Any number of Russells, "meddling and muddling" in hereditary conceit, could be better spared by England than the brave Algernon Sydney, whose unjustly-compassed death leaves so great a stain on the government of Charles. It was like the slaughter

1 See our pp. 667 and 692, note 1.

2 Shaftesbury and Sir Thomas Armstrong: see p. 799, note 1.

3 James Scott, Duke of Monmouth; not the Duke of York.

4 See p. 684, note 2.

5 This refers to Gilbert Burnet, who was closely connected with the Elmboard's groaning (see our pp. 99, 925), in the time of Sheriffs Slingsby Bethel and Cornish.

The weakest part of Algernon Sydney's defence was that touching the papers written long before by himself, never published, found in his house, and produced against him instead of another witness to substantiate the testimony of the infamous Lord Howard of Escrick. A more straightforward avowal would have been in conformity with the character of Sydney, and no quibbling could be advantageous, for his anti-monarchical sentiments were notorious. He was on firmer ground when he showed the absence of sufficient proof against him, the legal necessity of having two witnesses to the same fact: either the conspiracy against the King's life, or, the levying war. Howard alone testified that Sydney intended to raise an insurrection among the Scots. The distinct matter of the Rye-House Plot, for the assassination of Charles, had been brought in (having no connexion with Sydney, except hearsay evidence on the part of Keeling, that Goodenough had mentioned the Colonel's name), in order to prejudice the jury, by thus indicating that conspiracies were afoot against the King's life. There was absolutely no proof that Sydney ever entertained such a design. As he said himself, "There is no man that thinks that I would kill the King that knows me. I am not a man to have such a design; perhaps I may say I have saved his life

of the Duke d'Enghien by the first Napoleon. In neither case could a "fatal necessity" be pleaded. It was an impolitic act, in addition to being an immorality: "not only a crime, but a blunder." In the case of the enthusiastic Republican, it left the leadership of the disaffected to men of baser instincts than himself, more selfish, and less scrupulous. Visions of austere virtue and national freedom had often come to cheer his gloom during exile, and cause forgetfulness of personal wrongs endured of old from more grasping overthrowers of monarchy, whom their ambition, not affection, made his associates, during the Commonwealth troubles. Such visions were too high for the sympathy of the intriguers, whose practical sagacity and cunning helped onward the Revolution, five years after he had mounted the scaffold. The materials of our volume have in no case prominently brought Algernon Sydney before us. At most, there were indirect allusions to him, and we therefore lacked excuse for any lengthened notice. But he was too noble and important a figure of the time, in close connexion with the Plots, false or real, for us willingly to omit a brief tribute of respect to his memory.

"This was the noblest Roman of them all."

Among the triumphant Loyal Songs of 1685 are few with which we feel less sympathy than that one (on p. 348, but issued a year earlier, no doubt) entitled "Collonel Sidney's Lamentation and Last Farewel to the World." To the tune, What name, &c. It was written in cruel exultation over his murder. It takes for granted his complicity in the Rye-House Plot of assassination, although no trustworthy evidence was brought to prove it against him. It couples his name with plotters every way his inferiors. It accuses him of misleading Monmouth, with intent (true enough in regard to Shaftesbury's share) of throwing him aside whenever he had served as a tool for the conspirators. Thus we read :

With Tony, Gray, and Russel, I Conspir'd
My Princes death, and many thousands hyr'd
To arm themselves in ev'ry Town and Shire,
To Murther this King and [his] Lawful Heir,

once."-Sydney's Defence. That he was a dangerous, disaffected man is undoubted. But this is a very different affair from having been satisfactorily proved guilty of overt acts of treason. He was incapable of meanness or treachery of any kind. He was no factious demagogue, like Russell; no wily spinner of the meshes of intrigue, like Shaftesbury; no vacillator and vainglorious trifler, like Monmouth; and beyond all comparison above such men as Armstrong and Grey. He was a Republican, pure and simple, because he distrusted and hated monarchy. His death took place on Tower Hill, December 7th, 1683. "Are you ready, Sir! Will you rise again?" said the greedy headsman, Ketch. The reply came promptly: "Not till the general resurrection-strike on!"

And lay it all upon the Papists backs,

Which with the weight of our own Treason cracks;
And for our Crimes too murther them allow,

Poor Traytors, where's our Ignoramus now?
We draw'd in Monmout]h to advance the Cause,
And made him Popular by Fools Applause;
We made his Soul swell to be a King,

When we, alas! intended no such thing. &c.

The first verse begins, "Now, now too weak, alas! I find our Cause;" viz. that "Good Old Cause" of the Republicans, which Harrison died avowing. The second verse is against Sydney: These forty years I've reigned in Roguery, With kind success 'gainst Lawful Monarchy; And now must my gray Head be over-reacht, And my stiff Neck by strength of halter strecht.

Another ballad to the tune of "Ignoramus" ("Lay by your Reason") entitled "The Newcastle Associators; or, the Trimmers Loyalty;" written and published in August, 1684, thus recalled Shaftesbury's plan of the Whig Association:

Russel did try for 't,
Sidney did die for 't,

While Rumbold, Gray, and Tom with the rest did flie for 't;

For all their Teaching,
Ferguson's Preaching,

His Head's upon a Pole, and his Quarters bleaching.

The Starter's a Martyr,

The Squire gives no Quarter,

1

For now the Bully Knight is by the head cut shorter.

They Plotted, and Lotted, and Sotted, and Voted,

And never will have done till their quarters are promoted.

Page 821, note.

Stephen College.

