CHAPTER XXXVI--ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND
CHAPTER XXXVI--ENGLAND UNDER JAMES THE SECOND
King James the Second was a man so very disagreeable, that even the bestof historians has favoured his brother Charles, as becoming, bycomparison, quite a pleasant character. The one object of his shortreign was to re-establish the Catholic religion in England; and this hedoggedly pursued with such a stupid obstinacy, that his career very sooncame to a close.
The first thing he did, was, to assure his council that he would make ithis endeavour to preserve the Government, both in Church and State, as itwas by law established; and that he would always take care to defend andsupport the Church. Great public acclamations were raised over this fairspeech, and a great deal was said, from the pulpits and elsewhere, aboutthe word of a King which was never broken, by credulous people who littlesupposed that he had formed a secret council for Catholic affairs, ofwhich a mischievous Jesuit, called FATHER PETRE, was one of the chiefmembers. With tears of joy in his eyes, he received, as the beginning of_his_ pension from the King of France, five hundred thousand livres; yet,with a mixture of meanness and arrogance that belonged to hiscontemptible character, he was always jealous of making some show ofbeing independent of the King of France, while he pocketed his money.As--notwithstanding his publishing two papers in favour of Popery (andnot likely to do it much service, I should think) written by the King,his brother, and found in his strong-box; and his open display of himselfattending mass--the Parliament was very obsequious, and granted him alarge sum of money, he began his reign with a belief that he could dowhat he pleased, and with a determination to do it.
Before we proceed to its principal events, let us dispose of Titus Oates.He was tried for perjury, a fortnight after the coronation, and besidesbeing very heavily fined, was sentenced to stand twice in the pillory, tobe whipped from Aldgate to Newgate one day, and from Newgate to Tyburntwo days afterwards, and to stand in the pillory five times a year aslong as he lived. This fearful sentence was actually inflicted on therascal. Being unable to stand after his first flogging, he was draggedon a sledge from Newgate to Tyburn, and flogged as he was drawn along. Hewas so strong a villain that he did not die under the torture, but livedto be afterwards pardoned and rewarded, though not to be ever believed inany more. Dangerfield, the only other one of that crew left alive, wasnot so fortunate. He was almost killed by a whipping from Newgate toTyburn, and, as if that were not punishment enough, a ferocious barristerof Gray's Inn gave him a poke in the eye with his cane, which caused hisdeath; for which the ferocious barrister was deservedly tried andexecuted.
As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle and Monmouth went fromBrussels to Rotterdam, and attended a meeting of Scottish exiles heldthere, to concert measures for a rising in England. It was agreed thatArgyle should effect a landing in Scotland, and Monmouth in England; andthat two Englishmen should be sent with Argyle to be in his confidence,and two Scotchmen with the Duke of Monmouth.
Argyle was the first to act upon this contract. But, two of his menbeing taken prisoners at the Orkney Islands, the Government became awareof his intention, and was able to act against him with such vigour as toprevent his raising more than two or three thousand Highlanders, althoughhe sent a fiery cross, by trusty messengers, from clan to clan and fromglen to glen, as the custom then was when those wild people were to beexcited by their chiefs. As he was moving towards Glasgow with his smallforce, he was betrayed by some of his followers, taken, and carried, withhis hands tied behind his back, to his old prison in Edinburgh Castle.James ordered him to be executed, on his old shamefully unjust sentence,within three days; and he appears to have been anxious that his legsshould have been pounded with his old favourite the boot. However, theboot was not applied; he was simply beheaded, and his head was set uponthe top of Edinburgh Jail. One of those Englishmen who had been assignedto him was that old soldier Rumbold, the master of the Rye House. He wassorely wounded, and within a week after Argyle had suffered with greatcourage, was brought up for trial, lest he should die and disappoint theKing. He, too, was executed, after defending himself with great spirit,and saying that he did not believe that God had made the greater part ofmankind to carry saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths, andto be ridden by a few, booted and spurred for the purpose--in which Ithoroughly agree with Rumbold.
