No More Learning

The
general wish of Europe was that James would govern in conformity with
law and with public opinion. From the Escurial itself came letters,
expressing an earnest hope that the new King of England would be on good
terms with his Parliament and his people. [246] From the Vatican itself
came cautions against immoderate zeal for the Roman Catholic faith.
Benedict Odescalchi, who filled the papal chair under the name of
Innocent the Eleventh, felt, in his character of temporal sovereign, all
those apprehensions with which other princes watched the progress of the
French power. He had also grounds of uneasiness which were peculiar to
himself. It was a happy circumstance for the Protestant religion that,
at the moment when the last Roman Catholic King of England mounted the
throne, the Roman Catholic Church was torn by dissension, and threatened
with a new schism. A quarrel similar to that which had raged in the
eleventh century between the Emperors and the Supreme Pontiffs had
arisen between Lewis and Innocent. Lewis, zealous even to bigotry
for the doctrines of the Church of Rome, but tenacious of his regal
authority, accused the Pope of encroaching on the secular rights of the
French Crown, and was in turn accused by the Pope of encroaching on the
spiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty as he was, encountered a
spirit even more determined than his own. Innocent was, in all private
relations, the meekest and gentlest of men: but when he spoke officially
from the chair of St. Peter, he spoke in the tones of Gregory the
Seventh and of Sixtus the Fifth. The dispute became serious. Agents of
the King were excommunicated. Adherents of the Pope were banished. The
King made the champions of his authority Bishops. The Pope refused them
institution. They took possession of the Episcopal palaces and revenues:
but they were incompetent to perform the Episcopal functions. Before the
struggle terminated, there were in France thirty prelates who could not
confirm or ordain. [247]

Had any prince then living, except Lewis, been engaged in such a dispute
with the Vatican, he would have had all Protestant governments on his
side. But the fear and resentment which the ambition and insolence of
the French King had inspired were such that whoever had the courage
manfully to oppose him was sure of public sympathy. Even Lutherans and
Calvinists, who had always detested the Pope, could not refrain from
wishing him success against a tyrant who aimed at universal monarchy.
It was thus that, in the present century, many who regarded Pius the
Seventh as Antichrist were well pleased to see Antichrist confront the
gigantic power of Napoleon.

The resentment which Innocent felt towards France disposed him to take
a mild and liberal view of the affairs of England. The return of
the English people to the fold of which he was the shepherd would
undoubtedly have rejoiced his soul. But he was too wise a man to believe
that a nation so bold and stubborn, could be brought back to the Church
of Rome by the violent and unconstitutional exercise of royal authority.
It was not difficult to foresee that, if James attempted to promote the
interests of his religion by illegal and unpopular means, the attempt
would fail; the hatred with which the heretical islanders regarded
the true faith would become fiercer and stronger than ever; and an
indissoluble association would be created in their minds between
Protestantism and civil freedom, between Popery and arbitrary power. In
the meantime the King would be an object of aversion and suspicion to
his people. England would still be, as she had been under James the
First, under Charles the First, and under Charles the Second, a power of
the third rank; and France would domineer unchecked beyond the Alps and
the Rhine. On the other hand, it was probable that James, by acting with
prudence and moderation, by strictly observing the laws and by exerting
himself to win the confidence of his Parliament, might be able to
obtain, for the professors of his religion, a large measure of relief.
Penal statutes would go first. Statutes imposing civil incapacities
would soon follow. In the meantime, the English King and the English
nation united might head the European coalition, and might oppose an
insuperable barrier to the cupidity of Lewis.

Innocent was confirmed in his judgment by the principal Englishmen who
resided at his court. Of these the most illustrious was Philip Howard,
sprung from the noblest houses of Britain, grandson, on one side, of an
Earl of Arundel, on the other, of a Duke of Lennox. Philip had long
been a member of the sacred college: he was commonly designated as the
Cardinal of England; and he was the chief counsellor of the Holy See in
matters relating to his country. He had been driven into exile by the
outcry of Protestant bigots; and a member of his family, the unfortunate
Stafford, had fallen a victim to their rage. But neither the Cardinal's
own wrongs, nor those of his house, had so heated his mind as to make
him a rash adviser. Every letter, therefore, which went from the Vatican
to Whitehall, recommended patience, moderation, and respect for the
prejudices of the English people. [248]

