reason, as I can find, but that it is written in St. Peter. Gentlemen, I must tell you, I am afraid that this city hath too many of these people in it, and it is your duty to find them out. Gentlemen, I shall not stand complimenting with you: I shall talk with some of you before you and I part, I tell you: I tell you I have brought a besom, and I will sweep every man's door, whether great or small. Certainly here are a great many of those men whom they call Trimmers: a Whig is but a mere fool to those; for & Whig is some sort of a subject in comparison of these; for a Trimmer is but a cowardly and base-spirited Whig; for the Whig is but the journeyman prentice that is hired and set over the rebellion, whilst the Trimmer is afraid to appear in the cause." He then opens his charge against the Aldermen for the sale of convicts, and thus continues, Good God! where am I?-in Bristol? This city it seems claims the privilege of hanging and drawing among themselves. I find you have more need of a special commission once a month at least. The very magistrates, that should be the ministers of justice, fall out with one another to that degree they will scarcely dine together: yet I find they can agree for their interest if there be but a kid in the case; for I hear the trade of kidnapping is much in request in this city. You can discharge a felon or a traitor, provided they will go to Mr. Alderman's plantation in the West Indies. Come, come, I find you stink for want of rubbing. It seems the dissenters and fanatics fare well amongst you, by reason of the favour of the magistrates; for example, if a dissenter who is a notorious and obstinate offender comes before them, one alderman or another stands up and says, He is a good man (though three parts a rebel). Well then, for the sake of Mr. Alderman, he shall be fined but five shillings. Then comes another, and up stands another goodman Alderman, and says, I know him to be an honest man (though rather worse than the former). Well, for Mr. Alderman's sake, he shall be fined but half-acrown; so manus manum fricat; you play the knave for me now, and I will play the knave for you by-and-by. I am ashamed of these things, but, by God's grace, I will mend them: for, as I have told you, I have brought a brush in my pocket, and I shall be sure to rub the dirt wherever it is, or on whomsoever it sticks." Thereupon," says Roger North, "he turns to the Mayor, accoutred with his scarlet and furs, and gave him all the ill names that scolding eloquence could supply; and so, with rating and staring as his way was, never left till he made him quit the bench and go down to the criminal's post at the bar; and there be pleaded for himself as a common rogue or thief must have done; and when the Mayor hesitated a little, or slackened his pace, he bawled at him, and stamping, called for his guards, for he was still general by commission. Thus the citizens saw their scarlet chief magistrate at the bar, to their infinite terror and amazement."*

•

VOL. III.

* Life of Guilford, ii. 113. Wool. 225.

37

Only three were executed for treason at Bristol, but Jeffreys looking at the end of his campaign to the returns of the enemy killed, had the satisfaction to find that they amounted to 330,-besides 800 prisoners ordered to be transported.*

He now hastened homewards to pounce upon the Great Seal. In his way through Somersetshire with a regiment. [SEPT. 25.] of dragoons as his life-guards, the Mayor took the liberty to say that there were two Spokes who had been convicted, and that one of these left for execution was not the one intended to suffer, the other having contrived to make his escape, and that favour might perhaps still be shown to him whom it was intended to pardon. "No!" said the General-Judge; "his family owe a life, he shall die for his namesake!" To render such narratives credible, we must recollect that his mind was often greatly disturbed by fits of the stone, and still more by intemperance. Burnet, speaking of his behaviour at this time, says, "He was perpetually either drunk or in a rage, liker a fury than the zeal of a Judge."+

I shall conclude my sketch of Jeffreys as a Criminal Judge with his treatment of a prisoner whom he was eager to hang, but who escaped with life. This was Prideaux, a gentleman of fortune in the west of England, who had been apprehended on the landing of Monmouth, for no other reason than that his father had been Attorney General under Cromwell. A reward of 5007., with a free pardon, was offered to any witnesses who would give evidence against him; but none could be found, and he was discharged. Afterwards two convicts were prevailed upon to say that they had seen him take some part in the insurrection, and he was again cast into prison. His friends, alarmed for his safety, though convinced of his innocence, tried to procure a pardon for him, when they were told "that nothing could be done for him, as the King had given him to the Chief Justice" (the familiar phrase for the grant of an estate about to be forfeited). A negotiation was then opened with Jennings, the avowed agent of Jeffreys for the sale of pardons,—and the sum of 15,000l. was actually paid to him by a banker for the deliverance of a man whose destruction could not be effected by any perversion of the formalities of law.‡

