Circumstances
had
changed.
changed.
Macaulay
He had, on the preceding day, come up to town
from Hampshire, in consequence of a pressing summons from Porter, who,
dissolute and unprincipled as he was, had to Pendergrass been a
most kind friend, indeed almost a father. In a Jacobite insurrection
Pendergrass would probably have been one of the foremost. But he learned
with horror that he was expected to bear a part in a wicked and shameful
deed. He found himself in one of those situations which most cruelly
torture noble and sensitive natures. What was he to do? Was he to
commit a murder? Was he to suffer a murder which he could prevent to be
committed? Yet was he to betray one who, however culpable, had loaded
him with benefits? Perhaps it might be possible to save William without
harming Porter? Pendergrass determined to make the attempt. "My Lord,"
he said to Portland, "as you value King William's life, do not let
him hunt tomorrow. He is the enemy of my religion; yet my religion
constrains me to give him this caution. But the names of the
conspirators I am resolved to conceal; some of them are my friends; one
of them especially is my benefactor; and I will not betray them. "
Portland went instantly to the King; but the King received the
intelligence very coolly, and seemed determined not to be frightened
out of a good day's sport by such an idle story. Portland argued and
implored in vain. He was at last forced to threaten that he would
immediately make the whole matter public, unless His Majesty would
consent to remain within doors during the next day; and this threat was
successful. [666]
Saturday the fifteenth came. The Forty were all ready to mount, when
they received intelligence from the orderlies who watched Kensington
House that the King did not mean to hunt that morning. "The fox," said
Chambers, with vindictive bitterness, "keeps his earth. " Then he opened
his shirt; showed the great scar in his breast, and vowed revenge on
William.
The first thought of the conspirators was that their design had been
detected. But they were soon reassured. It was given out that the
weather had kept the King at home; and indeed the day was cold and
stormy. There was no sign of agitation at the palace. No extraordinary
precaution was taken. No arrest was made. No ominous whisper was
heard at the coffeehouses. The delay was vexatious; but Saturday the
twenty-second would do as well.
But, before Saturday the twenty-second arrived, a third informer, De
la Rue, had presented himself at the palace. His way of life did not
entitle him to much respect; but his story agreed so exactly with what
had been said by Fisher and Pendergrass that even William began to
believe that there was real danger.
Very late in the evening of Friday the twenty-first, Pendergrass, who
had as yet disclosed much less than either of the other informers, but
whose single word was worth much more than their joint oath, was sent
for to the royal closet. The faithful Portland and the gallant Cutts
were the only persons who witnessed the singular interview between the
King and his generous enemy. William, with courtesy and animation
which he rarely showed, but which he never showed without making a
deep impression, urged Pendergrass to speak out. "You are a man of true
probity and honour; I am deeply obliged to you; but you must feel that
the same considerations which have induced you to tell us so much ought
to induce you to tell us something more. The cautions which you have as
yet given can only make me suspect every body that comes near me. They
are sufficient to embitter my life, but not sufficient to preserve it.
You must let me know the names of these men. " During more than half an
hour the King continued to entreat and Pendergrass to refuse. At last
Pendergrass said that he would give the information which was required,
if he could be assured that it would be used only for the prevention of
the crime, and not for the destruction of the criminals. "I give you
my word of honour," said William, "that your evidence shall not be used
against any person without your own free consent. " It was long
past midnight when Pendergrass wrote down the names of the chief
conspirators.
While these things were passing at Kensington, a large party of the
assassins were revelling at a Jacobite tavern in Maiden Lane. Here they
received their final orders for the morrow. "Tomorrow or never," said
King. "Tomorrow, boys," cried Cassels with a curse, "we shall have the
plunder of the field. " The morrow came. All was ready; the horses
were saddled; the pistols were loaded; the swords were sharpened; the
orderlies were on the alert; they early sent intelligence from the
palace that the King was certainly going a hunting; all the usual
preparations had been made; a party of guards had been sent round by
Kingston Bridge to Richmond; the royal coaches, each with six horses,
had gone from the stables at Charing Cross to Kensington. The chief
murderers assembled in high glee at Porter's lodgings. Pendergrass, who,
by the King's command, appeared among them, was greeted with ferocious
mirth. "Pendergrass," said Porter, "you are named one of the eight who
are to do his business. I have a musquetoon for you that will carry
eight balls. " "Mr. Pendergrass," said King, "pray do not be afraid of
smashing the glass windows. " From Porter's lodgings the party adjourned
to the Blue Posts in Spring Gardens, where they meant to take some
refreshment before they started for Turnham Green. They were at table
when a message came from an orderly that the King had changed his mind
and would not hunt; and scarcely had they recovered from their first
surprise at this ominous news, when Keyes, who had been out scouting
among his old comrades, arrived with news more ominous still. "The
coaches have returned to Charing Cross. The guards that were sent round
to Richmond have just come back to Kensington at full gallop, the flanks
of the horses all white with foam. I have had a word with one of
the Blues. He told me that strange things are muttered. " Then the
countenances of the assassins fell; and their hearts died within them.
Porter made a feeble attempt to disguise his uneasiness. He took up
an orange and squeezed it. "What cannot be done one day may be done
another. Come, gentlemen, before we part let us have one glass to the
squeezing of the rotten orange. " The squeezing of the rotten orange was
drunk; and the company dispersed. [667]
A few hours elapsed before all the conspirators abandoned all hope. Some
of them derived comfort from a report that the King had taken physic,
and that this was his only reason for not going to Richmond. If it were
so, the blow might still be struck. Two Saturdays had been unpropitious.
But Sunday was at hand. One of the plans which had formerly been
discussed and abandoned might be resumed. The usurper might be set upon
at Hyde Park Corner on his way to his chapel. Charnock was ready for any
enterprise however desperate. If the hunt was up, it was better to die
biting and scratching to the last than to be worried without resistance
or revenge. He assembled some of his accomplices at one of the numerous
houses at which he had lodgings, and plied there hard with healths to
the King, to the Queen, to the Prince, and to the Grand Monarch, as they
called Lewis. But the terror and dejection of the gang were beyond the
power of wine; and so many had stolen away that those who were left
could effect nothing. In the course of the afternoon it was known that
the guards had been doubled at the palace; and soon after nightfall
messengers from the Secretary of State's office were hurrying to and fro
with torches through the streets, accompanied by files and musketeers.
Before the dawn of Sunday Charnock was in custody. A little later,
Rockwood and Bernardi were found in bed at a Jacobite alehouse on Tower
Hill. Seventeen more traitors were seized before noon; and three of the
Blues were put under arrest. That morning a Council was held; and, as
soon as it rose, an express was sent off to call home some regiments
from Flanders; Dorset set out for Sussex, of which he was Lord
Lieutenant; Romney, who was Warden of the Cinque Ports, started for the
coast of Kent; and Russell hastened down the Thames to take the command
of the fleet. In the evening the Council sate again. Some of the
prisoners were examined and committed. The Lord Mayor was in attendance,
was informed of what had been discovered, and was specially charged to
look well to the peace of the capital. [668]
On Monday morning all the trainbands of the City were under arms. The
King went in state to the House of Lords, sent for the Commons, and
from the throne told the Parliament that, but for the protection of a
gracious Providence, he should at that moment have been a corpse, and
the kingdom would have been invaded by a French army. The danger of
invasion, he added, was still great; but he had already given such
orders as would, he hoped, suffice for the protection of the realm. Some
traitors were in custody; warrants were out against others; he should
do his part in this emergency; and he relied on the Houses to do theirs.
[669]
The Houses instantly voted a joint address in which they thankfully
acknowledged the divine goodness which had preserved him to his people,
and implored him to take more than ordinary care of his person. They
concluded by exhorting him to seize and secure all persons whom he
regarded as dangerous.
On the same day two important bills were brought into the Commons. By
one the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. The other provided that the
Parliament should not be dissolved by the death of William. Sir Rowland
Gwyn, an honest country gentleman, made a motion of which he did not
at all foresee the important consequences. He proposed that the members
should enter into an association for the defence of their Sovereign and
their country. Montague, who of all men was the quickest at taking and
improving a hint, saw how much such an association would strengthen the
government and the Whig party. [670] An instrument was immediately
drawn tip, by which the representatives of the people, each for himself,
solemnly recognised William as rightful and lawful King, and bound
themselves to stand by him and by each other against James and James's
adherents. Lastly they vowed that, if His Majesty's life should be
shortened by violence, they would avenge him signally on his murderers,
and would, with one heart, strenuously support the order of succession
settled by the Bill of Rights. It was ordered that the House should
be called over the next morning. [671] The attendance was consequently
great; the Association, engrossed on parchment, was on the table; and
the members went up, county by county, to sign their names. [672]
The King's speech, the joint address of both Houses, the Association
framed by the Commons, and a proclamation, containing a list of
the conspirators and offering a reward of a thousand pounds for the
apprehension of any one of them, were soon cried in all the streets of
the capital and carried out by all the postbags. Wherever the news came
it raised the whole country. Those two hateful words, assassination and
invasion, acted like a spell. No impressment was necessary. The seamen
came forth from their hiding places by thousands to man the fleet. Only
three days after the King had appealed to the nation, Russell sailed out
of the Thames with one great squadron. Another was ready for action at
Spithead. The militia of all the maritime counties from the Wash to
the Land's End was under arms. For persons accused of offences merely
political there was generally much sympathy. But Barclay's assassins
were hunted like wolves by the whole population. The abhorrence which
the English have, through many generations, felt for domiciliary visits,
and for all those impediments which the police of continental states
throws in the way of travellers, was for a time suspended. The gates of
the City of London were kept many hours closed while a strict search was
made within. The magistrates of almost every walled town in the kingdom
followed the example of the capital. On every highway parties of armed
men were posted with orders to stop passengers of suspicious appearance.