Anthony à Wood gives us a contemporary record of the execution of this man, who, like Polonius, thrust himself forward into situations of peril without necessity, and paid the forfeit :

"Wednesday at 11. Stephen College, born at Watford in

1 This does not refer to Robert Ferguson, who survived till 1714. His many escapes from punishment leave a suspicion on his memory that he saved himself by treachery and the betrayal of those whom he had continually encouraged in rebellion. The head and quarters here referred to are those of "Tom," "the Bully Knight," Sir Thomas Armstrong, who fled, it is true, but was tamely surrendered by the Dutch authorities to the officers sent from England to arrest him. He was summarily sentenced, without a formal trial, and beheaded on June 20th, 1684. His head was placed between Cromwell's and Bradshaw's at Whitehall. See 2nd Div. xxii, the note on page 799; and, for verses on Algernon Sydney's death, p. 712.)

Hertfordshire, nephew to Edmund College of St. Peters in the Bayly, suffered death by hanging in the Castle yard, Oxon., and when he had hanged about half an hour was cut down by Catch or Ketch, and quartered under the gallows, his entrails were burnt in a fire made by the gallow. He spoke and prayed more than half an hour, his body was, after quartering, put into a coffin, and the same day was conveyed to London, and buried privately, the Thursday following at night, in St. Gregory's Church, near St. Paul's." Bliss gives in a footnote (p. 233, of the Life) the last letter written by "Stephen Colledge," thus signed, to his children, August 30, 1681. The man had some good qualities, although he was fanatical, obtrusive, and seditiously inclined. Too much exultation had been shown over his dismissal from trial by an "Ignoramus" jury in London, to afford him any chance of a second escape when tried at Oxford. His hatred against the Roman Catholics, especially against James Duke of York, and his influence over the crowd as a demagogue, undoubtedly secured his own condemnation.

Page 830.

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune,
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.

John Tutchin.

After having read, or attempted to read, some of the poetical labours of John Tutchin, we are not inclined to deem the offer made in pleasantry by Judge Jeffreys an unwarrantable boast:"I hear that you are a poet. I will cap verses with you!" It was not an offer suited to the supposed dignity of the Bench. Alas! we have seen the ermine far from stainless in recent days; and after-writers, free from contemporary servility of adulation, will mention some names with censure such as we apply to Scroggs and Jeffreys. As Emerson well said: "The reputations of the nineteenth century will hereafter be quoted to prove its barbarism." Jeffreys must have been a very poor versifier, if he could not equal Tutchin; for whom a whipping or two might have been useful, without overdoing the exercise. His "Poems on Several Occasions," including a Pastoral, were published in 1685. The Foreigners, a Poem," by him, came out in 1700. The Companion poem, "The Natives," was by a different hand, but in reissue they appeared beside one another. Whether Defoe wrote "A Dialogue between a Dissenter and the Observator [J. Tutchin's writings], concerning [Defoe's] 'Shortest Way with the Dissenters,"" we do not feel assured, but it is probable. Con

John Tutchin, Defoe, and Philip Stubs.

1007

nected with Tutchin is an "Answer to the Whigs' Black List," etc., in 4to. 1705, the date of our ballad. In controversy with Defoe, in the same year, and likewise in 4to., appeared Tutchin's "Daniel the Prophet no Conjurer." At that date, there was a squibbing with ballads, about "The Tackers," Marlborough, and other matters, one of which appears to have been written by Defoe, another by Tutchin, with a common burden of "One hundred and thirty-four" [see 2nd Index]. The attack on Stubs lay more with Defoe than with Tutchin, who died 23rd Sept. 1704. The Rev. Philip Stubs was Archdeacon of St. Albans, and in 1702 had published a sermon entitled "For God, or for Baal; or, No Neutrality in Religion." He took his text from 1 Kings xviii. 21. (Another 4to. edition of the sermon followed in 1704.) As this provoked much comment and scurrilous abuse, there appeared, in 1703, a twelve-paged threepenny 4to. pamphlet, entitled "A view of the Present Controversy about Occasional Conformity: As far as Religion's engaged in it: With a Vindication of Mr. Stubs's Sermon against Neutrality in Religion, Entituled, For GOD or for BAAL, from the Unchristian Usage of several Party-Pamphleteers. London, Printed for Henry Mortlock, and sold by John Nutt, near Stationers-Hall;" etc. It is scarcely necessary for us here to do more than indicate a few of the innumerable pamphlets to be examined by those who wish to go further into the subject. Daniel Foe (he is spoken of as "D. F."), his Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters, in Cases of Preferment, with a Preface to Mr. How. This being met by "Considerations," etc., called forth "A Letter to Mr. How, by way of Reply to his Consideration of the Preface to an Enquiry," etc. The writer of "A View," etc., acknowledges that, "As for Mr. Stubs, the Author I have undertaken to Vindicate, it must be allow'd he has had very hard measure from the Church's Adversaries, who, for publishing a Reconciliation Sermon, occasioned by the halfConformity of some Separatists, and that too supported by no Authorities but those of Dissenters themselves, against them; .... is yet, contrary to his true Character, so immoderately traduced as a Hot Man," etc. The italics are his, not ours. simply illustrate the passage in our ballad-text. John Tutchin, writer of the Observator, etc., is reputed (and declared in MS. to have been) the author of "The Whiskers Whisk'd; or, A Farewel Sermon Prepared to be Preach'd at Turner's-Hall in Phillpot Lane. By the Irreverend J J Doctor of Enthusiasm." 1703. This refers to Dr. Joseph Jacob. It is nothing but ribaldry. In Poems on Affairs of State, ii. p. 1, Tutchin's "Foreigners" is reprinted, but only bears his initial,

We