meditations, and got upon the stage to see Nell Gwyn and Mrs. Bracegirdle, in the comedies of Dryden and Etherege. It is unfair to take the reports of a police court as fully representing the characteristics of a time; but there never was a time which left a fuller impression of its idiosyncrasies in such an unsavory record office. Let us pick up a case or two pretty much at random.

ened to sink his boat, the supposed hangman stuck to his story, and was presumably landed in safety. The evidence seems to be rather ambiguous as concerns the prisoner, who was accused of being the actual executioner; but the vivacity with which Mr. Abraham Smith tells his story is admirable. Doubtless it had been his favorite anecdote to his fellows and his fares during the intervening years, and he felt, rightly as it has turned out, that this accidental contact with one of the great events of history would be his sole title to a kind of obscure immortality.

He

It is pleasantest, perhaps, to avoid the more familiar and pompous scenes. It is rather in the byplay-in the little vignettes of real life which turn up amidst more serious events that we may find Another hero of that time, unfortuthe characteristic charm of the narrative. nately a principal instead of a mere specThe trials, for example, of the regicides tator in the recorded tragedy, is so full of have an interest. They died for the most exuberant vitality that we can scarcely part (Hugh Peters seems to have been an reconcile ourselves to the belief that the exception) as became the survivors of the poor man was hanged two centuries ago. terrible Ironsides, glorying, till drums The gallant Colonel Turner had served beat under the scaffold to silence them, in the royal army, and, if we may believe in their fidelity to the "good old cause," his dying words, was specially valued by and showing a stern front to the jubilant his Majesty. The poor colonel, however, royalists. But one must admit that they got into difficulties: he made acquaintance show something, too, of the peculiarities with a rich old merchant named Tryon, which made the race tiresome to their and tried to get a will forged in his favor contemporaries as they probably would by one of Tryon's clerks; failing in this, be to us. They cannot submit without a he decided upon speedier measures. wrangle which they know to be futile tied down poor old Tryon in his bed one over some legal point, where simple night, and then carried off jewels to the submission to the inevitable would have value of 3,000l. An energetic alderman been more dignified; and their dying suspected the colonel, clutched him a day prayers and orations are echoes of the or two afterwards, and forced him to dislong-winded sermons of the Blathergowls. gorge. When put upon his defence, he They showed fully as much courage, but could only tell one of those familiar ficnot so much taste as the "royal actor" tions common to pickpockets; how he on the same scene. But amidst the trials had accidentally collared the thief, who there occurs here and there a fragment of had transferred the stolen goods to him, picturesque evidence. A waterman tells and how he was thus entitled to gratitude us how he was walking about Whitehall instead of punishment. It is not suron the morning of the "fatal blow." prising that the jury declined to believe "Down came a file of musketeers." him; but we are almost surprised that They hurried the hangman into his boat, any judge had the courage to sentence and said, “Waterman, away with him; him. For Colonel Turner is a splendid begone quickly." "So," says the water-scoundrel. There is something truly heman, "out I launched, and having got a little way in the water, says I, Who the devil have I got in my boat?' Says my fellow, says he, 'Why?' I directed my speech to him, saying, 'Are you the hangman that cut off the king's head?' 'No, as I am a sinner to God,' saith he, 'not I.' He shook, every joint of him. I knew not what to do. I rowed away a little further, and fell to a new examination of him. 'Tell me true,' says I, 'are you the hangman that hath cut off the king's head? I cannot carry you,' said I.No,' saith he;" and explains that his instruments had been used, but not himself; and though the waterman threat

roic in his magnificent self-complacency; the fine, placid glow of conscious virtue diffused over his speeches. He is a link between Dugald Dalgetty, Captain_Bobadil, and the audacious promoter of some modern financiering scheme. Had he lived in days when old merchants invest their savings in shares instead of diamonds, he would have been an invaluable director of a bubble company. There is a dash of the Pecksniff about him; but he has far too much pith and courage to be dashed like that miserable creature by a single exposure. Old Chuzzlewit would never have broken loose from his bonds. It is delightful to see, in days when most