During a few days it was hardly possible to perform a journey without a
passport, or to procure posthorses without the authority of a justice
of the peace. Nor was any voice raised against these precautions. The
common people indeed were, if possible, more eager than the public
functionaries to bring the traitors to justice. This eagerness may
perhaps be in part ascribed to the great rewards promised by the royal
proclamation. The hatred which every good Protestant felt for Popish
cutthroats was not a little strengthened by the songs in which the
street poets celebrated the lucky hackney coachman who had caught
his traitor, had received his thousand pounds, and had set up as a
gentleman. [673] The zeal of the populace could in some places hardly
be kept within the limits of the law. At the country seat of Parkyns
in Warwickshire, arms and accoutrements sufficient to equip a troop of
cavalry were found. As soon as this was known, a furious mob assembled,
pulled down the house and laid the gardens utterly waste. [674] Parkyns
himself was tracked to a garret in the Temple. Porter and Keyes, who
had fled into Surrey, were pursued by the hue and cry, stopped by the
country people near Leatherhead, and, after some show of resistance,
secured and sent to prison. Friend was found hidden in the house of a
Quaker. Knightley was caught in the dress of a fine lady, and recognised
in spite of his patches and paint. In a few days all the chief
conspirators were in custody except Barclay, who succeeded in making his
escape to France.
At the same time some notorious malecontents were arrested, and were
detained for a time on suspicion. Old Roger Lestrange, now in his
eightieth year, was taken up. Ferguson was found hidden under a bed
in Gray's Inn Lane, and was, to the general joy, locked up in Newgate.
[675] Meanwhile a special commission was issued for the trial of the
traitors. There was no want of evidence. For, of the conspirators who
had been seized, ten or twelve were ready to save themselves by bearing
witness against their associates. None had been deeper in guilt,
and none shrank with more abject terror from death, than Porter. The
government consented to spare him, and thus obtained, not only his
evidence, but the much more respectable evidence of Pendergrass.
Pendergrass was in no danger; he had committed no offence; his character
was fair; and his testimony would have far greater weight with a jury
than the testimony of a crowd of approvers swearing for their necks. But
he had the royal word of honour that he should not be a witness without
his own consent; and he was fully determined not to be a witness unless
he were assured of Porter's safety. Porter was now safe; and Pendergrass
had no longer any scruple about relating the whole truth.
Charnock, King and Keyes were set first to the bar. The Chiefs of the
three Courts of Common Law and several other judges were on the bench;
and among the audience were many members of both Houses of Parliament.
It was the eleventh of March. The new Act which regulated the
procedure in cases of high treason was not to come into force till
the twenty-fifth. The culprits urged that, as the Legislature had, by
passing that Act, recognised the justice of allowing them to see their
indictment, and to avail themselves of the assistance of an advocate,
the tribunal ought either to grant them what the highest authority had
declared to be a reasonable indulgence, or to defer the trial for a
fortnight. The judges, however, would consent to no delay. They have
therefore been accused by later writers of using the mere letter of
the law in order to destroy men who, if that law had been construed
according to its spirit, might have had some chance of escape. This
accusation is unjust. The judges undoubtedly carried the real intention
of the Legislature into effect; and, for whatever injustice was
committed, the Legislature, and not the judges, ought to be held
accountable. The words, "twenty-fifth of March," had not slipped into
the Act by mere inadvertence. All parties in Parliament had long been
agreed as to the principle of the new regulations. The only matter about
which there was any dispute was the time at which those regulations
should take effect. After debates extending through several sessions,
after repeated divisions with various results, a compromise had been
made; and it was surely not for the Courts to alter the terms of that
compromise. It may indeed be confidently affirmed that, if the Houses
had foreseen the Assassination Plot, they would have fixed, not an
earlier, but a later day for the commencement of the new system.
Undoubtedly the Parliament, and especially the Whig party, deserved
serious blame. For, if the old rules of procedure gave no unfair
advantage to the Crown, there was no reason for altering them; and if,
as was generally admitted, they did give an unfair advantage to the
Crown, and that against a defendant on trial for his life, they ought
not to have been suffered to continue in force a single day. But no
blame is due to the tribunals for not acting in direct opposition both
to the letter and to the spirit of the law.
The government might indeed have postponed the trials till the new Act
came into force; and it would have been wise, as well as right, to do
so; for the prisoners would have gained nothing by the delay. The case
against them was one on which all the ingenuity of the Inns of Court
could have made no impression. Porter, Pendergrass, De la Rue and others
gave evidence which admitted of no answer. Charnock said the very little
that he had to say with readiness and presence of mind. The jury found
all the defendants guilty. It is not much to the honour of that age that
the announcement of the verdict was received with loud huzzas by the
crowd which surrounded the Courthouse. Those huzzas were renewed when
the three unhappy men, having heard their doom, were brought forth under
a guard. [676]
Charnock had hitherto shown no sign of flinching; but when he was again
in his cell his fortitude gave way. He begged hard for mercy. He
would be content, he said, to pass the rest of his days in an easy
confinement. He asked only for his life. In return for his life, he
promised to discover all that he knew of the schemes of the Jacobites
against the government. If it should appear that he prevaricated or that
he suppressed any thing, he was willing to undergo the utmost rigour
of the law. This offer produced much excitement, and some difference of
opinion, among the councillors of William. But the King decided, as in
such cases he seldom failed to decide, wisely and magnanimously. He
saw that the discovery of the Assassination Plot had changed the whole
posture of affairs. His throne, lately tottering, was fixed on an
immovable basis. His popularity had risen impetuously to as great a
height as when he was on his march from Torbay to London. Many who
had been out of humour with his administration, and who had, in their
spleen, held some communication with Saint Germains, were shocked to
find that they had been, in some sense, leagued with murderers. He would
not drive such persons to despair. He would not even put them to the
blush. Not only should they not be punished; they should not undergo the
humiliation of being pardoned. He would not know that they had offended.
Charnock was left to his fate. [677] When he found that he had no chance
of being received as a deserter, he assumed the dignity of a martyr, and
played his part resolutely to the close. That he might bid farewell to
the world with a better grace, he ordered a fine new coat to be hanged
in, and was very particular on his last day about the powdering and
curling of his wig. [678] Just before he was turned off, he delivered
to the Sheriffs a paper in which he avowed that he had conspired against
the life of the Prince of Orange, but solemnly denied that James had
given any commission authorising assassination. The denial was doubtless
literally correct; but Charnock did not deny, and assuredly could not
with truth have denied, that he had seen a commission written and signed
by James, and containing words which might without any violence be
construed, and which were, by all to whom they were shown, actually
construed, to authorise the murderous ambuscade of Turnham Green.
Indeed Charnock, in another paper, which is still in existence, but has
never been printed, held very different language. He plainly said that,
for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, he could not tell the
whole truth in the paper which he had delivered to the Sheriffs. He
acknowledged that the plot in which he had been engaged seemed, even
to many loyal subjects, highly criminal. They called him assassin
and murderer. Yet what had he done more than had been done by Mucius
Scaevola? Nay, what had he done more than had been done by every body
who bore arms against the Prince of Orange? If an array of twenty
thousand men had suddenly landed in England and surprised the usurper,
this would have been called legitimate war. Did the difference between
war and assassination depend merely on the number of persons engaged?
What then was the smallest number which could lawfully surprise an
enemy? Was it five thousand, or a thousand, or a hundred? Jonathan and
his armourbearer were only two. Yet they made a great slaughter of the
Philistines. Was that assassination? It cannot, said Charnock, be the
mere act, it must be the cause, that makes killing assassination. It
followed that it was not assassination to kill one,--and here the
dying man gave a loose to all his hatred,--who had declared a war of
extermination against loyal subjects, who hung, drew and quartered every
man who stood up for the right, and who had laid waste England to
enrich the Dutch. Charnock admitted that his enterprise would have been
unjustifiable if it had not been authorised by James; but he maintained
that it had been authorised, not indeed expressly, but by implication.
His Majesty had indeed formerly prohibited similar attempts; but
had prohibited them, not as in themselves criminal, but merely as
inexpedient at this or that conjuncture of affairs.
Circumstances had
changed. The prohibition might therefore reasonably be considered as
withdrawn. His Majesty's faithful subjects had then only to look to
the words of his commission; and those words, beyond all doubt, fully
warranted an attack on the person of the usurper. [679]
King and Keyes suffered with Charnock. King behaved with firmness and
decency. He acknowledged his crime, and said that he repented of it. He
thought it due to the Church of which he was a member, and on which his
conduct had brought reproach, to declare that he had been misled, not by
any casuistry about tyrannicide, but merely by the violence of his
own evil passions. Poor Keyes was in an agony of terror. His tears and
lamentations moved the pity of some of the spectators. It was said at
the time, and it has often since been repeated, that a servant drawn
into crime by a master was a proper object of royal clemency. But
those who have blamed the severity with which Keyes was treated
have altogether omitted to notice the important circumstance which
distinguished his case from that of every other conspirator. He had been
one of the Blues. He had kept up to the last an intercourse with his
old comrades. On the very day fixed for the murder he had contrived to
mingle with them and to pick up intelligence from them. The regiment had
been so deeply infected with disloyalty that it had been found necessary
to confine some men and to dismiss many more. Surely, if any example
was to be made, it was proper to make an example of the agent by whose
instrumentality the men who meant to shoot the King communicated with
the men whose business was to guard him.