In the mind of James there was a great conflict. We should do him
injustice if we supposed that a state of vassalage was agreeable to his
temper. He loved authority and business. He had a high sense of his own
personal dignity. Nay, he was not altogether destitute of a sentiment
which bore some affinity to patriotism. It galled his soul to think that
the kingdom which he ruled was of far less account in the world than
many states which possessed smaller natural advantages; and he listened
eagerly to foreign ministers when they urged him to assert the dignity
of his rank, to place himself at the head of a great confederacy, to
become the protector of injured nations, and to tame the pride of that
power which held the Continent in awe. Such exhortations made his heart
swell with emotions unknown to his careless and effeminate brother.
But those emotions were soon subdued by a stronger feeling. A vigorous
foreign policy necessarily implied a conciliatory domestic policy. It
was impossible at once to confront the might of France and to trample
on the liberties of England. The executive government could undertake
nothing great without the support of the Commons, and could obtain their
support only by acting in conformity with their opinion. Thus James
found that the two things which he most desired could not be enjoyed
together. His second wish was to be feared and respected abroad. But his
first wish was to be absolute master at home. Between the incompatible
objects on which his heart was set he, for a time, went irresolutely
to and fro. The conflict in his own breast gave to his public acts a
strange appearance of indecision and insincerity. Those who, without
the clue, attempted to explore the maze of his politics were unable to
understand how the same man could be, in the same week, so haughty and
so mean. Even Lewis was perplexed by the vagaries of an ally who passed,
in a few hours, from homage to defiance, and from defiance to
homage. Yet, now that the whole conduct of James is before us, this
inconsistency seems to admit of a simple explanation.

At the moment of his accession he was in doubt whether the kingdom
would peaceably submit to his authority. The Exclusionists, lately so
powerful, might rise in arms against him. He might be in great need
of French money and French troops. He was therefore, during some days,
content to be a sycophant and a mendicant. He humbly apologised for
daring to call his Parliament together without the consent of the French
government. He begged hard for a French subsidy. He wept with joy over
the French bills of exchange. He sent to Versailles a special embassy
charged with assurances of his gratitude, attachment, and submission.
But scarcely had the embassy departed when his feelings underwent a
change. He had been everywhere proclaimed without one riot, without
one seditions outcry. From all corners of the island he received
intelligence that his subjects were tranquil and obedient. His spirit
rose. The degrading relation in which he stood to a foreign power seemed
intolerable. He became proud, punctilious, boastful, quarrelsome. He
held such high language about the dignity of his crown and the balance
of power that his whole court fully expected a complete revolution in
the foreign politics of the realm. He commanded Churchill to send home a
minute report of the ceremonial of Versailles, in order that the honours
with which the English embassy was received there might be repaid, and
not more than repaid, to the representative of France at Whitehall. The
news of this change was received with delight at Madrid, Vienna, and
the Hague. [249] Lewis was at first merely diverted. "My good ally talks
big," he said; "but he is as fond of my pistoles as ever his brother
was. " Soon, however, the altered demeanour of James, and the hopes with
which that demeanour inspired both the branches of the House of Austria,
began to call for more serious notice. A remarkable letter is still
extant, in which the French King intimated a strong suspicion that he
had been duped, and that the very money which he had sent to Westminster
would be employed against him. [250]

By this time England had recovered from the sadness and anxiety caused
by the death of the goodnatured Charles. The Tories were loud in
professions of attachment to their new master. The hatred of the Whigs
was kept down by fear. That great mass which is not steadily Whig or
Tory, but which inclines alternately to Whiggism and to Toryism, was
still on the Tory side. The reaction which had followed the dissolution
of the Oxford parliament had not yet spent its force.

The King early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to the proof.
While he was a subject, he had been in the habit of hearing mass with
closed doors in a small oratory which had been fitted up for his wife.
He now ordered the doors to be thrown open, in order that all who came
to pay their duty to him might see the ceremony. When the host was
elevated there was a strange confusion in the antechamber. The Roman
Catholics fell on their knees: the Protestants hurried out of the room.
Soon a new pulpit was erected in the palace; and, during Lent, a
series of sermons was preached there by Popish divines, to the great
discomposure of zealous churchmen. [251]

A more serious innovation followed. Passion week came; and the King
determined to hear mass with the same pomp with which his predecessors
had been surrounded when they repaired to the temples of the established
religion. He announced his intention to the three members of the
interior cabinet, and requested them to attend him. Sunderland, to
whom all religions were the same, readily consented. Godolphin, as
Chamberlain of the Queen, had already been in the habit of giving her
his hand when she repaired to her oratory, and felt no scruple about
bowing himself officially in the house of Rimmon. But Rochester was
greatly disturbed. His influence in the country arose chiefly from the
opinion entertained by the clergy and by the Tory gentry, that he was a
zealous and uncompromising friend of the Church. His orthodoxy had been
considered as fully atoning for faults which would otherwise have made
him the most unpopular man in the kingdom, for boundless arrogance,
for extreme violence of temper, and for manners almost brutal. [252] He
feared that, by complying with the royal wishes, he should greatly
lower himself in the estimation of his party. After some altercation
he obtained permission to pass the holidays out of town. All the other
great civil dignitaries were ordered to be at their posts on Easter
Sunday. The rites of the Church of Rome were once more, after an
interval of a hundred and twenty-seven years, performed at Westminster
with regal splendour. The Guards were drawn out. The Knights of the
Garter wore their collars. The Duke of Somerset, second in rank among
the temporal nobles of the realm, carried the sword of state. A long
train of great lords accompanied the King to his seat. But it was
remarked that Ormond and Halifax remained in the antechamber. A few
years before they had gallantly defended the cause of James against some
of those who now pressed past them. Ormond had borne no share in the
slaughter of Roman Catholics. Halifax had courageously pronounced
Stafford not guilty. As the timeservers who had pretended to shudder at
the thought of a Popish king, and who had shed without pity the innocent
blood of a Popish peer, now elbowed each other to get near a Popish
altar, the accomplished Trimmer might, with some justice, indulge his
solitary pride in that unpopular nickname. [253]

