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

age and infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to make this

request. Jeffreys burst into a storm of rage. "Not a minute," he

cried, "to save his life. I can deal with saints as well as with

sinners. There stands Oates on one side of the pillory; and, if

Baxter stood on the other, the two greatest rogues in the kingdom

would stand together."


When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved

and honoured Baxter filled the court. At his side stood Doctor

William Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist

divines. Two Whig barristers of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop,

appeared for the defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his

address to the jury, when the Chief Justice broke forth:

"Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you. You are

the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue, a schismatical

knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the Liturgy. He would

have nothing but longwinded cant without book;" and then his

Lordship turned up his eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing

through his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's

style of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people,

thy dear people." Pollexfen gently reminded the court that his

late Majesty had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And

what ailed the old blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did

not take it?" His fury now rose almost to madness. He called

Baxter a dog, and swore that it would be no more than justice to

whip such a villain through the whole City.


Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. "You are

in all these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop," said the Judge.

"Gentlemen of the long robe ought to be ashamed to assist such

factious knaves." The advocate made another attempt to obtain a

hearing, but to no purpose. "If you do not know your duty," said

Jeffreys, "I will teach it you."


Wallop sate down; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word.

But the Chief Justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of

ribaldry and invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. "My

Lord," said the old man, "I have been much blamed by Dissenters

for speaking respectfully of Bishops." "Baxter for Bishops!"

cried the Judge, "that's a merry conceit indeed. I know what you

mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself, Kidderminster Bishops,

factious snivelling Presbyterians!" Again Baxter essayed to

speak, and again Jeffreys bellowed "Richard, Richard, dost thou

think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old

knave. Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every

book as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By the grace

of God, I'll look after thee. I see a great many of your

brotherhood waiting to know what will befall their mighty Don.

And there," he continued, fixing his savage eye on Bates, "there

is a Doctor of the party at your elbow. But, by the grace of God

Almighty, I will crush you all."


Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for the

defence made a last effort, and undertook to show that the words

of which complaint was made would not bear the construction put

on them by the information. With this view he began to read the

context. In a moment he was roared down. "You sha'n't turn the

court into a conventicle." The noise of weeping was heard from

some of those who surrounded Baxter. "Snivelling calves!" said

the Judge.


Witnesses to character were in attendance, and among them were

several clergymen of the Established Church. But the Chief

Justice would hear nothing. "Does your Lordship think," said

Baxter, "that any jury will convict a man on such a trial as

this?" "I warrant you, Mr. Baxter," said Jeffreys: "don't trouble

yourself about that." Jeffreys was right. The Sheriffs were the

tools of the government. The jurymen, selected by the Sheriffs

from among the fiercest zealots of the Tory party, conferred for

a moment, and returned a verdict of Guilty. "My Lord," said

Baxter, as he left the court, "there was once a Chief Justice who

would have treated me very differently." He alluded to his

learned and virtuous friend Sir Matthew Hale. "There is not an

honest man in England," answered Jeffreys, "but looks on thee as

a knave."280


The sentence was, for those times. a lenient one. What passed in

conference among the judges cannot be certainly known. It was

believed among the Nonconformists, and is highly probable, that

the Chief Justice was overruled by his three brethren. He

proposed, it is said, that Baxter should be whipped through

London at the cart's tail. The majority thought that an eminent

divine, who, a quarter of a century before, had been offered a

mitre, and who was now in his seventieth year, would be

sufficiently punished for a few sharp words by fine and

imprisonment.281


The manner in which Baxter was treated by a judge, who was a

member of the cabinet and a favourite of the Sovereign,

indicated, in a manner not to be mistaken, the feeling with which

the government at this time regarded the Protestant

Nonconformists. But already that feeling had been indicated by

still stronger and more terrible signs. The Parliament of

Scotland had met. James had purposely hastened the session of

this body, and had postponed the session of the English Houses,

in the hope that the example set at Edinburgh would produce a

good effect at Westminster. For the legislature of his northern

kingdom was as obsequious as those provincial Estates which Lewis

the Fourteenth still suffered to play at some of their ancient

functions in Britanny and Burgundy. None but an Episcopalian

could sit in the Scottish Parliament, or could even vote for a

member, and in Scotland an Episcopalian was always a Tory or a

timeserver. From an assembly thus constituted, little opposition

to the royal wishes was to he apprehended; and even the assembly

thus constituted could pass no law which had not been previously

approved by a committee of courtiers.


