Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 3/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
REIGN OF CHARLES II. (Concluded).
Amid the contending factions of his court, and the most absolute destitution of money—for the commons would grant nothing without the exclusion bill—Charles is described as being outwardly merry. Reresby, at the end of December, 1080, says that Charles "seemed quite free from care and trouble, though one would have thought at this time he should have been overwhelmed therewith; for every one now imagined he must either dismiss the parliament in a few days, or deliver himself up to their pressing desires; but the straits he was in seemed no way to embarrass him."
Yet his situation would have embarrassed a much wiser man. The opposition, trusting to his need of money, calculated on his giving way to the exclusion bill; and they kept up their warfare by speeches, pamphlets, and addresses to the public, and by secret pressure on him through his ministers, his mistress, his nephew, the prince of Orange, and his allies. Sunderland and Godolphin urged his concession to the opposition in parliament; the duchess, when he sought retirement with her, harped on the same string; Halifax, who had offended the opposition greatly by his determined resistance to the exclusion bill, now proposed a bill of limitations of the authority of James in case of his succession; and the prince of Orange warned the king on no account to adopt this bill, because it would undermine the very foundation of the monarchy. The Spaniards complained that Louis was violating the treaty of Nimeguen, and called on him, to act as their ally and a party to the treaty.
To contend with Louis required money, even if he were so disposed, and money he had none. Instead of answering his demands for it, the commons expressed their resentment of his resistance to the exclusion bill, by attacking all the supporters of the king. They summoned various tory leaders on one pretence or another to their bar; they demanded the removal of Jeffreys from the office of recorder of London, and he make haste to submit; they voted impeachments against Scroggs and North, the chief justices, and Lewis Weston and other judges. They sent a message to the king, that unless the duke of York was excluded, there was no safety to protestantism—a great truth, but one which they had most deplorably damaged by the base means which they had used to establish it. They voted that the marquis of Worcester, Halifax, Clarendon, and Feversham, were promoters of popery; that they and Lawrence Hyde, and Seymour, ought to be removed from the king's council, and that till then no money could be voted; and, moreover, that any one lending the king money upon any branch of the revenue, should be adjudged enemies of the country. As they were going on voting still further resolutions of a like kind, Charles sent and prorogued parliament, and then by proclamation dissolved it, ordering another to assemble at the end of two months at Oxford.
The very naming of the place of meeting struck the opposition with alarm. In London they had a strong protection in a strongly sympathising population; but Oxford was notorious for its royalist and tory feeling; and there Charles, amid a fiery mob of fortune-seeking gownsmen, and a strong body of soldiery, might overawe parliament, and direct particular attacks against the opposition leaders. These fears were well founded. But the king had, in the interim, also strengthened himself in another manner. He had first set to work every person of the duke's friends that he possibly could, to induce him to appear at least to conform to the demands of parliament, but finding that utterly unavailing, he had turned to his old friend Louis. The French monarch, who never liked to leave Charles at the mercy of his parliament, again gratified his desire, and agreed to pay him two millions of livres this year, and half a million of crowns in each of the two following years, on condition that he should leave the Spaniards to his overbearing encroachments. The many hints thrown out of secret treaties betwixt Charles and Louis had not been lost, and no written contract of this agreement was made, but it was treated as a matter of honour, and only the two monarchs, with Barillon on the one side, and Hyde on the other, were included in the secret.
Being thus made independent of his parliament, Charles disregarded the strongest remonstrances against holding the parliament in Oxford, and on the day appointed appeared there attended by a troop of horse guards, besides crowds of armed courtiers, and the opposition members and their party equally armed, and attended by armed followers. It appeared more like a preparation for war than for peaceful debate. Charles addressed the assembled hearers in the tone of a man who had money in his pocket. Ho spoke strongly of the factious proceedings of the last parliament, and of his determination neither to exercise arbitrary power himself, nor to suffer it in others; but to show that he had every disposition to consult the wishes of his subjects, he proposed to grant them almost everything they had solicited. He then offered the substance of the bill of limitations proposed by Halifax, that James should be banished five hundred miles from the British shores during the king's life; that, on succeeding, though he should have the title of king, the powers of government should be vested in a regent, and that regent in the first instance be his daughter, the princess Mary of Orange, and after her her sister Anne; that if James should have a son educated in the protestant faith, the regency should continue only till he reached his majority; that besides this, all catholics of incomes of more than one hundred pounds per annum, should be banished, the fraudulent conveyance of their estates be pronounced void, and their children taken from them and educated in protestantism.
This was a sweeping concession; short of expelling James altogether, nothing more could be expected, and it was scarcely to be expected that Charles would concede that. On this one point he had always displayed unusual firmness, and it was a firmness highly honourable to him, for by it he maintained the rights of a brother, at the expense of the aggrandisement of his own son. Nothing would have been easier than to have, by a little finesse, conveyed the crown to Monmouth, the favourite of the protestant bulk of the nation, and for whom he had a strong affection. But the whigs overstood their opportunity; they were blinded to their own interest by the idea of their strength, and that having so much offered, they were on the point of gaining all. This was the culminating point of their success; but they rejected the offer, and from that hour the tide of their power ebbed, and their ruin was determined.
There was another attempt to spur on the country to carry the exclusion bill, by making use of a miserable pretence of a plot got up by two low adventurers, Everard and Fitzharris. First these fellows pretended that the king was leagued with the duke to establish popery; but when Fitzharris was thrown into Newgate, he got up another story, that he had been offered ten thousand pounds to murder the king by the duchess of Modena, and that a foreign invasion was to assist the catholic attempt. The opposition were ready to seize on this man as another Dangerfield, to move the country by the disclosures of these plots. But Charles was beforehand with them, cut off all intercourse with the prisoner, and ordered the attorney-general to proceed against him. The commons claimed to deal with him, and sent up an impeachment to the lord; the lords refused to entertain it, and voted that he should be tried as the king directed, by common law. The commons were exasperated, and declared that this was a denial of justice, a violation of the rights of parliament, and any inferior court interfering would be guilty of a high breach of the privileges of their house. They were going on with the reading of the exclusion bill, when suddenly the king summoned them to the house of lords, and dissolved parliament. He had, on hearing of their proceedings, privately put the crown and robes of state into a sedan chair, and hastened to the house. The astonishment and rage of the opposition were inconceivable. Shaftesbury called on the members not to leave the house, but it was in vain; they gradually withdrew: the king rode off, at. tended by a detachment of his guards, to Windsor, and thus, after the session of a week, ended his fifth and last parliament.
Charles II.
DEATH OF CAMERON.
The whigs published a counter-address, but still drawing their arguments from Oates's plot, it failed to tell; that delusion had gone by, and the opposite one of "divine right" was moving now, in consequence, with an exaggerated impetus. The king persisted on bringing Fitzharris to trial; the whigs endeavoured to defend him by pleading that being impeached by the commons, no other court than parliament could try him; but this was overruled, he was tried, condemned, and hanged.
At the same time suffered the titular archbishop of Armagh; the last victim of the popish plot, and perhaps the most hardly and unjustly used. Oliver Plunket, the archbishop, was imprisoned merely for receiving orders in the catholic church, contrary to the law; but whilst in prison some of the Irish informers charged him with being concerned in the popish plot; but instead of trying him in Ireland, where he was well known, and could produce his witnesses, he was brought over to England, and before his evidence could arrive, was tried and condemned. A more shameful proceeding never disgraced any country. The earl of Essex, who had been lord-lieutenant in Ireland, solicited his pardon, saying to Charles, that from his own knowledge, the charge against him was undoubtedly false.
"Then,"retorted the king, "on your head, my lord, be his blood. You might have saved him if you would. I cannot pardon him, because I dare not." The storm, in fact, was about to burst on the heads of those who had raised it. There was no parliament to defend them, and the government now proceeded to retaliate. The miscreants who had served Shaftesbury in running down his victims, now perceived the change of public opinion, and either slunk away or offered their services to government against their former employers.
The first to be arrested were Shaftesbury himself, College, Burnamed the protestant joiner, and Rouse, the leader of the mob from Wapping; Lord Howard was already in the Tower on the denunciation of Fitzharris. The grand jury refused to find the bill of indictment against lord Howard; they did the same in the case of Rouse, but College was tried, and the same witnesses which had been deemed worthy enough to condemn the catholics, were brought against him. But the jury now refused to believe them against a protestant, and acquitted him. College, however, was not permitted to escape so easily. He was a noisy and determined leader of the people, sung songs and distributed, prints, ridiculing the king and court, and was celebrated as the inventor of the protestant flail. It was found that some of his misdemeanours had been committed in Oxfordshire, and he was sent down and tried there, where the tory feeling was not likely to let him off again. There the miserable wretches, whose concocted evidence had doomed to death so many charged by them as participators in the popish plot, were now arrayed against each other. Dugdale, Tuberville, and Smith swore against College; Oates, Bolron, and others committed the political blunder of contradicting them, and representing them in colours that in truth belonged to the whole crew. For this proceeding Oates was deprived of his pension and turned out of Whitehall; but College was condemned amid the roars of applause from the gownsmen. The execution of College was the commencement of a murderous retaliation on the whigs, as savage as had been theirs on the catholics. Shaftesbury, through the influence of the sheriffs, and the vehement demonstrations of the city made in his favour, was saved for the present by the jury ignoring the indictment, amid the acclamations of the people, and the event was celebrated by bonfires, ringing of bells, and shouts of "a Monmouth, a Shaftesbury, and a Buckingham!"
But the arrest of Shaftesbury had led to consequences which were fatal to him, and most disastrous to the whig party generally. Amongst his papers were found, in particular, two which roused the indignation of the tory and catholic parties to a perfect fury. One was the form of an association for excluding James and all catholics from the throne, and from political power, and including a vow to pursue to the death all who should oppose this great purpose; the other contained two lists of the leading persons in every county, ranged under the heads of "worthy men," and "men worthy," the latter phrase being supposed to mean worthy to be hanged. When this was published, the "men worthy" sent up the most ardent addresses of loyalty, and readiness to support the crown in all its views; and many of the "worthy men" even hastened to escape from the invidious distinction. The king lost no time in taking advantage of this ferment. He availed himself of the information contained in these lists, and struck out the most prominent "worthy men" in office and commission. As the dissenters had supported Shaftesbury and his party, he let loose the myrmidons of persecution against them, and they were fined, distrained upon, and imprisoned as remorselessly as ever. He determined to punish the city for its partisanship, and by a quo warranto to inquire into its privileges, of which we shall ere long see the result.
At this critical moment William of Orange proposed to pay a visit to his uncles, which his loving father-in-law James, strenuously opposed, but which the easy Charles permitted. It was soon seen that William, though his ostensible object was to induce Charles to enter into a league against France—whose king continued, in spite of treaties, to press on his encroachments—yet was courted by the exclusionists, even by Monmouth, as well as lord Russell and the other whig leaders; and with all his habitual caution could not avoid letting it be seen that he was proud of the courtship. He even consented to accept an invitation from the city to dinner, to the great disgust of the court, which was in high dudgeon at the conduct of the sheriffs, and William soon returned. His object was to ascertain the strength of the whig party, and though the tide was rapidly running against it at that moment, he went back with the conviction that some violent change was not very for off. Though Charles promised William to join the alliance against France, and call a parliament, no sooner was the prince gone than he assured Louis that he was more than ever his friend, and received a fresh bribe of a million of livres to allow France to attack Luxemburg, one of the main keys of Holland.
