Reign on James II page 7

In this style he terrified the witnesses, and then came the turn of the jury. They retired to consult, but not coming to a speedy conclusion, for they were afraid of the judge and yet loth to condemn the prisoner, Jeffreys sent them word that if they did not agree he would lock them up all night. They then came into court and expressed their doubts of Mrs. Lisle knowing that Hicks had been with Monmouth. Jeffreys told them that their doubt was altogether groundless, and sent them back to agree. Again they returned, unable to get rid of their doubt. Then Jeffreys thundered against them in his fiercest style, and declared that were he on the jury, he would have found her guilty had she been his own mother. At length the jury gave way and brought in a verdict of guilty. The next morning Jeffreys pronounced sentence upon her amid a storm of vituperation against the presbyterians, to whom he supposed Mrs. Lisle belonged. He ordered her, according to the rigour of the old law of treason, to be burned alive that very afternoon.

This monstrous sentence thoroughly roused the inhabitants of the place; and the clergy of the cathedral, the stauchest supporters of the king's beloved arbitrary power, remonstrated with Jeffreys in such a manner, that he consented to a respite of five days, in order that application might be made to the king. The clergy sent a deputation to James, earnestly interceding for the life of the aged woman, on the ground of her generous conduct on all occasions to the king's friends. Ladies of high rank, amongst them the ladies St. John and Abergavenny, pleaded tenderly for her life. Feversham, moved by a bribe of a thousand pounds, joined in the entreaty, but nothing could move that obdurate heart, and all the favour that James would grant her was, that she should be beheaded instead of burnt. Her execution, accordingly, took place at Winchester on the 2nd of September, and James II. won the unenviable notoriety of being the only tyrant in this country, however implacable, who had ever dyed his hands in woman's blood for the merciful deed of attempting to save the lives of the unfortunate. What made this case worse was, that neither Hicks nor Nelthorpe had yet been tried, so that the trial of Mrs. Lisle was altogether illegal, and the forcing of the jury completed one of the most diabolical instances of judicial murder on record.

From Winchester Jeffreys proceeded to Dorchester. He came surrounded by still more troops, and, in fact, rather like a general to take bloody vengeance, than as a judge to make a just example of the guilty, mingled with mercy, on account of the ignorance of the offenders. The ferocious tyrant was rendered more ferocious, from his temper being exasperated by the agonies of the stone which his drunken habits had inflicted on him. He had the court hung with scarlet, as if to announce his sanguinary determination. When the clergyman who preached before him, recommended mercy in his sermon, he was seen to make a horrible grimace, expressive of his savage disdain of such a sentiment. It was whilst preparing to judge the three hundred prisoners collected there, that he received the news of his elevation to the woolsack. He had received orders from James to make effectual work with the rebels, and he now adopted a mode of dispatching the unhappy wretches in a most wholesale style. As it would be a very tedious work to try all that number one by one, he devised a very expeditious plan. He sent two officers to them into the prison, offering them mercy or certain death. All who chose to make confession of their guilt should be treated with clemency, all who refused should be led to immediate execution. His clemency amounted to a respite of a day or two - he hanged them all the same. Writing to Sunderland, Jeffreys said on the 16th of September: - "This day I began with the rebels, and have dispatched ninety-eight." Of the three hundred, two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death. Eighty only were hanged, the rest were, for the most part, sent to the plantations as slaves. Jeffreys had declared that, any lawyer or parson found amongst the rebels should be hanged to a certainty, and here he had the pleasure of hanging Matthew Brag, an attorney. One of the prisoners objected to the witnesses brought against him, a prostitute and a papist. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed Jeffreys, " to reflect on the king's evidence. I see thee, villain - I see thee already with the halter around thy neck." Some one told him that a prisoner was a poor creature, who was maintained by the parish. "Make yourself easy," said Jeffreys; "I will relieve the parish of him."