Friend was tried next. His crime was not of so black a dye as that of
the three conspirators who had just suffered. He had indeed invited
foreign enemies to invade the realm, and had made preparations
for joining them. But, though he had been privy to the design of
assassination, he had not been a party to it. His large fortune however,
and the use which he was well known to have made of it, marked him out
as a fit object for punishment. He, like Charnock, asked for counsel,
and, like Charnock, asked in vain. The judges could not relax the law;
and the Attorney General would not postpone the trial. The proceedings
of that day furnish a strong argument in favour of the Act from the
benefit of which Friend was excluded. It is impossible to read them
over at this distance of time without feeling compassion for a silly ill
educated man, unnerved by extreme danger, and opposed to cool, astute
and experienced antagonists. Charnock had defended himself and those
who were tried with him as well as any professional advocate could have
done. But poor Friend was as helpless as a child. He could do little
more than exclaim that he was a Protestant, and that the witnesses
against him were Papists, who had dispensations from their priests for
perjury, and who believed that to swear away the lives of heretics was
a meritorious work. He was so grossly ignorant of law and history as to
imagine that the statute of treasons, passed in the reign of Edward the
Third, at a time when there was only one religion in Western Europe,
contained a clause providing that no Papist should be a witness, and
actually forced the Clerk of the Court to read the whole Act from
beginning to end. About his guilt it was impossible that there could be
a doubt in any rational mind. He was convicted; and he would have been
convicted if he had been allowed the privileges for which he asked.
Parkyns came next. He had been deeply concerned in the worst part of
the plot, and was, in one respect, less excusable than any of his
accomplices; for they were all nonjurors; and he had taken the oaths
to the existing government. He too insisted that he ought to be tried
according to the provisions of the new Act. But the counsel for the
Crown stood on their extreme right; and his request was denied. As he
was a man of considerable abilities, and had been bred to the bar, he
probably said for himself all that counsel could have said for him;
and that all amounted to very little. He was found guilty, and received
sentence of death on the evening of the twenty-fourth of March, within
six hours of the time when the law of which he had vainly demanded the
benefit was to come into force. [680]
The execution of the two knights was eagerly expected by the population
of London. The States General were informed by their correspondent that,
of all sights, that in which the English most delighted was a hanging,
and that, of all hangings within the memory of the oldest man, that of
Friend and Parkyns excited the greatest interest. The multitude had been
incensed against Friend by reports touching the exceeding badness of the
beer which he brewed. It was even rumoured that he had, in his zeal for
the Jacobite cause, poisoned all the casks which he had furnished to the
navy. An innumerable crowd accordingly assembled at Tyburn. Scaffolding
had been put up which formed an immense amphitheatre round the gallows.
On this scaffolding the wealthier spectators stood, row above row; and
expectation was at the height when it was announced that the show was
deferred. The mob broke up in bad humour, and not without many fights
between those who had given money for their places and those who refused
to return it. [681]
The cause of this severe disappointment was a resolution suddenly passed
by the Commons. A member had proposed that a Committee should be sent
to the Tower with authority to examine the prisoners, and to hold out
to them the hope that they might, by a full and ingenuous confession,
obtain the intercession of the House. The debate appears, from the
scanty information which has come down to us, to have been a very
curious one. Parties seemed to have changed characters. It might have
been expected that the Whigs would have been inexorably severe, and
that, if there was any tenderness for the unhappy men, that tenderness
would have been found among the Tories. But in truth many of the Whigs
hoped that they might, by sparing two criminals who had no power to do
mischief, be able to detect and destroy numerous criminals high in rank
and office. On the other hand, every man who had ever had any dealings
direct or indirect with Saint Germains, or who took an interest in any
person likely to have had such dealings, looked forward with dread to
the disclosures which the captives might, under the strong terrors of
death, be induced to make. Seymour, simply because he had gone further
in treason than almost any other member of the House, was louder than
any other member of the House in exclaiming against all indulgence
to his brother traitors. Would the Commons usurp the most sacred
prerogative of the Crown? It was for His Majesty, and not for them, to
judge whether lives justly forfeited could be without danger spared. The
Whigs however carried their point. A Committee, consisting of all the
Privy Councillors in the House, set off instantly for Newgate. Friend
and Parkyns were interrogated, but to no purpose. They had, after
sentence had been passed on them, shown at first some symptoms of
weakness; but their courage had been fortified by the exhortations of
nonjuring divines who had been admitted to the prison. The rumour
was that Parkyns would have given way but for the entreaties of his
daughter, who adjured him to suffer like a man for the good cause. The
criminals acknowledged that they had done the acts of which they had
been convicted, but, with a resolution which is the more respectable
because it seems to have sprung, not from constitutional hardihood, but
from sentiments of honour and religion, refused to say any thing which
could compromise others. [682]
In a few hours the crowd again assembled at Tyburn; and this time the
sightseers were not defrauded of their amusement. They saw indeed
one sight which they had not expected, and which produced a greater
sensation than the execution itself. Jeremy Collier and two other
nonjuring divines of less celebrity, named Cook and Snatt, had attended
the prisoners in Newgate, and were in the cart under the gallows. When
the prayers were over, and just before the hangman did his office, the
three schismatical priests stood up, and laid their hands on the heads
of the dying men who continued to kneel. Collier pronounced a form of
absolution taken from the service for the Visitation of the Sick, and
his brethren exclaimed "Amen! "
This ceremony raised a great outcry; and the outcry became louder
when, a few hours after the execution, the papers delivered by the two
traitors to the Sheriffs were made public. It had been supposed that
Parkyns at least would express some repentance for the crime which had
brought him to the gallows. Indeed he had, before the Committee of the
Commons, owned that the Assassination Plot could not be justified. But,
in his last declaration, he avowed his share in that plot, not only
without a word indicating remorse, but with something which resembled
exultation. Was this a man to be absolved by Christian divines, absolved
before the eyes of tens of thousands, absolved with rites evidently
intended to attract public attention, with rites of which there was no
trace in the Book of Common Prayer or in the practice of the Church of
England?
In journals, pamphlets and broadsides, the insolence of the three
Levites, as they were called, was sharply reprehended. Warrants were
soon out. Cook and Snatt were taken and imprisoned; but Collier was able
to conceal himself, and, by the help of one of the presses which were at
the service of his party, sent forth from his hiding place a defence of
his conduct. He declared that he abhorred assassination as much as any
of those who railed against him; and his general character warrants us
in believing that this declaration was perfectly sincere. But the
rash act into which he had been hurried by party spirit furnished his
adversaries with very plausible reasons for questioning his sincerity.
A crowd of answers to his defence appeared. Preeminent among them in
importance was a solemn manifesto signed by the two Archbishops and by
all the Bishops who were then in London, twelve in number. Even Crewe
of Durham and Sprat of Rochester set their names to this document. They
condemned the proceedings of the three nonjuring divines, as in form
irregular and in substance impious. To remit the sins of impenitent
sinners was a profane abuse of the power which Christ had delegated
to his ministers. It was not denied that Parkyns had planned an
assassination. It was not pretended that he had professed any repentance
for planning an assassination. The plain inference was that the divines
who absolved him did not think it sinful to assassinate King William.
Collier rejoined; but, though a pugnacious controversialist, he on this
occasion shrank from close conflict, and made his escape as well as he
could under a cloud of quotations from Tertullian, Cyprian and Jerome,
Albaspinaeus and Hammond, the Council of Carthage and the Council of
Toledo. The public feeling was strongly against the three absolvers. The
government however wisely determined not to confer on them the honour of
martyrdom. A bill was found against them by the grand jury of Middlesex;
but they were not brought to trial. Cook and Snatt were set at liberty
after a short detention; and Collier would have been treated with equal
lenity if he would have consented to put in bail. But he was determined
to do no act which could be construed into a recognition of the usurping
government. He was therefore outlawed; and when he died, more than
thirty years later, his outlawry had not been reversed. [683]
Parkyns was the last Englishman who was tried for high treason under the
old system of procedure. The first who was tried under the new system
was Rockwood. He was defended by Sir Bartholomew Shower, who in the
preceding reign had made himself unenviably conspicuous as a servile and
cruel sycophant, who had obtained from James the Recordership of
London when Holt honourably resigned it, and who had, as Recorder,
sent soldiers to the gibbet for breaches of military discipline. By
his servile cruelty he had earned the nickname of the Manhunter. Shower
deserved, if any offender deserved, to be excepted from the Act of
Indemnity, and left to the utmost rigour of those laws which he had so
shamelessly perverted. But he had been saved by the clemency of William,
and had requited that clemency by pertinacious and malignant opposition.
[684] It was doubtless on account of Shower's known leaning towards
Jacobitism that he was employed on this occasion. He raised some
technical objections which the Court overruled. On the merits of the
case he could make no defence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty.
Cranburne and Lowick were then tried and convicted. They suffered with
Rookwood; and there the executions stopped. [685]
The temper of the nation was such that the government might have shed
much more blood without incurring the reproach of cruelty. The feeling
which had been called forth by the discovery of the plot continued
during several weeks to increase day by day. Of that feeling the able
men who were at the head of the Whig party made a singularly skilful
use. They saw that the public enthusiasm, if left without guidance,
would exhaust itself in huzzas, healths and bonfires, but might, if
wisely guided, be the means of producing a great and lasting effect. The
Association, into which the Commons had entered while the King's speech
was still in their ears, furnished the means of combining four fifths of
the nation in one vast club for the defence of the order of succession
with which were inseparably combined the dearest liberties of the
English people, and of establishing a test which would distinguish those
who were zealous for that order of succession from those who sullenly
and reluctantly acquiesced in it. Of the five hundred and thirty members
of the Lower House about four hundred and twenty voluntarily subscribed
the instrument which recognised William as rightful and lawful King of
England. It was moved in the Upper House that the same form should be
adopted; but objections were raised by the Tories. Nottingham, ever
conscientious, honourable and narrow minded, declared that he could not
assent to the words "rightful and lawful. " He still held, as he had
held from the first, that a prince who had taken the Crown, not by
birthright, but by the gift of the Convention, could not properly be so
described. William was doubtless King in fact, and, as King in fact, was
entitled to the obedience of Christians. "No man," said Nottingham, "has
served or will serve His Majesty more faithfully than I. But to this
document I cannot set my hand. " Rochester and Normanby held similar
language. Monmouth, in a speech of two hours and a half, earnestly
exhorted the Lords to agree with the Commons. Burnet was vehement on the
same side. Wharton, whose father had lately died, and who was now Lord
Wharton, appeared in the foremost rank of the Whig peers. But no man
distinguished himself more in the debate than one whose life, both
public and private, had been one long series of faults and disasters,
the incestuous lover of Henrietta Berkeley, the unfortunate lieutenant
of Monmouth. He had recently ceased to be called by the tarnished name
of Grey of Wark, and was now Earl of Tankerville. He spoke on that day
with great force and eloquence for the words, "rightful and lawful. "
Leeds, after expressing his regret that a question about a mere phrase
should have produced dissension among noble persons who were all equally
attached to the reigning Sovereign, undertook the office of mediator.