James, during these mouths, had been distinguishing himself in Scotland in a manner which promised but a poor prospect to protestantism should he ever come to the throne. After the battle of Bothwell Bridge, the covenanting party seemed for a while to have sunk into the earth and disappeared; but ere long there was seen emerging again from their hiding-places, the more determined and enthusiastic section which followed Donald Cargill and Richard Cameron. These so-called Cameronians believed that Charles Stuart, by renouncing the solemn league and covenant, had renounced all right to rule over them; and Cameron, accompanied by about twenty of his adherents, affixed on the, cross of Sanquhar "a declaration and testimony of the true presbyterian, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, and persecuted party in Scotland." In this bold paper they disowned Charles Stuart, who ought, they said, to have been denuded years before of being king, ruler, or magistrate, on account of his tyranny. They declared war on him as a tyrant and usurper; they also disowned all power of James, duke of York, in Scotland, and declared that they would treat their enemies as they had hitherto treated them.
The host of Israel, as they styled themselves, consisted of six-and-twenty horse and forty foot. At Airdmoss, in Kyle, this little knot of men who spoke such loud things was surprised by three troops of dragoons, and Cameron, as bold in action as in word, rushed on this unequal number, crying, "Lord, take the ripest, spare the greenest." He fell with his brother and seven others. Rathillet, who was there, was wounded and taken prisoner, but Cargill escaped. Rathillet was tried and executed for the murder of archbishop Sharp. His hands were first cut oft" at the foot of the gallows, after hanging, his head was cut off", and fixed on a spike at Cupar, and his body was hung in chains at Magus Moor. Cargill reappeared in September, 1680, at Torwood, in Stirlingshire, and there preached; and then, after the sermon, pronounced this extraordinary excommunication:—"I, being a minister of Jesus Christ, and having authority from him, do, in his name and by his spirit, excommunicate, cast out of the true church, and deliver up to Satan, Charles II., king of Scotland, for his mocking of God, his perjury, his uncleanness of adultery and incest, his drunkenness, and his dissembling with God and man." He also excommunicated the duke of York for idolatry, Monmouth for his slaughter of the Lord's people at Bothwell Bridge, Lauderdale for blasphemy, apostacy, and adultery, and other different offences.
The government thought it time to hunt out this nest of enthusiasts, and put to death as a terror the prisoners taken at Airdmoss. Two of these were women, Isabel Alison and Marian Harvey, who went to the gallows rejoicing. The duke of York offered to pardon some of them if they would only say, "God save the king," but they refused, and congratulated each other that they should that night sup in Paradise. Cargill and four of his followers were taken in July, 1681, and hanged.
James now professed great leniency and liberality. Instead of persecuting the Cameronians, he drafted them off into a Scottish regiment which was serving abroad in Flanders, in the pay of Spain. He put a stop to many of Lauderdale's embezzlements, and turned out some of the worst of his official blood-suckers. He promised to maintain episcopacy, and to put down conventicles, and brought into parliament a new test act, which was to swear every one to the king's supremacy and to passive obedience. His leniency was then soon at an end, and the object he was driving at was too palpable to escape the slightest observation. But Fletcher of Saltoun, lord Stair, and some other bold patriots opposed the design, and carried a clause in the test act for the defence of the protestant religion, which was so worded as to make it mean presbyterianism of the confession of faith of 1560. This so little suited James that he was necessitated to add another clause, excusing the princes of the blood taking his own test. But lord Belhaven boldly declared that the great object of it was to bind a popish successor. At this avowal, the last vestige of James's assumed liberality deserted him, and he sent lord Belhaven prisoner to the castle, and ordered the attorney-general to impeach him. He removed lord Stair from his office of president of the court of session, and commenced prosecutions against both him and Fletcher of Saltoun. The earl of Argyll, however, whose father had been executed by Charles soon after his restoration, made a decided speech against the test, and James called upon him at the council board to take it. Argyll took it with certain qualifications, whereupon James appeared to be satisfied, and invited Argyll to sit beside him at the council-board, and repeatedly took the opportunity of whispering in his ear, as if he bestowed his highest confidence on him. But this was but the fawning of the tiger ere he made his spring. Two days after he sent him to the castle on a charge of treason, for limiting the test. James, however, when some of the courtiers surmised that his life and fortune must pay for his treason, exclaimed, "Life and fortune! God forbid!"
Yet on the 20th of November instructions arrived from England to accuse him of high treason, and on the 12th of December he was brought to trial. To show what was to be expected from such a trial, the marquis of Montrose, the grandson of the celebrated Montrose, whom the father of Argyll and the covenanters hanged, and who was, in consequence, the implacable enemy of the present earl and all his house, was made foreman of the jury, and delivered the sentence of guilty. The whole council were called on to indorse this sentence; even the bishops were not allowed to be exempt, according to their privilege, from being concerned in a doom of blood; and the earl's own friends and adherents had not the firmness to refuse selling their names. Argyll, however, disappointed his enemies, by escaping in the disguise of a page to his daughter-in-law, lady Lindsay, and made his way to England, and thence to Holland, where, like many other fugitives from England and Scotland, he took refuge with William of Orange. A decree was immediately issued, ordering him to be put to death whenever taken; his estates, goods, and chattels, to be forfeited to the crown; his name and honours to be extinct; and his posterity to be for ever incapable of holding place, honour, or office. The outraged feeling of the country against so wholesale and shameless a sentence for so trivial an offence as that of dissenting in his place in parliament from some of the provisions of a proposed measure, compelled the court to restore the estates to the earl's son, the marquis of Lorn, but the king took care to strip away his hereditary jurisdictions, and passed them out amongst the creatures of James's Scottish court, to be holden at the royal pleasure—a certain means of securing their adhesion.
James now, whilst the parliament was terror-stricken by this example of royal vengeance, brought in a bill making it high treason in any one to maintain the lawfulness of excluding him from the throne, either on account of his religion or for any other reason whatever. By this he showed to the exclusionists that they must expect a civil war with Scotland if they attempted to bar his way to the throne of England. Deeming himself now secure, he gave way to his natural cruelty of temper, and indulged in tortures and barbarities which seemed almost to cast the atrocities of Lauderdale into the shade. It was his custom to have the prisoners for religion so tortured in the privy council, that even the old hardened courtiers who had stood out the merciless doings of Lauderdale and Middleton, escaped from the board as soon as the iron boots were introduced. But James not only seemed to enjoy the agonies of the sentenced with a peculiar satisfaction, but he made an order that the whole of the privy council should remain during these more than inquisitorial horrors. He was thus employing himself when he was summoned to England by Charles, who assured him that he should be allowed soon to return permanently on condition that he made over part of his parliamentary allowance to the French mistress, the duchess of Portland. James consented, and then returning to Scotland by sea, the country was very nearly relieved from all further apprehensions of him by his being wrecked on the sandbank called the Lemon and Ore, about twelve leagues from Yarmouth. Unfortunately, however, he escaped, though lord O'Brien, the earl of Roxburgh, Sir Joseph Douglas, one of the Hydes, a lieutenant of the frigate, the captain, and above a hundred and thirty other persons perished. His narrow escape had produced no better feeling in him, but on reaching Edinburgh he returned to his favourite exercises of hunting up, torturing, and destroying covenanters, Cameronians, and all who dared to show them any favour. The earls of Perth, Aberdeen, and Queensbury were his unflinching agents. Above two thousand people were outlawed, courts of inquisition were erected all over the west and south of Scotland; the soldiers had orders to shoot down any who would not disavow Cargill's excommunication of the king, and say, "Go bless him!" The persecuted people now began to deem that nothing but their utter destruction would satisfy the ruthless tyrant, and were contemplating shipping themselves to America, when political causes removed James to London.
The duke being allowed to return, and being restored to the office of lord high admiral, and lodged in St. James's Palace, Monmouth, who had been assured that James should be retained in Scotland, also returned from abroad, in spite of the positive command of the king. On the duke of York's return, the tories, who regarded it as a proof of the ascendancy of their principles, framed an address of congratulation, and of abhorrence of Shaftesbury's scheme of association. When Monmouth arrived, the whig party received him with still more boisterous enthusiasm. The city was in a turmoil of delight, but in the blaze of his popularity, Monmouth, conceiving that the whig influence was on the decline, endeavoured to follow the example of Sunderland, who had made his peace with the king, and the duke was readmitted to the cabinet. But Monmouth was too narrowly watched, and though he had sent offers of reconciliation through his wife, the reproaches of Shaftesbury. Russell, and his other partisans, made him draw back, and under pretence of paying a visit to the earl of Macclesfield, he set out as in 1680, in a tour through the provinces.
Nothing could exceed Monmouth's folly on this progress. Had he been the undoubted heir-apparent to the crown, he could not have assumed more airs of royalty; and at a moment when the eyes of both the king and James were following him with jealous vigilance, that folly was the more egregious wherever he came he was met by the nobles and great landowners at the head of their tenantry, most of whom were armed, and conducted in royal state to their houses. He was thus received by the lords Macclesfield, Brandon, Rivers, Colchester, Delaniere, Russell, and Grey, as well as the leading gentry. He travelled attended by a hundred men on horseback, one half of whom preceded and the other followed him. As he approached a town, he quitted his coach and mounted his horse, on which he rode alone in the centre of the procession. On entering the town, the nobles, gentry, and city officials took their places in front, the tenantry and common people fell in behind, shouting, "A Monmouth! a Monmouth! and no York!" Wherever he dined he ordered two hundred covers to be laid for the guests, and the people, conducted by proper officers, passed through the room in at one door and out at another in order to see him, as if he were a king. At Liverpool he did not hesitate to touch for the king's evil. Wherever there were fairs, races, or other public assemblies, he was sure to appear and ingratiate himself with the populace, not only by his flattering bows and smiles, but by entering into their sports. He was a man of amazing agility, and ran races on foot with the most celebrated pedestrians, and after beating them in his shoes, he would run again in his boots, against them in their shoes, and won still. The prizes that he thus gained he gave away at christenings in the evening.
Whilst he was thus exciting the wonder of the common people by his popular acts, accomplishments, and condescensions, the spies of Chiffinch, his father's old agent for secret purposes, were constantly around him, and sent up hourly reports to court. Jeffreys, who was now chief justice of Chester, and himself addicted to much low company, buffoonery, and drunkenness off the bench, and the wildestand most insulting conduct upon it, seized the opportunity of some slight disturbances which occurred during Monmouth's stay there, to win favour with the duke of York, by taking into custody and punishing some of his followers. At Stafford Monmouth had engaged to dine in the public streets with the whole population; but as he was walking towards the appointed place, a king's messenger appeared and arrested him on a charge of "passing through the kingdom with multitudes of riotous people, to the disturbance of the peace and the terror of the king's subjects." Shaftesbury was not there, or he might have been advised to throw himself on the protection of the assembled people, and their rebellion which he stirred up a few years later might have occurred then, for Shaftesbury was now advising all the leaders of his party to rise; but Monmouth surrendered without resistance, and was conveyed to the capital, where he was admitted to bail himself in a bond of ten thousand pounds, and his sureties, Russell, Grey, &c., in two thousand pounds each. The king, with that affection which he always showed for this vain and foolish young man, appeared satisfied with having cut short his mock-heroic progress.