criminals prostrated themselves in abject | of Johnson's famous friend); "there must humiliation, how this splendid colonel be," he is sure, when he thinks of all his takes the lord chief justice into his confi. virtues, a thousand sorrowful souls and dence, verbally buttonholes " 'my dear weeping eyes" for him this day. The atlord 99 with a pleasant assumption that, tendant clergy are a little scandalized at though for form's sake some inquiry this peculiar kind of penitence; and he is might be necessary, every reasonable man good enough to declare that he "disclaims must see the humor of an accusation di- any desert of his own". -a sentiment rected against so innocent a patriot. The which we feel to be a graceful concession, whole thing is manifestly absurd. And but not to be too strictly interpreted. The then the colonel gracefully slides in little hangman is obliged to put the rope round compliments to his own domestic virtues. his neck. Part of his story had to be that he had sent his wife (who was accused as an accomplice) on an embassy to recover the stolen goods. "I sent my poor wife away," he says, "and, saving your lord-ters some pious ejaculations, and as he is ship's presence, she did all bedirt herself assuming the fatal cap, sees a lady at a a thing she did not use to do, poor soul. window; he kisses his hand to her, and She found this Nagshead, she sat down, says, "Your servant, mistress;" and so being somewhat fat and weary, poor pulling down the cap, the brave colonel heart! I have had twenty-seven children vanishes, as the reporter tells us, with a by her, fifteen sons and twelve daugh- very undaunted carriage to his last ters." "Seven or eight times this fellow breath.

"Dost thou mean to choke me, fellow?" exclaims the indignant colonel. "What a simple fellow is this! how long have you been executioner that you know not how to put the knot?” He then ut

did round her." "Let me give that rela- Sir Thomas More with his flashes of tion," interrupts the wife. "You cannot," playfulness, or Charles with his solemn replies the colonel, "it is as well. Pry-"remember," could scarcely play their thee, sit down, dear Moll; sit thee down, parts more gallantly than Colonel Turner, good child, all will be well." And so the and they had the advantage of a belief in colonel proceeds with admirable volubility, the goodness of their cause. Perhaps it and we sympathize with this admirable is illogical to sympathize all the more with father of twenty-seven children under so poor Colonel Turner, because we know cruel a hardship. But not to follow that his courage had not the adventitious the trial- the colonel culminated under aid of a good conscience. But surely he the most trying circumstances. His dy- was a very prince of burglars! We turn ing speech is superb. He is honorably a page and come to a very different quesconfessing his sins, but his natural in- tion of casuistry. Law and morality are stinct asserts itself. He cannot but ad- at a deadlock. Instead of the florid, mit, in common honesty, that he is a swaggering cavalier, we have a pair of model character, and speaks under his Quakers, Margaret Fell and the famous gallows as if he were the good apprentice George Fox, arguing with the most irrijust arrived at the mayoralty. He ad- tating calmness and logic against the immits, indeed, that he occasionally gave position of an oath. "Give me the book way to swearing, though he "hated and in my hand," says Fox; and they are all loathed "the sin when he observed it; but gazing in hopes that he is about to swear. he was it was the source of all his Then he holds up the Bible and exclaims, troubles of a "hasty nature." But he "This book commands me not to swear.'" was brought up in an honest family in the To which dramatic argument (the report, good old times, and laments the bad times it is to be observed, comes from Fox's that have since come in. He has been a side) there is no possible reply but to devoted loyalist; he has lived civilly and "pluck the book forth of his hand again," honestly at the upper end of Cheapside as and send him back to prison. The Quakbecame a freeman of the Company of ers vanish in their invincible passiveDrapers; he was never known to be "dis-ness; and in the next page, we find ourguised in drink; a small cup of cider in selves at Bury St. Edmunds. The venerthe morning, and two little glasses of ated Sir Matthew Hale is on the bench, sack and one of claret at dinner, were and the learned and eloquent Sir Thomas enough for him; he was a constant Browne appears in the witness-box. They churchgoer, and of such delicate propriety of behavior that he never "saw a man in church with his hat on but it troubled him | very much" (a phrase which reminds us

listen to a wretched story of two poor old women accused of bewitching children. The children swear that they have been tormented by imps, in the shape of flies,