He proposed that their Lordships, instead of recognising William as
rightful and lawful King, should declare that William had the right
by law to the English Crown, and that no other person had any right
whatever to that Crown. Strange to say, almost all the Tory peers were
perfectly satisfied with what Leeds had suggested. Among the Whigs there
was some unwillingness to consent to a change which, slight as it was,
might be thought to indicate a difference of opinion between the two
Houses on a subject of grave importance. But Devonshire and Portland
declared themselves content; their authority prevailed; and the
alteration was made. How a rightful and lawful possessor is to be
distinguished from a possessor who has the exclusive right by law is
a question which a Whig may, without any painful sense of shame,
acknowledge to be beyond the reach of his faculties, and leave to be
discussed by High Churchmen. Eighty-three peers immediately affixed
their names to the amended form of association; and Rochester was among
them. Nottingham, not yet quite satisfied, asked time for consideration.
[686]
Beyond the walls of Parliament there was none of this verbal quibbling.
The language of the House of Commons was adopted by the whole country.
The City of London led the way. Within thirty-six hours after the
Association had been published under the direction of the Speaker it
was subscribed by the Lord Mayor, by the Aldermen, and by almost all the
members of the Common Council. The municipal corporations all over the
kingdom followed the example. The spring assizes were just beginning;
and at every county town the grand jurors and the justices of the peace
put down their names. Soon shopkeepers, artisans, yeomen, farmers,
husbandmen, came by thousands to the tables where the parchments were
laid out. In Westminster there were thirty-seven thousand associators,
in the Tower Hamlets eight thousand, in Southwark eighteen thousand. The
rural parts of Surrey furnished seventeen thousand. At Ipswich all the
freemen signed except two. At Warwick all the male inhabitants who had
attained the age of sixteen signed, except two Papists and two Quakers.
At Taunton, where the memory of the Bloody Circuit was fresh, every man
who could write gave in his adhesion to the government. All the churches
and all the meeting houses in the town were crowded, as they had never
been crowded before, with people who came to thank God for having
preserved him whom they fondly called William the Deliverer. Of all the
counties of England Lancashire was the most Jacobitical. Yet Lancashire
furnished fifty thousand signatures. Of all the great towns of England
Norwich was the most Jacobitical. The magistrates of that city were
supposed to be in the interest of the exiled dynasty. The nonjurors were
numerous, and had, just before the discovery of the plot, seemed to be
in unusual spirits and ventured to take unusual liberties. One of the
chief divines of the schism had preached a sermon there which gave rise
to strange suspicions. He had taken for his text the verse in which the
Prophet Jeremiah announced that the day of vengeance was come, that
the sword would be drunk with blood, that the Lord God of Hosts had a
sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates. Very soon it was
known that, at the time when this discourse was delivered, swords had
actually been sharpening, under the direction of Barclay and Parkyns,
for a bloody sacrifice on the north bank of the river Thames. The
indignation of the common people of Norwich was not to be restrained.
They came in multitudes, though discouraged by the municipal
authorities, to plight faith to William, rightful and lawful King. In
Norfolk the number of signatures amounted to forty-eight thousand, in
Suffolk to seventy thousand. Upwards of five hundred rolls went up
to London from every part of England. The number of names attached to
twenty-seven of those rolls appears from the London Gazette to have been
three hundred and fourteen thousand. After making the largest allowance
for fraud, it seems certain that the Association included the great
majority of the adult male inhabitants of England who were able to sign
their names. The tide of popular feeling was so strong that a man who
was known not to have signed ran considerable risk of being publicly
affronted. In many places nobody appeared without wearing in his hat a
red riband on which were embroidered the words, "General Association
for King William. " Once a party of Jacobites had the courage to parade
a street in London with an emblematic device which seemed to indicate
their contempt for the new Solemn League and Covenant. They were
instantly put to rout by the mob, and their leader was well ducked. The
enthusiasm spread to secluded isles, to factories in foreign countries,
to remote colonies. The Association was signed by the rude fishermen
of the Scilly Rocks, by the English merchants of Malaga, by the English
merchants of Genoa, by the citizens of New York, by the tobacco planters
of Virginia and by the sugar planters of Barbadoes. [687]
Emboldened by success, the Whig leaders ventured to proceed a step
further. They brought into the Lower House a bill for the securing of
the King's person and government. By this bill it was provided that
whoever, while the war lasted, should come from France into England
without the royal license should incur the penalties of treason, that
the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act should continue to the end of
the year 1696, and that all functionaries appointed by William should
retain their offices, notwithstanding his death, till his successor
should be pleased to dismiss them. The form of Association which the
House of Commons had adopted was solemnly ratified; and it was provided
that no person should sit in that House or should hold any office, civil
or military, without signing. The Lords were indulged in the use of
their own form; and nothing was said about the clergy.
The Tories, headed by Finch and Seymour, complained bitterly of this
new test, and ventured once to divide, but were defeated. Finch seems to
have been heard patiently; but, notwithstanding all Seymour's eloquence,
the contemptuous manner in which he spoke of the Association raised a
storm against which he could not stand. Loud cries of "the Tower, the
Tower," were heard. Haughty and imperious as he was, he was forced to
explain away his words, and could scarcely, by apologizing in a manner
to which he was little accustomed, save himself from the humiliation of
being called to the bar and reprimanded on his knees. The bill went up
to the Lords, and passed with great speed in spite of the opposition of
Rochester and Nottingham. [688]
The nature and extent of the change which the discovery of the
Assassination Plot had produced in the temper of the House of Commons
and of the nation is strikingly illustrated by the history of a bill
entitled a Bill for the further Regulation of Elections of Members
of Parliament. The moneyed interest was almost entirely Whig, and was
therefore an object of dislike to the Tories. The rapidly growing power
of that interest was generally regarded with jealousy by landowners
whether they were Whigs or Tories. It was something new and monstrous
to see a trader from Lombard Street, who had no tie to the soil of our
island, and whose wealth was entirely personal and movable, post down to
Devonshire or Sussex with a portmanteau full of guineas, offer himself
as candidate for a borough in opposition to a neighbouring gentleman
whose ancestors had been regularly returned ever since the Wars of the
Roses, and come in at the head of the poll. Yet even this was not the
worst. More than one seat in Parliament, it was said, had been bought
and sold over a dish of coffee at Garraway's. The purchaser had not been
required even to go through the form of showing himself to the electors.
Without leaving his counting house in Cheapside, he had been chosen to
represent a place which he had never seen. Such things were intolerable.
No man, it was said, ought to sit in the English legislature who was
not master of some hundreds of acres of English ground. [689] A bill was
accordingly brought in which provided that every member of the House of
Commons must have a certain estate in land. For a knight of a shire the
qualification was fixed at five hundred a year; for a burgess at two
hundred a year. Early in February this bill was read a second time and
referred to a Select Committee. A motion was made that the Committee
should be instructed to add a clause enacting that all elections should
be by ballot. Whether this motion proceeded from a Whig or a Tory, by
what arguments it was supported and on what grounds it was opposed,
we have now no means of discovering. We know only that it was rejected
without a division.
Before the bill came back from the Committee, some of the most
respectable constituent bodies in the kingdom had raised their voices
against the new restriction to which it was proposed to subject them.
There had in general been little sympathy between the commercial towns
and the Universities. For the commercial towns were the chief seats of
Whiggism and Non conformity; and the Universities were zealous for the
Crown and the Church. Now, however, Oxford and Cambridge made common
cause with London and Bristol. It was hard, said the Academics, that a
grave and learned man, sent by a large body of grave and learned men to
the Great Council of the nation, should be thought less fit to sit in
that Council than a boozing clown who had scarcely literature enough
to entitle him to the benefit of clergy. It was hard, said the traders,
that a merchant prince, who had been the first magistrate of the first
city in the world, whose name on the back of a bill commanded entire
confidence at Smyrna and at Genoa, at Hamburg and at Amsterdam, who
had at sea ships every one of which was worth a manor, and who had
repeatedly, when the liberty and religion of the kingdom were in peril,
advanced to the government, at an hour's notice, five or ten thousand
pounds, should be supposed to have a less stake in the prosperity of the
commonwealth than a squire who sold his own bullocks and hops over a pot
of ale at the nearest market town. On the report, it was moved that the
Universities should be excepted; but the motion was lost by a hundred
and fifty-one votes to a hundred and forty-three. On the third reading
it was moved that the City of London should be excepted; but it was not
thought advisable to divide. The final question that the bill do pass,
was carried by a hundred and seventy-three votes to a hundred and fifty
on the day which preceded the discovery of the Assassination Plot. The
Lords agreed to the bill without any amendment.
William had to consider whether he would give or withhold his assent.