Within a week after this ceremony James made a far greater sacrifice
of his own religious prejudices than he had yet called on any of his
Protestant subjects to make. He was crowned on the twenty-third of
April, the feast of the patron saint of the realm. The Abbey and the
Hall were splendidly decorated. The presence of the Queen and of the
peeresses gave to the solemnity a charm which had been wanting to the
magnificent inauguration of the late King. Yet those who remembered that
inauguration pronounced that there was a great falling off. The ancient
usage was that, before a coronation, the sovereign, with all his
heralds, judges, councillors, lords, and great dignitaries, should ride
in state from the Tower of Westminster. Of these cavalcades the last and
the most glorious was that which passed through the capital while the
feelings excited by the Restoration were still in full vigour. Arches of
triumph overhung the road. All Cornhill, Cheapside, Saint Paul's Church
Yard, Fleet Street, and the Strand, were lined with scaffolding.
The whole city had thus been admitted to gaze on royalty in the most
splendid and solemn form that royalty could wear. James ordered an
estimate to be made of the cost of such a procession, and found that it
would amount to about half as much as he proposed to expend in covering
his wife with trinkets. He accordingly determined to be profuse where he
ought to have been frugal, and niggardly where he might pardonably
have been profuse. More than a hundred thousand pounds were laid out in
dressing the Queen, and the procession from the Tower was omitted. The
folly of this course is obvious. If pageantry be of any use in politics,
it is of use as a means of striking the imagination of the multitude. It
is surely the height of absurdity to shut out the populace from a show
of which the main object is to make an impression on the populace.
James would have shown a more judicious munificence and a more judicious
parsimony, if he had traversed London from east to west with the
accustomed pomp, and had ordered the robes of his wife to be somewhat
less thickly set with pearls and diamonds. His example was, however,
long followed by his successors; and sums, which, well employed, would
have afforded exquisite gratification to a large part of the nation,
were squandered on an exhibition to which only three or four thousand
privileged persons were admitted. At length the old practice was
partially revived. On the day of the coronation of Queen Victoria there
was a procession in which many deficiencies might be noted, but which
was seen with interest and delight by half a million of her subjects,
and which undoubtedly gave far greater pleasure, and called forth far
greater enthusiasm, than the more costly display which was witnessed by
a select circle within the Abbey.

James had ordered Sancroft to abridge the ritual. The reason publicly
assigned was that the day was too short for all that was to be done.
But whoever examines the changes which were made will see that the
real object was to remove some things highly offensive to the religious
feelings of a zealous Roman Catholic. The Communion Service was not
read. The ceremony of presenting the sovereign with a richly bound copy
of the English Bible, and of exhorting him to prize above all earthly
treasures a volume which he had been taught to regard as adulterated
with false doctrine, was omitted. What remained, however, after all this
curtailment, might well have raised scruples in the mind of a man who
sincerely believed the Church of England to be a heretical society,
within the pale of which salvation was not to be found. The King made
an oblation on the altar. He appeared to join in the petitions of the
Litany which was chaunted by the Bishops. He received from those false
prophets the unction typical of a divine influence, and knelt with the
semblance of devotion, while they called down upon him that Holy Spirit
of which they were, in his estimation, the malignant and obdurate foes.
Such are the inconsistencies of human nature that this man, who, from a
fanatical zeal for his religion, threw away three kingdoms, yet chose to
commit what was little short of an act of apostasy, rather than forego
the childish pleasure of being invested with the gewgaws symbolical of
kingly power. [254]

Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, preached. He was one of those writers
who still affected the obsolete style of Archbishop Williams and Bishop
Andrews. The sermon was made up of quaint conceits, such as seventy
years earlier might have been admired, but such as moved the scorn of a
generation accustomed to the purer eloquence of Sprat, of South, and of
Tillotson. King Solomon was King James. Adonijah was Monmouth. Joab was
a Rye House conspirator; Shimei, a Whig libeller; Abiathar, an honest
but misguided old Cavalier. One phrase in the Book of Chronicles was
construed to mean that the King was above the Parliament; and another
was cited to prove that he alone ought to command the militia. Towards
the close of the discourse the orator very timidly alluded to the new
and embarrassing position in which the Church stood with reference to
the sovereign, and reminded his hearers that the Emperor Constantius
Chlorus, though not himself a Christian, had held in honour those
Christians who remained true to their religion, and had treated with
scorn those who sought to earn his favour by apostasy. The service in
the Abbey was followed by a stately banquet in the Hall, the banquet by
brilliant fireworks, and the fireworks by much bad poetry. [255]

This may be fixed upon as the moment at which the enthusiasm of the
Tory party reached the zenith. Ever since the accession of the new King,
addresses had been pouring in which expressed profound veneration for
his person and office, and bitter detestation of the vanquished Whigs.
The magistrates of Middlesex thanked God for having confounded the
designs of those regicides and exclusionists who, not content with
having murdered one blessed monarch, were bent on destroying the
foundations of monarchy. The city of Gloucester execrated the
bloodthirsty villains who had tried to deprive His Majesty of his just
inheritance. The burgesses of Wigan assured their sovereign that
they would defend him against all plotting Achitophels and rebellions
Absaloms. The grand jury of Suffolk expressed a hope that the Parliament
would proscribe all the exclusionists. Many corporations pledged
themselves never to return to the House of Commons any person who had
voted for taking away the birthright of James. Even the capital was
profoundly obsequious. The lawyers and the traders vied with each
other in servility. Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery sent up fervent
professions of attachment and submission. All the great commercial
societies, the East India Company, the African Company, the Turkey
Company, the Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Maryland
Merchants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant Adventurers, declared
that they most cheerfully complied with the royal edict which required
them still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city of the island, echoed
the voice of London. But nowhere was the spirit of loyalty stronger than
in the two Universities. Oxford declared that she would never swerve
from those religious principles which bound her to obey the King without
any restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe terms,
the violence and treachery of those turbulent men who had maliciously
endeavoured to turn the stream of succession out of the ancient channel.
[256]

Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time, every number
of the London Gazette. But it was not only by addressing that the Tories
showed their zeal. The writs for the new Parliament had gone forth,
and the country was agitated by the tumult of a general election. No
election had ever taken place under circumstances so favourable to
the Court. Hundreds of thousands whom the Popish plot had scared into
Whiggism had been scared back by the Rye House plot into Toryism. In the
counties the government could depend on an overwhelming majority of the
gentlemen of three hundred a year and upwards, and on the clergy almost
to a man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels of Whiggism
had recently been deprived of their charters by legal sentence, or
had prevented the sentence by voluntary surrender. They had now been
reconstituted in such a manner that they were certain to return members
devoted to the crown. Where the townsmen could not be trusted, the
freedom had been bestowed on the neighbouring squires. In some of the
small western corporations, the constituent bodies were in great part
composed of Captains and Lieutenants of the Guards. The returning
officers were almost everywhere in the interest of the court. In every
shire the Lord Lieutenant and his deputies formed a powerful, active,
and vigilant committee, for the purpose of cajoling and intimidating the
freeholders. The people were solemnly warned from thousands of pulpits
not to vote for any Whig candidate, as they should answer it to Him who
had ordained the powers that be, and who had pronounced rebellion a sin
not less deadly than witchcraft. All these advantages the predominant
party not only used to the utmost, but abused in so shameless a manner
that grave and reflecting men, who had been true to the monarchy in
peril, and who bore no love to republicans and schismatics, stood
aghast, and augured from such beginnings the approach of evil times.
[257]

Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishment of their errors,
though defeated, disheartened, and disorganized, did not yield without
an effort. They were still numerous among the traders and artisans of
the towns, and among the yeomanry and peasantry of the open country. In
some districts, in Dorsetshire for example, and in Somersetshire, they
were the great majority of the population. In the remodelled boroughs
they could do nothing: but, in every county where they had a chance,
they struggled desperately. In Bedfordshire, which had lately been
represented by the virtuous and unfortunate Russell, they were
victorious on the show of hands, but were beaten at the poll. [258] In
Essex they polled thirteen hundred votes to eighteen hundred. [259] At
the election for Northamptonshire the common people were so violent in
their hostility to the court candidate that a body of troops was drawn
out in the marketplace of the county town, and was ordered to load with
ball. [260] The history of the contest for Buckinghamshire is still more
remarkable. The whig candidate, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip
Lord Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity and by
audacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always a
respectable, part in the politics of several reigns. He had been one of
those members of the House of Commons who had carried up the Exclusion
Bill to the bar of the Lords. The court was therefore bent on throwing
him out by fair or foul means. The Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys himself
came down into Buckinghamshire, for the purpose of assisting a gentleman
named Hacket, who stood on the high Tory interest. A stratagem was
devised which, it was thought, could not fail of success. It was given
out that the polling would take place at Ailesbury; and Wharton,
whose skill in all the arts of electioneering was unrivalled, made his
arrangements on that supposition. At a moment's warning the Sheriff
adjourned the poll to Newport Pagnell. Wharton and his friends hurried
thither, and found that Hacket, who was in the secret, had already
secured every inn and lodging. The Whig freeholders were compelled to
tie their horses to the hedges, and to sleep under the open sky in
the meadows which surround the little town. It was with the greatest
difficulty that refreshments could be procured at such short notice for
so large a number of men and beasts, though Wharton, who was utterly
regardless of money when his ambition and party spirit were roused,
disbursed fifteen hundred pounds in one day, an immense outlay for those
times. Injustice seems, however, to have animated the courage of the
stouthearted yeomen of Bucks, the sons of the constituents of John
Hampden. Not only was Wharton at the head of the poll; but he was able
to spare his second votes to a man of moderate opinions, and to throw
out the Chief Justice's candidate. [261]