But though the British Absalom for the present escaped thus easily, the war of royalty and reassured toryism on the long triumphant whigs was beginning in earnest. Shaftesbury, since his discharge from the Tower, had seen with terror the rapid rise of the tory influence, the vindictive addresses from every part of the country against him, and the undisguised cry of passive obedience. The circumstances scorned not only to irritate his temper, but to have destroyed the cool steadiness of his judgment. He felt assured that it would not be long before he would be singled out for royal vengeance; and he busied himself with his subordinate agents in planning schemes for raising the country. These agents and associates were Walcot, formerly an officer under the commonwealth in the Irish army; Rumsey, another military adventurer, who had been in the war in Portugal; Ferguson, a Scotch minister, who deemed both the king and the duke apostates and tyrants, to be got rid of by almost any means; and West, a lawyer. These men had their agents and associates of the like views, and they assured Shaftesbury that they could raise the city at any time.
But the tug of war was actually beginning betwixt the court and the city, and the prospect was so little flattering to the city, that Halifax said there would soon be hanging, and Shaftesbury even thought of attempting a reconciliation with the duke. He made an overture, to which James replied, that though lord Shaftesbury had been the most bitter of his enemies, all his offences should be forgotten whenever he became a dutiful subject of his majesty. But second thoughts did not encourage Shaftesbury to trust to the smooth speech of the man who never forgot or forgave.
So long as the whigs were in the ascendant, their sheriffs could secure juries to condemn their opponents and save their friends. Charles and James determined, whilst the tory feeling ran so high, to force the government of the city from the whigs, and to hold the power in their own hands. Sir John Moore, the then lord mayor, was brought over to their interest, and they availed themselves of an old but disused custom to get sheriff nominated to their own minds. This custom was, at the Bridge House feast, for the lord mayor to send the loving cup to the person whom he nominated as one of the sheriffs; and on midsummer day the livery accepted this nominee as a matter of course, and elected the other sheriff themselves. This custom had been abandoned since the commencement of the commonwealth, and more in accordance with the free spirit of the times, the sheriffs had been elected in the common hall. On this occasion the lord mayor, at the suggestion of the court, sent the cup to Dudley North, a brother of North the chief justice, and a man of notoriously tory principles. The whigs of the corporation instantly took the alarm, and prepared to prevent the obvious design. On midsummer day both factions appeared in strong force in the hall. The whigs declared the nomination of North illegal; the crown lawyers, on the contrary, asserted the nomination by the lord mayor was an ancient and indefeasible right. A poll was demanded; the court party supported North and Rich, the latter as much a stickler for prerogative as the former; the whigs named Papillon and Dubois, who instantly were returned by a vast majority. But the lord mayor insisted on the right of his man, and adjourned the hall. The sheriffs Pilkington and Shute denied his right to adjourn on such an occasion. A fierce dispute arose, which lasted for several months. There were breaches of the peace and prosecutions. Finally, on the 28th of September, the different candidates came up to be sworn, but the lord mayor would only take the oaths of North and Rich, and the same afternoon, the old sheriffs giving up the contest, surrendered to them the custody of gaols and prisons. The contest was renewed at the election of the lord mayor: the city returned Gould, but the tory party nominated Pritchard, and by a scrutiny managed to place their man in office. This the government had a complete triumph in the city; and they pursued their advantage. A prosecution was commenced against Pilkington, one of the late sheriffs, who in his vexation unguardedly said, "The duke of York fired the city at the burning of London, and now ho is coming to cut our throats." Damages were laid at one hundred thousand pounds, and awarded by a jury at Hertford. Pilkington, whose sentence amounted to imprisonment for life, and Shute, his late colleague. Sir Patience Ward, Cornel, Ford, lord Grey, and others were tried, Ward for perjury, the rest for riot and assault on the lord mayor, and convicted. In all these proceedings Mr. Serjeant Jeffreys was an active instrument to promote the government objects.
But these triumphs were only temporary. The court determined to establish a permanent power over the city. It therefore proceeded by quo warranto to deprive the city of its franchise. The case was tried before Sir Edward Sanders and the other judges of the King's Bench. The attorney-general pleaded that the city had perpetrated two illegal acts—they had imposed an arbitary tax on merchandise brought into the public market, and had accused the king, by adjourning parliament, of having interrupted the necessary business of the nation. After much contention and delay, in the hope that the city would voluntarily lay itself at the feet of the monarch, judgment was pronounced that "the city of London should be taken and seized with the king's hands." When the authorities prayed the non-carrying out of the sentence, the lord chancellor North candidly avowed the real object of the proceeding. That the king was re-solved to put an end to the opposition of the city, by having a veto on the appointment of the lord mayor and sheriffs. That he did not wish to interfere in their affairs or liberties further, but this power he was determined to possess, and therefore the judgment was confirmed June 20th, 1683, and London was reduced to an absolute slavery to the king's will. It was equally determined to proceed by the same means of a quo warranto to suppress the charters of the other corporations in the kingdom.
Shaftesbury had seen the progress of this enormous change with the deepest alarm. He retired to his house in Aldersgate Street, and not feeling himself secure there, hid himself successively in different parts of the city, striving, through his agents, to move Monmouth, Essex, and Grey to rise, and break this progress of despotism. He boasted that he had ten thousand link-boys yet in the city, who would rise at the lifting of his finger. It was proposed by Monmouth that he should engage the lords Macclesfield, Brandon, and Delamere to rise in Cheshire and Lancashire. Lord Russell corresponded with Sir Francis Drake in the west of England, Trenchard engaged to raise the people of Taunton. But Monmouth had more than half betrayed the scheme to the king, and the progress of events in the city grew formidable. Shaftesbury at length was struck with despair, and sought safety by flight. He escaped to Harwich in the guise of a presbyterian minister, and got thence over to Holland. He took up his residence at Amsterdam, where he was visited by Oates and Waller; but his mortification at the failure of his grand scheme of "walking the king leisurely out of his dominions, and making the duke of York a vagabond like Cain on the face of the earth," broke his spirits and his constitution. The gout fixed itself in his stomach, and on the 21st of January, l683, he expired, only two months after his quitting England.
The fall of this extraordinary man and of his cause is a grand lesson in history. His cause was the best in the world—that of maintaining the liberties of England against the designs of one of the most profligate and despotic courts that ever existed. But, by following crooked by-paths and dishonest schemes, and by employing the most villainous of mankind for accomplishing his object, he ruined it. Had he and his fellows, who had more or less of genuine patriotism in them, combined to rouse their country by high, direct, and honourable means, they would have won the confidence of their country, and saved it, or have perished with honour. As it was, the great national achievement was reserved for others.
The flight and death of Shaftesbury struck a terror into the whig party; many gave up the cause in despair, others of a timid nature went over to the enemy, and others, spurred on by their indignation, rushed forward into more rash and fatal projects; and at this moment one of the extraordinary revelations took place, which rapidly brought to the gallows and the block nearly the whole of Shaftesbury's agents, coadjutors, and colleagues, including lord William Russell and Algernon Sidney.
That Shaftesbury and his party had been seriously contemplating an insurrection to compel Charles to adopt the measures for securing a protestant succession that they could not persuade him to, we have seen, and the consultations of the arch-agitator with his agents. West, Ferguson, Rouse, Rumsey, Walcot, and others, to rouse the nobles of the whig party to action, which proved abortive, and induced Shaftesbury to fly. Unfortunately, the royal party being now in the full tide of retribution, the more contemptible portion of those who had been most active in carrying on the whig aggressions, began to consider what was to be gained by betraying their associates. On the 1st of June a Scotchman was arrested on suspicion at Newcastle, and on him was found a letter, which indicated a concert betwixt the opposition parties in Scotland and England. A quick inquiry was set on foot after further traces of the alarming facts; and on the 12th, the very day on which judgment was pronounced against the city, Josiah Keeling, a man who had been extremely prominent in the late contest about the sheriffs, and who had displayed his zeal by actually laying hands on the lord mayor Moore, for his support of the government, now waited on lord Dartmouth, the duke of York's close friend, and informed him of particulars of the late schemes, as if they were yet actively in operation against the king's life. Dartmouth took the informer to Sir Leoline Jenkins, secretary of state, who had been extremely active in the late proceedings against the city. The story which Keeling laid before Sir Leoline was to the following appalling purport:—That in the month of March last, when the king and duke of York were about to proceed to Newmarket, to the races, Goodenough, the late under sheriff, one of Shaftesbury's most busy men in the city, lamenting the slavery to which the city was fast being reduced, asked him how many men he could engage to kill the king and the duke too. That ho had repeated the same question to him whilst the king and the duke were there, and that he then consented to join the plot, and to endeavour to procure accomplices. Accordingly, he engaged Burton, a cheese-monger, Thompson, a carver, and Barber, an instrument maker of Wapping. They then met with one Rumbold, a maltster at the Mitre Tavern, without Aldgate, where it was settled to go down to a house that Rumbold had, called the Rye House, on the river Lee, near Hoddesden, in Hertfordshire, and there execute their design. That this house lay conveniently by the wayside, and a number of men concealed under a fence could easily shoot down the king's postilion and horses, and then kill him and the duke, and the four guards with them. If they failed to stop the carriage, a man placed with a cart and horse in a cross lane a few paces further, was to run his horse and cart athwart the road, and there stop it, till they had completed their design. From this circumstance the plot obtained the name of the Rye House Plot.
At a subsequent meeting at the Dolphin, behind the Exchange, there was a disagreement as to the time when the king would return, and thus they missed the opportunity, for Rumbold, who went down, said the king and duke passed the place with only fire life-guards. Various other plans were then laid—one to cut off the king betwixt Windsor and Hampton Court.
Secretary Jenkins, after listening to this recital, told Keeling that it would require another witness to establish a charge of treason against the conspirators, and Keeling fetched his brother John, who swore with him to these and many other particulars—namely, that Goodenough had organised a plan for raising twenty districts in the city, and that twenty thousand pounds were to be distributed amongst the twenty managers of these districts. That the duke of Monmouth was to head the insurrection, a person called the colonel was to furnish one thousand pounds, and different men in different parts of the country were to raise their own neighbourhoods. That the murder now was to come off at the next bull-feast in Red Lion Fields. Two days after they added that Goodenough had informed them that lord William Russell would enter heart and soul into the design of killing the king and the duke of York.
The Duke of Monmouth. From an authentic Portrait.
A proclamation was immediately issued for the arrest of Rumbold, colonel Rumsey, Walcot, Wade, Nelthorp, Thompson, Burton, and Hone; but it was supposed that John Keeling, who had been reluctantly dragged into the affair by Josiah, had given them warning, and they had all got out of the way. Barber, the instrument maker of Wapping, however, was taken, and declared that he had never understood that the design was against the king, but only against the duke. West soon surrendered himself, and in hope of pardon, gave most extensive evidence against Ferguson and a dozen others; like Gates and Bedloe, continually adding fresh facts and dragging in fresh people. He said Ferguson had brought money to buy arms; that Wildman had been furnished with means to buy arms; and that lord Howard of Escrick had gone deep into it. That Algernon Sidney and Wildman were in close correspondence with the conspirators in Scotland. That at meetings held at the Devil Tavern, it was projected to shoot the king returning from the theatre in a narrow street. That they had hinted something of their design to the duke of Monmouth, but not the killing part of it, but that he had sternly replied they must look on him as a son; and then the relations of this wretched turncoat lawyer assumed all the wildness of a Bluebeard story. Ferguson would hear of nothing but killing. That the new lord mayor, the new sheriffs Rich and North, were to be killed, and their skins stuffed and hung up in Guildhall; the judges were to be flayed, too, and their skins suspended in Westminster Hall, and other great traitors were to have their skins hung up in the parliament house.