The commercial towns of the kingdom, and among them the City of London,
which had always stood firmly by him, and which had extricated him
many times from great embarrassments, implored his protection.
from Hampshire, in consequence of a pressing summons from Porter, who,
dissolute and unprincipled as he was, had to Pendergrass been a
most kind friend, indeed almost a father. In a Jacobite insurrection
Pendergrass would probably have been one of the foremost. But he learned
with horror that he was expected to bear a part in a wicked and shameful
deed. He found himself in one of those situations which most cruelly
torture noble and sensitive natures. What was he to do? Was he to
commit a murder? Was he to suffer a murder which he could prevent to be
committed? Yet was he to betray one who, however culpable, had loaded
him with benefits? Perhaps it might be possible to save William without
harming Porter? Pendergrass determined to make the attempt. "My Lord,"
he said to Portland, "as you value King William's life, do not let
him hunt tomorrow. He is the enemy of my religion; yet my religion
constrains me to give him this caution. But the names of the
conspirators I am resolved to conceal; some of them are my friends; one
of them especially is my benefactor; and I will not betray them. "
Portland went instantly to the King; but the King received the
intelligence very coolly, and seemed determined not to be frightened
out of a good day's sport by such an idle story. Portland argued and
implored in vain. He was at last forced to threaten that he would
immediately make the whole matter public, unless His Majesty would
consent to remain within doors during the next day; and this threat was
successful. [666]
Saturday the fifteenth came. The Forty were all ready to mount, when
they received intelligence from the orderlies who watched Kensington
House that the King did not mean to hunt that morning. "The fox," said
Chambers, with vindictive bitterness, "keeps his earth. " Then he opened
his shirt; showed the great scar in his breast, and vowed revenge on
William.
The first thought of the conspirators was that their design had been
detected. But they were soon reassured. It was given out that the
weather had kept the King at home; and indeed the day was cold and
stormy. There was no sign of agitation at the palace. No extraordinary
precaution was taken. No arrest was made. No ominous whisper was
heard at the coffeehouses. The delay was vexatious; but Saturday the
twenty-second would do as well.
But, before Saturday the twenty-second arrived, a third informer, De
la Rue, had presented himself at the palace. His way of life did not
entitle him to much respect; but his story agreed so exactly with what
had been said by Fisher and Pendergrass that even William began to
believe that there was real danger.
Very late in the evening of Friday the twenty-first, Pendergrass, who
had as yet disclosed much less than either of the other informers, but
whose single word was worth much more than their joint oath, was sent
for to the royal closet. The faithful Portland and the gallant Cutts
were the only persons who witnessed the singular interview between the
King and his generous enemy. William, with courtesy and animation
which he rarely showed, but which he never showed without making a
deep impression, urged Pendergrass to speak out. "You are a man of true
probity and honour; I am deeply obliged to you; but you must feel that
the same considerations which have induced you to tell us so much ought
to induce you to tell us something more. The cautions which you have as
yet given can only make me suspect every body that comes near me. They
are sufficient to embitter my life, but not sufficient to preserve it.
You must let me know the names of these men. " During more than half an
hour the King continued to entreat and Pendergrass to refuse. At last
Pendergrass said that he would give the information which was required,
if he could be assured that it would be used only for the prevention of
the crime, and not for the destruction of the criminals. "I give you
my word of honour," said William, "that your evidence shall not be used
against any person without your own free consent. " It was long
past midnight when Pendergrass wrote down the names of the chief
conspirators.
While these things were passing at Kensington, a large party of the
assassins were revelling at a Jacobite tavern in Maiden Lane. Here they
received their final orders for the morrow. "Tomorrow or never," said
King. "Tomorrow, boys," cried Cassels with a curse, "we shall have the
plunder of the field. " The morrow came. All was ready; the horses
were saddled; the pistols were loaded; the swords were sharpened; the
orderlies were on the alert; they early sent intelligence from the
palace that the King was certainly going a hunting; all the usual
preparations had been made; a party of guards had been sent round by
Kingston Bridge to Richmond; the royal coaches, each with six horses,
had gone from the stables at Charing Cross to Kensington. The chief
murderers assembled in high glee at Porter's lodgings. Pendergrass, who,
by the King's command, appeared among them, was greeted with ferocious
mirth. "Pendergrass," said Porter, "you are named one of the eight who
are to do his business. I have a musquetoon for you that will carry
eight balls. " "Mr. Pendergrass," said King, "pray do not be afraid of
smashing the glass windows. " From Porter's lodgings the party adjourned
to the Blue Posts in Spring Gardens, where they meant to take some
refreshment before they started for Turnham Green. They were at table
when a message came from an orderly that the King had changed his mind
and would not hunt; and scarcely had they recovered from their first
surprise at this ominous news, when Keyes, who had been out scouting
among his old comrades, arrived with news more ominous still. "The
coaches have returned to Charing Cross. The guards that were sent round
to Richmond have just come back to Kensington at full gallop, the flanks
of the horses all white with foam. I have had a word with one of
the Blues. He told me that strange things are muttered. " Then the
countenances of the assassins fell; and their hearts died within them.
Porter made a feeble attempt to disguise his uneasiness. He took up
an orange and squeezed it. "What cannot be done one day may be done
another. Come, gentlemen, before we part let us have one glass to the
squeezing of the rotten orange. " The squeezing of the rotten orange was
drunk; and the company dispersed. [667]
A few hours elapsed before all the conspirators abandoned all hope. Some
of them derived comfort from a report that the King had taken physic,
and that this was his only reason for not going to Richmond. If it were
so, the blow might still be struck. Two Saturdays had been unpropitious.
But Sunday was at hand. One of the plans which had formerly been
discussed and abandoned might be resumed. The usurper might be set upon
at Hyde Park Corner on his way to his chapel. Charnock was ready for any
enterprise however desperate. If the hunt was up, it was better to die
biting and scratching to the last than to be worried without resistance
or revenge. He assembled some of his accomplices at one of the numerous
houses at which he had lodgings, and plied there hard with healths to
the King, to the Queen, to the Prince, and to the Grand Monarch, as they
called Lewis. But the terror and dejection of the gang were beyond the
power of wine; and so many had stolen away that those who were left
could effect nothing. In the course of the afternoon it was known that
the guards had been doubled at the palace; and soon after nightfall
messengers from the Secretary of State's office were hurrying to and fro
with torches through the streets, accompanied by files and musketeers.
Before the dawn of Sunday Charnock was in custody. A little later,
Rockwood and Bernardi were found in bed at a Jacobite alehouse on Tower
Hill. Seventeen more traitors were seized before noon; and three of the
Blues were put under arrest. That morning a Council was held; and, as
soon as it rose, an express was sent off to call home some regiments
from Flanders; Dorset set out for Sussex, of which he was Lord
Lieutenant; Romney, who was Warden of the Cinque Ports, started for the
coast of Kent; and Russell hastened down the Thames to take the command
of the fleet. In the evening the Council sate again. Some of the
prisoners were examined and committed. The Lord Mayor was in attendance,
was informed of what had been discovered, and was specially charged to
look well to the peace of the capital. [668]
On Monday morning all the trainbands of the City were under arms. The
King went in state to the House of Lords, sent for the Commons, and
from the throne told the Parliament that, but for the protection of a
gracious Providence, he should at that moment have been a corpse, and
the kingdom would have been invaded by a French army. The danger of
invasion, he added, was still great; but he had already given such
orders as would, he hoped, suffice for the protection of the realm. Some
traitors were in custody; warrants were out against others; he should
do his part in this emergency; and he relied on the Houses to do theirs.
[669]
The Houses instantly voted a joint address in which they thankfully
acknowledged the divine goodness which had preserved him to his people,
and implored him to take more than ordinary care of his person. They
concluded by exhorting him to seize and secure all persons whom he
regarded as dangerous.
On the same day two important bills were brought into the Commons. By
one the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. The other provided that the
Parliament should not be dissolved by the death of William. Sir Rowland
Gwyn, an honest country gentleman, made a motion of which he did not
at all foresee the important consequences. He proposed that the members
should enter into an association for the defence of their Sovereign and
their country. Montague, who of all men was the quickest at taking and
improving a hint, saw how much such an association would strengthen the
government and the Whig party. [670] An instrument was immediately
drawn tip, by which the representatives of the people, each for himself,
solemnly recognised William as rightful and lawful King, and bound
themselves to stand by him and by each other against James and James's
adherents. Lastly they vowed that, if His Majesty's life should be
shortened by violence, they would avenge him signally on his murderers,
and would, with one heart, strenuously support the order of succession
settled by the Bill of Rights. It was ordered that the House should
be called over the next morning. [671] The attendance was consequently
great; the Association, engrossed on parchment, was on the table; and
the members went up, county by county, to sign their names. [672]
The King's speech, the joint address of both Houses, the Association
framed by the Commons, and a proclamation, containing a list of
the conspirators and offering a reward of a thousand pounds for the
apprehension of any one of them, were soon cried in all the streets of
the capital and carried out by all the postbags. Wherever the news came
it raised the whole country. Those two hateful words, assassination and
invasion, acted like a spell. No impressment was necessary. The seamen
came forth from their hiding places by thousands to man the fleet. Only
three days after the King had appealed to the nation, Russell sailed out
of the Thames with one great squadron. Another was ready for action at
Spithead. The militia of all the maritime counties from the Wash to
the Land's End was under arms. For persons accused of offences merely
political there was generally much sympathy. But Barclay's assassins
were hunted like wolves by the whole population. The abhorrence which
the English have, through many generations, felt for domiciliary visits,
and for all those impediments which the police of continental states
throws in the way of travellers, was for a time suspended. The gates of
the City of London were kept many hours closed while a strict search was
made within. The magistrates of almost every walled town in the kingdom
followed the example of the capital. On every highway parties of armed
men were posted with orders to stop passengers of suspicious appearance.