In Cheshire the contest lasted six days. The Whigs polled about
seventeen hundred votes, the Tories about two thousand.
The common
people were vehement on the Whig side, raised the cry of "Down with the
Bishops," insulted the clergy in the streets of Chester, knocked
down one gentleman of the Tory party, broke the windows and beat the
constables. The militia was called out to quell the riot, and was kept
assembled, in order to protect the festivities of the conquerors. When
the poll closed, a salute of five great guns from the castle proclaimed
the triumph of the Church and the Crown to the surrounding country. The
bells rang. The newly elected members went in state to the City Cross,
accompanied by a band of music, and by a long train of knights and
squires. The procession, as it marched, sang "Joy to Great Caesar," a
loyal ode, which had lately been written by Durfey, and which, though
like all Durfey's writings, utterly contemptible, was, at that time,
almost as popular as Lillibullero became a few years later. [262] Round
the Cross the trainbands were drawn up in order: a bonfire was lighted:
the Exclusion Bill was burned: and the health of King James was drunk
with loud acclamations. The following day was Sunday. In the morning the
militia lined the streets leading to the Cathedral. The two knights of
the shire were escorted with great pomp to their choir by the magistracy
of the city, heard the Dean preach a sermon, probably on the duty of
passive obedience, and were afterwards feasted by the Mayor. [263]

In Northumberland the triumph of Sir John Fenwick, a courtier whose
name afterwards obtained a melancholy celebrity, was attended by
circumstances which excited interest in London, and which were thought
not unworthy of being mentioned in the despatches of foreign ministers.
Newcastle was lighted up with great piles of coal. The steeples sent
forth a joyous peal. A copy of the Exclusion Bill, and a black box,
resembling that which, according to the popular fable, contained the
contract between Charles the Second and Lucy Walters, were publicly
committed to the flames, with loud acclamations. [264]

The general result of the elections exceeded the most sanguine
expectations of the court. James found with delight that it would be
unnecessary for him to expend a farthing in buying votes. He Said that,
with the exception of about forty members, the House of Commons was just
such as he should himself have named. [265] And this House of Commons
it was in his power, as the law then stood, to keep to the end of his
reign.

Secure of parliamentary support, he might now indulge in the luxury of
revenge. His nature was not placable; and, while still a subject, he had
suffered some injuries and indignities which might move even a placable
nature to fierce and lasting resentment. One set of men in particular
had, with a baseness and cruelty beyond all example and all description,
attacked his honour and his life, the witnesses of the plot. He may
well be excused for hating them; since, even at this day, the mention of
their names excites the disgust and horror of all sects and parties.

Some of these wretches were already beyond the reach of human justice.
Bedloe had died in his wickedness, without one sign of remorse or shame.
[266] Dugdale had followed, driven mad, men said, by the Furies of an
evil conscience, and with loud shrieks imploring those who stood round
his bed to take away Lord Stafford. [267] Carstairs, too, was gone. His
end had been all horror and despair; and, with his last breath, he had
told his attendants to throw him into a ditch like a dog, for that he
was not fit to sleep in a Christian burial ground. [268] But Oates and
Dangerfield were still within the reach of the stern prince whom they
had wronged. James, a short time before his accession, had instituted
a civil suit against Oates for defamatory words; and a jury had given
damages to the enormous amount of a hundred thousand pounds. [269] The
defendant had been taken in execution, and was lying in prison as a
debtor, without hope of release. Two bills of indictment against him
for perjury had been found by the grand jury of Middlesex, a few weeks
before the death of Charles. Soon after the close of the elections the
trial came on.