which flew into their mouths with crooked | tion." The attorney-general argues that pins the said imps being presumably this shows malice, and urges that Mr. the diabolical emissaries of the witches. Hastings, too, was a man of good family. Then Sir Thomas Browne gravely deliv- But the peers only find their fellow guilty ers his opinion; he quotes a case of of manslaughter. He claims his privilege, witchcraft in Denmark, and decides, after and is dismissed with a benevolent admodue talk about "superabundant humors "nition not to do it again. Elsewhere, we and judicious balancing of conflicting have Lord Cornwallis and a friend coming considerations, that the fits into which the out of Whitehall in the early morning, children fell were strictly natural, but drunk and using the foulest language. "heightened to a great excess by the After trying in vain to quarrel with a sensubtlety of the devil co-operating with the tinel, they swear that they will kill somemalice of the witches." An ingenious body before going home. An unlucky person," however, suggests an experi- youth comes home to his lodgings close ment. The child who had sworn that the by, and after some abuse from the peer touch of the witch threw her into fits, was and his friend, the lad is somehow tumblindfolded and touched by another per- bled down-stairs and killed on the spot. son passed off as the witch. The young As it seems not to be clear whether Lord sinner fell into the same fits, and the Cornwallis gave the fatal kick, he is hon"ingenious person pronounced the orably acquitted. Then we have a free whole affair to be an imposture. How fight at a tavern, where Lord Pembroke ever, a more ingenious person gets up is drinking with a lot of friends. One of and proves by dexterous logic, curiously them says that he is as good a gentleman like that of a detected "medium" of to- as Lord Pembroke. The witnesses were day, that, on the contrary, it confirms the all too drunk to remember how and why evidence. Whereupon, the witches were anything happened; but after a time one found guilty, the judge and all the court of them is kicked out of the tavern; anbeing fully satisfied with the verdict, and other, a Mr. Cony, is knocked down and were hanged accordingly, though abso- trampled, and swears that he has received lutely refusing to confess. what turned out some days later to be Our ancestors' justice strikes us as mortal injuries from the boots of Lord rather heavy-handed and dull-eyed on Pembroke. The case is, indeed, doubtthese occasions. In another class of tri- | ful; for the doctor who was called in reals we see the opposite phase - the man- fused to make a post-mortem examination ifestation of that curious tenderness which on the ground that it might lead him into has shown itself in so many forms since a troublesome matter; and another the days when highway robbery appeared was disposed to attribute the death to to be a graceful accomplishment if prac- poor Mr. Cony's inordinate love of "cold tised by a wild Prince and Poins. Things small beer." He drank three whole tankwere made delightfully easy in the race ards the night before his death; and which flourished after the Restoration. when actually dying, declined "white wine Every peer, by the amazing privilege of posset drink," suggested by the doctor, the "benefit of clergy," had a right to and "swore a great oath he would have commit one manslaughter. Like a school- small beer." And so he died, whether by boy, he was allowed to plead "first fault; "boots or beer; and the lord high steward and a good many peers took advantage of the system.

Lord Morley, for example, has a quarrel "about half-a-crown." A Mr. Hast ings, against whom he has some previous grudge, contemptuously throws down four half-crowns. Therefore Lord Morley and an attendant bully insult Hastings, assault him repeatedly, and at last fall upon him "just under the arch in Lincoln's Inn Fields," and there Lord Morley stabs him to death, "with a desperate impreca

This case was in 1665. It is curious that in the case of Hathaway in 1702, a precisely similar experiment convinced everybody that the accuser was an impostor; and got him a whipping and a place in the

pillory.

66

in due time had to inform Lord Pembroke that his lordship was guilty of manslaughter, but, being entitled to his clergy, was to be discharged on paying his fees. The most sinister figure amongst these wild gallants is the Lord Mohun, who killed, and was killed by, the Duke of Hamilton, as all the readers of the journals of Swift or of Colonel Esmond remember. He appears twice in the collection. On December 9, 1690, Mohun and his friend Colonel Hill come swaggering into the play-house, and get from the pit upon the stage. An attendant asks them to pay for their places; whereupon Lord Mohun nobly refuses, saying, "If you bring any of your masters I will slit their