From Dorchester he proceeded to Exeter, where two hundred and forty-three prisoners awaited their doom. He proceeded in the same way, and condemned the whole body in a batch, and as they saved him much trouble, he did not hang so many of them. Taunton, the capital of Somersetshire, the county where the rebellion was the strongest, presented him with no fewer than a thousand prisoners. Here he perfectly revelled in his bloody task. The work seemed to have the effect of brandy or champagne upon him. He grew every day more exuberant and riotous. He was in such a state of excitement from morning to night, that 0 many thought him drunk the whole time. He laughed like a maniac, bellowed, scolded, cut his filthy jokes on the confounded prisoners, and was more like an exulting demon than a man. There were two hundred and thirty-three prisoners hanged, drawn, and quartered in a few days. The whole number hanged in this bloody campaign have been variously stated at from three to seven hundred. Probably the medium is the most correct. But so many were hung in chains, or their jointed quarters and limbs displaced on the highways, village greens, and in the market-places, that the whole country was infected with the intolerable stench. Some of their heads were nailed on the porches of parish churches, the whole district was a perfect Golgotha. It was in vain that the most distinguished people endeavoured to check the infuriated judge's fury, he only turned his evil diatribes on them, and gave them what he called "a lick with the rough side of his tongue." Because lord Stowell, a royalist, complained of the remorseless butchery of the poor people of his neighbourhood, he gibbeted a corpse at his park-gate.

That James was perfectly cognisant daily of these proceedings, his own letters to William of Orange too unequivocally testify. On the 24th of September he wrote; - "Lord chief justice has almost done his' campaign; he has already condemned several hundreds, some of which are already executed, more are to be, and the others sent to the plantations." Amongst the prisoners were a considerable number of a superior station, but nothing could save them. Abraham Holmes, an aged officer, who had fought under Cromwell, lost an arm at the battle of Sedgemoor, yet when on the way to the gallows, the horses turned restive, and would not go forward, he got out and walked thither, saying, "Stop, gentlemen, there is more in this than you think. The ass saw formerly what the rider could not." A young templar, of the name of Battiscombe, was another victim, whose affianced bride threw herself at Jeffreys' feet to implore his life, but the hideous monster refused her with ä jest too detestable for any ears but his own. In another case, the sister of two mere youths, of the name of Hewling, got, admittance to the king at Whitehall, to solicit the pardon of the second after the execution of the first. Churchill saw her in the antechamber, and warned her not to hope, for, said he, touching the chimney-piece, "this marble is not harder than the king," and it proved so.

The fate of the transported prisoners was worse than death itself. They were eight hundred and forty in number, and were granted as favours to the courtiers. Jeffreys estimated that they were, on an average, worth from ten pounds to fifteen pounds apiece to the grantee. They were not to be shipped to New England or New Jersey, because the puritan inhabitants might have a sympathy with them on account of their religion, and mitigate the hardship of their lot. They were to go to the West Indies, where they were to be slaves, and not acquire their freedom for ten years. They were transported in small vessels with all the horrors of the slave trade. They were crowded so that they had not room for lying down all at once; were never allowed to go on deck; and in darkness, starvation, and pestiferous stench, they died daily in such quantities, that the loss of one-fifth of them was calculated on. The rest reached the plantations, ghastly, emaciated, and all but lifeless.

The property of these unfortunates, and of those who were put to death, was clutched by Jeffreys, or scrambled for by his myrmidons. Every means was taken by these bullies and informers to terrify the widows and relations out of their substance, and the amount of bribery for pardons or for exemptions from trial, was something enormous. In London, as in the west, the same severity to the poor or obstinate, and extortion from the rich was carried on. Cornish, formerly sheriff of London, was hanged within sight of his own door. Elizabeth Gaunt of Wapping was burnt at Tyburn, for giving refuge to one Burton after the battle of Sedgemoor, on the evidence of the scoundrel Burton himself J and one Edward Prideaux, arrested on mere suspicion, was frightened out of fifteen thousand pounds, with which Jeffreys bought an estate, which the people named Aceldama, the field of blood. Dining this time James not only revelled in descriptions of these horrors amongst the courtiers and foreign ministers, but went to Winchester and enjoyed himself at the races. Still more expressive of his approbation, was the eclat with which Jeffreys was received on his return at court, and the parade with which his new honours were gazetted.