Among the upper and middle classes Oates had few friends left. The most
respectable Whigs were now convinced that, even if his narrative had
some foundation in fact, he had erected on that foundation a vast
superstructure of romance. A considerable number of low fanatics,
however, still regarded him as a public benefactor. These people well
knew that, if he were convicted, his sentence would be one of extreme
severity, and were therefore indefatigable in their endeavours to manage
an escape. Though he was as yet in confinement only for debt, he was put
into irons by the authorities of the King's Bench prison; and even so he
was with difficulty kept in safe custody. The mastiff that guarded his
door was poisoned; and, on the very night preceding the trial, a ladder
of ropes was introduced into the cell.

On the day in which Titus was brought to the bar, Westminster Hall was
crowded with spectators, among whom were many Roman Catholics, eager to
see the misery and humiliation of their persecutor. [270] A few years
earlier his short neck, his legs uneven, the vulgar said, as those of a
badger, his forehead low as that of a baboon, his purple cheeks, and his
monstrous length of chin, had been familiar to all who frequented the
courts of law. He had then been the idol of the nation. Wherever he had
appeared, men had uncovered their heads to him. The lives and estates of
the magnates of the realm had been at his mercy. Times had now changed;
and many, who had formerly regarded him as the deliverer of his country,
shuddered at the sight of those hideous features on which villany seemed
to be written by the hand of God. [271]

It was proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that this man had by
false testimony deliberately murdered several guiltless persons. He
called in vain on the most eminent members of the Parliaments which had
rewarded and extolled him to give evidence in his favour. Some of those
whom he had summoned absented themselves. None of them said anything
tending to his vindication. One of them, the Earl of Huntingdon,
bitterly reproached him with having deceived the Houses and drawn on
them the guilt of shedding innocent blood. The Judges browbeat and
reviled the prisoner with an intemperance which, even in the most
atrocious cases, ill becomes the judicial character. He betrayed,
however, no sign of fear or of shame, and faced the storm of invective
which burst upon him from bar, bench, and witness box, with the
insolence of despair. He was convicted on both indictments. His offence,
though, in a moral light, murder of the most aggravated kind, was, in
the eye of the law, merely a misdemeanour. The tribunal, however, was
desirous to make his punishment more severe than that of felons or
traitors, and not merely to put him to death, but to put him to death
by frightful torments. He was sentenced to be stripped of his clerical
habit, to be pilloried in Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall
with an inscription declaring his infamy over his head, to be pilloried
again in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate to
Newgate, and, after an interval of two days, to be whipped from Newgate
to Tyburn. If, against all probability, he should happen to survive this
horrible infliction, he was to be kept close prisoner during life. Five
times every year he was to be brought forth from his dungeon and exposed
on the pillory in different parts of the capital. [272] This rigorous
sentence was rigorously executed. On the day on which Oates was
pilloried in Palace Yard he was mercilessly pelted and ran some risk of
being pulled in pieces. [273] But in the City his partisans mustered
in great force, raised a riot, and upset the pillory. [274] They were,
however, unable to rescue their favourite. It was supposed that he would
try to escape the horrible doom which awaited him by swallowing poison.
All that he ate and drank was therefore carefully inspected. On the
following morning he was brought forth to undergo his first flogging.
At an early hour an innumerable multitude filled all the streets from
Aldgate to the Old Bailey. The hangman laid on the lash with such
unusual severity as showed that he had received special instructions.
The blood ran down in rivulets. For a time the criminal showed a strange
constancy: but at last his stubborn fortitude gave way. His bellowings
were frightful to hear. He swooned several times; but the scourge still
continued to descend. When he was unbound, it seemed that he had borne
as much as the human frame can bear without dissolution. James was
entreated to remit the second flogging. His answer was short and clear:
"He shall go through with it, if he has breath in his body. " An attempt
was made to obtain the Queen's intercession; but she indignantly refused
to say a word in favour of such a wretch. After an interval of only
forty-eight hours, Oates was again brought out of his dungeon. He was
unable to stand, and it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn on a
sledge. He seemed quite insensible; and the Tories reported that he had
stupified himself with strong drink. A person who counted the stripes
on the second day said that they were seventeen hundred. The bad
man escaped with life, but so narrowly that his ignorant and bigoted
admirers thought his recovery miraculous, and appealed to it as a proof
of his innocence. The doors of the prison closed upon him. During many
months he remained ironed in the darkest hole of Newgate. It was said
that in his cell he gave himself up to melancholy, and sate whole days
uttering deep groans, his arms folded, and his hat pulled over his eyes.
It was not in England alone that these events excited strong interest.
Millions of Roman Catholics, who knew nothing of our institutions or
of our factions, had heard that a persecution of singular barbarity had
raged in our island against the professors of the true faith, that many
pious men had suffered martyrdom, and that Titus Oates had been the
chief murderer. There was, therefore, great joy in distant countries
when it was known that the divine justice had overtaken him. Engravings
of him, looking out from the pillory, and writhing at the cart's tail,
were circulated all over Europe; and epigrammatists, in many languages,
made merry with the doctoral title which he pretended to have received
from the University of Salamanca, and remarked that, since his forehead
could not be made to blush, it was but reasonable that his back should
do so. [275]

