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired officer
of the parliamentary army, and one of those zealots who would own no
king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor. His arm had been
frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle; and, as no surgeon was
at hand, the stout old soldier amputated it himself. He was carried
up to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make no
submission. "I am an aged man," he said, "and what remains to me of life
is not worth a falsehood or a baseness. I have always been a republican;
and I am so still. " He was sent back to the West and hanged. The people
remarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to
the gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not
that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way sword
in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals.
"Stop, gentlemen," he cried: "let me go on foot. There is more in this
than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not
see. " He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a
smile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist
and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology
for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but one arm. "
[450]
Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young Templar
of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an agreeable provincial
town proud of its taste and refinement, was regarded by all as the
model of a fine gentleman. Great interest was made to save him. It was
believed through the West of England that he was engaged to a young lady
of gentle blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at
the feet of Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from
him with a jest so hideous that to repeat it would be an offence
against decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and
courageously. [451]
A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant brothers,
William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young, handsome, accomplished,
and well connected. Their maternal grandfather was named Kiffin. He was
one of the first merchants in London, and was generally considered as
the head of the Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling
on the trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather,"
he said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you. " The poor lad, who
was only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and fortitude,
that an officer of the army who attended the execution, and who had made
himself remarkable by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, and
said, "I do not believe that my Lord Chief Justice himself could be
proof against this. " Hopes were entertained that Benjamin would be
pardoned. One victim of tender years was surely enough for one house to
furnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. The
truth was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations,
and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated
intercessors pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was allowed
for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to Whitehall
with a petition. Many courtiers wished her success; and Churchill, among
whose numerous faults cruelty had no place, obtained admittance for her.
"I wish well to your suit with all my heart," he said, as they stood
together in the antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes.
This marble,"--and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece,--"is not
harder than the King. " The prediction proved true. James was inexorable.
Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst lamentations in
which the soldiers who kept guard round the gallows could not refrain
from joining. [452]
Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than
some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable to
bring home the charge of high treason were convicted of misdemeanours,
and were sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that which Oates
had undergone. A woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered by
half the women in the districts where the war had raged, was condemned
to be whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. She
suffered part of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to London;
but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers, with the humane
connivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the responsibility
of sparing her any further torture. A still more frightful sentence was
passed on a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious words. He
was, as usual, interrupted in his defence by ribaldry and scurrility
from the judgment seat. "You are a rebel; and all your family have been
rebels Since Adam. They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses
with you. " The sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven
years, and should, during that period, be flogged through every market
town in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst into
tears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My Lord,"
said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many market towns in
our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortnight for seven
years. " "If he is a young man," said Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue.
Ladies, you do not know the villain as well as I do. The punishment is
not half bad enough for him. All the interest in England shall not alter
it. " Tutchin in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity,
that he might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this
conjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it seemed
highly improbable that the sentence would ever be executed, the Chief
Justice consented to remit it, in return for a bribe which reduced the
prisoner to poverty. The temper of Tutchin, not originally very mild,
was exasperated to madness by what he had undergone. He lived to be
known as one of the most acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the
House of Stuart and of the Tory party. [453]
The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and
forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffered
death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed
favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts
should be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be
emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should
be some West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed for
the purpose of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England or
New Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them
and a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was
therefore determined that they should be sent to colonies where a
Puritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a labourer born
in the temperate zone could hope to enjoy little health. Such was the
state of the slave market that these bondmen, long as was the passage,
and sickly as they were likely to prove, were still very valuable. It
was estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average, each of them, after all
charges were paid, would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There was
therefore much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the West
conceived that they had, by their exertions and sufferings during the
insurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which had been
eagerly snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The courtiers,
however, were victorious. [454]
The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who are now
carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best information which
is at present accessible that more than one fifth of those who were
shipped were flung to the sharks before the end of the voyage. The human
cargoes were stowed close in the holds of small vessels. So little space
was allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented by
unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on one
another. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was
constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses.
In the dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease
and death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one vessel,
twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage was
performed with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived at their
house of bondage were mere skeletons. During some weeks coarse biscuit
and fetid water had been doled out to them in such scanty measure that
any one of them could easily have consumed the ration which was assigned
to five. They were, therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whom
they had been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling
them. [455]
Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death, and
of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the tropical sun,
was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By law
a subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this law
was enforced after the Bloody Assizes with a rigour at once cruel
and ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of the
labouring men whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon by
the agents of the Treasury to explain what had become of a basket, of a
goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of beans, of
a truss of hay. [456] While the humbler retainers of the government were
pillaging the families of the slaughtered peasants, the Chief Justice
was fast accumulating a fortune out of the plunder of a higher class of
Whigs. He traded largely in pardons. His most lucrative transaction of
this kind was with a gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that
Prideaux had not been in arms against the government; and it is probable
that his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his
father, an eminent lawyer who had been high in office under the
Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the crown.
Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they would bear
evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay long in gaol and
at length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to pay fifteen
thousand pounds for his liberation. This great sum was received by
Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which the people gave the name
of Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased with the price
of innocent blood. [457]
He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of parasites
who were in the habit of drinking and laughing with him. The office
of these men was to drive hard bargains with convicts under the strong
terrors of death, and with parents trembling for the lives of children.
A portion of the spoil was abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To one
of his boon companions, it is said he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor
across the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse to any
intercession except that of his creatures, for he guarded his profitable
monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even suspected that he sent
some persons to the gibbet solely because they had applied for the royal
clemency through channels independent of him. [458]
Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of this
traffic. The ladies of the Queen's household distinguished themselves
preeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of the disgrace which
they incurred falls on their mistress: for it was solely on account of
the relation in which they stood to her that they were able to enrich
themselves by so odious a trade; and there can be no question that
she might with a word or a look have restrained them. But in truth she
encouraged them by her evil example, if not by her express approbation.
She seems to have been one of that large class of persons who bear
adversity better than prosperity. While her husband was a subject and an
exile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent danger of being
deprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her manners
conciliated the kindness even of those who most abhorred her religion.
But when her good fortune came her good nature disappeared. The meek and
affable Duchess turned out an ungracious and haughty Queen. [459] The
misfortunes which she subsequently endured have made her an object of
some interest; but that interest would be not a little heightened if it
could be shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or even
tried to save, one single victim from the most frightful proscription
that England has ever seen. Unhappily the only request that she is known
to have preferred touching the rebels was that a hundred of those who
were sentenced to transportation might be given to her. [460] The profit
which she cleared on the cargo, after making large allowance for those
who died of hunger and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated
at less than a thousand guineas.