Next, Rumsey came in and turned informer, and, improving as he went on, he also accused lord Russell, Mr. Trenchard, Roe, the sword bearer of Bristol, the duke of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Armstrong, lord Grey, and Ferguson. That he had met most of these persons at Shepherd's, a wine merchant, near Lombard Street, and that nothing less was intended by most of them than killing the king and his brother. That Trenchard had promised a thousand foot and three hundred horse in the west, and Ferguson had engaged to raise twelve hundred Scots who had fled to England after the battle of Bothwell Bridge. Shepherd, the wine merchant, was called up, and said that certainly Shaftesbury, before going to Holland, the duke of Monmouth, lords Russell and Grey, Armstrong, Rumsey, and Ferguson had met at his house, and, he was informed, had talked about securing his majesty's guards, and had walked about the court end of the town at night, and reported a very remiss state of the guards on duty. He added, that not obtaining sufficient support, the design, so far as he knew, was laid aside.
On the 26th of June a proclamation was issued for the apprehension of Monmouth, Grey, Russell, Armstrong, Walcot, and others. Monmouth, Grey, Armstrong, and Ferguson made their escape; lord Russell, Sidney, Essex, Wildman, Howard of Escrick, Walcot, and others were taken, then or soon after. Lord Russell was the first secured. He was found quietly seated in his library, and though the messengers had walked to and fro for some time before his door, as if wishing him to get away, he took no steps towards it, but as soon as the officer had shown his warrant, he went with him as though he had been backed by a troop. When examined before the council, he is said, even by his own party, to have made but a feeble defence. He admitted having been at Shepherd's, but only to buy wines. That he understood that some of those whom he had seen there were a crowd of dangerous designers; he should not, therefore, mention them, but only the duke of Monmouth, against whom there could be no such charge. He denied that he had heard there anything about a rising in the west or in Scotland, but only that in the latter country there were many people in distress, ministers and others, whom it would be a great charity to relieve. He was committed to the Tower, and on entering it he said he was sworn against, and they would have his life. His servant replied that he honed matters were not so bad as that, but he rejoined, "Yes! the devil is loose!" He saw the course things were taking; the spirit that was in the ascendant; he knew that he had entered into revolutionary schemes sufficiently for his condemnation, and that the duke of York, who had an old hatred for him, would never let him escape.
Lord Howard was one of the last arrested. He went about after the arrest of several of the others, declaring that there really was no plot; that he knew of none; yet after that it is asserted, and strong evidence adduced for it, that to save his own life he had made several offers to the court to betray his kinsman Russell. Four days before lord Russell's trial, a serjeant-at-arms, attended by a troop of horse, was sent to his house at Knightsbridge, and after a long search discovered him in his shirt in the chimney of his room. His conduct when taken was most cowardly and despicable, and fully justified the character that he had of being one of the most perfidious and base of men. He wept, trembled, and entreated, and, begging a private interview with the king and duke, he betrayed his associates to save himself. Russell had always had a horror and suspicion of him, but he had managed to captivate Sidney by his vehement professions of republicanism, and by Sidney and Essex he had been induced to tolerate the traitor. The earl of Essex was taken at his house at Cassiobury, and was escorted to town by a party of horse. He might have escaped through the assistance of his friends, but he deemed that his flight would tend to condemn his friend Russell, and he refused.
He was a man of a melancholy temperament, but he bore up bravely till he was shut up in the Tower, in the same cell where his wife's grandfather, the earl of Northumberland, in the reign of Elizabeth, had died by his own hands or those of an assassin, and from which his father, the lord Capel, had been led to execution under the commonwealth. He now became greatly depressed. The rest of the prisoners—Sidney, Hampden, Armstrong, Baillie of Jerviswood, and others, both Scotch and English—displayed the most firm bearing before the council, and refused to answer the questions put to them. Sidney told the king and his ministers that if they wished to criminate him, it was not from himself that they would get their information.
The first of the prisoners brought to trial were Walcot, Rouse, and Hone, a joiner, who, on the evidence of West, Keeling, and Rumsey, were condemned and executed as traitors. Walcot and Rouse denied any design of murdering the king or the duke; but Hone, the joiner, confessed having spoken to Goodenough about killing the blackbird and goldfinch, meaning the king and the duke. Meantime, the city, under its new regimé, put on an air of intense loyalty; almost all the other corporations in the kingdom followed their example; neither were the counties behind, pouring in addresses for the condign punishment of the execrable traitors, villains, and infamous miscreants, rebellious spirits, and atheistic monsters, who were seeking his majesty's precious life, which the magistrates of Middlesex declared was worth a hundred millions of theirs.
In this state of the public mind lord Russell was brought to trial on the 13th of July, at the Old Bailey. He was charged with conspiring the death of the king, and consulting to levy war upon him. Intense interest was attached to this trial, not only in consequence of the high character of the prisoner, but because it must decide how for the whig leaders were concerned in the designs of the lower conspirators. He requested a delay till afternoon or next morning, because material witnesses had not arrived, but the attorney-general. Sir Robert Sawyer, replied, "You would not have given the king an hour's notice for saving his life; the trial must proceed."He then requested the use of pen, ink, and paper, and for permission to avail himself of the documents he had with him. These requests were granted, and he then asked for some one to help him to take notes; and the court replied that he might have the service of any of his servants for that purpose. "My lord," said Russell, addressing chief justice Pemberton, "my wife is here to do it." This observation, and the lady herself then rising up to place herself at her husband's side to perform this office, produced a lively sensation in the crowd of spectators. The daughter of the excellent and popular lord Southampton thus devoting herself to assist her husband in his last extremity, was an incident not likely to lose its effect on the mind of Englishmen, and the image
Of that sweet saint who sat by Russell's side
has ever since formed a favourite theme for the painter and the poet.
The witnesses first produced against him were Rumsey and Shepherd. Rumsey deposed that the prisoner had attended a meeting at Shepherd's for concerting a plan to surprise the king's guards at the Savoy and the Mews, and Shepherd confirmed this evidence. Russell admitted the being at Shepherd's, and meeting the persons alleged, but denied the object stated so far as he himself was concerned, or so far as he had heard or understood. The last and most infamous witness was lord Howard of Eserick. This man, who was a man of ability and address, but a thorough profligate, and generally despised, and by Russell himself long suspected, and who had gone about protesting that there was no plot that he knew of, now came forward to save his own life by sacrificing those who had imprudently trusted him. Yet even he seemed to feel the infamy of his position, and to give his evidence with shame and reluctance. Whilst in the midst of it, the court was electrified by the news that the earl of Essex had that moment committed suicide in his cell. He had called for a razor, shut himself up in a closet, and cut his throat so effectually that he had nearly severed his head from his body. It was an awkward circumstance for the king and duke, that just at that time they had made a visit to the Tower, where they were said not to have been for years. It was supposed that they had gone from curiosity to see how lord Russell bore himself as he was conveyed to trial. Just as they were leaving the Tower, the cry arose that Essex was murdered, and this singular coincidence caused a murmur that they had themselves done this bloody deal. But the matter is too ridiculous to be dwelt on for a moment. They had too many and certain means of getting rid of their enemies by legal power, to directly dip their own hands in blood. When the news, however, reached the court of the Old Bailey, the sensation was intense. The witness himself was greatly agitated by it, and Jeffreys, who was counsel for the crown, seized upon it to damage the cause of the prisoner at the bar. He argued that the very act showed the conscious guilt of Essex, who had been constantly mixed up in the proceedings of Russell.
Plan of Rye House, from a scarce Print of the Period.
Howard swore that he had heard from Monmouth, Walcot, and others, that lord Russell had been deeply concerned with the conspirators, and especially their head, lord Shaftesbury. He alleged that Russell had taken part in two discussions at Hampden's, where they had arranged the treasonable correspondence with the earl of Argyll and his adherents in Scotland; and was aware of the agent, one Aaron Smith, being sent to Scotland for the purpose of organising their co-operation. Being pressed to say whether lord Russell took an active part in these discussions, he did not plainly assert that he did, as he said he was well known to be cautious and reserved in his discourse, but that all was understood, and he appeared to consent to everything. Lord Russell admitted having been at those meetings, but again denied any knowledge of any such designs, and declared that lord Howard's evidence was mere hearsay evidence, and of no legal weight whatever; and that, moreover, Howard had positively declared repeatedly that there was no plot, and had sworn to his (lord Russell's) innocence. On this Howard was recalled, and explained that it was before his arrest that he had ridiculed and denied the plot—which, under the circumstances, was natural enough—and he had sworn to lord Russell's innocence only as far as it regarded a design of assassination of the king and duke, but not of his participation in the general plot. West and the serjeant-at-arms, who had the Scottish prisoners in custody, were also called to prove the reality of the plot, and of their looking chiefly to lord Russell to head it.
On his part the prisoner contended that none of the witnesses were to be relied on, because they were swearing against him in order to save their own lives. He also argued that, according to the statute of 25 Edward II., the statute decided not the design to levy war, but the overt act, to constitute treason. But the attorney-general replied that not only to levy war, but to conspire to levy war against the king, to kill, depose, or constrain him, was treason by the statute. Before the jury retired, Russell addressed them, saying, "Gentlemen, I am now in your hands eternally; my honour, my life, and all; and I hope the heats and animosities that are amongst you will not so bias you as to make you in the least inclined to find an innocent man guilty. I call heaven and earth to witness that I never had a design against the king's life. I am in your hands, so God direct you." They returned a verdict of guilty, and Treby, the recorder of London, who had been an active exclusionist, pronounced the sentence of death.
There were active exertions made after his condemnation to obtain a pardon, or at least a commutation of the sentence; but lord Russell himself is said to have entertained no hope that the never-forgiving duke of York would forego his blood. His father, the duke of Bedford, offered one hundred thousand pounds through the duchess of Portsmouth to save his life, but Charles held firm to his purpose, and was steeled even to refuse the money by James. When lord Dartmouth urged that to take his life would remain an unpardonable offence to a great family, whilst something was due to the daughter of the earl of Southampton, and to spare lord Russell would lay an everlasting obligation on the house of Bedford, Charles replied that all that was very true, but that if he did not take Russell's life he would soon have his. The afflicted father made a second and public petition to the king for his son's life, and said that himself, his wife, and children would be content to be reduced for the remainder of their days to bread and water, so that he might be saved.
It was in vain; and though lord Russell, at the earnest entreaty of his family, humbled himself to petition both the king and the duke for a change of sentence, still protesting his innocence of any design against their lives, he told his friends that it was perfectly useless, and would be hawked about the streets when he was hanged, as a proof of his submission. Lady Russell herself presented the petition to the duchess of York, with earnest prayers for her good offices; but the appeal might as well have been made to a stone as to James, who never forgave the smallest injury; and in this case, lord Russell had been as prominent as Shaftesbury in advocating the duke's exclusion from the succession, and to such an offence there could be no pardon in James's heart. Lord Russell did not attempt to palliate his conduct except by asserting that he had acted solely on public grounds, and without any personal animosity towards his highness: and he promised, if his life were spared, to regard his intercession as the highest obligation, and never more to engage in any opposition to him.