Macaulay says, "Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the number of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very much exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have been put to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of 1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more formidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or after the rebellion of 1745, the house of Hanover erred on the side of clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together will appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgraced the bloody assizes."

Even the innocent school girls, many under ten years of age, at Taunton, who had gone in procession to present a banner to Monmouth, at the command of their mistress, were not excused. The queen, who had never preferred a single prayer to her husband for mercy to the victims of this unexampled proscription, was eager to participate in the profit, and had a hundred sentenced men awarded to her, the profit on which was calculated at one thousand pounds. Her maids of honour solicited a share of this blood-money, and had a fine of seven thousand pounds on these poor girls assigned to them. In noticing this disgraceful feet, Macaulay has perpetrated a gross and most unsupported calumny on the celebrated William Penn. He says, "Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, the tory member for Bridge- water, was requested to undertake the office of exacting the ransom. Warre excused himself from taking any part in a transaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested William Penn to act for them, and Penn accepted the commission." Now, it is a grave charge against an historian to say that there is not one word of truth in this most injurious assertion. The charge rests entirely on a letter of Sunderland's, addressed to "a Mr. Penne," which Sir James Mackintosh discovered in the state paper office, and not knowing of any other Penn, or Penne, incautiously asserted it to be William Penn. There is no mention whatever of William Penn, no address under that name; and so far-from any proof that "Penn accepted it," it is clearly shown by Oldmixon, who did accept and undertake the dirty business, namely, "one Brent, a popish lawyer, and his under agent, one Crane, of Bridgewater."

Now these facts have been fully stated since Macaulay published this, and many other calumnies on the same excellent man, by the "Tablet" newspaper, by W. E. Forster, in a paper now given as preface to Clarkson's "Life of Penn," and followed up by Dixon in another "Life of Penn;" yet in his recent edition of his History, Macaulay, without being able to produce one iota of evidence in support of the flagrant and groundless charge, has still persisted in it, only asking whether William Penn, who had influence at court, or one George Penne, who has been pointed out as the probable man, seeing that he was actually engaged in bargaining for the pardon of one of these prisoners, was most likely to be selected by the queen's women for their agent. In our opinion, the George Penne who was acting in such matters was the most likely; for it was not more likely that Penn would defile his soul with such a thing than Sir Francis Warre. But the thing is not a thing of probability, it is a thing of fact. There is not a title of proof that William Penn " did accept the com mission," not even that it was ever offered to him; yet lord Macaulay not only perpetuates the base falsehood, but accompanies it by a baser assurance, that he could, produce much worse charges against Penn if he pleased. It is difficult to express our real opinion on such conduct in an historian who, instead of proving what he has asserted, asserts further by innuendo what it is certain he cannot make good. The honourable fame of one of our most virtuous historic characters demanded this brief vindication from us in passing.

The only persons who escaped from this sea of blood were Grey, as we have said, Sir John Cochrane, who had been in Argyll's expedition, Storey, who had been commissary to Monmouth's army, Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson. All these owed their escape to money or their secret services in giving information against their old friends, except Ferguson, who by some means escaped to the continent. On the other hand Bateman, the surgeon who had bled Oates in Newgate after his scourging, and thus saved his life, was, for a mere duty of his profession, arrested, tried, hanged, and quartered.

James now seemed at the summit of his ambition. He had established an actual reign of terror. The dreadful massacre of the west struck dumb the most courageous, and this gloomy tyrant gave full play to his love of cruelty. The nonconformists were everywhere beset by informers, who imprisoned, robbed, and abused them at pleasure. They could only meet for worship in the most obscure places and in the most secret manner. Their houses were broken into and searched on pretence of discovering conventicles. Their ministers were seized and thrust into prison. Baxter was there; Howe was obliged to escape abroad. Never even in the time of Laud, had the oppression been so universal and crushing. All spirit of resistance appeared to be quenched in terror. The close of the year 1685 was long remembered as one of indescribable and unexampled depression and speechless misery.