The Duke of Monmouth, partly through being detained and partly throughidling his time away, was five or six weeks behind his friend when helanded at Lyme, in Dorset: having at his right hand an unlucky noblemancalled LORD GREY OF WERK, who of himself would have ruined a far morepromising expedition. He immediately set up his standard in the market-place, and proclaimed the King a tyrant, and a Popish usurper, and I knownot what else; charging him, not only with what he had done, which wasbad enough, but with what neither he nor anybody else had done, such assetting fire to London, and poisoning the late King. Raising some fourthousand men by these means, he marched on to Taunton, where there weremany Protestant dissenters who were strongly opposed to the Catholics.Here, both the rich and poor turned out to receive him, ladies waved awelcome to him from all the windows as he passed along the streets,flowers were strewn in his way, and every compliment and honour thatcould be devised was showered upon him. Among the rest, twenty youngladies came forward, in their best clothes, and in their brightestbeauty, and gave him a Bible ornamented with their own fair hands,together with other presents.
Encouraged by this homage, he proclaimed himself King, and went on toBridgewater. But, here the Government troops, under the EARL OFFEVERSHAM, were close at hand; and he was so dispirited at finding thathe made but few powerful friends after all, that it was a questionwhether he should disband his army and endeavour to escape. It wasresolved, at the instance of that unlucky Lord Grey, to make a nightattack on the King's army, as it lay encamped on the edge of a morasscalled Sedgemoor. The horsemen were commanded by the same unlucky lord,who was not a brave man. He gave up the battle almost at the firstobstacle--which was a deep drain; and although the poor countrymen, whohad turned out for Monmouth, fought bravely with scythes, poles,pitchforks, and such poor weapons as they had, they were soon dispersedby the trained soldiers, and fled in all directions. When the Duke ofMonmouth himself fled, was not known in the confusion; but the unluckyLord Grey was taken early next day, and then another of the party wastaken, who confessed that he had parted from the Duke only four hoursbefore. Strict search being made, he was found disguised as a peasant,hidden in a ditch under fern and nettles, with a few peas in his pocketwhich he had gathered in the fields to eat. The only other articles hehad upon him were a few papers and little books: one of the latter beinga strange jumble, in his own writing, of charms, songs, recipes, andprayers. He was completely broken. He wrote a miserable letter to theKing, beseeching and entreating to be allowed to see him. When he wastaken to London, and conveyed bound into the King's presence, he crawledto him on his knees, and made a most degrading exhibition. As Jamesnever forgave or relented towards anybody, he was not likely to softentowards the issuer of the Lyme proclamation, so he told the suppliant toprepare for death.
On the fifteenth of July, one thousand six hundred and eighty-five, thisunfortunate favourite of the people was brought out to die on Tower Hill.The crowd was immense, and the tops of all the houses were covered withgazers. He had seen his wife, the daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch, inthe Tower, and had talked much of a lady whom he loved far better--theLADY HARRIET WENTWORTH--who was one of the last persons he remembered inthis life. Before laying down his head upon the block he felt the edgeof the axe, and told the executioner that he feared it was not sharpenough, and that the axe was not heavy enough. On the executionerreplying that it was of the proper kind, the Duke said, 'I pray you havea care, and do not use me so awkwardly as you used my Lord Russell.' Theexecutioner, made nervous by this, and trembling, struck once and merelygashed him in the neck. Upon this, the Duke of Monmouth raised his headand looked the man reproachfully in the face. Then he struck twice, andthen thrice, and then threw down the axe, and cried out in a voice ofhorror that he could not finish that work. The sheriffs, however,threatening him with what should be done to himself if he did not, hetook it up again and struck a fourth time and a fifth time. Then thewretched head at last fell off, and James, Duke of Monmouth, was dead, inthe thirty-sixth year of his age. He was a showy, graceful man, withmany popular qualities, and had found much favour in the open hearts ofthe English.