An attempt was now made upon him by the prelates, to induce him to admit the doctrine of non-resistance; and it was thought that had he consented to that, his life might have been spared; but that was an apostacy to one of the very greatest of political principles, which no man of noble and upright character could consent to, which would have left him a pitiable object of contempt. Yet Burnet and Tillotson, then dean of Canterbury, laboured hard for this triumph over him, but without effect, and his execution was fixed for the 21st of July. Lord Cavendish nobly offered to manage his escape by changing clothes with him, but neither would he consent to that, for with such people as Charles and James, Cavendish would himself have speedily forfeited his life. When he had taken leave of his devoted wife, who endeavoured to keep down her emotion so as not to unman him, he said, " Now the bitterness of death is passed." The scaffold was not, according to custom, erected on Tower Hill, but in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in order, says Wallace, "that the citizens might be humbled by the spectacle of their once triumphant leader carried in his coach to death through the city; a device which, like most others of the kind, produced an effect contrary to what was intended: the multitude imagined that they beheld virtue and liberty sitting by his side." The trying circumstance to the illustrious prisoner was, that he had to pass Southampton House, the paternal home of his noble-minded wife, and he could not see it without strong emotion, and a few tears. Burnet and Tillotson accompanied him, and whilst Tillotson read prayers, Burnet was ready to write down his last observations. His lordship handed a paper to the sheriff Rich, who had been a zealous co-operator with him in endeavouring to effect the exclusion, saying that he had never loved much speaking, and could not now expect to be well heard, and therefore had set down there what he had to say. He declared that he died in charity with all men, and prayed that the protestants might forget all their animosities, and still combine for the defeat of popery. He declared that he regarded himself far happier than lord Howard, who had purchased his life by the infamy of betraying his associates. Having embraced Tillotson and Burnet, he laid his head on the block, and, like lord Stafford, refusing to give any sign to the executioner, his head was severed from his body at two strokes.
The people testified their sense of this execution by a general groan, and retired in a mood which boded no good to the perpetrators of the deed. The execution was scarcely over, when the town rang in every quarter of the city with the printed statement of the sufferer's last declaration, which, though he gave it to the sheriff in manuscript, was already printed and circulated by the management of his lady.
In this paper lord Russell again denied ever having had or participated in any design against the king's life; he did not deny his endeavour to obtain the exclusion, but defended the measure as necessary to the preservation of protestantism. He denied having consented to the seizure of the guards, but contended that he had at lord Shaftesbury's denounced the scheme, as rendering the next necessary step, the massacre of the guards in cold blood; a thing detestable, and so like a popish practice that he abhorred it. He still denied the justice of his sentence, on the ground that he had not actually levied war on the king, and therefore did not come within the meaning of the act of Edward II. But the weakest part of his statement was that in which he defended his proceedings regardings the popish plot, declaring that he sincerely had believed, and did still believe, that the plot was real. But if so, his alarm must have strangely blinded him to the nature of the evidence produced, the infamous character of the witnesses, and their most flagrant contradictions of themselves and each other, and their gross and palpable inventions.
That lord William Russell was a sincere and high-minded patriot; that he was too noble to soil his fingers with French money, like so many of his coadjutors; and that he died firmly for his principles, refusing to betray the great national cause by consenting to the base doctrine—absolute submission to royal tyranny—to save his life, must always place him high amongst British worthies: but as few men are perfect, so his acquiescence in the base proceedings against many innocent men charged with being guilty of Titus Oates's plot, is a stain amid his brightness. That he ran a fair risk of forfeiting his life by his patriotic exertions, he would have been blind not to foresee, and in his last paper he admits the fact. That Charles, and still less James, should have had the nobility to spare his life, was not in their nature; though there came a time when James was reminded by Russell's father how supremely politic such clemency would have been. The drawing up his last declaration was attributed to Burnet, who, after the revolution, acknowledged this to be the fact. At that time also his attainder was reversed, on the plea of his lawful challenge of his jurors having been refused, and of partial and unjust construction of laws.
On the very day of lord Russell's death, the university of Oxford marked the epoch by one of those rampant assertions of toryism and base subservience which has too often disgraced that seat of learning. It published a "Judgment and Declaration," as passed in their convocation, for the honour of the holy and undivided Trinity, the preservation of catholic truth in the church, and that the king's majesty might be secured both from the attempts of open bloody enemies, and the machinations of treacherous heretics and schismatics. In this declaration they attacked almost every principle of civil and religious liberty, which had been promulgated and advocated in the works of Milton, Baxter, Bellarmin, Owen, Knox, Buchanan, and others. They declared that the doctrines of the civil authority being derived from the people; of there existing any compact, tacit or expressed, between the prince and his subjects from the obligation of which, should one party retreat, the other becomes exempt; of the sovereign forfeiting his right to govern if he violate the limitations established by the laws of God and man, were all wicked, abominate, and devilish doctrines, deserving of everlasting reprobation. And they called upon "All and singular the readers, tutors, and catechists, diligently to instruct and ground their scholars in that most necessary doctrine, which in a manner is the badge and character of the church of England, of submitting to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, teaching that this submission and obedience is to be clear, absolute, and without exception of any state or order of men." This doctrine of slaves, which Oxford would vainly have fixed on the nation as the badge of Englishmen, they were in a very few years, under James, taught the practical blessing of. They had, when their term came, quickly enough of it, flung the badge to the winds, and made a present of their plate to the Dutch prince, who came to drive their sovereign from the throne.
Before the trial of Algernon Sydney took place. Sir Francis Jeffreys was made lord chief justice in place of Sanderd, who was incapacitated by sickness. Jeffreys was promoted over the heads of the other judges, though merely a Serjeant. But the court wanted a man who would go thorough for it, and Jeffreys had shown that he was at once a servile tool of power, and a savage bully to the accused. He was perhaps the most singular mixture of buffoonery, debauchery, insolence, vulgarity, and brutal cruelty, that ever sate on the bench, and his name has come down to us as the perfection of judicial infamy. He hated the whigs, because they had turned him out of the recordership of the city of London, and took a savage and malignant pleasure in browbeating and hanging them. "His friendship and conversation," says Roger North, "lay much amongst the good fellows and humorists, and his delights were the extravagancies of the bottle. His weakness was, that he could not reprehend without scolding, and in such Billingsgate as should not come out of the mouth of any man. He called it giving a lick with the rough side of his tongue."
Before this alternately laughing and blackguarding demon Algernon Sidney, the last of the republicans, was arraigned at the bar of the king's bench on the 7th of September, 1683. Rumsey, Keeling, and West were brought against him as against Rusell, but the main witness was the despicable lord Howard, whom Evelyn truly calls, "That monster of a man, lord Howard of Escrick." On their evidence he was charged with being a member of the council of six, sworn to kill the king and overturn his government. That he had attended at those meetings already mentioned at Hampden's, Russell's, and Shepherd's. That he had undertaken to send Aaron Smith to Scotland, to concert a simultaneous insurrection, and to persuade the leading Scotch conspirators to come to London, on pretence of proceeding to Carolina.
Sidney, after Howard had delivered his evidence, was asked if be had any questions to put to the witness, but he replied with the utmost scorn, that "he had no questions to ask such as him!" "Then," said the attorney-general "silence—you know the rest of the proverb." The difficulty remained to prove Sidney's treason, for there were no two witnesses able or willing to attest an overt act. But if it depended on the existence of fact, there was not one of the council of six who was not guilty of really conspiring to drive out the next successor to the crown. Neither Russell, Hampden, nor Sidney, though they laboured in self-defence to prove the plot improbable, ever substantially denied its existence. They knew that it did exist, and were too honest to deny it, though they notoriously sought to evade the penalty of it, by contending that nothing of the kind was or could be proved. But what said Hampden himself after the revolution, before a committee of the house of lords? Plainly, "that the coming into England of king William was nothing else but the continuation of the council of six." The conspiracy by that time was become in the eyes of the government no longer a crime, but a meritorious fact. The injustice thus done to these patriots was not that they had not committed treason against the existing government, but that they were condemned on discreditable and insufficient evidence. When men conspire to get rid of a tyrannous government by force, they commit what is legally rendered treason, and must take the consequence, if detected, by the ruling powers. But that circumstance does not render the attempt less meritorious, and if it succeeds they have their reward. In this case the prisoners knew very well that if their real doings could be proved against them, they must fall by the resentment of those whom they sought to get rid of; but they resisted, and justly, being condemned on the evidence of traitors like lord Howard, and even then by evidence less than the law required.
Lady Rachael Russell, wife of Lord William Russell. From an authentic Portrait.
TRIAL OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL.
As that was clearly the case, he brought forward several witnesses, some of them of high rank, to demolish the only remaining evidence of any consequence—that of lord Howard. These witnesses were two of lord Howard's own relations—Philip and Edward Howard; the earl of Anglesey, lord Clare, lord Paget, M. Du Cas, a Frenchman, a Mr. Blake, and two of his own servants. They one and all swore that lord Howard had solemnly and repeatedly protested that there was no plot, and Mr. Edward Howard spoke out in the strongest manner of his relative. He declared that he fully believed the first statement of lord Howard, that there was no plot, for he was not a man to get into anything where there was danger, and because he had no motive for telling himself this. He added, he would not now believe his second statement were he on the jury. The evidence of this most honourable scion of the family of Howard, was so bold and strong, that he was threatened with being bound over to keep the peace.
Finch, the solicitor-general, replied, assuming the fact to be proved that the pamphlet was Sidney's; that, taken with the rest of the evidence, it was quite sufficient, especially as the prisoner had taught the horrid doctrine, that when kings broke their trust to their people, they might be called to account by them; and that Sidney was the most dangerous of all the conspirators, because he was not, like some of them, stirred up by fancied personal injuries, but acted on a king-destroying principle. Jeffreys, after a parade of humanity, declaring that the king desired not to take away any man's life which was not clearly forfeited to the law, but had rather that many guilty men should escape than one innocent man suffer, concluded, nevertheless, by telling the jury that scribere est agere—that they had evidence enough before them, and they, accordingly, brought in a verdict of guilty.
When the prisoner was brought up on the 26th of November to receive sentence, he pleaded in arrest of judgment that he had had no trial, that some of his jurors were not freeholders, and that his challenges had not been complied with; yet he seems to have exercised that right to a great extent, for the panel contains the names of eighty-nine persons, of whom fifty-five were challenged, absent, or excused. As jurymen, however, then were summoned, there might still be much truth in his plea. He objected, too, that there was a material flaw in the indictment, the words in the king's title, defender of the faith, being left out. "But," exclaimed Jeffreys, "that you would deprive the king of his life, that is in very full, I think." But this plea had a certain effect, and a Mr. Bampfield, a barrister, contended that the judgment should not be proceeded with whilst there was go material a defect in the indictment. Sidney also insisted that there was no proof of the manuscript being his, or of its being treason, and demanded that the duke of Monmouth should be summoned, as he could not be earlier found, and now was at hand. But Jeffreys overruled all his pleadings, and declared that there was nothing further to do than to pass sentence. "I must appeal to God and the world that I am not heard," said Sidney. "Appeal to whom you will," retorted Jeffreys, brutally, and with many terms of crimination and abuse, passed on him sentence of death with all its butcheries.