poses." The pair have a coach-and-six is a cry for help. Somehow a chair is waiting in the street to carry off Mrs. hoisted over the rails, and poor Mr. Coote Bracegirdle, to whom Hill has been mak-is found prostrate in a pool of blood. The ing love. As she is going home to sup- chairmen strongly object to spoiling their per, they try to force her into it with the chairs by putting a bloody man into help of half-a-dozen soldiers. The by them. They are pacified by a promise of standers prevent this; but the pair insist tool. security; but the chair is somehow upon seeing Mrs. Bracegirdle to her broken, and the watch will not come to house, and mount guard outside with help, because it is out of their ward; their swords drawn. Mrs. Bracegirdle "and I staid half an hour," says the chief and her friends stand listening at the witness pathetically, "with my chair door, and hear them vowing vengeance broken, and afterwards I was laid hold against Mountford, of whom Hill was upon, both I and my partner, and kept till jealous. Presently the watch appears next night at eleven o'clock; and that is the constable and the beadle, and a man all the satisfaction I have had for my chair in front with a lantern. The constable and everything." This damage to the asks why are the swords drawn. Mrs. chair was clearly the chief point of interBracegirdle through the door hears est for poor Robert Browne, the chairMohun reply, "I am a peer of England, man, and it may be feared that his actouch me if you dare." "God bless your count is still unsettled. Mohun escaped honor," replies the constable, "I know upon this occasion, and, indeed, Esmond not what you are, but I hope you are is unjust in giving to him a principal part doing no harm." No," said he. "You in the tragedy. may knock me down, if you please," adds Such were the sights to be seen occaColonel Hill. 66 Nay, said I" (the lantern- sionally in London by the watchman's lanbearer), "we never use to knock gentle- tern, or the candle glimmering across the men down unless there be occasion." narrow alley, or some occasional lamp And the judicious watch retire to a tavern swinging across the street; for it was by in the next street, in order, as they say, such a lamp that a girl looked into the "to examine what they (Mohun and Hill) | hackney coach and saw the face of the were, and what they were doing." There man who had sent for Dr. Clench ostenwas, as the constable explains, "a drawer there, who had formerly lived over against him," and might throw some light upon the proceedings of these polite gentle

men.

But, alas! "in the mean time the murder was done." For as another witness tells us, Mr. Mountford came up the street and was speaking coolly to Mohun, when Hill came up behind and gave him a box on the ear. "Saith Mr. Mountford, what's that for? And with that he (Hill) whipped out his sword and made a pass at him, and I turned about and cried murder!" Mountford was instantly killed; but witnesses peeping through doors, and looking out of windows, gave conflicting accounts of the scuffle in the dim street, and Lord Mohun, after much argument as to the law, was acquitted. Five years later, he appears in the case reported by Esmond, with little more than a change in the names. An insensate tavern brawl is followed by an adjournment to Leicester Fields; six noblemen and gentlemen in chairs; Mr. Coote, the chief actor in the quarrel, urging his chairman by threatening to goad him with his sword. The gentlemen get over the railings and vanish into the "dark, wet" night, whilst the chairmen philosophically light their pipes. The pipes are scarcely alight, when there

sibly to visit a patient, but really in order to strangle the poor doctor on the way. They are strange illuminations on the margin of the pompous page of official history; and the incidental details give form and color to the incidents in Pepys' "Journals or Grammont's "Memoirs." We have kept at a distance from the more dignified records of the famous constitu. tional struggles which fill the greatest number of pages. Yet those pages are not barren for the lover of the picturesque. And here I must put in a word for one much reviled character. If ever I were to try my hand at the historical amuse ment of whitewashing, I should be tempted to take for my hero the infamous Jeffreys. He was, I dare say, as bad as he is painted; so perhaps were Nero and Richard III., and other much abused persons; but no miscreant of them all could be more amusing. Wherever the name of Jeffreys appears we may be certain of good sport. With all his inexpressible brutality, his buffoonery, his baseness, we can see that he was a man of remarkable talent. We think of him generally as he appeared when bullying Baxter; when "he snorted and squeaked, blew his nose and clenched his hands, and lifted up his eyes, mimicking their (the Noncomformists') manner,

