Part 17 (2/2)
The country was at peace, he was not unpopular, and all cla.s.ses and parties readily acquiesced in his government.
He retained all the great officers who had served under his brother that he could trust; and Rochester became prime minister, Sunderland kept possession of the Seals, and G.o.dolphin was made lord chamberlain.
He did not dismiss Halifax, Ormond, or Guildford, although he disliked and distrusted them, but abridged their powers, and mortified them by neglect.
The Commons voted him one million two hundred thousand pounds, and the Scottish parliament added twenty-five thousand pounds more, and the Customs for life. But this sum he did not deem sufficient for his wants, and therefore, like his brother, applied for aid to Louis XIV., and consented to become his pensioner and va.s.sal, and for the paltry sum of two hundred thousand pounds. James received the money with tears of grat.i.tude, hoping by this infamous pension to rule the nation without a parliament. It was not, of course, known to the nation, or even to his ministers, generally.
He was scarcely crowned before England was invaded by the Duke of Monmouth, natural son of Charles II., and Scotland by the Duke of Argyle, with a view of ejecting James from the throne.
Both these n.o.blemen were exiles in Holland, and both were justly obnoxious to the government for their treasonable intentions and acts.
Argyle was loath to engage in an enterprise so desperate as the conquest of England; but he was an enthusiast, was at the head of the most powerful of the Scottish clans, the Campbells, and he hoped for a general rising throughout Scotland, to put down what was regarded as idolatry, and to strike a blow for liberty and the Kirk.
Having concerted his measures with Monmouth, he set sail from Holland, the 2d of May, 1685, in spite of all the efforts of the English minister, and landed at Kirkwall, one of the Orkney Islands. But his objects were well known, and the whole militia of the land were put under arms to resist him. He, however, collected a force of two thousand five hundred Highlanders, and marched towards Glasgow; but he was miserably betrayed and deserted. His forces were dispersed, and he himself was seized while attempting to escape in disguise, brought to Edinburgh, and beheaded. His followers were treated with great harshness, but the rebellion was completely suppressed.
[Sidenote: Monmouth Lands in England.]
Monmouth had agreed to sail in six days from the departure of Argyle; but he lingered at Brussels, loath to part from a beautiful mistress, the Lady Henrietta Wentworth. It was a month before he set sail from the Texel, with about eighty officers and one hundred and fifty followers--a small force to overturn the throne. But he relied on his popularity with the people, and on a false and exaggerated account of the unpopularity of James. He landed at Lyme, in Dorsets.h.i.+re, about the middle of June, and forthwith issued a flaming proclamation, inviting all to join his standard, as a deliverer from the cruel despotism of a Catholic prince, whom he accused of every crime--of the burning of London, of the Popish Plot, of the condemnation of Russell and Sydney, of poisoning the late king, and of infringements on the const.i.tution. In this declaration, falsehood was mingled with truth, but well adapted to inflame the pa.s.sions of the people. He was supported by many who firmly believed that his mother, Lucy Walters, was the lawful wife of Charles II. He, of course, claimed the English throne, but professed to waive his rights until they should be settled by a parliament. The adventurer grossly misunderstood the temper of the people, and the extent to which his claims were recognized. He was unprovided with money, with generals, and with troops. He collected a few regiments from the common people, and advanced to Somersets.h.i.+re.
At Taunton his reception was flattering. All cla.s.ses welcomed him as a deliverer from Heaven, and the poor rent the air with acclamations and shouts. His path was strewed with flowers, and the windows were crowded with ladies, who waved their handkerchiefs, and even waited upon him with a large deputation. Twenty-six lovely maidens presented the handsome son of Charles II. with standards and a Bible, which he kissed, and promised to defend.
[Sidenote: Battle of Sedgemoor.]
[Sidenote: Death of Monmouth.]
But all this enthusiasm was soon to end. The Duke of Albemarle--the son of General Monk, who restored Charles II.--advanced against him with the militia of the country, and Monmouth was supported only by the vulgar, the weak, and the credulous. Not a single n.o.bleman joined his standard, and but few of the gentry. He made innumerable blunders.
He lost time by vain attempts to drill the peasants and farmers who followed his fortunes. He slowly advanced to the west of England, where he hoped to be joined by the body of the people. But all men of station and influence stood aloof. Discouraged and dismayed, he reached Wells, and pushed forward to capture Bristol, then the second city in the kingdom. He was again disappointed. He was forced, from unexpected calamities, to abandon the enterprise. He then turned his eye to Wilts; but when he arrived at the borders of the county, he found that none of the bodies on which he had calculated had made their appearance. At Phillips Norton was a slight skirmish, which ended favorably to Monmouth, in which the young Duke of Grafton, natural son of Charles II., distinguished himself against his half brother; but Monmouth was discouraged, and fell back to Bridgewater.