As soon as he had finished, Sidney exclaimed in a loud and solemn tone, "Then, O God! O God! I beseech thee to sanctify my sufferings, and impute not my blood to the country or the city; let no inquisition be made for it; but, if any day the shedding of blood that is innocent must be avenged, let the weight of it fall only on those that maliciously persecute me for righteousness' sake."
Even this burst of feeling in the solemn prospect of death could not awe that brutal judge into a dignified silence. He burst forth with, "I pray God to work in you a temper fit to go unto the other world, for I see you are not fit for this." "My lord," exclaimed Sidney, stretching out his arm, "feel my pulse, and see if I am disordered. I bless God, I never was in better temper than I am now."
Sidney did not disdain to beg his life of the king. Halifax, the prime minister, was his nephew by marriage, and through him he sent a paper, in which he stated the irregularities of his trial, and begged to be admitted to the presence of his majesty, in which he said that if he did not convince him that it was to his interest and honour to save him from that oppression, he would not complain of his fate. But Charles only replied to the petition, which was rather a demand for justice than a plea for pardon, by signing his death warrant. On the 7th of December Sidney was led to execution. In consideration of the nobility of his family, his sentence was changed from hanging to beheading. The place was Tower Hill, and he mounted the scaffold with the calmest and most undaunted air. He would not allow any of his friends to accompany him; he declined the services of the clergy, and when asked whether he did not intend to address the spectators, he replied that "he had made his peace with God, and had nothing to say to man." He put, however, a paper containing his last observations into the hands of the sheriff, and, laying his head on the block, was despatched by a single stroke.
Algernon Sidney was a stern and immovable republican. He took a distinguished lead amongst the overthrowers of Charles I., but the usurpation of Cromwell drove him from the public service for some time. Yet afterwards he accepted office under the commonwealth, and was envoy to the court of Denmark at the time of the restoration. He would even have condescended to serve the restored Stuart, but it was known to the court that he had written in the album of the university of Copenhagen, "Manus hæc inimica tyraunis" (this hand is the foe of tyrants). He then hastened to Paris to persuade Louis that it was his interest to re-establish the republic in England. He did not succeed in that, nor in obtaining the one hundred thousand livres which he solicited for the purpose of overturning Charles's government; but he consented to receive five hundred pounds per annum of Louis's money to serve his purposes in England. This is a blot which must ever cling to the character of Sidney. We cannot admit that a patriot shall receive money from the enemy of his country under any plea, and that Louis was such an enemy, he must have been a shallow politician who did not perceive. If, as his apologists assert, he received the money to save his country, that makes worse of it; for though it well became him to endeavour to save the liberties of his country, it ill became him to receive the pay of the enemy to do the work of a friend. That was to add duplicity to sordidness. In fact, Sidney was a man of fortune, and ought to have laboured for his country for the work's sake. Nothing could be clearer than that Louis only employed the patriots for his own purposes, which were to keep the king in his chains, and prevent the efficient aid of protestant England to protestant Holland, and the other countries that he sought to subject to his ambitious plans.
In other respects Sidney was rather a zealous republican than a far-seeing one. The fate of the commonwealth, the scenes of the restoration, all demonstrated most vividly that England was by no means ripe for a republic, and that, therefore, a republic was an impossibility. A wise man would, accordingly—however he might lament the rejection of his favourite scheme of government—have submitted, contenting himself in diffusing around him his better views, as he might suppose them, but would not attempt what was utterly impracticable, and which, even were it by some means practicable, would still be unjust, for a small minority has no right to force on a large majority a government, however admirable, which is opposed to its views and wishes.
With these defects, the character of Algernon Sidney is worthy of admiration, from his deep and unshakable attachment to the liberties of his country. It is only justice at the same time to Charles, to state that he at one time granted a pardon to Sidney for all past offences, which he declared that "he valued not at a lower rate than the saving of his life;" and it would have been nobler and more grateful in him to have united with the whigs only for the maintenance of constitutional liberty, than in seeking entirely to overturn the throne of his benefactor.
A very different man at this epoch obtained his pardon, and played a very different part. The weak, impulsive, ambitious, and yet vacillating Monmouth was by means of Halifax reconciled to his father. Halifax, who was known as a minister by the name of the trimmer, though he had aided the tories in gaining the ascendant, no sooner saw the lengths to which they were driving, than he began to incline to the other side. His tendency was always to trim the balance. When the whigs were in the ascendant he was a decided tory: he did his best to throw out the exclusion bill, and when it was thrown out he was one of the first to advocate measures for preventing the mischiefs of a popish succession. His genius was not to stimulate some great principle, and bear it on in triumph, but to keep the prevailing crisis from running into extravagance. He was, like Danby, an enemy to the French alliance; he loathed the doctrine of passive obedience; he was opposed to long absence of parliaments; he dared to intercede for Russell and Sidney, when the tory faction were demanding their blood; he saw the undue influence that the duke of York had acquired by the late triumph over the whigs, and he began to patronise Monmouth as a counterpoise; he wrote some letters for Monmouth, professing great penitence, and Monmouth copied and sent them, and the king at once relented. On the 20th of October Charles received him at the house of major Long, in the city; and though he assumed an air of displeasure, and upbraided him with the heinous nature of his crimes, he added words which showed that he meant to forgive. On the 11th of November there was another private interview, and Halifax laboured hard to remove all difficulties. The king offered him full forgiveness, but on condition that he submitted himself entirely to his pleasure. On the 24th of November he threw himself at the feet of the king and the duke of York, and implored their forgiveness, promising to be the first man, in case of the king's death, to draw the sword for the maintenance of the duke's claims. The duke had been prepared beforehand for this scene, and accorded apparently his forgiveness. But Monmouth was then weak enough to be induced to confirm the testimony of lord Howard against his late associates, and to reveal the particulars of their negotiations with Argyll in Scotland. This he did under solemn assurances that all should remain secret, and nothing should be done which should humiliate him. Having done this, his outlawry was reversed, a full pardon formally drawn, and a present of six thousand pounds was made him by the king to start afresh with.
No sooner, however, was this done than he saw with consternation his submission and confession published in the "Gazette." He denied that he had revealed anything to the king which confirmed the sentences lately passed on Russell and Sidney. The king was enraged, and insisted that he should in writing contradict these assertions. He was again cowardly enough to comply, and immediately being assailed by the reproaches of his late friends, and especially of Hampden, whose turn was approaching, and who said that Monmouth had sealed his doom, he hastened to Charles, and in great excitement and distress demanded back his letter. Charles assured him that it should never be produced in any court as evidence against the prisoners, and advised him to take some time to reflect on the consequences of the withdrawal to himself. But the next morning, the 7th of December, renewing his entreaty for the letter, it was returned him in exchange for a less decisive statement, and Charles bade him never come into his presence again. He then retired to his seat in the country, and once more offered to sign a paper as strong as the last. Even Charles felt the infamy of this proceeding, and refused the offer.
But still it was determined to make use of him, and he was subpœnaed to give evidence on the approaching trial of Hampden. He pleaded the promise that his confession, should not be used against the prisoners, but he was told that he had cancelled that obligation by his subsequently withdrawing his letter. Seeing by this that he would be dragged before a public court to play the disgraceful part of lord Howard, he suddenly disappeared from his house in Holborn, and escaped to Holland, where he was well received by prince William, who was now the grand refuge of English and Scotch refugees of all parties and politics. As Monmouth's escape deprived the court of his evidence, and only one main witness, lord Howard, could be obtained, the charge of high treason was abandoned, and that of a misdemeanour was substituted. Howard was the chief witness, and Hampden was found guilty and punished by a fine of forty thousand pounds, and imprisoned till paid, besides finding two securities for his good behaviour during life. When he complained of the severity of the sentence, which was equivalent to imprisonment during the life of his father, he was reminded that his crime really amounted to treason, and therefore was very mild.
Halloway and Armstrong next suffered death on account of the plot. Halloway was seized in the West Indies, and being brought to England, he refused a trial, but petitioned for mercy. This, however, was denied, and he was condemned on his outlawries, and hanged. Sir Thomas Armstrong was taken at Leyden, and handed over by the civil authorities to Chudleigh, the British ambassador at the Hague. He demanded a trial by the statute of the 6th of Edward VI., which gave this favour to outlaws who surrendered within a year. But Jeffreys replied that was allowed only to outlaws who voluntarily surrendered, which he had not done. Armstrong still demanded the benefit of the law, and Jeffreys exclaimed, By the grace of God, the benefit of the law you shall have; let him be executed according to the law on Friday next." Both these prisoners, like all the rest, positively denied any intention of assailing the king's life; but Halloway confessed to the design of the insurrection, and Armstrong was silent on that head. Here the thirst of blood for this plot was at length stayed in England, but the Scottish partisans of Shaftesbury, Russell, and Sidney, who were arrested in London, were sent down to Scotland, and tried in a most arbitrary and illegal manner.
On the return of the duke of York to Scotland, the persecutions of the defeated covenanters had been renewed there with a fury and diabolical ferocity which has scarcely a parallel in history. Wives were tortured for refusing to betray their husbands, children because they would not discover their parents. People were tortured and then hanged merely because they would not say that the insurrection there was a rebellion, or the idling of archbishop Sharp was a murder. The fortress of the Bass Rock, Dumbarton Castle, and other strongholds were crammed with covenanters and Cameronians. Witnesses, a thing unheard of before, were now tortured. "This," says Sir John Lauder of Fountain Hall, "was agreeable to the Roman law, but not to ours; it was a barbarous practice, but yet of late frequently used amongst us." He also informs us that generals Dalziell and Drummond had imported thumb-screws from Russia, where they had seen them used, by which they crushed the thumbs of prisoners to compel them to confess. All the laws of evidence were thrown aside, and the accused were condemned on presumptive evidence. On such evidence the property of numbers was forfeited, and the notorious Graham of Claverhouse was enriched by the estate of a suspected covenanter.
The prisoners now sent from London were tried and condemned on the evidence of living witnesses, or by written depositions taken from the trials of Russell, Sidney, and others in England. Baillie of Jarviswood was the first victim; Spence, the secretary of the earl of Argyll, and Carstairs, a presbyterian clergyman, were horribly tortured to force revelations from them. Their thumbs were crushed, and they were kept awake for four or five days and nights together, by the application of hair shirts and by pricking, till they were nearly driven mad, and were at length compelled to confess that there had been an agreement betwixt Argyll, Stair, and others now in Holland, with the whigs in England, for a general rising in Scotland. Spence was forced to read the letters of cypher from these noblemen, proving this; and Carstairs not only confessed that the plot had existed for ten years to keep out the duke of York, but he betrayed the names of the earl of Tarras, Murray of Philiphaugh, Pringle of Torwoodlee, Scott of Galashiels, and many other gentlemen as privy to it. Several of these gentlemen were tortured. One of them, Gordon of Earlstone, became furious at the sight of the boots and thumbscrews, and accused Dalziell, Drummond, and duke Hamilton, the torturers themselves, as being concerned, which made the spectators think he was gone mad.
By these torrents of blood, these diabolical engines of iron boots, thumbscrews, and other tortures; by witnesses forced to implicate their neighbours, and a herd of vile caitifis brought forward to swear away the lives and fortunes of every man who dared to entertain, though he scarcely ventured to avow, a free opinion; by a church preaching passive obedience; by servile, bullying, and brutal judges; Charles had now completely subdued the spirit of the nation, and had, through the aid of French money, obtained that absolute power which his father in vain fought for. "He enjoyed," says Lingard, "uninterrupted tranquillity during the remainder of his reign. Relieved from the constant assaults of a powerful faction, he employed his attention in strengthening his power, and in guiding the opposite parties which sprung up among his own members." What a tranquillity! What relief! purchased by the destruction of everything dear to a nation, and to men with souls. The dominion of lust and tyranny enthroned on the blood and groans of the best men of the realm.