During a few days it was hardly possible to perform a journey without a
passport, or to procure posthorses without the authority of a justice
of the peace. Nor was any voice raised against these precautions. The
common people indeed were, if possible, more eager than the public
functionaries to bring the traitors to justice. This eagerness may
perhaps be in part ascribed to the great rewards promised by the royal
proclamation. The hatred which every good Protestant felt for Popish
cutthroats was not a little strengthened by the songs in which the
street poets celebrated the lucky hackney coachman who had caught
his traitor, had received his thousand pounds, and had set up as a
gentleman. [673] The zeal of the populace could in some places hardly
be kept within the limits of the law. At the country seat of Parkyns
in Warwickshire, arms and accoutrements sufficient to equip a troop of
cavalry were found. As soon as this was known, a furious mob assembled,
pulled down the house and laid the gardens utterly waste. [674] Parkyns
himself was tracked to a garret in the Temple. Porter and Keyes, who
had fled into Surrey, were pursued by the hue and cry, stopped by the
country people near Leatherhead, and, after some show of resistance,
secured and sent to prison. Friend was found hidden in the house of a
Quaker. Knightley was caught in the dress of a fine lady, and recognised
in spite of his patches and paint. In a few days all the chief
conspirators were in custody except Barclay, who succeeded in making his
escape to France.
At the same time some notorious malecontents were arrested, and were
detained for a time on suspicion. Old Roger Lestrange, now in his
eightieth year, was taken up. Ferguson was found hidden under a bed
in Gray's Inn Lane, and was, to the general joy, locked up in Newgate.
[675] Meanwhile a special commission was issued for the trial of the
traitors. There was no want of evidence. For, of the conspirators who
had been seized, ten or twelve were ready to save themselves by bearing
witness against their associates. None had been deeper in guilt,
and none shrank with more abject terror from death, than Porter. The
government consented to spare him, and thus obtained, not only his
evidence, but the much more respectable evidence of Pendergrass.
Pendergrass was in no danger; he had committed no offence; his character
was fair; and his testimony would have far greater weight with a jury
than the testimony of a crowd of approvers swearing for their necks. But
he had the royal word of honour that he should not be a witness without
his own consent; and he was fully determined not to be a witness unless
he were assured of Porter's safety. Porter was now safe; and Pendergrass
had no longer any scruple about relating the whole truth.
Charnock, King and Keyes were set first to the bar. The Chiefs of the
three Courts of Common Law and several other judges were on the bench;
and among the audience were many members of both Houses of Parliament.
It was the eleventh of March. The new Act which regulated the
procedure in cases of high treason was not to come into force till
the twenty-fifth. The culprits urged that, as the Legislature had, by
passing that Act, recognised the justice of allowing them to see their
indictment, and to avail themselves of the assistance of an advocate,
the tribunal ought either to grant them what the highest authority had
declared to be a reasonable indulgence, or to defer the trial for a
fortnight. The judges, however, would consent to no delay. They have
therefore been accused by later writers of using the mere letter of
the law in order to destroy men who, if that law had been construed
according to its spirit, might have had some chance of escape. This
accusation is unjust. The judges undoubtedly carried the real intention
of the Legislature into effect; and, for whatever injustice was
committed, the Legislature, and not the judges, ought to be held
accountable. The words, "twenty-fifth of March," had not slipped into
the Act by mere inadvertence. All parties in Parliament had long been
agreed as to the principle of the new regulations. The only matter about
which there was any dispute was the time at which those regulations
should take effect. After debates extending through several sessions,
after repeated divisions with various results, a compromise had been
made; and it was surely not for the Courts to alter the terms of that
compromise. It may indeed be confidently affirmed that, if the Houses
had foreseen the Assassination Plot, they would have fixed, not an
earlier, but a later day for the commencement of the new system.
Undoubtedly the Parliament, and especially the Whig party, deserved
serious blame. For, if the old rules of procedure gave no unfair
advantage to the Crown, there was no reason for altering them; and if,
as was generally admitted, they did give an unfair advantage to the
Crown, and that against a defendant on trial for his life, they ought
not to have been suffered to continue in force a single day. But no
blame is due to the tribunals for not acting in direct opposition both
to the letter and to the spirit of the law.
The government might indeed have postponed the trials till the new Act
came into force; and it would have been wise, as well as right, to do
so; for the prisoners would have gained nothing by the delay. The case
against them was one on which all the ingenuity of the Inns of Court
could have made no impression. Porter, Pendergrass, De la Rue and others
gave evidence which admitted of no answer. Charnock said the very little
that he had to say with readiness and presence of mind. The jury found
all the defendants guilty. It is not much to the honour of that age that
the announcement of the verdict was received with loud huzzas by the
crowd which surrounded the Courthouse. Those huzzas were renewed when
the three unhappy men, having heard their doom, were brought forth under
a guard. [676]
Charnock had hitherto shown no sign of flinching; but when he was again
in his cell his fortitude gave way. He begged hard for mercy. He
would be content, he said, to pass the rest of his days in an easy
confinement. He asked only for his life. In return for his life, he
promised to discover all that he knew of the schemes of the Jacobites
against the government. If it should appear that he prevaricated or that
he suppressed any thing, he was willing to undergo the utmost rigour
of the law. This offer produced much excitement, and some difference of
opinion, among the councillors of William. But the King decided, as in
such cases he seldom failed to decide, wisely and magnanimously. He
saw that the discovery of the Assassination Plot had changed the whole
posture of affairs. His throne, lately tottering, was fixed on an
immovable basis. His popularity had risen impetuously to as great a
height as when he was on his march from Torbay to London. Many who
had been out of humour with his administration, and who had, in their
spleen, held some communication with Saint Germains, were shocked to
find that they had been, in some sense, leagued with murderers. He would
not drive such persons to despair. He would not even put them to the
blush. Not only should they not be punished; they should not undergo the
humiliation of being pardoned. He would not know that they had offended.
Charnock was left to his fate. [677] When he found that he had no chance
of being received as a deserter, he assumed the dignity of a martyr, and
played his part resolutely to the close. That he might bid farewell to
the world with a better grace, he ordered a fine new coat to be hanged
in, and was very particular on his last day about the powdering and
curling of his wig. [678] Just before he was turned off, he delivered
to the Sheriffs a paper in which he avowed that he had conspired against
the life of the Prince of Orange, but solemnly denied that James had
given any commission authorising assassination. The denial was doubtless
literally correct; but Charnock did not deny, and assuredly could not
with truth have denied, that he had seen a commission written and signed
by James, and containing words which might without any violence be
construed, and which were, by all to whom they were shown, actually
construed, to authorise the murderous ambuscade of Turnham Green.
Indeed Charnock, in another paper, which is still in existence, but has
never been printed, held very different language. He plainly said that,
for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, he could not tell the
whole truth in the paper which he had delivered to the Sheriffs. He
acknowledged that the plot in which he had been engaged seemed, even
to many loyal subjects, highly criminal. They called him assassin
and murderer. Yet what had he done more than had been done by Mucius
Scaevola? Nay, what had he done more than had been done by every body
who bore arms against the Prince of Orange? If an array of twenty
thousand men had suddenly landed in England and surprised the usurper,
this would have been called legitimate war. Did the difference between
war and assassination depend merely on the number of persons engaged?
What then was the smallest number which could lawfully surprise an
enemy? Was it five thousand, or a thousand, or a hundred? Jonathan and
his armourbearer were only two. Yet they made a great slaughter of the
Philistines. Was that assassination? It cannot, said Charnock, be the
mere act, it must be the cause, that makes killing assassination. It
followed that it was not assassination to kill one,--and here the
dying man gave a loose to all his hatred,--who had declared a war of
extermination against loyal subjects, who hung, drew and quartered every
man who stood up for the right, and who had laid waste England to
enrich the Dutch. Charnock admitted that his enterprise would have been
unjustifiable if it had not been authorised by James; but he maintained
that it had been authorised, not indeed expressly, but by implication.
His Majesty had indeed formerly prohibited similar attempts; but
had prohibited them, not as in themselves criminal, but merely as
inexpedient at this or that conjuncture of affairs.
Circumstances had
changed. The prohibition might therefore reasonably be considered as
withdrawn. His Majesty's faithful subjects had then only to look to
the words of his commission; and those words, beyond all doubt, fully
warranted an attack on the person of the usurper. [679]
King and Keyes suffered with Charnock. King behaved with firmness and
decency. He acknowledged his crime, and said that he repented of it. He
thought it due to the Church of which he was a member, and on which his
conduct had brought reproach, to declare that he had been misled, not by
any casuistry about tyrannicide, but merely by the violence of his
own evil passions. Poor Keyes was in an agony of terror. His tears and
lamentations moved the pity of some of the spectators. It was said at
the time, and it has often since been repeated, that a servant drawn
into crime by a master was a proper object of royal clemency. But
those who have blamed the severity with which Keyes was treated
have altogether omitted to notice the important circumstance which
distinguished his case from that of every other conspirator. He had been
one of the Blues. He had kept up to the last an intercourse with his
old comrades. On the very day fixed for the murder he had contrived to
mingle with them and to pick up intelligence from them. The regiment had
been so deeply infected with disloyalty that it had been found necessary
to confine some men and to dismiss many more. Surely, if any example
was to be made, it was proper to make an example of the agent by whose
instrumentality the men who meant to shoot the King communicated with
the men whose business was to guard him.