Horrible as were the sufferings of Oates, they did not equal his crimes.
The old law of England, which had been suffered to become obsolete,
treated the false witness, who had caused death by means of perjury, as
a murderer. [276] This was wise and righteous; for such a witness is, in
truth, the worst of murderers. To the guilt of shedding innocent blood
he has added the guilt of violating the most solemn engagement into
which man can enter with his fellow men, and of making institutions,
to which it is desirable that the public should look with respect
and confidence, instruments of frightful wrong and objects of general
distrust. The pain produced by ordinary murder bears no proportion to
the pain produced by murder of which the courts of justice are made the
agents. The mere extinction of life is a very small part of what makes
an execution horrible. The prolonged mental agony of the sufferer, the
shame and misery of all connected with him, the stain abiding even to
the third and fourth generation, are things far more dreadful than death
itself. In general it may be safely affirmed that the father of a large
family would rather be bereaved of all his children by accident or by
disease than lose one of them by the hands of the hangman. Murder by
false testimony is therefore the most aggravated species of murder; and
Oates had been guilty of many such murders. Nevertheless the punishment
which was inflicted upon him cannot be justified. In sentencing him to
be stripped of his ecclesiastical habit and imprisoned for life, the
judges exceeded their legal power. They were undoubtedly competent to
inflict whipping; nor had the law assigned a limit to the number of
stripes. But the spirit of the law clearly was that no misdemeanour
should be punished more severely than the most atrocious felonies.
The worst felon could only be hanged. The judges, as they believed,
sentenced Oates to be scourged to death. That the law was defective is
not a sufficient excuse: for defective laws should be altered by the
legislature, and not strained by the tribunals; and least of all should
the law be strained for the purpose of inflicting torture and destroying
life. That Oates was a bad man is not a sufficient excuse; for the
guilty are almost always the first to suffer those hardships which are
afterwards used as precedents against the innocent. Thus it was in the
present case. Merciless flogging soon became an ordinary punishment for
political misdemeanours of no very aggravated kind. Men were sentenced,
for words spoken against the government, to pains so excruciating that
they, with unfeigned earnestness, begged to be brought to trial on
capital charges, and sent to the gallows. Happily the progress of this
great evil was speedily stopped by the Revolution, and by that article
of the Bill of Rights which condemns all cruel and unusual punishments.

The villany of Dangerfield had not, like that of Oates, destroyed
many innocent victims; for Dangerfield had not taken up the trade of
a witness till the plot had been blown upon and till juries had become
incredulous. [277] He was brought to trial, not for perjury, but for the
less heinous offense of libel. He had, during the agitation caused by
the Exclusion Bill, put forth a narrative containing some false and
odious imputations on the late and on the present King. For this
publication he was now, after the lapse of five years, suddenly taken
up, brought before the Privy Council, committed, tried, convicted, and
sentenced to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate to
Tyburn. The wretched man behaved with great effrontery during the trial;
but, when he heard his doom, he went into agonies of despair, gave
himself up for dead, and chose a text for his funeral sermon. His
forebodings were just. He was not, indeed, scourged quite so severely as
Oates had been; but he had not Oates's iron strength of body and mind.
After the execution Dangerfield was put into a hackney coach and was
taken back to prison. As he passed the corner of Hatton Garden, a Tory
gentleman of Gray's Inn, named Francis, stopped the carriage, and cried
out with brutal levity, "Well, friend, have you had your heat this
morning? " The bleeding prisoner, maddened by this insult, answered with
a curse. Francis instantly struck him in the face with a cane which
injured the eye. Dangerfield was carried dying into Newgate. This
dastardly outrage roused the indignation of the bystanders. They seized
Francis, and were with difficulty restrained from tearing him to
pieces. The appearance of Dangerfield's body, which had been frightfully
lacerated by the whip, inclined many to believe that his death was
chiefly, if not wholly, caused by the stripes which he had received. The
government and the Chief Justice thought it convenient to lay the whole
blame on Francis, who; though he seems to have been at worst guilty only
of aggravated manslaughter, was tried and executed for murder. His dying
speech is one of the most curious monuments of that age. The savage
spirit which had brought him to the gallows remained with him to the
last. Boasts of his loyalty and abuse of the Whigs were mingled with the
parting ejaculations in which he commended his soul to the divine
mercy. An idle rumour had been circulated that his wife was in love with
Dangerfield, who was eminently handsome and renowned for gallantry.
The fatal blow, it was said, had been prompted by jealousy. The dying
husband, with an earnestness, half ridiculous, half pathetic, vindicated
the lady's character. She was, he said, a virtuous woman: she came of
a loyal stock, and, if she had been inclined to break her marriage vow,
would at least have selected a Tory and a churchman for her paramour.
[278]

