Reign of Charles II. (Concluded) page 6

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 haec immica tyranuis" (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 25th 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 4th 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 ho was subpoenaed 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 Ley den, 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 killing 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 thumbscrews 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 caitiffs 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.