The atrocities, committed by the Government, which followed this Monmouthrebellion, form the blackest and most lamentable page in English history.The poor peasants, having been dispersed with great loss, and theirleaders having been taken, one would think that the implacable King mighthave been satisfied. But no; he let loose upon them, among otherintolerable monsters, a COLONEL KIRK, who had served against the Moors,and whose soldiers--called by the people Kirk's lambs, because they borea lamb upon their flag, as the emblem of Christianity--were worthy oftheir leader. The atrocities committed by these demons in human shapeare far too horrible to be related here. It is enough to say, thatbesides most ruthlessly murdering and robbing them, and ruining them bymaking them buy their pardons at the price of all they possessed, it wasone of Kirk's favourite amusements, as he and his officers sat drinkingafter dinner, and toasting the King, to have batches of prisoners hangedoutside the windows for the company's diversion; and that when their feetquivered in the convulsions of death, he used to swear that they shouldhave music to their dancing, and would order the drums to beat and thetrumpets to play. The detestable King informed him, as an acknowledgmentof these services, that he was 'very well satisfied with hisproceedings.' But the King's great delight was in the proceedings ofJeffreys, now a peer, who went down into the west, with four otherjudges, to try persons accused of having had any share in the rebellion.The King pleasantly called this 'Jeffreys's campaign.' The people downin that part of the country remember it to this day as The Bloody Assize.
It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old lady, MRS. ALICIA LISLE,the widow of one of the judges of Charles the First (who had beenmurdered abroad by some Royalist assassins), was charged with havinggiven shelter in her house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. Three timesthe jury refused to find her guilty, until Jeffreys bullied andfrightened them into that false verdict. When he had extorted it fromthem, he said, 'Gentlemen, if I had been one of you, and she had been myown mother, I would have found her guilty;'--as I dare say he would. Hesentenced her to be burned alive, that very afternoon. The clergy of thecathedral and some others interfered in her favour, and she was beheadedwithin a week. As a high mark of his approbation, the King made JeffreysLord Chancellor; and he then went on to Dorchester, to Exeter, toTaunton, and to Wells. It is astonishing, when we read of the enormousinjustice and barbarity of this beast, to know that no one struck himdead on the judgment-seat. It was enough for any man or woman to beaccused by an enemy, before Jeffreys, to be found guilty of high treason.One man who pleaded not guilty, he ordered to be taken out of court uponthe instant, and hanged; and this so terrified the prisoners in generalthat they mostly pleaded guilty at once. At Dorchester alone, in thecourse of a few days, Jeffreys hanged eighty people; besides whipping,transporting, imprisoning, and selling as slaves, great numbers. Heexecuted, in all, two hundred and fifty, or three hundred.
These executions took place, among the neighbours and friends of thesentenced, in thirty-six towns and villages. Their bodies were mangled,steeped in caldrons of boiling pitch and tar, and hung up by theroadsides, in the streets, over the very churches. The sight and smellof heads and limbs, the hissing and bubbling of the infernal caldrons,and the tears and terrors of the people, were dreadful beyond alldescription. One rustic, who was forced to steep the remains in theblack pot, was ever afterwards called 'Tom Boilman.' The hangman hasever since been called Jack Ketch, because a man of that name wenthanging and hanging, all day long, in the train of Jeffreys. You willhear much of the horrors of the great French Revolution. Many andterrible they were, there is no doubt; but I know of nothing worse, doneby the maddened people of France in that awful time, than was done by thehighest judge in England, with the express approval of the King ofEngland, in The Bloody Assize.
Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of money for himself as ofmisery for others, and he sold pardons wholesale to fill his pockets. TheKing ordered, at one time, a thousand prisoners to be given to certain ofhis favourites, in order that they might bargain with them for theirpardons. The young ladies of Taunton who had presented the Bible, werebestowed upon the maids of honour at court; and those precious ladiesmade very hard bargains with them indeed. When The Bloody Assize was atits most dismal height, the King was diverting himself with horse-racesin the very place where Mrs. Lisle had been executed. When Jeffreys haddone his worst, and came home again, he was particularly complimented inthe Royal Gazette; and when the King heard that through drunkenness andraging he was very ill, his odious Majesty remarked that such another mancould not easily be found in England. Besides all this, a former sheriffof London, named CORNISH, was hanged within sight of his own house, afteran abominably conducted trial, for having had a share in the Rye HousePlot, on evidence given by Rumsey, which that villain was obliged toconfess was directly opposed to the evidence he had given on the trial ofLord Russell. And on the very same day, a worthy widow, named ELIZABETHGAUNT, was burned alive at Tyburn, for having sheltered a wretch whohimself gave evidence against her. She settled the fuel about herselfwith her own hands, so that the flames should reach her quickly: andnobly said, with her last breath, that she had obeyed the sacred commandof God, to give refuge to the outcast, and not to betray the wanderer.