One of the first uses which he made of this beautiful tranquillity, was to destroy the ancient seminaries of freedom—the corporations of the country. Writs of quo warranto were issued, and the corporations, like the nation at large, prostrate at the feet of the polluted throne, were compelled by threats and promises to resign their ancient privileges.
"Neither," says Lingard, "had the boroughs much reason to complain. By the renewal of their charters they lost no franchise which it was reasonable they should retain; many acquired rights which they did not previously possess; but individuals suffered, because the exercise of authority was restricted to a smaller number of burgesses, and these, according to custom, were in the first instance named by the crown."
There, indeed, lay the gist and mischief of the whole matter. Charles eared little what other privileges they enjoyed so that he could deprive them of their most important privilege—their independence, and make them not only slavish institutions, but instruments for the general enslavement of the country. "In the course of time," says the same historian, "several boroughs, by the exercise of those exclusive privileges, which had been conferred on them by ancient grants from the crown, bad grown into nests or asylums of public malefactors, and on that account were presented as nuisances by the grand juries of the county assizes." An excellent reason why those "several boroughs" should have been reformed; but none whatever, why all boroughs should by force be compelled to surrender their independence to a despotic monarch. The great instrument in this sweeping usurpation, was the lord chief justice Jeffreys, a man admirably calculated for the work by his power of coaxing, jeering, brow-beating, and terrifying the reluctant corporations. Before he set out on his summer circuit this year, Charles presented him with a ring from his own finger, as a mark of his especial esteem, at the same time giving him a very necessary piece of advice, chief justice as he was, to beware of drinking too much, as the weather would be hot. The ring was called Jeffreys' blood-stone, being presented to him just after the execution of Sir Thomas Armstrong.
Though blood had ceased to flow, persecution of the whigs had not ceased. Sir Samuel Barnadiston, the foreman of the grand jury which had ignored the bill against lord Shaftesbury, was not forgotten. He was tried for a libel, and fined ten thousand pounds, and ordered to find security for his good behaviour during life. Williams, the speaker of the house of commons, was prosecuted for merely having discharged the duties of his office, in signing the votes; Braddon and Speke were tried and punished severely for slandering the king and duke by charging them with the murder of Essex. And James now indulged his spleen against the great Titus Oates for his proceedings against the catholics, and his endeavour to exclude James from the succession. The pretence seized upon was, that Oates and Dutton Colt had declared that the duke of York was a traitor, and that before he should come to the succession, he should be banished or hanged, the hanging being the fittest. Jeffreys, who tried them, had a particular pleasure in sentencing Oates, who, in the days of his popularity, had hit the rascally lawyer hard. In 1680 Jeffreys had fallen under the censure of parliament for interfering in its concerns, and they had not only brought him to his knees at their bar, but had compelled him to resign the recordership of London. On the trial of College, the protestant joiner, Oates had appealed to Jeffreys, then serjeant Jeffreys, to confirm a part of his evidence. Jeffreys indignantly said he did not intend becoming evidence for a man like him; whereupon Oates coolly replied, "I don't desire Sir George Jeffreys to become an evidence for me; I have had credit in parliaments, and Sir George had disgrace in one of them."
Jeffreys was stunned by this repartee, and merely replied, "Your servant, doctor; you are a witty man and a philosopher." But now the tide had turned; Jeffreys had the witty man at his mercy, and he fined him and Colt one hundred thousand pounds, or imprisonment till paid, which meant so long as they lived.
Tardy justice was at length also done to the remaining catholic peers who were in the Tower. Lord Stafford had fallen the victim of protestant terrors during the ascendancy of the whigs; lord Fetre died, worn out by his confinement, but the lords Powis, Arundell, and Bellasis, after lying five years, were brought up by writ of habeas corpus, and were discharged on each entering into recognisances of ten thousand pounds for himself, and five thousand pounds each for four sureties, to appear at the bar of the house if called for. The judges, now that the duke of York, the catholic prince, was in power, could admit that these victims of a political faction "ought in justice and conscience to have been admitted to bail long ago." Danby, too, was liberated on the same terms, though he never could be forgiven by the king or duke for his patronage of Oates, and his zeal in hunting out the plot.
The influence of James was every day more manifest. Charles restored James to his former status, by placing him at the head of the admiralty; and, to avoid subjecting him to the penalties of the test act, signed all the papers himself which required the signature of the lord high admiral. Seeing that this was received with perfect complacency, he went a step further, and in defiance of the test act, he introduced James again into the council. This, indeed, excited some murmurs, even the tories being scandalised at his thus coolly setting aside an act of parliament.
No sooner was James reinstated in the council, than he planned yet more daring changes. Under the plea of relieving the dissenters, which he afterwards carried so far in his own reign, he sought to relieve the catholics from their penalties. "What his regard was for the dissenters has been sufficiently shown by their cruel persecution in England, and by his own especial oppression of the covenanters in Scotland.
One morning, however, Jeffreys, who had lately been admitted to the council, appeared at the board with an immense bundle of papers and parchments, and informed the king that they were the rolls of the names of the recusants that he had collected during his late circuit. He declared that the gaols were crammed with them, and that their case deserved the serious attention of the king. Lord-keeper North, who saw instantly the drift of the motion, and who had a profound jealousy of Jeffreys, who, he knew, was anxiously looking for the seals, asked whether all the names in the list belonged to persons who were in prison? Jeffreys replied no, for the prisons could not hold all the persons convicted of recusancy. North then observed, that besides catholics there were vast numbers of nonconformists and other persons included in those lists, who were professed enemies of the king, and of church and state, and that it would be far easier and safer to grant particular pardons to catholics, than thus at once to set at liberty all the elements of commotion in the kingdom. The blow was struck. Strong as was the government then, it dared not give a measure of exemption exclusively to the catholics. The scheme, it was obviously seen, was transparent, and there was a significant silence. Neither Halifax, Rochester, nor the more protestant members had occasion to open their mouths, the council passed to other business.
But Halifax saw with alarm the advancing influence of the duke, and trembled for his own hold of office, for the duke, he knew, hated him mortality. He, therefore, as a certain resource against this advancing power, advised Charles to call a parliament, but that Charles had resolved never to do. He still received a considerable sum from Louis, though not so large in amount, nor so regularly paid as when his services were more needful, and to decrease his expenditure, he had, during the last year, sent a squadron under lord Dartmouth to destroy the fortification of Tangier, which he had received as part of the dowry of the queen. Had that settlement been well managed, it would have given England great advantages in the Mediterranean; but nothing of that kind was well managed by this impatriotic king. To spare the expenditure necessary for its maintenance, he thus destroyed the defences, and left the place to the Moors, to the great indignation of Portugal, which thought rightly, that if he did not value it, he might have returned it.
Defeated in that quarter, Halifax next endeavoured to stop the growing advancement of lord Rochester. This was the second son of the late lord chancellor Clarendon, and the especial favourite and protégé of the duke. He had lately not only been created earl of Rochester, but made first commissioner of the treasury. Halifax beheld in his rise an ominous competitor, especially as the duke was the main-spring of his prosperity. He therefore accused Rochester of negligence or embezzlement in his office, and succeeded in removing him, but only from the treasury-board to the presidency of the council. This Halifax called kicking a man upstairs. Nor did Rochester's promotion end here. He was soon after appointed to the government of Ireland, the old and veteran colleague of Rochester's father, and the stanch champion of Charles in the days of his adversity, being removed to make way for him. The great object, however, was not simply Rochester's promotion, but the organisation of a powerful catholic army in Ireland, for which it was deemed Ormond was not active enough, this army having reference to James's views on England, which afterwards proved his ruin.
By this appointment Rochester was removed from immediate rivalry with Halifax; but sufficient elements of danger still surrounded that minister. Halifax and his colleagues had succeeded in strengthening the protestant succession, by the marriage of the second daughter of the duke, Anne, to a protestant prince; but even in that event the influence of Louis had been active. Through the medium of Sunderland, who continued in office, and maintained a close intimacy with the French mistress, the duchess of Portland, Louis took care, that though the nation would not tolerate any but a protestant prince for her husband, it should be one of no great importance. George, prince of Hanover, afterwards George I., had been selected, and made a visit to London, but returned without the princess. The fortune, it has been suggested, was not enough for the penurious German, his father recalled him to marry the princess of Zell, a circumstance which Anne never forgot or forgave. In the midst of the agitation of the Rye House plot, and but two days before the execution of lord Russell, another wooer appeared in George, brother of the king of Denmark- This young man also had the approbation of Louis, and the match took place in a week after his arrival.
Still Halifax felt a growing insecurity in the royal favour. The whole influence of the duke of York was exerted to ruin him, and he therefore determined once more to attempt to re-establish Monmouth in the king's favour. This popular but weak young man was living in great honour at the court of the prince of Orange. Many remonstrances had been made by the duke of York to his daughter and son-in-law, against their encouragement of a son who had taken so determined a part both against his own father, the king, and himself, their father. But the prince and princess were well aware of Charles's affection for his undutiful son, and therefore did not fear seriously offending him. Under the management of Halifax, Van Citters, the Dutch ambassador in London, went over to the Hague on pretence of negotiating some measure of importance betwixt the two countries. The prince of Orange affected to comply with the wishes of Charles for the removal of Monmouth. But that nobleman, instead of taking up his residence at Brussels, as was given out, suddenly returned to London privately, had an interview with his father, and as suddenly returned to the Hague, saying that in three months he should be publicly admitted at court, and the duke of York be banished afresh. Charles, meantime, had proposed to James to go and hold a parliament in Scotland, as if conferring a mark of particular honour and confidence on him. But the private visit of Monmouth had not escaped James, nor the correspondence of Halifax with him, and this caused a fresh energy of opposition to that minister to be infused into the duke's creatures at court. Halifax had recommended a most enlightened measure to the king as it regarded the American colonies, which, had it been adopted, might have prevented their loss at a later period. He represented that the grant of local representative legislatures to them would be the best means of developing their resources, and governing them in peace; but on this admirable suggestion the duke's partisans seized as something especially anti-monarchical and injurious to the power of the king. The duke, the duchess of Portland, the earl of Sunderland, re-echoed these opinions, and drew from Charles a promise that unless Halifax retired of himself, he should be dismissed on the first plausible occasion. The influence of the French king was also at work to effect the overthrow of Halifax. It was in vain that Louis had endeavoured to buy him as he had done the king, the duke, and the other ministers; and as he could not be bought, the only alternative was to drive him from office. He was feebly supported by the lord-keeper North, he was actively and zealously undermined by his colleagues, Sunderland and Godolphin; but still Charles hesitated. He enjoyed the wit and brilliant conversation of Halifax; he knew well his ability, and, still more, he was in a most indolent and undecided tone of mind. Macaulay has well described him at this moment:—"The event depended wholly on the will of Charles, and Charles could not come to a decision. In his perplexity he promised everything to everybody. He would stand by France, he would break with France; he would never meet another parliament; he would order writs for a parliament without delay. He assured the duke of York that Halifax should be dismissed from office, and Halifax that the duke should be sent to Scotland. In public he affected implacable resentment against Monmouth, and in private conveyed to Monmouth assurances of unalterable affection. How long, if the king's life had been protracted, his hesitation would have lasted, and what would have been his resolve, can only be conjectured."
