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

Exclusion Bill to the bar of the Lords. The court was

therefore bent on throwing him out by fair or foul means. The

Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys himself came down into

Buckinghamshire, for the purpose of assisting a gentleman named

Hacket, who stood on the high Tory interest. A stratagem was

devised which, it was thought, could not fail of success. It was

given out that the polling would take place at Ailesbury; and

Wharton, whose skill in all the arts of electioneering was

unrivalled, made his arrangements on that supposition. At a

moment's warning the Sheriff adjourned the poll to Newport

Pagnell. Wharton and his friends hurried thither, and found that

Hacket, who was in the secret, had already secured every inn and

lodging. The Whig freeholders were compelled to tie their horses

to the hedges, and to sleep under the open sky in the meadows

which surround the little town. It was with the greatest

difficulty that refreshments could be procured at such short

notice for so large a number of men and beasts, though Wharton,

who was utterly regardless of money when his ambition and party

spirit were roused, disbursed fifteen hundred pounds in one day,

an immense outlay for those times. Injustice seems, however, to

have animated the courage of the stouthearted yeomen of Bucks,

the sons of the constituents of John Hampden. Not only was

Wharton at the head of the poll; but he was able to spare his

second votes to a man of moderate opinions, and to throw out the

Chief Justice's candidate.261


In Cheshire the contest lasted six days. The Whigs polled about

seventeen hundred votes, the Tories about two thousand. The

common people were vehement on the Whig side, raised the cry of

"Down with the Bishops," insulted the clergy in the streets of

Chester, knocked down one gentleman of the Tory party, broke the

windows and beat the constables. The militia was called out to

quell the riot, and was kept assembled, in order to protect the

festivities of the conquerors. When the poll closed, a salute of

five great guns from the castle proclaimed the triumph of the

Church and the Crown to the surrounding country. The bells rang.

The newly elected members went in state to the City Cross,

accompanied by a band of music, and by a long train of knights

and squires. The procession, as it marched, sang "Joy to Great

Caesar," a loyal ode, which had lately been written by Durfey,

and which, though like all Durfey's writings, utterly

contemptible, was, at that time, almost as popular as

Lillibullero became a few years later.262 Round the Cross the

trainbands were drawn up in order: a bonfire was lighted: the

Exclusion Bill was burned: and the health of King James was drunk

with loud acclamations. The following day was Sunday. In the

morning the militia lined the streets leading to the Cathedral.

The two knights of the shire were escorted with great pomp to

their choir by the magistracy of the city, heard the Dean preach

a sermon, probably on the duty of passive obedience, and were

afterwards feasted by the Mayor.263


In Northumberland the triumph of Sir John Fenwick, a courtier

whose name afterwards obtained a melancholy celebrity, was

attended by circumstances which excited interest in London, and

which were thought not unworthy of being mentioned in the

despatches of foreign ministers. Newcastle was lighted up with

great piles of coal. The steeples sent forth a joyous peal. A

copy of the Exclusion Bill, and a black box, resembling that

which, according to the popular fable, contained the contract

between Charles the Second and Lucy Walters, were publicly

committed to the flames, with loud acclamations.264


The general result of the elections exceeded the most sanguine

expectations of the court. James found with delight that it would

be unnecessary for him to expend a farthing in buying votes. He

Said that, with the exception of about forty members, the House

of Commons was just such as he should himself have named.265 And

this House of Commons it was in his power, as the law then stood,

to keep to the end of his reign.


Secure of parliamentary support, be might now indulge in the

luxury of revenge. His nature was not placable; and, while still

a subject, he had suffered some injuries and indignities which

might move even a placable nature to fierce and lasting

resentment. One set of men in particular had, with a baseness and

cruelty beyond all example and all description, attacked his

honour and his life, the witnesses of the plot. He may well be

excused for hating them; since, even at this day, the mention of

their names excites the disgust and horror of all sects and

parties.