After all this hanging, beheading, burning, boiling, mutilating,exposing, robbing, transporting, and selling into slavery, of his unhappysubjects, the King not unnaturally thought that he could do whatever hewould. So, he went to work to change the religion of the country withall possible speed; and what he did was this.
He first of all tried to get rid of what was called the Test Act--whichprevented the Catholics from holding public employments--by his own powerof dispensing with the penalties. He tried it in one case, and, elevenof the twelve judges deciding in his favour, he exercised it in threeothers, being those of three dignitaries of University College, Oxford,who had become Papists, and whom he kept in their places and sanctioned.He revived the hated Ecclesiastical Commission, to get rid of COMPTON,Bishop of London, who manfully opposed him. He solicited the Pope tofavour England with an ambassador, which the Pope (who was a sensible manthen) rather unwillingly did. He flourished Father Petre before the eyesof the people on all possible occasions. He favoured the establishmentof convents in several parts of London. He was delighted to have thestreets, and even the court itself, filled with Monks and Friars in thehabits of their orders. He constantly endeavoured to make Catholics ofthe Protestants about him. He held private interviews, which he called'closetings,' with those Members of Parliament who held offices, topersuade them to consent to the design he had in view. When they did notconsent, they were removed, or resigned of themselves, and their placeswere given to Catholics. He displaced Protestant officers from the army,by every means in his power, and got Catholics into their places too. Hetried the same thing with the corporations, and also (though not sosuccessfully) with the Lord Lieutenants of counties. To terrify thepeople into the endurance of all these measures, he kept an army offifteen thousand men encamped on Hounslow Heath, where mass was openlyperformed in the General's tent, and where priests went among thesoldiers endeavouring to persuade them to become Catholics. Forcirculating a paper among those men advising them to be true to theirreligion, a Protestant clergyman, named JOHNSON, the chaplain of the lateLord Russell, was actually sentenced to stand three times in the pillory,and was actually whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He dismissed his ownbrother-in-law from his Council because he was a Protestant, and made aPrivy Councillor of the before-mentioned Father Petre. He handed Irelandover to RICHARD TALBOT, EARL OF TYRCONNELL, a worthless, dissolute knave,who played the same game there for his master, and who played the deepergame for himself of one day putting it under the protection of the FrenchKing. In going to these extremities, every man of sense and judgmentamong the Catholics, from the Pope to a porter, knew that the King was amere bigoted fool, who would undo himself and the cause he sought toadvance; but he was deaf to all reason, and, happily for England everafterwards, went tumbling off his throne in his own blind way.
A spirit began to arise in the country, which the besotted blundererlittle expected. He first found it out in the University of Cambridge.Having made a Catholic a dean at Oxford without any opposition, he triedto make a monk a master of arts at Cambridge: which attempt theUniversity resisted, and defeated him. He then went back to hisfavourite Oxford. On the death of the President of Magdalen College, hecommanded that there should be elected to succeed him, one MR. ANTHONYFARMER, whose only recommendation was, that he was of the King'sreligion. The University plucked up courage at last, and refused. TheKing substituted another man, and it still refused, resolving to stand byits own election of a MR. HOUGH. The dull tyrant, upon this, punishedMr. Hough, and five-and-twenty more, by causing them to be expelled anddeclared incapable of holding any church preferment; then he proceeded towhat he supposed to be his highest step, but to what was, in fact, hislast plunge head-foremost in his tumble off his throne.
