Somerset in vain attempted to persuade Sir Francis Warre, a neighbouring gentleman, to obtain 7,000l. from the young women, without which, he said, the maids of honour were determined to prosecute them to outlawry. Roger Hoare, an eminent trader of Bridgewater, saved his life by the payment of 1,000l. to the maids of honour; but he was kept in suspense respecting his pardon till he came to the foot of the gallows, for no other conceivable purpose than that of extorting the largest possible sum. This delay caused the insertion of his execution in the first narratives of these events. But he lived to take the most just revenge on tyrants, by contributing, as representative in several parliaments for his native town, to support that free government which prevented the restoration of tyranny. The same disposition was shown by the King and his ministers in the case of Mr. Hampden, the grandson of him who, forty years before, had fallen in battle for the liberties of his country. Though this gentleman had been engaged in the consultations of Lord Russell and Mr. Sidney, yet there being only one witness against him, he was not tried for treason, but was convicted of a misdemeanor, and on the evidence of Lord Howard condemned to pay a fine of 40,000. His father being in possession of the family estate, he remained in prison till after Monmouth's defeat, when he was again brought to trial for the same act as high treason, under pretence that a second witness had been discovered. It had been secretly arranged, that if he pleaded guilty he should be pardoned on paying a large sum of money to two of the King's favourites. At the arraignment, both the Judges and Mr. Hampden performed the respective parts which the secret agreement required, he humbly entreating their intercession to obtain the pardon which he had already secured by more effectual means; they extolling the royal mercy, and declaring that the prisoner, by his humble confession, had taken the best means of qualifying himself to receive it. The result of this profanation of the forms of justice and mercy was, that Mr. Hampden was in a few months allowed to reverse his attainder, on payment of a bribe of 6,0007. to be divided between Jeffreys and Father Petre, the two guides of the King in the performance of his duty to God and his people.b State Trials, xi. 479. Lords' Journals, 20th Dec. 1689. This document has been overlooked by all historians, who, in consequence, have misrepresented the conduct of Mr. Hampden. Another proceeding, of a nature still more culpable, showed the same union of mercenary with sanguinary purposes in the King and his ministers. Prideaux, a gentleman of fortune in the west of England, was apprehended on the landing of Monmouth, for no other reason than that his father had been attorney-general under the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. Jeffreys, actuated here by personal motives, employed agents through the prisons of the west to discover evidence against Prideaux. The lowest prisoners were offered their lives, and a sum of 5007. if they would give evidence against him. Such, however, was the inflexible morality of the Nonconformists, who formed the bulk of Monmouth's adherents, that they remained unshaken by these offers, amidst the military violence which surrounded them, and in spite of the judicial rigours which were to follow. Prideaux was enlarged. Jeffreys himself, however, was able to obtain some information, though not upon oath, from two convicts under the influence of the terrible proceedings at Dorchester. Prideaux was again apprehended. The convicts were brought to London; and one of them was conducted to a private interview with the Lord Chancellor, by Sir Roger l'Estrange, the most noted writer in the pay of the court. Prideaux, alarmed at these attempts to tamper with witnesses, employed the influence of his friends to obtain his pardon. The motive for Jeffreys's unusual activity was then discovered. Prideaux's friends were told that nothing could be done for him, as "the King had given him" (the familiar phrase for a grant of an estate either forfeited or about to be forfeited) to the Chancellor, as a reward for his services in the west. On application to one Jennings, the avowed agent of the Chancellor for the sale of pardons, it was found that Jeffreys, unable to procure evidence on which he could ‘obtain the whole of Prideaux's large estates by a conviction, had now resolved to content himself with a bribe of 10,000l. for the deliverance of a man so innocent, that by the formalities of law, perverted as they then were, the Lord Chancellor could not effect his destruction. Payment of so large a sum was at first resisted; but to subdue this contumacy, Prideaux's friends were forbidden to have access to him in prison, and his ransom was raised to 15,0007. The money was then publicly paid by a banker to the Lord Chancellor of England by name. Even in the administration of the iniquitous * Sunderland to Jeffreys, 14th Sept. 1685. State Paper Office. laws of confiscation, there are probably few instances where, with so much premeditation and effrontery, the spoils of an accused man were promised first to the judge, who might have tried him, and afterwards to the Chancellor who was to advise the King in the exercise of mercy.a с Notwithstanding the perjury of Rumsey in the case of Cornish, a second experiment was made on the effect of his testimony by producing him, together with Lord Grey and one Saxton, as a witness against Lord Brandon on a charge of treason. The accused was convicted, and Rumsey was still allowed to correspond confidentially with the Prime Minister, to whom he even applied for money. But when the infamy of Rumsey became notorious, when Saxton had perjured himself on the subsequent trial of Lord Delamere, it was thought proper to pardon Lord Brandon, against whom no testimony remained but that of Lord Grey, who, when he made his confession, is said to have stipulated that no man should be put to death on his evidence. But