Some of these wretches were already beyond the reach of human

justice. Bedloe had died in his wickedness, without one sign of

remorse or shame.266 Dugdale had followed, driven mad, men said,

by the Furies of an evil conscience, and with loud shrieks

imploring those who stood round his bed to take away Lord

Stafford.267 Carstairs, too, was gone. His end had been all

horror and despair; and, with his last breath, he had told his

attendants to throw him into a ditch like a dog, for that he was

not fit to sleep in a Christian burial ground.268 But Oates and

Dangerfield were still within the reach of the stern prince whom

they had wronged. James, a short time before his accession, had

instituted a civil suit against Oates for defamatory words; and a

jury had given damages to the enormous amount of a hundred

thousand pounds.269 The defendant had been taken in execution,

and was lying in prison as a debtor, without hope of release. Two

bills of indictment against him for perjury had been found by the

grand jury of Middlesex, a few weeks before the death of Charles.

Soon after the close of the elections the trial came on.


Among the upper and middle classes Oates had few friends left.

The most respectable Whigs were now convinced that, even if his

narrative had some foundation in fact, he had erected on that

foundation a vast superstructure of romance. A considerable

number of low fanatics, however, still regarded him as a public

benefactor. These people well knew that, if he were convicted,

his sentence would be one of extreme severity, and were therefore

indefatigable in their endeavours to manage an escape. Though he

was as yet in confinement only for debt, he was put into irons by

the authorities of the King's Bench prison; and even so he was

with difficulty kept in safe custody. The mastiff that guarded

his door was poisoned; and, on the very night preceding the

trial, a ladder of ropes was introduced into the cell.


On the day in which Titus was brought to the bar, Westminster

Hall was crowded with spectators, among whom were many Roman

Catholics, eager to see the misery and humiliation of their

persecutor.270 A few years earlier his short neck, his legs

uneven, the vulgar said, as those of a badger, his forehead low

as that of a baboon, his purple cheeks, and his monstrous length

of chin, had been familiar to all who frequented the courts of

law. He had then been the idol of the nation. Wherever he had

appeared, men had uncovered their heads to him. The lives and

estates of the magnates of the realm had been at his mercy. Times

had now changed; and many, who had formerly regarded him as the

deliverer of his country, shuddered at the sight of those hideous

features on which villany seemed to be written by the hand of

God.271


It was proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that this man had

by false testimony deliberately murdered several guiltless

persons. He called in vain on the most eminent members of the

Parliaments which had rewarded and extolled him to give evidence

in his favour. Some of those whom he had summoned absented

themselves. None of them said anything tending to his

vindication. One of them, the Earl of Huntingdon, bitterly

reproached him with having deceived the Houses and drawn on them

the guilt of shedding innocent blood. The Judges browbeat and

reviled the prisoner with an intemperance which, even in the most

atrocious cases, ill becomes the judicial character. He betrayed,

however, no sign of fear or of shame, and faced the storm of

invective which burst upon him from bar, bench, and witness box,

with the insolence of despair. He was convicted on both

indictments. His offence, though, in a moral light, murder of the

most aggravated kind, was, in the eye of the law, merely a

misdemeanour. The tribunal, however, was desirous to make his

punishment more severe than that of felons or traitors, and not

merely to put him to death, but to put him to death by frightful

torments. He was sentenced to be stripped of his clerical habit,

to be pilloried in Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall

with an inscription declaring his infamy over his head, to be

pilloried again in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped

from Aldgate to Newgate, and, after an interval of two days, to

be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. If, against all probability,

he should happen to survive this horrible infliction, he was to

be kept close prisoner during life. Five times every year he was

to be brought forth from his dungeon and exposed on the pillory

in different parts of the capital.272 This rigorous sentence was

rigorously executed. On the day on which Oates was pilloried in

Palace Yard he was mercilessly pelted and ran some risk of being

pulled in pieces.273 But in the City his partisans mustered in

great force, raised a riot, and upset the pillory.274 They were,

however, unable to rescue their favourite. It was supposed that

he would try to escape the horrible doom which awaited him by

swallowing poison. All that he ate and drank was therefore

carefully inspected. On the following morning he was brought

forth to undergo his first flogging. At an early hour an

innumerable multitude filled all the streets from Aldgate to the

Old Bailey. The hangman laid on the lash with such unusual

severity as showed that he had received special instructions. The

blood ran down in rivulets. For a time the criminal showed a

strange constancy: but at last his stubborn fortitude gave way.

His bellowings were frightful to hear. He swooned several times;

but the scourge still continued to descend. When he was unbound,

it seemed that he had borne as much as the human frame can bear

without dissolution. James was entreated to remit the second

flogging. His answer was short and clear: "He shall go through

with it, if he has breath in his body." An attempt was