There is to be found only one defender of these atrocities. "I have indeed sometimes thought," says the author of A CAVEAT AGAINST THE WHIGS, "that in Jeffreys's western circuit justice went too far before mercy was remembered, though there was not above a fourth part executed of what were convicted. But when I consider in what manner several of those lives then spared were

* In a letter from Bristol dated 22d Sept. 1685, he boasts of his victory over that most factious city where he had committed the mayor and an alderman for selling to the plantations men whom they had unjustly convicted with a view to such a sale, and pledges himself that Bristol and the county of Somerset should know their duty both to God and their King before he leaves them.

† Burnet, ii. 334.

‡ Commons Journals, May 1. 1689.

afterwards spent, I cannot but think a little more hemp might have been usefully employed upon that occasion."

A great controversy has arisen, "who is chiefly to be blamed— Jeffreys or James?" Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, declares that "the King never forgave the cruelty of the Judge in executing such multitudes in the west against his express orders." Père d'Orléans says, "Le Roi fut trop tard averti de ce désordre, mais on ne l'en eût pas plustôt informé qu'il en témoigna de l'indignation; et si des services importans, qu'il avoit reçu de ceux qui en étoient accusez, l'obligea de les épargner, il répara autant qu'il put leur injustice, par le pardon général qu'il accorda à ceux des révoltez qui étoient encore en état d'éprouver les effets de sa clémence." And reliance is placed by Hume*, on the assertion of Roger North, that his brother, the Lord Keeper, going to the King and moving him "to put a stop to the fury which was in no respect for his service, and would be counted a carnage, not law or justice,-orders went to mitigate the proceeding."

I have already demonstrated that this last assertion is a mere invention,—and though it is easy to fix deep guilt on the Judge, it is impossible to exculpate the monarch. Burnet says that James "had a particular account of his proceedings writ to him every day, and he took pleasure to relate them in the drawingroom to foreign ministers, and at his table, calling it Jeffreys's campaign; speaking of all he had done in a style that neither became the majesty nor the mercifulness of a great Prince." Jeffreys himself (certainly a very suspicious witness), when in the Tower, declared to Tutchin, that "his instructions were much more severe than the execution of them; and that at his return he was snubbed at Court for being too merciful." And to Dr. Scott, the divine who attended him on his death-bed, he said, "Whatever I did then I did by express orders; and I have this further to say for myself, that I was not half bloody enough for him who sent me thither." We certainly know from a letter written to him by the Earl of Sunderland at Dorchester, that "the King approved entirely of all his proceedings." And though we cannot believe that he stopped short of any severity which he thought would be of service to himself, there seems no reason to doubt (if that be any palliation), that throughout the whole of these proceedings his object was to please his master, whose disposition was now most vindictive, and who thought that, by such terrible examples, he should secure to himself a long and quiet reign.‡

* Vol. viii. 236.

† Ante, p. 388.

* One of the strongest testimonies against James is his own letter to the Prince of Orange, dated Sept. 24. 1685, in which, after giving him a long account of his fox-hunting, he says, " As for news, there is little stirring, but that the Lord Chief Justice has almost done his campaign. He has already condemned several hundreds, some of which are already executed, some are to be, and the others sent to the plantations."-Dalrymple's App. part ii. 165.-The only public man who showed any bowels of compassion amidst these horrors, was Lord Sunderland, who

The two were equally criminal,* and both had their reward, But in the first instance, and till the consequences of such wickedness and folly began to appear, they met each other with mutual joy and congratulations. Jeffreys returning from the west, by royal command stopped at Windsor Castle. He arrived there on the 28th of September; and after a most gracious reception, the Great Seal was immediately delivered to him with the title of Lord Chancellor.

We learn from Evelyn that it had been three weeks in the King's personal custody. "About six o'clock came Sir Dudley North and his brother Roger North, and brought the Great Seal from my Lord Keeper, who died the day before. The King went immediately to Council; everybody guessing who was most likely to succeed this great officer: most believed it would be no other than Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, who had so rigorously prosecuted the late rebels, and was now gone the western circuit to punish the rest that were secured in the several counties, and was now near upon his return."†

The London Gazette of October 1. 1685, contains the following notice:

"Windsor, Sept. 28.

