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

the soldiers who kept guard round the

gallows could not refrain from joining.452


Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied

than some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys

was unable to bring home the charge of high treason were

convicted of misdemeanours, and were sentenced to scourging not

less terrible than that which Oates had undergone. A woman for

some idle words, such as had been uttered by half the women in

the districts where the war had raged, was condemned to be

whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. She

suffered part of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to

London; but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers, with

the humane connivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the

responsibility of sparing her any further torture. A still more

frightful sentence was passed on a lad named Tutchin, who was

tried for seditious words. He was, as usual, interrupted in his

defence by ribaldry and scurrility from the judgment seat. "You

are a rebel; and all your family have been rebels Since Adam.

They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses with you. The

sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven years, and

should, during that period, be flogged through every market town

in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst into

tears. The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My

Lord," said he, "the prisoner is very young. There are many

market towns in our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once

a fortnight for seven years." "If he is a young man," said

Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue. Ladies, you do not know the

villain as well as I do. The punishment is not half bad enough

for him. All the interest in England shall not alter it." Tutchin

in his despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity, that he

might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this

conjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it

seemed highly improbable that the sentence would ever be

executed, the Chief Justice consented to remit it, in return for

a bribe which reduced the prisoner to poverty. The temper of

Tutchin, not originally very mild, was exasperated to madness by

what he had undergone. He lived to be known as one of the most

acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the House of Stuart and

of the Tory party.453


The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight

hundred and forty-one. These men, more wretched than their

associates who suffered death, were distributed into gangs, and

bestowed on persons who enjoyed favour at court. The conditions

of the gift were that the convicts should be carried beyond sea

as slaves, that they should not be emancipated for ten years, and

that the place of their banishment should be some West Indian

island. This last article was studiously framed for the purpose

of aggravating the misery of the exiles. In New England or New

Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them

and a climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was

therefore determined that they should be sent to colonies where a

Puritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a

labourer born in the temperate zone could hope to enjoy little

health. Such was the state of the slave market that these

bondmen, long as was the passage, and sickly as they were likely

to prove, were still very valuable. It was estimated by Jeffreys

that, on an average, each of them, after all charges were paid,

would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There was therefore

much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the West

conceived that they had, by their exertions and sufferings during

the insurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which

had been eagerly snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The

courtiers, however, were victorious.454


The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who

are now carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best

information which is at present accessible that more than one

fifth of those who were shipped were flung to the sharks before

the end of the voyage. The human cargoes were stowed close in the

holds of small vessels. So little space was allowed that the

wretches, many of whom were still tormented by unhealed wounds,

could not all lie down at once without lying on one another. They

were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was constantly

watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses. In the

dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and

death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one

vessel, twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the

voyage was performed with unusual speed. The survivors when they

arrived at their house of bondage were mere skeletons. During

some weeks coarse biscuit and fetid water had been doled out to

them in such scanty measure that any one of them could easily

have consumed the ration which was assigned to five. They were,

therefore, in such a state that the merchant to whom they had

been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling

them.455


Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death,

and of those more unfortunate men who were withering under the

tropical sun, was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of

greedy informers. By law a subject attainted of treason forfeits

all his substance; and this law was enforced after the Bloody

Assizes with a rigour at once cruel and ludicrous. The

brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of the labouring men

whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon by the

agents of the Treasury to explain what had become of a basket, of

a goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of

beans, of a truss of hay.456 While the humbler retainers of the

government were pillaging the families of the slaughtered

peasants, the Chief Justice was fast accumulating a fortune out

of the plunder of a higher class of Whigs. He traded largely in

pardons. His most lucrative transaction of this kind was with a

gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that Prideaux had

not been in arms against the government; and it is probable that

his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his

father, an eminent lawyer who had been high in office under the

Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the

crown. Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they

would bear evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay

long in gaol and at length, overcome by fear of the gallows,

consented to pay fifteen thousand pounds for his liberation. This

great sum was received by Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate,

to which the people gave the name of Aceldama, from that accursed

field which was purchased with the price of innocent blood.457


He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of

parasites who were in the habit of drinking and laughing with

him. The office of these men was to drive hard bargains with

convicts under the strong terrors of death, and with parents

trembling for the lives of children. A portion of the spoil was

abandoned by Jeffreys to his agents. To one of his boon

companions, it is said. he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor

across the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse

to any intercession except that of his creatures, for he guarded

his profitable monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even

suspected that he sent some persons to the gibbet solely because

they had applied for the royal clemency through channels

independent of him.458


Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of

this traffic. The ladies of the Queen's household distinguished

themselves preeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of

the disgrace which they incurred falls on their mistress: for it

was solely on account of the relation in which they stood to her

that they were able to enrich themselves by so odious a trade;

and there can be no question that she might with a word or a look

have restrained them. But in truth she encouraged them by her

evil example, if not by her express approbation. She seems to

have been one of that large class of persons who bear adversity

better than prosperity. While her husband was a subject and an

exile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent danger of

being deprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her

manners conciliated the kindness even of those who most abhorred

her religion. But when her good fortune came her good nature

disappeared. The meek and affable Duchess turned out an

ungracious and haughty Queen.459 The misfortunes which she

subsequently endured have made her an object of some interest;

but that interest would be not a little heightened if it could be

shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or even

tried to save, one single victim from the most frightful

proscription that England has ever seen. Unhappily the only

request that she is known to have preferred touching the rebels

was that a hundred of those who were sentenced to transportation

might be given to her.460 The profit which she cleared on the

cargo, after making large allowance for those who died of hunger

and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated at less than a

thousand guineas. We cannot wonder that her attendants should

have imitated her unprincely greediness and her unwomanly

cruelty. They exacted a thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, a

merchant of Bridgewater; who had contributed to the military

chest of the rebel army. But the prey on which they pounced most

eagerly was one which it might have been thought that even the

most ungentle natures would have spared. Already some of the

girls who had presented the standard to Monmouth at Taunton had

cruelly expiated their offence. One of them had been thrown into

prison where an infectious malady was raging. She had sickened

and died there. Another had presented herself at the bar before

Jeffreys to beg for mercy. "Take her, gaoler," vociferated the

Judge, with one of those frowns which had often struck terror

into stouter hearts than hers. She burst into tears, drew her

hood over her face, followed the gaoler out of the court, fell

ill of fright, and in a few hours was a corpse. Most of the young

ladies, however, who had walked in the procession were still

alive. Some of them were under ten years of age. All had acted

under