About the same time a culprit, who bore very little resemblance to Oates
or Dangerfield, appeared on the floor of the Court of King's Bench. No
eminent chief of a party has ever passed through many years of civil
and religious dissension with more innocence than Richard Baxter. He
belonged to the mildest and most temperate section of the Puritan body.
He was a young man when the civil war broke out. He thought that the
right was on the side of the Houses; and he had no scruple about acting
as chaplain to a regiment in the parliamentary army: but his clear
and somewhat sceptical understanding, and his strong sense of justice,
preserved him from all excesses. He exerted himself to check the
fanatical violence of the soldiery. He condemned the proceedings of
the High Court of Justice. In the days of the Commonwealth he had the
boldness to express, on many occasions, and once even in Cromwell's
presence, love and reverence for the ancient institutions of the
country. While the royal family was in exile, Baxter's life was chiefly
passed at Kidderminster in the assiduous discharge of parochial duties.
He heartily concurred in the Restoration, and was sincerely desirous to
bring about an union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. For, with
a liberty rare in his time, he considered questions of ecclesiastical
polity as of small account when compared with the great principles of
Christianity, and had never, even when prelacy was most odious to the
ruling powers, joined in the outcry against Bishops. The attempt to
reconcile the contending factions failed. Baxter cast in his lot with
his proscribed friends, refused the mitre of Hereford, quitted the
parsonage of Kidderminster, and gave himself up almost wholly to study.
His theological writings, though too moderate to be pleasing to the
bigots of any party, had an immense reputation. Zealous Churchmen called
him a Roundhead; and many Nonconformists accused him of Erastianism and
Arminianism. But the integrity of his heart, the purity of his life,
the vigour of his faculties, and the extent of his attainments were
acknowledged by the best and wisest men of every persuasion. His
political opinions, in spite of the oppression which he and his brethren
had suffered, were moderate. He was friendly to that small party which
was hated by both Whigs and Tories. He could not, he said, join in
cursing the Trimmers, when he remembered who it was that had blessed the
peacemakers. [279]

In a Commentary on the New Testament he had complained, with some
bitterness, of the persecution which the Dissenters suffered. That men
who, for not using the Prayer Book, had been driven from their homes,
stripped of their property, and locked up in dungeons, should dare to
utter a murmur, was then thought a high crime against the State and the
Church. Roger Lestrange, the champion of the government and the oracle
of the clergy, sounded the note of war in the Observator. An information
was filed. Baxter begged that he might be allowed some time to prepare
for his defence. It was on the day on which Oates was pilloried in
Palace Yard that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed by age
and infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to make this request. Jeffreys
burst into a storm of rage. "Not a minute," he cried, "to save his life.
I can deal with saints as well as with sinners. There stands Oates on
one side of the pillory; and, if Baxter stood on the other, the two
greatest rogues in the kingdom would stand together. "

When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved and
honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor William
Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist divines. Two
Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop, appeared for the
defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his address to the jury, when
the Chief Justice broke forth: "Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a
mark on you. You are the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue,
a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy.
He would have nothing but longwinded cant without book;" and then
his Lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing
through his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's style
of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear
people. " Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his late Majesty
had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the old
blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it? " His fury now
rose almost to madness. He called Baxter a dog, and swore that it would
be no more than justice to whip such a villain through the whole City.

Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. "You are in all
these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop," said the Judge. "Gentlemen of the long
robe ought to be ashamed to assist such factious knaves. " The advocate
made another attempt to obtain a hearing, but to no purpose. "If you do
not know your duty," said Jeffreys, "I will teach it you. "

Wallop sate down; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word. But
the Chief Justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of ribaldry and
invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. "My Lord," said the old
man, "I have been much blamed by Dissenters for speaking respectfully of
Bishops. " "Baxter for Bishops! " cried the Judge, "that's a merry
conceit indeed. I know what you mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself,
Kidderminster Bishops, factious snivelling Presbyterians! " Again Baxter
essayed to speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed "Richard, Richard, dost
thou think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old
knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book as
full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace of God, I'll
look after thee. I see a great many of your brotherhood waiting to know
what will befall their mighty Don. And there," he continued, fixing his
savage eye on Bates, "there is a Doctor of the party at your elbow. But,
by the grace of God Almighty, I will crush you all. "

Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for the defence
made a last effort, and undertook to show that the words of which
complaint was made would not bear the construction put on them by the
information. With this view he began to read the context. In a moment
he was roared down. "You sha'n't turn the court into a conventicle. "
The noise of weeping was heard from some of those who surrounded Baxter.
"Snivelling calves! " said the Judge.

Witnesses to character were in attendance, and among them were several
clergymen of the Established Church. But the Chief Justice would hear
nothing.