Meanwhile the royal army approached, and encamped at Sedgemoor. Here was fought a decisive battle, which was fatal to the rebels, ”the last deserving the name of _battle_, that has been fought on English ground.” Monmouth, when all was lost, fled from the field, and hastened to the British Channel, hoping to gain the Continent. He was found near the New Forest, hidden in a ditch, exhausted by hunger and fatigue. He was sent, under a strong guard, to Ringwood; and all that was left him was, to prepare to meet the death of a rebel. But he clung to life, so justly forfeited, with singular tenacity. He abjectly and meanly sued for pardon from that inexorable tyrant who never forgot or forgave the slightest resistance from a friend, when even that resistance was lawful, much less rebellion from a man he both hated and despised. He was transferred to London, lodged in the Tower, and executed in a bungling manner by ”Jack Ketch”--the name given for several centuries to the public executioner. He was buried under St. Peter's Chapel, in the Tower, where reposed the headless bodies of so many noted saints and political martyrs--the great Somerset, and the still greater Northumberland, the two Earls of Ess.e.x, and the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and other great men who figured in the reigns of the Plantagenets and the Tudors.
Monmouth's rebellion was completely suppressed, and a most signal vengeance was inflicted on all who were concerned in it. No mercy was shown, on the part of government, to any party or person.
Of the agents of James in punis.h.i.+ng all concerned in the rebellion, there were two, preeminently, whose names are consigned to an infamous immortality. The records of English history contain no two names so loathsome and hateful as Colonel Kirke and Judge Jeffreys.
The former was left, by Feversham, in command of the royal forces at Bridgewater, after the battle of Sedgemoor. He had already gained an unenviable notoriety, as governor of Tangier, where he displayed the worst vices of a tyrant and a sensualist; and his regiment had imitated him in his disgraceful brutality. But this leader and these troops were now let loose on the people of Somersets.h.i.+re. One hundred captives were put to death during the week which succeeded the battle.
His irregular butcheries, however, were not according to the taste of the king. A more systematic slaughter, under the sanctions of the law, was devised, and Jeffreys was sent into the Western Circuit, to try the numerous persons who were immured in the jails of the western counties.
Sir George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench, was not deficient in talent, but was const.i.tutionally the victim of violent pa.s.sions. He first attracted notice as an insolent barrister at the Old Bailey Court, who had a rare tact in cross-examining criminals and browbeating witnesses. According to Macaulay, ”impudence and ferocity sat upon his brow, while all tenderness for the feelings of others, all self-respect, all sense of the becoming, were obliterated from his mind. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of his maledictions could hardly be rivalled in the Fish Market or Bear Garden. His yell of fury sounded, as one who often heard it said, like the thunder of the judgment day. He early became common serjeant, and then recorder of London. As soon as he obtained all the city could give, he made haste to sell his forehead of bra.s.s and his tongue of venom to the court.” He was just the man whom Charles II. wanted as a tool. He was made chief justice of the highest court of criminal law in the realm, and discharged its duties entirely to the satisfaction of a king resolved on the subjection of the English nation. His violence, at all times, was frightful; but when he was drunk, it was terrific: and he was generally intoxicated. His first exploit was the judicial murder of Algernon Sydney. On the death of Charles, he obtained from James a peerage, and a seat in the Cabinet, a signal mark of royal approbation. In prospect of yet greater honors, he was ready to do whatever James required. James wished the most summary vengeance inflicted on the rebels, and Jeffreys, with his tiger ferocity, was ready to execute his will.
[Sidenote: Brutality of Jeffreys.]
Nothing is more memorable than those ”b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sizes” which he held in those counties through which Monmouth had pa.s.sed. Nothing is remembered with more execration. Nothing ever equalled the brutal cruelty of the judge. His fury seemed to be directed with peculiar violence upon the Dissenters. ”Show me,” said he, ”a Presbyterian, and I will show thee a lying knave. Presbyterianism has all manner of villany in it. There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians, but, one way or another, has had a hand in the rebellion.” He sentenced nearly all who were accused, to be hanged or burned; and the excess of his barbarities called forth pity and indignation even from devoted loyalists. He boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest.
On a single circuit, he hanged three hundred and fifty; some of these were people of great worth, and many of them were innocent; while many whom he spared from an ignominious death, were sentenced to the most cruel punishments--to the lash of the pillory, to imprisonment in the foulest jails, to mutilation, to banishment, and to heavy fines.
King James watched the conduct of the inhuman Jeffreys with delight, and rewarded him with the Great Seal. The Old Bailey lawyer had now climbed to the greatest height to which a subject could aspire. He was Lord Chancellor of England--the confidential friend and agent of the king, and his unscrupulous instrument in imposing the yoke of bondage on an insulted nation.
[Sidenote: Persecution of the Dissenters.]
At this period, the condition of the Puritans was deplorable. At no previous time was persecution more inveterate, not even under the administration of Laud and Strafford. The persecution commenced soon after the restoration of Charles II., and increased in malignity until the elevation of Jeffreys to the chancellors.h.i.+p. The sufferings of no cla.s.s of sectaries bore any proportion to theirs. They found it difficult to meet together for prayer or exhortation even in the smallest a.s.semblies. Their ministers were introduced in disguise.
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