"His Majesty taking into his royal consideration the many eminent and faithful services which the Right Honourable George Lord Jeffreys, of Wem, Lord Chief Justice of England, has rendered the Crown, as well in the reign of the late King, of ever blessed memory, as since his Majesty's accession to the throne, entreated repeatedly with Jeffreys, but in vain, for a youth named William Jenkins. His father, an eminent Nonconformist clergyman, having died in Newgate in consequence of a long and unjust imprisonment, he distributed mourning rings with the inscription," William Jenkins murdered in Newgate." He was in consequence confined in Ilchester gaol till released by Monmouth's army which he followed.— Letter from Sunderland to Jeffreys, Sept. 12. 1685. State Paper Office.-Whig party writers are at great pains to exculpate Polexfen, the great Whig lawyer, who conducted all these prosecutions as counsel for the Crown, but I think he comes in for no small share of the infamy then incurred, and he must be considered as principal aide de camp to Jeffreys in the Western campaign. He ought to have told the jury that there was no case against the Lady Lisle, and when a few examples had been made he ought to have stopped the prosecutions, or have thrown up his briefs. See Life of James II. vol. ii. p. 44. Mackintosh's Works, vol. ii. p. 34.

* I hope I have not been prejudiced in my estimate of James's character by the consideration that when acting as Regent in Scotland he issued an order (afterwards recalled) for the utter suppression of the name of CAMPBELL, "which," says Mackintosh, "would have amounted to a proscription of several noblemen, a considerable body of gentry, and the most numerous and powerful tribe in the kingdom."- Works, ii. 109.

† Mem. i. 569.

was pleased teis day to commit to him the custody of the Great Seal of England, with the title of Lord Chancellor."

CHAPTER CI.

CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF LORD CHANCELLOR JEFFREYS TILL THE GREAT SEAL WAS TAKEN FROM HIM BY JAMES II. AND THROWN INTO THE RIVER THAMES.

THE new Lord Chancellor, having brought the Great Seal with him from Windsor to London, had near a

month to prepare for the business of the [SEPT. 29, 1685.]

term.

He took a large house in Duke Street, Westminster; and there fitted up a Court, which was afterwards consecrated as a place of public worship, and is now called "Duke Street Chapel."

He had had only a very slender acquaintance with Chancery proceedings, and he was by no means thoroughly grounded in common-law learning; but he now fell to the study of equity pleading and practice, and though exceedingly inferior to his two immediate predecessors in legal acquirements, his natural shrewdness was such, that, when entirely sober, he contrived to gloss over his ignorance of technicalities, and to arrive at a right decision. He was seldom led into temptation by the occurrence of cases in which the interests of political parties, or religious sects, were concerned; and, as an Equity Judge, the multitude rather regarded him with favour.

He took his place in the Court of Chancery on the 23d of October, the first day of Michaelmas term. I find no account of his

* The Crown Office Minute Book, not imitating the amusing circumstantiality of the old entries on the Close Roll, after stating the death of the late Lord Keeper on the 5th of September, the delivery of the Seal next day to the King, "who kept it in his own custody till the return of the Lord Jeffreys from the Western circuit, merely states, that, "on the 28th of the same September, his Majesty was pleased to deliver the Seal to him with the title of Lord Chancellor."-p. 121. Burnet relates, that as a farther reward he was created a Peer (ii. 335.); and Hume and most subsequent historians repeat the statement, although it is quite certain that he had been created a Peer before the meeting of the parliament months before, and had taken an active part in the House of Lords before Monmouth's rebellion broke As such mistakes are little noticed, I am encouraged to hope that those I may fall into may be overlooked or forgiven.

out.

† Pennant, in his "London," speaking of Jeffreys's house, says, "It is easily known by a large flight of stone steps, which his royal master permitted to be made into the park adjacent, for the accommodation of his Lordship. These steps terminate in a small court, on three sides of which stands the housc. The cause room was afterwards converted into a place of worship called Duke Street Chapel, and is on the left. When Jeffreys found it inconvenient to sit at Westminster or Lincoln's Inn, he made use of this court."