The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

/> Chief Justice, who, brutal as he was, was not mad enough to risk

a quarrel on such a subject with a body so much respected by the

Tory party. He consented to put off the execution five days.

During that time the friends of the prisoner besought James to be

merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham,

whose recent victory had increased his influence at court, and

who, it is said, had been bribed to take the compassionate side,

spoke in her favour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law,

pleaded her cause. But all was vain. The utmost that could be

obtained was that her sentence should be commuted from burning to

beheading. She was put to death on a scaffold in the marketplace

of Winchester, and underwent her fate with serene courage.444


In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day

following her execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the

principal town of the county in which Monmouth had landed; and

the judicial massacre began. The court was hung, by order of the

Chief Justice, with scarlet; and this innovation seemed to the

multitude to indicate a bloody purpose. It was also rumoured

that, when the clergyman who preached the assize sermon enforced

the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge was distorted

by an ominous grin. These things made men augur ill of what was

to follow.445


More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work

seemed heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light.

He let it be understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon

or respite was to plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons, who put

themselves on their country and were convicted, were ordered to

be tied up without delay. The remaining prisoners pleaded guilty

by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death.

The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire amounted to seventy-four.


From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had

barely grazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore,

comparatively few persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire,

the chief seat of the rebellion, had been reserved for the last

and most fearful vengeance. In this county two hundred and

thirty-three prisoners were in a few days hanged, drawn, and

quartered. At every spot where two roads met, on every

marketplace, on the green of every large village which had

furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in

the wind, or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air,

and made the traveller sick with horror. In many parishes the

peasantry could not assemble in the house of God without seeing

the ghastly face of a neighbour grinning at them over the porch.

The Chief Justice was all himself. His spirits rose higher and

higher as the work went on. He laughed, shouted, joked, and swore

in such a way that many thought him drunk from morning to night.

But in him it was not easy to distinguish the madness produced by

evil passions from the madness produced by brandy. A prisoner

affirmed that the witnesses who appeared against him were not

entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, and

another a prostitute. "Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge,

"to reflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see

thee already with the halter round thy neck." Another produced

testimony that he was a good Protestant. "Protestant! " said

Jeffreys; "you mean Presbyterian. I'll hold you a wager of it. I

can smell a Presbyterian forty miles." One wretched man moved the

pity even of bitter Tories. "My Lord," they said, "this poor

creature is on the parish." "Do not trouble yourselves," said the

Judge, "I will ease the parish of the burden." It was not only

against the prisoners that his fury broke forth. Gentlemen and

noblemen of high consideration and stainless loyalty, who

ventured to bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance,

were almost sure to receive what he called, in the coarse dialect

which he had learned in the pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick with

the rough side of his tongue. Lord Stawell, a Tory peer, who

could not conceal his horror at the remorseless manner in which

his poor neighbours were butchered, was punished by having a

corpse suspended in chains at his park gate.446 In such

spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told

over the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of

Somersetshire. Within the last forty years, peasants, in some

districts, well knew the accursed spots, and passed them

unwillingly after sunset.447


Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his

predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the

number of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one

shire, very much exceeded the number of all the political

offenders who have been put to death in our island since the

Revolution. The rebellions of 1715 and 1745 were of longer

duration, of wider extent, and of more formidable aspect than

that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has not been generally

thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or after the

rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of

clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together

will appear to have been few indeed when compared with those

which disgraced the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom

Jeffreys hanged on this circuit was three hundred and twenty.448


Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had

been generally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of

blameless life, and of high religious profession. They were

regarded by themselves, and by a large proportion of their

neighbours, not as wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with

blood the truth of the Protestant religion. Very few of the

convicts professed any repentance for what they had done. Many,

animated by the old Puritan spirit, met death, not merely with

fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain that the ministers

of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt of rebellion

and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim of the

King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of

the clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved

the bitter scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed

hymns in the dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge.

Christ, they sang while they were undressing for the butchery,

would soon come to rescue Zion and to make war on Babylon, would

set up his standard, would blow his trumpet, and would requite

his foes tenfold for all the evil which had been inflicted on his

servants. The dying words of these men were noted down: their

farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way, with

the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious

supplement to the Marian martyrology.449


A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired

officer of the parliamentary army, and one of those zealots who

would own no king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor.

His arm had been frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle;

and, as no surgeon was at hand, the stout old soldier amputated

it himself. He was carried up to London, and examined by the King

in Council, but would make no submission. "I am an aged man," he

said, "and what remains to me of life is not worth a falsehood or

a baseness. I have always been a republican; and I am so still."

He was sent back to the West and hanged. The people remarked with

awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to the

gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not

that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way

sword in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the

inferior animals. "Stop, gentlemen," he cried: "let me go on

foot. There is more in this than you think. Remember how the ass

saw him whom the prophet could not see." He walked manfully to

the gallows, harangued the people with a smile, prayed fervently

that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist and the

deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology

for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but one

arm."450


Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young

Templar of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an

agreeable provincial town proud of its taste and refinement, was

regarded by all as the model of a fine gentleman. Great interest

was made to save him. It was believed through the West of England

that he was engaged to a young lady of gentle blood, the sister

of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at the feet of Jeffreys to

beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from him with a jest

so hideous that to repeat it would be an offence against decency

and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and

courageously.451


A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant

brothers, William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young,

handsome, accomplished, and well connected. Their maternal

grandfather was named Kiffin. He was one of the first merchants

in London, and was generally considered as the head of the

Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling on the

trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather," he

said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you." The poor lad,

who was only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and

fortitude, that an officer of the army who attended the

execution, and who had made himself remarkable by rudeness and

severity, was strangely melted, and said, "I do not believe that

my Lord Chief Justice himself could be proof against this." Hopes

were entertained that Benjamin would be pardoned. One victim of

tender years was surely enough for one house to furnish. Even

Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. The truth

was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations,

and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated

intercessors. pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was

allowed for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner

went to Whitehall with a petition. Many courtiers wished her

success; and Churchill, among whose numerous faults cruelty had

no place, obtained admittance for her. "I wish well to your suit

with all my heart," he said, as they stood together in the

antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes. This

marble,"- and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece,-"is not

harder than the King." The prediction proved true. James was

inexorable. Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst

lamentations in which