James II.
But his time was come. It was not likely that a man who had led the dissipated life that Charles had, would live to a very old age. He was now in his fiftieth year, and the twenty-fifth of his reign, that is, reckoning from the restoration, and not from the death of his father, as the royalists, who would never admit that a king could be unkinged, did. His health, or, more visibly, his spirits, had lately much failed—no doubt the consequence of that giving way of his debilitated system, which was soon to carry him off. His gaiety had quite forsaken him; he was gloomy, depressed, finding no pleasure in anything, and only at any degree of ease in sauntering away his time amongst his women. It was thought that his conscience began to trouble him for the profligacy of his life, and the blood that had been shed under his rule; but Charles was not a man much troubled with a conscience; he was sinking without being aware of it, and the heaviness of death was lying on him. On Monday, the 2nd of February, 1685, he rose at an early hour from a restless couch. Dr. King, a surgeon and chemist, who had been employed by him in experiments, perceived that he walked heavily, and with an unsteady gait. His face was ghastly, his head drooping, and his hand retained on his stomach. When spoken to he returned no answer, or a very incoherent one. King hastened out, and informed the earl of Peterborough that the king was in a strange state, and did not speak one word of sense. They returned instantly to the king's apartment, and had scarcely entered it, when he fell on the floor in an apoplectic fit. As no time was to be lost, Dr. King, on his own responsibility, bled him. The blood flowed freely, and he recovered his consciousness. When the physicians arrived, they perfectly approved of what Dr. King had done, and applied strong stimulants to various parts of his body. The council ordered one thousand pounds to he paid to Dr. King for his prompt services, which, however, never were paid.
As soon as the king rallied a little, he asked for the queen, who hastened to his bedside, and waited on him with the most zealous affection till the sight of his sufferings threw her into fits, and the physicians ordered her to her own apartment. Towards evening Charles had a relapse, but the next morning he rallied again, and was so much better, that the physicians issued a bulletin, expressing hope of his recovery; but the next day he changed again for the worse, and on the fourth evening it was clear that his end was at hand. The announcement of his dangerous condition spread consternation through the city; the momentary news of his improvement was received with unequivocal joy, the ringing of bells and making of bonfires. When the contrary intelligence of his imminent danger was made known, crowds rushed to the churches to pray for his recovery; and it is said the service was interrupted by the sobs and tears of the people. In the royal chapel prayers every two hours were continued during his remaining moments. These, say the royalist historians, were unmistakable signs that Charles was greatly beloved by his subjects. And there is, no doubt, considerable truth in the statement. The king, with all his faults, was of a free and easy disposition, excessively fond of gaiety and merriment, and insinuating in his manners and address; and the English people will love excessively any monarch who will let them, and who does not wantonly outrage their feelings and prejudices. The wit and pleasantry of Charles made his subjects forget his vices, and his inroads on their liberties. During his reign, too, though the national honour suffered in every way, the national prosperity increased. The trade, commerce, and general activity of the nation, had now arrived at that pitch, that if monarchs would let the people alone they could take good care of themselves; and the monarch who does this, is by the multitude thought a good monarch. But what gave energy and edge to the feelings of the people, was not so much affection for the king who was going, as dread of the one who was coming. There had been a long and fearful anticipation of the gloomy and remorseless bigotry and selfish despotism of James. The most strenuous and continued efforts had been made to prevent this cruel, unimpressible man from mounting the throne, and a direful apprehension of approaching evil now agitated the public.
James was never a moment from the dying king's bedside. He was afterwards accused of having poisoned him—a suspicion for which there does not appear the slightest foundation; but independent of natural brotherly regard, James was on the watch to guard the chances of his succession. Every precaution was taken to secure the tranquillity of the city, and to insure an uninterrupted proclamation of his accession. In the room, too, were as constantly a great number of noblemen and bishops. There were the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London, Durham, and Ely, and Bath and Wells, besides twenty-five lords and privy councillors. A bishop, with some of the nobles, took turns to watch each night. Early on the Thursday morning, Ken, of Bath and Wells, ventured to warn the king of his danger, and Charles receiving the solemn intelligence with an air of resignation, he proceeded to read the office for the visitation of the sick. He asked Charles if he repented of his sins, and on replying that he did, Ken gave him absolution according to the prescribed form of the church of England, and then inquired whether he should administer the sacrament. To this there was no answer. Ken, supposing that the king did not clearly comprehend the question, repeated it more distinctly. Charles replied there was yet plenty of time. The bread and wine, however, were brought, and placed on a table near him; but though the question was again repeatedly asked by the bishop, Charles only replied, "he would think of it."
The mystery was, however, solved by the French mistress, who, drawing Barillon, the French ambassador, into her boudoir, said, "Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, I am going to tell you the greatest secret in the world, and my head would be in danger if it were known here. The king, in the bottom of his heart, is a catholic, and nobody tells him the state he is in, or speaks to him of God. I can no longer with propriety enter into his chamber, where the queen is almost constantly with him; the duke of York thinks about his own affairs, and has no time to take the care that he ought of the king's conscience. Go and tell him that I have conjured you to warn him to do what he can to save the soul of the king, his brother. He is master in the royal chamber, and can make any one withdraw from it as he lists. Lose no time, for if you delay ever so little, it may be too late."
When Barillon whispered this to James, he seemed to start as from a lethargy, and said, "You are right, there is no time to lose. I will rather hazard all than not do my duty." But there were no ordinary difficulties in the way. Who was to administer the catholic rites? It was death by the law for any priest of that faith to be on English ground, except the queen's expressly privileged confessors, and they were all too well known. There was another difficulty; notwithstanding Charles's years of life on the continent, he could not, it seems, understand any language but English, and where was an English priest to be found? Such, however, was found in Huddleston, who had been with the king in the battle of Worcester, and accompanied him in his flight. He had become a Benedictine monk, and had been appointed one of the chaplains of the queen. The duke, stooping to the king's ear, had inquired in a whisper whether he should bring him a catholic priest, and Charles instantly replied, "For God's sake, do!" The duke then requested, in the king's name, all the company to retire into an adjoining room, except the earl of Bath, lord of the bed-chamber, and lord Feversham, captain of the guard, and as soon as this was done, Huddleston, disguised in a wig and gown, was introduced by the backstairs by Chiffinch, who for so many years had been employed to introduce very different persons. Barillon says that Huddleston was no great doctor, which is probably true enough, having originally been a soldier, but he managed to administer the sacrament to the king, and also the extreme unction. Charles declared he pardoned all his enemies, and prayed to be pardoned by God, and forgiven by all whom he had injured.
This ceremony lasted three-quarters of an hour, and the excluded attendants passed the time in much wonder and significant guesses. They looked at one another in amazement, but spoke only with their eyes or in whispers. The lords Bath and Feversham being both protestants, however, seemed to disarm the fears of the bishops. But when Huddleston withdrew, the news was speedily spread. That night he was in much pain; the queen sent to excuse her absence, and to beg that he would pardon any offence that she might at any time have given him. "Alas! poor woman!" he replied, "she beg my pardon? I beg hers with all my heart; take back to her that answer." He then sent for his illegitimate sons, except Monmouth, whom he never mentioned, and recommended them to James, and taking each by the hand, gave them his blessing. The bishops, affected by this edifying sight, threw themselves on their knees, and begged he would bless them too; whereupon he was raised up and blessed them all. Perhaps they did not know at the moment that they were receiving the blessing of a king who had just broken his coronation oath of adherence to their faith, and were solacing themselves with the benediction of a catholic head of the church, having blessed the bishops, he next blessed the ladies of his harem, and particularly recommended to his successor the care of the duchess of Portsmouth, who had been pretty active for his exclusion, and also the duchess of Cleveland, hoping, moreover, that "poor Nelly"—Nell Gwynne, would not be left to starve. Three hours afterwards, in this pious, benedictory, paternal, and loverlike style, this strange monarch breathed his last.
Upon a naturally easy, pleasure-loving disposition, Charles, in his wandering youth on the continent, had engrafted all the vices of the age. He was blessed with abilities which might have made him one of the most brilliant monarchs of the time; but he was too indolent to use them, except to add éclat and piquancy to a most profligate life and court. No man succeeded more completely in dishonouring and degrading his kingdom in the eyes of foreign nations, nor of enslaving his people, nor ever saddled this country with such a troop of bastards. He had no issue by his wife, but his children by other women were a little host—James, duke of Monmouth, by Lucy Walters; Charlotte, countess of Yarmouth, by lady Shannon; Charles, duke of Southampton, Henry, duke of Grafton, George, duke of Northumberland, and Charlotte, countess of Lichfield, by the duchess of Cleveland; Charles, duke of St. Albans, by Nell Gwynne; Charles, duke of Richmond, by the duchess of Portsmouth; and Mary, countess of Dumbarton, by Mary Davies. His grandfather, James I., was styled the British Solomon, for his imagined wisdom; Charles was far better entitled to the name by the extent of his seraglio and the number of his progeny. His blood still flows far and wide through the high places of this nation. All these sons were furnished with large estates, and the duke of Grafton endowed with fourteen thousand pounds a year for ever, out of the post-office, excise, and king's bench. As the king's mistresses were as free in their turn as Charles, the nation has still probably to maintain, through his profligacy, other men's descendants under the name of his.
But the incumbrances fixed on the nation were nothing to the virus of vice and loose principle infused by his example into society. What this was at court to the last, Evelyn, in his diary, gives us a striking idea of:—"I can never forget," he says, "the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gambling and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of God, it being Sunday evening, which this day se'nnight I was witness of. The king sitting and toying with his concubines—Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarin, &c., a French boy singing love songs in that glorious gallery; whilst about twenty of the greatest courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset round a large table, a bank of at least two thousand pounds in gold before them. Six days after, all was dust."
This profligacy had spread from the court into every class and station, and poured such a flood of obscenity and vileness into our literature, especially that of the stage, as never cruelty any nation besides, except the French. But it had been well had the mischief stopped there; but to furnish the boundless demands of his harem, his pimps, and panders, and all their hangers-on, this in-English king sold himself, as we have seen, to the French monarch, avowing to the ambassador himself that this was the way for Louis "de mettre pour touie sa vie l'Angleterre dans sa dependence;" and so completely did it subject England to France, that while this country sunk in its influence, in its army, its navy, its power of asserting its rank amongst the nations, into utter insignificance, Louis had raised his navy from a force of small vessels to the finest fleet in Europe, manned by sixty thousand sailors, and with his army he lorded it over the continent from the Pyrenees to the frontier of Holland, across the Alps, and in the Mediterranean. He bombarded Genoa, and compelled the Italian princes to tremble at his name. We had thus a libidinous, utterly effeminate, and traitor king; a debauched court and aristocracy; a slavish parliament; a persecuting church; our arms used at home to destroy and enslave our countrymen; our fleets disgraced on the ocean—such was England under Charles II. of merry memory. Well did Rochester describe him in the impromptu epigram which he one day in sport wrote on his chamber-door, and at which, so far from resenting it, the king laughed, and said it was quite true:— Here lies our sovereign lord the king, Whose word no man relies on; Who never said a foolish thing-. And never did a wise one.