Brandon was not enlarged on bail till fourteen months, nor was his pardon completed till two years after his trial. The only considerable trial which remained was that of Lord Delamere, before the Lord Steward (Jeffreys) and thirty peers. Though this nobleman was obnoxious and formidable to the court, the proof of the falsehood and infamy of Saxton, the principal witness against him, was so complete, that he was unanimously acquitted; a remarkable and almost solitary exception from the prevalent proceedings of courts of law at that time, arising partly from a proof of the falsehood of the charge more clear than can often be expected, partly perhaps from the fellow-feeling of the judges with the prisoner, and from the greater reproach to which an unjust judgment exposes its authors, when in a conspicuous station. The administration of justice in state prosecutions is one of the surest tests of good government. The judicial proceedings which have been thus carefully and circumstantially related afford a specimen of those evils from which England was delivered by the Revolution. As these acts were done with the aid of juries, and without the censure of parliament, they also afford a fatal proof that a Commons' Journals, 1st May, 1689. b Narcissus Luttrell, 25th Nov. 1685; which, though very short, is more full than any published account of Lord Brandon's trial. с Rumsey to Lord Sunderland, Oct. 1685, and Jan. 1686. State Paper Office. d Narcissus Luttrell, Jan. and Oct. 1687. judicial forms and constitutional establishments may be rendered unavailing by the subserviency or the prejudices of those who are appointed to carry them into effect. The wisest institutions may become a dead letter, and may even, for a time, be converted into a shelter and an instrument of tyranny, when the sense of justice and the love of liberty are weakened in the minds of a people. CHAPTER II. Dismissal of Halifax.-Meeting of Parliament.-Debates on the Address.-Prorogation of Parliament.-Habeas Corpus Act.-State of the Catholic Party.— Character of the Queen.-Of Catherine Sedley.-Attempt to support the dispensing Power by a Ĵudgment of a Court of Law.-Godden v. Hales.—Consideration of the Arguments.-Attack on the Church.-Establishment of the Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes.-Advancement of Catholics to Offices. -Intercourse with Rome. THE general appearance of submission which followed the suppression of the revolt, and the punishment of the revolters, encouraged the King to remove from office the Marquis of Halifax, with whose liberal opinions he had recently as well as early been dissatisfied, and whom he suffered to remain in place at the accession, only as an example that old opponents might atone for their offences by compliance. A different policy was adopted in a situation of more strength. As the King found that Halifax would not comply with his projects, he determined to dismiss him before the meeting of parliament, an act of vigour which it was thought would put an end to division in his counsels, and prevent discontented ministers from countenancing a resistance to his measures. When he announced this resolution to Barillon, he added, that "his design was to obtain a repeal of the Test and Habeas Corpus Acts, of which the former was destructive of the Catholic religion, and the other of the royal authority; that Halifax had not the firmness to support the good cause, and that he would have less power of doing harm if he were disgraced."b Barillon au Roi, 24th February, (5th March), 1685. Fox, App. XIV. b Barillon au Roi, 10 (20) October, 1685. Fox, App. CXXI. James had been advised to delay the dismissal till after the session, that the opposition of Halifax might be moderated, if not silenced, by the restraints of high office; but he thought that his authority would be more strengthened, by an example of a determination to keep no terms with any who did not show an unlimited compliance with his wishes. "I do not suppose,” said the King to Barillon, with a smile, "that the King your master will be sorry for the removal of Halifax. I know that it will mortify the ministers of the allies." Nor was he deceived in either of these respects. The news was received with satisfaction by Louis, and with dismay by the ministers of the empire, of Spain, and of Holland, who lost their only advocate in the councils of England: it excited wonder and alarm among those Englishmen who were zealously attached to their religion and liberty." Though Lord Halifax had no share in the direction of public affairs since the accession, his removal was an important event in the eye of the public, and gave him a popularity which he preserved by independent and steady conduct during the sequel of James's reign. с It is remarkable that, on the meeting of parliament, little notice was taken of the military and judicial excesses in the west. Sir Edward Seymour applauded the punishment of the rebels, and Waller alone, a celebrated wit, an ingenious poet, the father of parliamentary oratory, and one of the refiners of the English language, though now in his eightieth year, arraigned the violences of the soldiery with a spirit still unextinguished. He probably intended to excite a discussion which might gradually have reached the more deliberate and inexcusable faults of the Judges. But the opinions and policy of his audience defeated his generous purpose. The prevalent party looked with little disapprobation on severities which fell on Nonconformists and supposed Republicans. Many might be base enough to feel little compassion for sufferers in the humbler classes of society; some were probably silenced by a pusillanimous dread of being said to be the abettors of rebels; and all must have been, in some measure, influenced by an undue and excessive degree of that wholesome respect for judicial proceedings, which is one of the characteristic virtues of a free country. This disgraceful silence is, perhaps, somewhat a Barillon, 25th October (5th November), 1685. b Reresby. Barillon. |