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

This speech has often been cited to prove that

James was not so vindictive as he had been called by his enemies.

It seems rather to prove that he by no means deserved the praises

which have been bestowed on his sincerity by his friends.228


Ormond was politely informed that his services were no longer

needed in Ireland, and was invited to repair to Whitehall, and to

perform the functions of Lord Steward. He dutifully submitted,

but did not affect to deny that the new arrangement wounded his

feelings deeply. On the eve of his departure he gave a

magnificent banquet at Kilmainham Hospital, then just completed,

to the officers of the garrison of Dublin. After dinner he rose,

filled a goblet to the brim with wine, and, holding it up, asked

whether he had spilt one drop. "No, gentlemen; whatever the

courtiers may say, I am not yet sunk into dotage. My hand does

not fail me yet: and my hand is not steadier than my heart. To

the health of King James!" Such was the last farewell of Ormond

to Ireland. He left the administration in the hands of Lords

Justices, and repaired to London, where he was received with

unusual marks of public respect. Many persons of rank went forth

to meet him on the road. A long train of eguipages followed him

into Saint James's Square, where his mansion stood; and the

Square was thronged by a multitude which greeted him with loud

acclamations.229


The Great Seal was left in Guildford's custody; but a marked

indignity was at the same time offered to him. It was determined

that another lawyer of more vigour and audacity should be called

to assist in the administration. The person selected was Sir

George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. The

depravity of this man has passed into a proverb. Both the great

English parties have attacked his memory with emulous violence:

for the Whigs considered him as their most barbarous enemy; and

the Tories found it convenient to throw on him the blame of all

the crimes which had sullied their triumph. A diligent and candid

enquiry will show that some frightful stories which have been

told concerning him are false or exaggerated. Yet the

dispassionate historian will be able to make very little

deduction from the vast mass of infamy with which the memory of

the wicked judge has been loaded.


He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but constitutionally

prone to insolence and to the angry passions. When just emerging

from boyhood he had risen into practice at the Old Bailey bar, a

bar where advocates have always used a license of tongue unknown

in Westminster Hall. Here, during many years his chief business

was to examine and crossexamine the most hardened miscreants of a

great capital. Daily conflicts with prostitutes and thieves

called out and exercised his powers so effectually that he became

the most consummate bully ever known in his profession.

Tenderness for others and respect for himself were feelings alike

unknown to him. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric

in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of

maledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his

vocabulary could hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or

the beargarden. His countenance and his voice must always have

been unamiable. But these natural advantages,-for such he seems

to have thought them,-he had improved to such a degree that

there were few who, in his paroxysms of rage, could see or hear

him without emotion. Impudence and ferocity sate upon his brow.

The glare of his eyes had a fascination for the unhappy victim on

whom they were fixed. Yet his brow and his eye were less terrible

than the savage lines of his mouth. His yell of fury, as was said

by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder of the

judgment day. These qualifications he carried, while still a

young man, from the bar to the bench. He early became Common

Serjeant, and then Recorder of London. As a judge at the City

sessions he exhibited the same propensities which afterwards, in

a higher post, gained for him an unenviable immortality. Already

might be remarked in him the most odious vice which is incident

to human nature, a delight in misery merely as misery. There was

a fiendish exultation in the way in which he pronounced sentence

on offenders. Their weeping and imploring seemed to titillate him

voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits by dilating

with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what they were

to suffer. Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an

unlucky adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, "Hangman,"

he would exclaim, "I charge you to pay particular attention to

this lady! Scourge her soundly man! Scourge her till the blood

runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to strip in!

See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly!"230 He was hardly

less facetious when he passed judgment on poor Lodowick

Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied himself a prophet.

"Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy,

easy, easy punishment!" One part of this easy punishment was the

pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with

brickbats.231


By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to that

temper which tyrants require in their worst implements. He had

hitherto looked for professional advancement to the corporation

of London. He had therefore professed himself a Roundhead, and

had always appeared to be in a higher state of exhilaration when

he explained to Popish priests that they were to be cut down

alive, and were to see their own bowels burned, than when he

passed ordinary sentences of death. But, as soon as he had got

all that the city could give, he made haste to sell his forehead

of brass and his tongue of venom to the Court. Chiffinch, who was

accustomed to act as broker in infamous contracts of more than

one kind, lent his aid. He had conducted many amorous and many

political intrigues; but he assuredly never rendered a more

scandalous service to his masters than when he introduced

Jeffreys to Whitehall. The renegade soon found a patron in the

obdurate and revengeful James, but was always regarded with scorn

and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they were, had no

affinity with insolence and cruelty. "That man," said the King,

"has no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than

ten carted street-walkers."232 Work was to be done, however,

which could be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was

sensible of shame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at which a

barrister thinks himself fortunate if he is employed to conduct

an important cause, was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench.


His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the

qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was

merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind.

But he had one of those happily constituted intellects which,

across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial

facts, go straight to the true point. Of his intellect, however,

he seldom had the full use. Even in civil causes his malevolent

and despotic temper perpetually disordered his judgment. To enter

his court was to enter the den of a wild beast, which none could

tame, and which was as likely to be roused to rage by caresses as

by attacks. He frequently poured forth on plaintiffs and

defendants, barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen,

torrents of frantic abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses. His

looks and tones had inspired terror when he was merely a young

advocate struggling into practice. Now that he was at the head of

the most formidable tribunal in the realm, there were few indeed

who did not tremble before him. Even when he was sober, his

violence was sufficiently frightful. But in general his reason

was overclouded and his evil passions stimulated by the fumes of

intoxication. His evenings were ordinarily given to revelry.

People who saw him only over his bottle would have supposed him

to be a man gross indeed, sottish, and addicted to low company

and low merriment, but social and goodhumoured. He was constantly

surrounded on such occasions by buffoons selected, for the most

part, from among the vilest pettifoggers who practiced before

him. These men bantered and abused each other for his

entertainment. He joined in their ribald talk, sang catches with

them, and, when his head grew hot, hugged and kissed them in an

ecstasy of drunken fondness. But though wine at first seemed to

soften his heart, the effect a few hours later was very

different. He often came to the judgment seat, having kept the

court waiting long, and yet having but half slept off his

debauch, his cheeks on fire, his eyes staring like those of a

maniac. When he was in this state, his boon companions of the

preceding night, if they were wise, kept out of his way: for the

recollection of the familiarity to which he had admitted them

inflamed his malignity; and he was sure to take every opportunity

of overwhelming them with execration and invective. Not the least

odious of his many odious peculiarities was the pleasure which he

took in publicly browbeating and mortifying those whom, in his

fits of maudlin tenderness, he had encouraged to presume on his

favour.


The services which the government had expected from him were

performed, not merely without flinching, but eagerly and

triumphantly. His first exploit was the judicial murder of

Algernon Sidney. What followed was in perfect harmony with this

beginning. Respectable Tories lamented the disgrace which the

barbarity and indecency of so great a functionary brought upon

the administration of justice. But the excesses which filled such

men with horror were titles to the esteem of James. Jeffreys,

therefore, very soon after the death of Charles, obtained a seat

in the cabinet and a peerage. This last honour was a signal mark

of royal approbation. For, since the judicial system of the realm

had been remodelled in the thirteenth century, no Chief Justice

had been a Lord of Parliament.233


Guildford now found himself superseded in all his political

functions, and restricted to his business as a judge in equity.

At Council he was treated by Jeffreys with marked incivility. The

whole legal patronage was in the hands of the Chief Justice; and

it was well known by the bar that the surest way to propitiate

the Chief Justice was to treat the Lord Keeper with disrespect.


James had not been many hours King when a dispute arose between

the two heads of the law. The customs had been settled on Charles

for life only, and