All that the government asked was readily granted. In a financial

point of view, indeed, the liberality of the Scottish Estates was

of little consequence. They gave, however, what their scanty

means permitted. They annexed in perpetuity to the crown the

duties which had been granted to the late King, and which in his

time had been estimated at forty thousand pounds sterling a year.

They also settled on James for life an additional annual income

of two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds Scots, equivalent to

eighteen thousand pounds sterling. The whole Sum which they were

able to bestow was about sixty thousand a year, little more than

what was poured into the English Exchequer every fortnight.282


Having little money to give, the Estates supplied the defect by

loyal professions and barbarous statutes. The King, in a letter

which was read to them at the opening of their session, called on

them in vehement language to provide new penal laws against the

refractory Presbyterians, and expressed his regret that business

made it impossible for him to propose such laws in person from

the throne. His commands were obeyed. A statute framed by his

ministers was promptly passed, a statute which stands forth even

among the statutes of that unhappy country at that unhappy

period, preeminent in atrocity. It was enacted, in few but

emphatic words, that whoever should preach in a conventicle under

a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as hearer, a

conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death and

confiscation of property.283


This law, passed at the King's instance by an assembly devoted to

his will, deserves especial notice. For he has been frequently

represented by ignorant writers as a prince rash, indeed, and

injudicious in his choice of means, but intent on one of the

noblest ends which a ruler can pursue, the establishment of

entire religious liberty. Nor can it be denied that some portions

of his life, when detached from the rest and superficially

considered, seem to warrant this favourable view of his

character.


While a subject he had been, during many years, a persecuted man;

and persecution had produced its usual effect on him. His mind,

dull and narrow as it was, had profited under that sharp

discipline. While he was excluded from the Court, from the

Admiralty, and from the Council, and was in danger of being also

excluded from the throne, only because he could not help

believing in transubstantiation and in the authority of the see

of Rome, he made such rapid progress in the doctrines of

toleration that he left Milton and Locke behind. What, he often

said, could be more unjust, than to visit speculations with

penalties which ought to be reserved for acts? What more

impolitic than to reject the services of good soldiers, seamen,

lawyers, diplomatists, financiers, because they hold unsound

opinions about the number of the sacraments or the pluripresence

of saints? He learned by rote those commonplaces which all sects

repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppression, and forget

so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed

his lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this

subject gave him credit for much more sense and much readier

elocution than he really possessed. His professions imposed on

some charitable persons, and perhaps imposed on himself. But his

zeal for the rights of conscience ended with the predominance of

the Whig party. When fortune changed, when he was no longer

afraid that others would persecute him, when he had it in his

power to persecute others, his real propensities began to show

themselves. He hated the Puritan sects with a manifold hatred,

theological and political, hereditary and personal. He regarded

them as the foes of Heaven, as the foes of all legitimate

authority in Church and State, as his great-grandmother's foes

and his grandfather's, his father's and his mother's, his

brother's and his own. He, who had complained so fondly of the

laws against Papists, now declared himself unable to conceive how

men could have the impudence to propose the repeal of the laws

against Puritans.284 He, whose favourite theme had been the

injustice of requiring civil functionaries to take religious

tests, established in Scotland, when he resided there as Viceroy,

the most rigorous religious test that has ever been known in the

empire.285 He, who had expressed just indignation when the

priests of his own faith were hanged and quartered, amused

himself with hearing Covenanters shriek and seeing them writhe

while their knees were beaten flat in the boots.286 In this mood

he became King; and he immediately demanded and obtained from the

obsequious Estates of