Friend was tried next. His crime was not of so black a dye as that of
the three conspirators who had just suffered. He had indeed invited
foreign enemies to invade the realm, and had made preparations
for joining them. But, though he had been privy to the design of
assassination, he had not been a party to it. His large fortune however,
and the use which he was well known to have made of it, marked him out
as a fit object for punishment. He, like Charnock, asked for counsel,
and, like Charnock, asked in vain. The judges could not relax the law;
and the Attorney General would not postpone the trial. The proceedings
of that day furnish a strong argument in favour of the Act from the
benefit of which Friend was excluded. It is impossible to read them
over at this distance of time without feeling compassion for a silly ill
educated man, unnerved by extreme danger, and opposed to cool, astute
and experienced antagonists. Charnock had defended himself and those
who were tried with him as well as any professional advocate could have
done. But poor Friend was as helpless as a child. He could do little
more than exclaim that he was a Protestant, and that the witnesses
against him were Papists, who had dispensations from their priests for
perjury, and who believed that to swear away the lives of heretics was
a meritorious work. He was so grossly ignorant of law and history as to
imagine that the statute of treasons, passed in the reign of Edward the
Third, at a time when there was only one religion in Western Europe,
contained a clause providing that no Papist should be a witness, and
actually forced the Clerk of the Court to read the whole Act from
beginning to end. About his guilt it was impossible that there could be
a doubt in any rational mind. He was convicted; and he would have been
convicted if he had been allowed the privileges for which he asked.
Parkyns came next. He had been deeply concerned in the worst part of
the plot, and was, in one respect, less excusable than any of his
accomplices; for they were all nonjurors; and he had taken the oaths
to the existing government. He too insisted that he ought to be tried
according to the provisions of the new Act. But the counsel for the
Crown stood on their extreme right; and his request was denied. As he
was a man of considerable abilities, and had been bred to the bar, he
probably said for himself all that counsel could have said for him;
and that all amounted to very little. He was found guilty, and received
sentence of death on the evening of the twenty-fourth of March, within
six hours of the time when the law of which he had vainly demanded the
benefit was to come into force. [680]
The execution of the two knights was eagerly expected by the population
of London. The States General were informed by their correspondent that,
of all sights, that in which the English most delighted was a hanging,
and that, of all hangings within the memory of the oldest man, that of
Friend and Parkyns excited the greatest interest. The multitude had been
incensed against Friend by reports touching the exceeding badness of the
beer which he brewed. It was even rumoured that he had, in his zeal for
the Jacobite cause, poisoned all the casks which he had furnished to the
navy. An innumerable crowd accordingly assembled at Tyburn. Scaffolding
had been put up which formed an immense amphitheatre round the gallows.
On this scaffolding the wealthier spectators stood, row above row; and
expectation was at the height when it was announced that the show was
deferred. The mob broke up in bad humour, and not without many fights
between those who had given money for their places and those who refused
to return it. [681]
The cause of this severe disappointment was a resolution suddenly passed
by the Commons. A member had proposed that a Committee should be sent
to the Tower with authority to examine the prisoners, and to hold out
to them the hope that they might, by a full and ingenuous confession,
obtain the intercession of the House. The debate appears, from the
scanty information which has come down to us, to have been a very
curious one. Parties seemed to have changed characters. It might have
been expected that the Whigs would have been inexorably severe, and
that, if there was any tenderness for the unhappy men, that tenderness
would have been found among the Tories. But in truth many of the Whigs
hoped that they might, by sparing two criminals who had no power to do
mischief, be able to detect and destroy numerous criminals high in rank
and office. On the other hand, every man who had ever had any dealings
direct or indirect with Saint Germains, or who took an interest in any
person likely to have had such dealings, looked forward with dread to
the disclosures which the captives might, under the strong terrors of
death, be induced to make. Seymour, simply because he had gone further
in treason than almost any other member of the House, was louder than
any other member of the House in exclaiming against all indulgence
to his brother traitors. Would the Commons usurp the most sacred
prerogative of the Crown? It was for His Majesty, and not for them, to
judge whether lives justly forfeited could be without danger spared. The
Whigs however carried their point. A Committee, consisting of all the
Privy Councillors in the House, set off instantly for Newgate. Friend
and Parkyns were interrogated, but to no purpose. They had, after
sentence had been passed on them, shown at first some symptoms of
weakness; but their courage had been fortified by the exhortations of
nonjuring divines who had been admitted to the prison. The rumour
was that Parkyns would have given way but for the entreaties of his
daughter, who adjured him to suffer like a man for the good cause. The
criminals acknowledged that they had done the acts of which they had
been convicted, but, with a resolution which is the more respectable
because it seems to have sprung, not from constitutional hardihood, but
from sentiments of honour and religion, refused to say any thing which
could compromise others. [682]
In a few hours the crowd again assembled at Tyburn; and this time the
sightseers were not defrauded of their amusement. They saw indeed
one sight which they had not expected, and which produced a greater
sensation than the execution itself. Jeremy Collier and two other
nonjuring divines of less celebrity, named Cook and Snatt, had attended
the prisoners in Newgate, and were in the cart under the gallows. When
the prayers were over, and just before the hangman did his office, the
three schismatical priests stood up, and laid their hands on the heads
of the dying men who continued to kneel. Collier pronounced a form of
absolution taken from the service for the Visitation of the Sick, and
his brethren exclaimed "Amen! "
This ceremony raised a great outcry; and the outcry became louder
when, a few hours after the execution, the papers delivered by the two
traitors to the Sheriffs were made public. It had been supposed that
Parkyns at least would express some repentance for the crime which had
brought him to the gallows. Indeed he had, before the Committee of the
Commons, owned that the Assassination Plot could not be justified. But,
in his last declaration, he avowed his share in that plot, not only
without a word indicating remorse, but with something which resembled
exultation. Was this a man to be absolved by Christian divines, absolved
before the eyes of tens of thousands, absolved with rites evidently
intended to attract public attention, with rites of which there was no
trace in the Book of Common Prayer or in the practice of the Church of
England?
In journals, pamphlets and broadsides, the insolence of the three
Levites, as they were called, was sharply reprehended. Warrants were
soon out. Cook and Snatt were taken and imprisoned; but Collier was able
to conceal himself, and, by the help of one of the presses which were at
the service of his party, sent forth from his hiding place a defence of
his conduct. He declared that he abhorred assassination as much as any
of those who railed against him; and his general character warrants us
in believing that this declaration was perfectly sincere. But the
rash act into which he had been hurried by party spirit furnished his
adversaries with very plausible reasons for questioning his sincerity.
A crowd of answers to his defence appeared. Preeminent among them in
importance was a solemn manifesto signed by the two Archbishops and by
all the Bishops who were then in London, twelve in number. Even Crewe
of Durham and Sprat of Rochester set their names to this document. They
condemned the proceedings of the three nonjuring divines, as in form
irregular and in substance impious. To remit the sins of impenitent
sinners was a profane abuse of the power which Christ had delegated
to his ministers. It was not denied that Parkyns had planned an
assassination. It was not pretended that he had professed any repentance
for planning an assassination. The plain inference was that the divines
who absolved him did not think it sinful to assassinate King William.
Collier rejoined; but, though a pugnacious controversialist, he on this
occasion shrank from close conflict, and made his escape as well as he
could under a cloud of quotations from Tertullian, Cyprian and Jerome,
Albaspinaeus and Hammond, the Council of Carthage and the Council of
Toledo. The public feeling was strongly against the three absolvers. The
government however wisely determined not to confer on them the honour of
martyrdom. A bill was found against them by the grand jury of Middlesex;
but they were not brought to trial. Cook and Snatt were set at liberty
after a short detention; and Collier would have been treated with equal
lenity if he would have consented to put in bail. But he was determined
to do no act which could be construed into a recognition of the usurping
government. He was therefore outlawed; and when he died, more than
thirty years later, his outlawry had not been reversed. [683]
Parkyns was the last Englishman who was tried for high treason under the
old system of procedure. The first who was tried under the new system
was Rockwood. He was defended by Sir Bartholomew Shower, who in the
preceding reign had made himself unenviably conspicuous as a servile and
cruel sycophant, who had obtained from James the Recordership of
London when Holt honourably resigned it, and who had, as Recorder,
sent soldiers to the gibbet for breaches of military discipline. By
his servile cruelty he had earned the nickname of the Manhunter. Shower
deserved, if any offender deserved, to be excepted from the Act of
Indemnity, and left to the utmost rigour of those laws which he had so
shamelessly perverted. But he had been saved by the clemency of William,
and had requited that clemency by pertinacious and malignant opposition.
[684] It was doubtless on account of Shower's known leaning towards
Jacobitism that he was employed on this occasion. He raised some
technical objections which the Court overruled. On the merits of the
case he could make no defence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty.
Cranburne and Lowick were then tried and convicted. They suffered with
Rookwood; and there the executions stopped. [685]
The temper of the nation was such that the government might have shed
much more blood without incurring the reproach of cruelty. The feeling
which had been called forth by the discovery of the plot continued
during several weeks to increase day by day. Of that feeling the able
men who were at the head of the Whig party made a singularly skilful
use. They saw that the public enthusiasm, if left without guidance,
would exhaust itself in huzzas, healths and bonfires, but might, if
wisely guided, be the means of producing a great and lasting effect. The
Association, into which the Commons had entered while the King's speech
was still in their ears, furnished the means of combining four fifths of
the nation in one vast club for the defence of the order of succession
with which were inseparably combined the dearest liberties of the
English people, and of establishing a test which would distinguish those
who were zealous for that order of succession from those who sullenly
and reluctantly acquiesced in it. Of the five hundred and thirty members
of the Lower House about four hundred and twenty voluntarily subscribed
the instrument which recognised William as rightful and lawful King of
England. It was moved in the Upper House that the same form should be
adopted; but objections were raised by the Tories. Nottingham, ever
conscientious, honourable and narrow minded, declared that he could not
assent to the words "rightful and lawful. " He still held, as he had
held from the first, that a prince who had taken the Crown, not by
birthright, but by the gift of the Convention, could not properly be so
described. William was doubtless King in fact, and, as King in fact, was
entitled to the obedience of Christians. "No man," said Nottingham, "has
served or will serve His Majesty more faithfully than I. But to this
document I cannot set my hand. " Rochester and Normanby held similar
language. Monmouth, in a speech of two hours and a half, earnestly
exhorted the Lords to agree with the Commons. Burnet was vehement on the
same side. Wharton, whose father had lately died, and who was now Lord
Wharton, appeared in the foremost rank of the Whig peers. But no man
distinguished himself more in the debate than one whose life, both
public and private, had been one long series of faults and disasters,
the incestuous lover of Henrietta Berkeley, the unfortunate lieutenant
of Monmouth. He had recently ceased to be called by the tarnished name
of Grey of Wark, and was now Earl of Tankerville. He spoke on that day
with great force and eloquence for the words, "rightful and lawful. "
Leeds, after expressing his regret that a question about a mere phrase
should have produced dissension among noble persons who were all equally
attached to the reigning Sovereign, undertook the office of mediator.