He had issued a declaration that there should be no religious tests orpenal laws, in order to let in the Catholics more easily; but theProtestant dissenters, unmindful of themselves, had gallantly joined theregular church in opposing it tooth and nail. The King and Father Petrenow resolved to have this read, on a certain Sunday, in all the churches,and to order it to be circulated for that purpose by the bishops. Thelatter took counsel with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was indisgrace; and they resolved that the declaration should not be read, andthat they would petition the King against it. The Archbishop himselfwrote out the petition, and six bishops went into the King's bedchamberthe same night to present it, to his infinite astonishment. Next day wasthe Sunday fixed for the reading, and it was only read by two hundredclergymen out of ten thousand. The King resolved against all advice toprosecute the bishops in the Court of King's Bench, and within threeweeks they were summoned before the Privy Council, and committed to theTower. As the six bishops were taken to that dismal place, by water, thepeople who were assembled in immense numbers fell upon their knees, andwept for them, and prayed for them. When they got to the Tower, theofficers and soldiers on guard besought them for their blessing. Whilethey were confined there, the soldiers every day drank to their releasewith loud shouts. When they were brought up to the Court of King's Benchfor their trial, which the Attorney-General said was for the high offenceof censuring the Government, and giving their opinion about affairs ofstate, they were attended by similar multitudes, and surrounded by athrong of noblemen and gentlemen. When the jury went out at seveno'clock at night to consider of their verdict, everybody (except theKing) knew that they would rather starve than yield to the King's brewer,who was one of them, and wanted a verdict for his customer. When theycame into court next morning, after resisting the brewer all night, andgave a verdict of not guilty, such a shout rose up in Westminster Hall asit had never heard before; and it was passed on among the people away toTemple Bar, and away again to the Tower. It did not pass only to theeast, but passed to the west too, until it reached the camp at Hounslow,where the fifteen thousand soldiers took it up and echoed it. And still,when the dull King, who was then with Lord Feversham, heard the mightyroar, asked in alarm what it was, and was told that it was 'nothing butthe acquittal of the bishops,' he said, in his dogged way, 'Call you thatnothing? It is so much the worse for them.'
Between the petition and the trial, the Queen had given birth to a son,which Father Petre rather thought was owing to Saint Winifred. But Idoubt if Saint Winifred had much to do with it as the King's friend,inasmuch as the entirely new prospect of a Catholic successor (for boththe King's daughters were Protestants) determined the EARLS OFSHREWSBURY, DANBY, and DEVONSHIRE, LORD LUMLEY, the BISHOP OF LONDON,ADMIRAL RUSSELL, and COLONEL SIDNEY, to invite the Prince of Orange overto England. The Royal Mole, seeing his danger at last, made, in hisfright, many great concessions, besides raising an army of forty thousandmen; but the Prince of Orange was not a man for James the Second to copewith. His preparations were extraordinarily vigorous, and his mind wasresolved.
For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for England, a greatwind from the west prevented the departure of his fleet. Even when thewind lulled, and it did sail, it was dispersed by a storm, and wasobliged to put back to refit. At last, on the first of November, onethousand six hundred and eighty-eight, the Protestant east wind, as itwas long called, began to blow; and on the third, the people of Dover andthe people of Calais saw a fleet twenty miles long sailing gallantly by,between the two places. On Monday, the fifth, it anchored at Torbay inDevonshire, and the Prince, with a splendid retinue of officers and men,marched into Exeter. But the people in that western part of the countryhad suffered so much in The Bloody Assize, that they had lost heart. Fewpeople joined him; and he began to think of returning, and publishing theinvitation he had received from those lords, as his justification forhaving come at all. At this crisis, some of the gentry joined him; theRoyal army began to falter; an engagement was signed, by which all whoset their hand to it declared that they would support one another indefence of the laws and liberties of the three Kingdoms, of theProtestant religion, and of the Prince of Orange. From that time, thecause received no check; the greatest towns in England began, one afteranother, to declare for the Prince; and he knew that it was all safe withhim when the University of Oxford offered to melt down its plate, if hewanted any money.
By this time the King was running about in a pitiable way, touchingpeople for the King's evil in one place, reviewing his troops in another,and bleeding from the nose in a third. The young Prince was sent toPortsmouth, Father Petre went off like a shot to France, and there was ageneral and swift dispersal of all the priests and friars. One afteranother, the King's most important officers and friends deserted him andwent over to the Prince. In the night, his daughter Anne fled fromWhitehall Palace; and the Bishop of London, who had once been a soldier,rode before her with a drawn sword in his hand, and pistols at hissaddle. 'God help me,' cried the miserable King: 'my very children haveforsaken me!' In his wildness, after debating with such lords as were inLondon, whether he should or should not call a Parliament, and afternaming three of them to negotiate with the Prince, he resolved to fly toFrance. He had the little Prince of Wales brought back from Portsmouth;and the child and the Queen crossed the river to Lambeth in an open boat,on a miserable wet night, and got safely away. This was on the night ofthe ninth of December.