and running on furiously, as he said they | to his nose," and feeling himself the very used to pray; "" and we may regard him focus of all attention, "I am quite clutas his victims must have regarded him, tered out of my senses; I do not know as a kind of demoniacal baboon placed on what I say." The wretched creature is the bench in robes and wig, in hideous allowed to reflect for a time, and then at caricature of justice. But the vigor and last declares that he will tell the truth. skill of the man when he has to worry the He tells enough in fact for the purpose, truth out of a stubborn witness, is also though he feebly tries to keep back the amazing. When a knavish witness pro- most damning words. Enough has been duced a forged deed in support of the wrenched out of him to send poor Lady claim of a certain Lady Ity to a great Lisle to the scaffold. The figure of the part of Shadwell, Jeffreys is in his ele- poor old lady falling asleep, as it is said, ment. He is perhaps a little too exuber- while Jeffreys' thunder and lightning was ant. "Ask him what questions you will," raging in this terrific fashion round the he breaks out, "but if he should swear as feeble defence of Dunne's reticence, is so long as Sir John Falstaff fought" (the pathetic, and her fate so piteous and dischief justice can quote Shakespeare), “I graceful, that we have little sense for anywould never believe a word he says." thing but Jeffreys' brutality. But if the His lordship may be too violent, but he is power of worming the truth out of a substantially doing justice; and shows grudging witness were the sole test of a himself a dead hand at unmasking a judge's excellence, we must admit the cheat. The most striking proof of Jef- amazing efficiency of Jeffreys' method. freys' power is in the dramatic trial of He is the ideal cross-examiner, and we Lady Lisle. The poor lady was accused may overlook the cruelty to victims who of harboring one Hicks, a Dissenting have so long ceased to suffer. preacher, after Sedgemoor. It was clear In the post-revolutionary period the that a certain James Dunne had guided world becomes more merciful and duller. Hicks to Lady Lisle's house. The diffi- Lawyers speak at greater length; and culty was to prove that Lady Lisle knew even the victims of '45, the strange Lord Hicks to be a traitor. Dunne had talked Lovat himself, give little sport at the reto her in presence of another witness, spectable bar of the House of Lords. and it was suggested that he had given But the domestic trials become perhaps her the fatal information. But Dunne more interesting, if only by way of comtried hard in telling his story to sink this mentary upon Tom Jones or "Rodvital fact. The effort of Jeffreys to twist erick Random." Novelists indeed have it out of poor Dunne, and Dunne's futile occasionally sought to turn these records and prolonged wriggling to escape the to account. The great Annesley case has confession, are reported at full, and form been used by Mr. Charles Reade, and one of the most striking passages in the Scott took some hints from it in one of State trials. Jeffreys shouts at him; the very best of his performances, the dilates in most edifying terms upon the inimitable Guy Mannering." Scott's bottomless lake of fire and brimstone adaptation should, indeed, be rather a which awaits all perjurers; snatches at warning than a precedent; for the surany slip; pins the witness down; fastens passing merit of his great novel consists inconsistencies upon him through page in the display of character, in Meg Merafter page; but poor Dunne desperately rilies and Dandie Dinmont and Counselclutches the secret in spite of the tremen- lor Pleydell, and certainly not in the dous strain. He almost seems to have rather childish plot with the long-lost heir escaped, when the other witness estab- business. He falls into the common error lishes the fact that some conversation of supposing that the actual occurrence of took place. Armed with this new thumb- events must be a sufficient guarantee for screw, Jeffreys leaps upon poor Dunne employing them in fiction. The Annesley again. The storm of objurgations, ap- case is almost the only one in the collecpeals, confutations, bursts forth with tion in which facts descend to the level of increased force; poor Dunne slips into a romance. The claimant's case was clearly fatal admission: he has admitted some established up to a certain point. There talk, but cannot explain what it was. He was no doubt that he had passed for Lord tries dogged silence. The torture of Jef- Annesley's son in his childhood; that he freys' tongue urges him to fresh blunder- had for that reason been spirited away ing. A candle is held up to his nose that by his uncle, and sold as a slave in the court "may see his brazen face." At America; and, further, that when he relast he exclaims, the candle "still nearer turned to make his claim and killed a man