Reign of Charles II. (Concluded) page 3

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 seemed 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 sheriffs 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. Thus 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 he 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 arbitrary 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 resolved 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 Alders- gate 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, 1683, 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 con- templating 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 sheritfs, 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 pf March last, when the king and duke of York were about to proceed to Newmarket, to the races, Goodenoügh, 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 he 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 cheesemonger, 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 five 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.

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 Oates 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.