He proposed that their Lordships, instead of recognising William as
rightful and lawful King, should declare that William had the right
by law to the English Crown, and that no other person had any right
whatever to that Crown. Strange to say, almost all the Tory peers were
perfectly satisfied with what Leeds had suggested. Among the Whigs there
was some unwillingness to consent to a change which, slight as it was,
might be thought to indicate a difference of opinion between the two
Houses on a subject of grave importance. But Devonshire and Portland
declared themselves content; their authority prevailed; and the
alteration was made. How a rightful and lawful possessor is to be
distinguished from a possessor who has the exclusive right by law is
a question which a Whig may, without any painful sense of shame,
acknowledge to be beyond the reach of his faculties, and leave to be
discussed by High Churchmen. Eighty-three peers immediately affixed
their names to the amended form of association; and Rochester was among
them. Nottingham, not yet quite satisfied, asked time for consideration.
[686]
Beyond the walls of Parliament there was none of this verbal quibbling.
The language of the House of Commons was adopted by the whole country.
The City of London led the way. Within thirty-six hours after the
Association had been published under the direction of the Speaker it
was subscribed by the Lord Mayor, by the Aldermen, and by almost all the
members of the Common Council. The municipal corporations all over the
kingdom followed the example. The spring assizes were just beginning;
and at every county town the grand jurors and the justices of the peace
put down their names. Soon shopkeepers, artisans, yeomen, farmers,
husbandmen, came by thousands to the tables where the parchments were
laid out. In Westminster there were thirty-seven thousand associators,
in the Tower Hamlets eight thousand, in Southwark eighteen thousand. The
rural parts of Surrey furnished seventeen thousand. At Ipswich all the
freemen signed except two. At Warwick all the male inhabitants who had
attained the age of sixteen signed, except two Papists and two Quakers.
At Taunton, where the memory of the Bloody Circuit was fresh, every man
who could write gave in his adhesion to the government. All the churches
and all the meeting houses in the town were crowded, as they had never
been crowded before, with people who came to thank God for having
preserved him whom they fondly called William the Deliverer. Of all the
counties of England Lancashire was the most Jacobitical. Yet Lancashire
furnished fifty thousand signatures. Of all the great towns of England
Norwich was the most Jacobitical. The magistrates of that city were
supposed to be in the interest of the exiled dynasty. The nonjurors were
numerous, and had, just before the discovery of the plot, seemed to be
in unusual spirits and ventured to take unusual liberties. One of the
chief divines of the schism had preached a sermon there which gave rise
to strange suspicions. He had taken for his text the verse in which the
Prophet Jeremiah announced that the day of vengeance was come, that
the sword would be drunk with blood, that the Lord God of Hosts had a
sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates. Very soon it was
known that, at the time when this discourse was delivered, swords had
actually been sharpening, under the direction of Barclay and Parkyns,
for a bloody sacrifice on the north bank of the river Thames. The
indignation of the common people of Norwich was not to be restrained.
They came in multitudes, though discouraged by the municipal
authorities, to plight faith to William, rightful and lawful King. In
Norfolk the number of signatures amounted to forty-eight thousand, in
Suffolk to seventy thousand. Upwards of five hundred rolls went up
to London from every part of England. The number of names attached to
twenty-seven of those rolls appears from the London Gazette to have been
three hundred and fourteen thousand. After making the largest allowance
for fraud, it seems certain that the Association included the great
majority of the adult male inhabitants of England who were able to sign
their names. The tide of popular feeling was so strong that a man who
was known not to have signed ran considerable risk of being publicly
affronted. In many places nobody appeared without wearing in his hat a
red riband on which were embroidered the words, "General Association
for King William. " Once a party of Jacobites had the courage to parade
a street in London with an emblematic device which seemed to indicate
their contempt for the new Solemn League and Covenant. They were
instantly put to rout by the mob, and their leader was well ducked. The
enthusiasm spread to secluded isles, to factories in foreign countries,
to remote colonies. The Association was signed by the rude fishermen
of the Scilly Rocks, by the English merchants of Malaga, by the English
merchants of Genoa, by the citizens of New York, by the tobacco planters
of Virginia and by the sugar planters of Barbadoes. [687]
Emboldened by success, the Whig leaders ventured to proceed a step
further. They brought into the Lower House a bill for the securing of
the King's person and government. By this bill it was provided that
whoever, while the war lasted, should come from France into England
without the royal license should incur the penalties of treason, that
the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act should continue to the end of
the year 1696, and that all functionaries appointed by William should
retain their offices, notwithstanding his death, till his successor
should be pleased to dismiss them. The form of Association which the
House of Commons had adopted was solemnly ratified; and it was provided
that no person should sit in that House or should hold any office, civil
or military, without signing. The Lords were indulged in the use of
their own form; and nothing was said about the clergy.
The Tories, headed by Finch and Seymour, complained bitterly of this
new test, and ventured once to divide, but were defeated. Finch seems to
have been heard patiently; but, notwithstanding all Seymour's eloquence,
the contemptuous manner in which he spoke of the Association raised a
storm against which he could not stand. Loud cries of "the Tower, the
Tower," were heard. Haughty and imperious as he was, he was forced to
explain away his words, and could scarcely, by apologizing in a manner
to which he was little accustomed, save himself from the humiliation of
being called to the bar and reprimanded on his knees. The bill went up
to the Lords, and passed with great speed in spite of the opposition of
Rochester and Nottingham. [688]
The nature and extent of the change which the discovery of the
Assassination Plot had produced in the temper of the House of Commons
and of the nation is strikingly illustrated by the history of a bill
entitled a Bill for the further Regulation of Elections of Members
of Parliament. The moneyed interest was almost entirely Whig, and was
therefore an object of dislike to the Tories. The rapidly growing power
of that interest was generally regarded with jealousy by landowners
whether they were Whigs or Tories. It was something new and monstrous
to see a trader from Lombard Street, who had no tie to the soil of our
island, and whose wealth was entirely personal and movable, post down to
Devonshire or Sussex with a portmanteau full of guineas, offer himself
as candidate for a borough in opposition to a neighbouring gentleman
whose ancestors had been regularly returned ever since the Wars of the
Roses, and come in at the head of the poll. Yet even this was not the
worst. More than one seat in Parliament, it was said, had been bought
and sold over a dish of coffee at Garraway's. The purchaser had not been
required even to go through the form of showing himself to the electors.
Without leaving his counting house in Cheapside, he had been chosen to
represent a place which he had never seen. Such things were intolerable.
No man, it was said, ought to sit in the English legislature who was
not master of some hundreds of acres of English ground. [689] A bill was
accordingly brought in which provided that every member of the House of
Commons must have a certain estate in land. For a knight of a shire the
qualification was fixed at five hundred a year; for a burgess at two
hundred a year. Early in February this bill was read a second time and
referred to a Select Committee. A motion was made that the Committee
should be instructed to add a clause enacting that all elections should
be by ballot. Whether this motion proceeded from a Whig or a Tory, by
what arguments it was supported and on what grounds it was opposed,
we have now no means of discovering. We know only that it was rejected
without a division.
Before the bill came back from the Committee, some of the most
respectable constituent bodies in the kingdom had raised their voices
against the new restriction to which it was proposed to subject them.
There had in general been little sympathy between the commercial towns
and the Universities. For the commercial towns were the chief seats of
Whiggism and Non conformity; and the Universities were zealous for the
Crown and the Church. Now, however, Oxford and Cambridge made common
cause with London and Bristol. It was hard, said the Academics, that a
grave and learned man, sent by a large body of grave and learned men to
the Great Council of the nation, should be thought less fit to sit in
that Council than a boozing clown who had scarcely literature enough
to entitle him to the benefit of clergy. It was hard, said the traders,
that a merchant prince, who had been the first magistrate of the first
city in the world, whose name on the back of a bill commanded entire
confidence at Smyrna and at Genoa, at Hamburg and at Amsterdam, who
had at sea ships every one of which was worth a manor, and who had
repeatedly, when the liberty and religion of the kingdom were in peril,
advanced to the government, at an hour's notice, five or ten thousand
pounds, should be supposed to have a less stake in the prosperity of the
commonwealth than a squire who sold his own bullocks and hops over a pot
of ale at the nearest market town. On the report, it was moved that the
Universities should be excepted; but the motion was lost by a hundred
and fifty-one votes to a hundred and forty-three. On the third reading
it was moved that the City of London should be excepted; but it was not
thought advisable to divide. The final question that the bill do pass,
was carried by a hundred and seventy-three votes to a hundred and fifty
on the day which preceded the discovery of the Assassination Plot. The
Lords agreed to the bill without any amendment.
William had to consider whether he would give or withhold his assent.
The commercial towns of the kingdom, and among them the City of London,
which had always stood firmly by him, and which had extricated him
many times from great embarrassments, implored his protection.
