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

the orders of their schoolmistress, without knowing that

they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honour asked

the royal permission to wring money out of the parents of the

poor children; and the permission was granted. An order was sent

down to Taunton that all these little girls should be seized and

imprisoned. Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, the Tory member for

Bridgewater, was requested to undertake the office of exacting

the ransom. He was charged to declare in strong language that the

maids of honour would not endure delay, that they were determined

to prosecute to outlawry, unless a reasonable sum were

forthcoming, and that by a reasonable sum was meant seven

thousand pounds. Warre excused himself from taking any part in a

transaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested

William Penn to act for them; and Penn accepted the commission.

Yet it should seem that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity

which he had often shown about taking off his hat would not have

been altogether out of place on this occasion. He probably

silenced the remonstrances of his conscience by repeating to

himself that none of the money which he extorted would go into

his own pocket; that if he refused to be the agent of the ladies

they would find agents less humane; that by complying he should

increase his influence at the court, and that his influence at

the court had already enabled him, and still might enable him, to

render great services to his oppressed brethren. The maids of

honour were at last forced to content themselves with less than a

third part of what they had demanded.461


No English sovereign has ever given stronger proof of a cruel

nature than James the Second. Yet his cruelty was not more odious

than his mercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his

mercy and his cruelty were such that each reflects infamy on the

other. Our horror at the fate of the simple clowns, the young

lads, the delicate women, to whom he was inexorably severe, is

increased when we find to whom and for what considerations he

granted his pardon.


The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be guided

in selecting rebels for punishment is perfectly obvious. The

ringleaders, the men of rank, fortune, and education, whose power

and whose artifices have led the multitude into error, are the

proper objects of severity. The deluded populace, when once the

slaughter on the field of battle is over, can scarcely be treated

too leniently. This rule, so evidently agreeable to justice and

humanity, was not only not observed: it was inverted. While those

who ought to have been spared were slaughtered by hundreds, the

few who might with propriety have been left to the utmost rigour

of the law were spared. This eccentric clemency has perplexed

some writers, and has drawn forth ludicrous eulogies from others.

It was neither at all mysterious nor at all praiseworthy. It may

be distinctly traced in every case either to a sordid or to a

malignant motive, either to thirst for money or to thirst for

blood.


In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. His

parts and knowledge, the rank which he had inherited in the

state, and the high command which he had borne in the rebel army,

would have pointed him out to a just government as a much fitter

object of punishment than Alice Lisle, than William Hewling, than

any of the hundreds of ignorant peasants whose skulls and

quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. But Grey's estate was

large and was strictly entailed. He had only a life interest in

his property; and he could forfeit no more interest than he had.

If he died, his lands at once devolved on the next heir. If he

were pardoned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was

therefore suffered to redeem himself by giving a bond for forty

thousand pounds to the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other

courtiers.462


Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the same rank

which had been held by Grey in the West of England. That Cochrane

should be forgiven by a prince vindictive beyond all example,

seemed incredible. But Cochrane was the younger son of a rich

family; it was therefore only by sparing him that money could be

made out of him. His father, Lord Dundonald, offered a bribe of

five thousand pounds to the priests of the royal household; and a

pardon was granted.463


Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Commissary

to the rebel army, and who had inflamed the ignorant populace of

Somersetshire by vehement harangues in which James had been

described as an incendiary and a poisoner, was admitted to mercy.

For Storey was able to give important assistance to Jeffreys in

wringing fifteen thousand pounds out of Prideaux.464


None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade,

Goodenough, and Ferguson. These three chiefs of the rebellion had

fled together from the field of Sedgemoor, and had reached the

coast in safety. But they had found a frigate cruising near the

spot where they had hoped to embark. They had then separated.

Wade and Goodenough were soon discovered and brought up to

London. Deeply as they had been implicated in the Rye House plot,

conspicuous as they had been among the chiefs of the Western

insurrection, they were suffered to live, because they had it in

their power to give information which enabled the King to

slaughter and plunder some persons whom he hated, but to whom he

had never yet been able to bring home any crime.465


How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all the

enemies of the government he was, without doubt, the most deeply

criminal. He was the original author of the plot for

assassinating the royal brothers. He had written that Declaration

which, for insolence, malignity, and mendacity, stands unrivalled

even among the libels of those stormy times. He had instigated

Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and then to usurp the

crown. It was reasonable to expect that a strict search would be

made for the archtraitor, as he was often called; and such a

search a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely

have eluded. It was confidently reported in the coffee houses of

London that Ferguson was taken, and this report found credit with

men who had excellent opportunities of knowing the truth. The

next thing that was heard of him was that he was safe on the

Continent. It was strongly suspected that he had been in constant

communication with the government against which he was constantly

plotting, that he had, while urging his associates to every

excess of rashness sent to Whitehall just so much information

about their proceedings as might suffice to save his own neck,

and that therefore orders had been given to let him escape.466


And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his

reward. He arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving carnage,

mourning, and terror behind him. The hatred with which he was

regarded by the people of Somersetshire has no parallel in our

history. It was not to be quenched by time or by political

changes, was long transmitted from generation to generation, and

raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. When he had been

many years dead, when his name and title were extinct, his

granddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret, travelling along the

western road, was insulted by the populace, and found that she

could not safely venture herself among the descendants of those

who had witnessed the Bloody Assizes.467


But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge

after his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with

interest and delight. In his drawingroom and at his table he had

frequently talked of the havoc which was making among his

disaffected subjects with a glee at which the foreign ministers

stood aghast. With his own hand he had penned accounts of what he

facetiously called his Lord Chief Justice's campaign in the West.

Some hundreds of rebels, His Majesty wrote to the Hague, had been

condemned. Some of them had been hanged: more should be hanged:

and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It was to no

purpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people,

and described with pathetic eloquence the frightful state of his

diocese. He complained that it was impossible to walk along the

highways without seeing some terrible spectacle, and that the

whole air of Somersetshire was tainted with death. The King read,

and remained, according to the saying of Churchill, hard as the

marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. At Windsor the great seal of

England was put into the hands of Jeffreys and in the next London

Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour was the reward

of the many eminent and faithful services which he had rendered

to the crown.468


At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror

of the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King

attempted to vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each

other. Jeffreys, in the Tower, protested that, in his utmost

cruelty, he had not gone beyond his master's express orders, nay,

that he had fallen short of them. James, at Saint Germain's would

willingly have had it believed that his own inclinations had been

on the side of clemency, and that unmerited obloquy had been

brought on him by the violence of his minister. But neither of

these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of the

other. The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand

to be false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it be true in

fact, is utterly worthless.


The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was

about to begin. The government was peculiarly desirous to find

victims among the great Whig merchants of the City. They had, in

the last reign, been a formidable part of the strength of the

opposition. They were wealthy; and their wealth was not, like

that of many noblemen and country gentlemen, protected by entail

against forfeiture. In the case of Grey and of men situated like

him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty and rapacity at once;

but a rich trader might be both hanged and plundered. The

commercial grandees, however, though in general hostile to Popery

and to arbitrary power, had yet been too scrupulous or too timid

to incur the guilt of high treason. One of the most considerable

among them was Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the

old charter of the City, and had filled the