At one o'clock on the morning of the eleventh, the King, who had, in themeantime, received a letter from the Prince of Orange, stating hisobjects, got out of bed, told LORD NORTHUMBERLAND who lay in his room notto open the door until the usual hour in the morning, and went down theback stairs (the same, I suppose, by which the priest in the wig and gownhad come up to his brother) and crossed the river in a small boat:sinking the great seal of England by the way. Horses having beenprovided, he rode, accompanied by SIR EDWARD HALES, to Feversham, wherehe embarked in a Custom House Hoy. The master of this Hoy, wanting moreballast, ran into the Isle of Sheppy to get it, where the fishermen andsmugglers crowded about the boat, and informed the King of theirsuspicions that he was a 'hatchet-faced Jesuit.' As they took his moneyand would not let him go, he told them who he was, and that the Prince ofOrange wanted to take his life; and he began to scream for a boat--andthen to cry, because he had lost a piece of wood on his ride which hecalled a fragment of Our Saviour's cross. He put himself into the handsof the Lord Lieutenant of the county, and his detention was made known tothe Prince of Orange at Windsor--who, only wanting to get rid of him, andnot caring where he went, so that he went away, was very muchdisconcerted that they did not let him go. However, there was nothingfor it but to have him brought back, with some state in the way of LifeGuards, to Whitehall. And as soon as he got there, in his infatuation,he heard mass, and set a Jesuit to say grace at his public dinner.
The people had been thrown into the strangest state of confusion by hisflight, and had taken it into their heads that the Irish part of the armywere going to murder the Protestants. Therefore, they set the bells aringing, and lighted watch-fires, and burned Catholic Chapels, and lookedabout in all directions for Father Petre and the Jesuits, while thePope's ambassador was running away in the dress of a footman. They foundno Jesuits; but a man, who had once been a frightened witness beforeJeffreys in court, saw a swollen, drunken face looking through a windowdown at Wapping, which he well remembered. The face was in a sailor'sdress, but he knew it to be the face of that accursed judge, and heseized him. The people, to their lasting honour, did not tear him topieces. After knocking him about a little, they took him, in the basestagonies of terror, to the Lord Mayor, who sent him, at his own shriekingpetition, to the Tower for safety. There, he died.
Their bewilderment continuing, the people now lighted bonfires and maderejoicings, as if they had any reason to be glad to have the King backagain. But, his stay was very short, for the English guards were removedfrom Whitehall, Dutch guards were marched up to it, and he was told byone of his late ministers that the Prince would enter London, next day,and he had better go to Ham. He said, Ham was a cold, damp place, and hewould rather go to Rochester. He thought himself very cunning in this,as he meant to escape from Rochester to France. The Prince of Orange andhis friends knew that, perfectly well, and desired nothing more. So, hewent to Gravesend, in his royal barge, attended by certain lords, andwatched by Dutch troops, and pitied by the generous people, who were farmore forgiving than he had ever been, when they saw him in hishumiliation. On the night of the twenty-third of December, not even thenunderstanding that everybody wanted to get rid of him, he went out,absurdly, through his Rochester garden, down to the Medway, and got awayto France, where he rejoined the Queen.
There had been a council in his absence, of the lords, and theauthorities of London. When the Prince came, on the day after the King'sdeparture, he summoned the Lords to meet him, and soon afterwards, allthose who had served in any of the Parliaments of King Charles theSecond. It was finally resolved by these authorities that the throne wasvacant by the conduct of King James the Second; that it was inconsistentwith the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom, to be governed bya Popish prince; that the Prince and Princess of Orange should be Kingand Queen during their lives and the life of the survivor of them; andthat their children should succeed them, if they had any. That if theyhad none, the Princess Anne and her children should succeed; that if shehad none, the heirs of the Prince of Orange should succeed.
On the thirteenth of January, one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine,the Prince and Princess, sitting on a throne in Whitehall, boundthemselves to these conditions. The Protestant religion was establishedin England, and England's great and glorious Revolution was complete.