Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishment of their errors, though defeated, disheartened, and disorganized. did not yield without an effort. They were still numerous among the traders and artisans of the towns, and among the yeomanry and peasantry of the open country. In some districts, in Dorsetshire, for example, and in Somersetshire, they were the great majority of the population. In the remodelled boroughs they could do nothing; but, in every county where they had a chance, they struggled desperately. In Bedfordshire, which had lately been represented by the virtuous and unfortunate Russell, they were victorious on the show of hands, but were beaten at the poll.* In Essex they polled thirteen hundred votes to eighteen hundred. At the election for Northamptonshire the common people were so violent in their hostility to the court candidate, that a body of troops was drawn out in the market place of the county town, and was ordered to load with ball. The history of the contest for Buckinghamshire is still more remarkable. The Whig candidate, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity and by audacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always a respectable, part in the politics of several reigns. He had been one of those members of the House of Commons who had carried up the 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 inter ⚫ est. 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 pamphleteers have written on this subject. I will cite only one witness, a Churchman and a Tory. Elections," says Evelyn, "were thought to be very indecently carried on in most places. God give a better issue of it than some expect!" (May 10, 1685.) Again he says, "The truth is, there were many of the new members whose elections and returns were universally condemned." (May 22.) * From a newsletter in the library of the Royal Institution. Citters mentions the strength of the Whig party in Bedfordshire. + Bramston's Memoirs. Reflections on a Remonstrance and Protestation of all the good Protestants of this Kingdom, 1689; Dialogue between Two Friends. 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 odging. 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 diffi culty 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 stout-hearted 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.* 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 assem. bled, 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 newlyelected 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 Cæsar," 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 Lillebul. lero became a few years later.t 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 Sun * Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Marquess of Wharton, 1715. † See the Guardian, No. 67; an exquisite specimen of Addison's peculiar manner. It would be difficult to find in any other writer such an instance of benevolence delicately flavored with contempt. day. In the morning the militia lined the streets leading to the Cathedral. The two knights of the shire were escorted with great pomp to the 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.* 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 bonfires. 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.+ 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. 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, he might now indulge in the luxury of revenge. His nature was not placable; and, while still a subject, he had suffered some injuries and indig nities 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 a!! description, attacked his honor 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. Dugdale had followed to the grave, driven mad, men said, by the furies of an evil conscience, and with loud shrieks imploring those who stood round *The Observator, April 4, 1685. † Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors, April 18, 1685. Burnet, i. 626. A faithful accourt of the Sickness, Death, and Burial of Captain Bedlow, 1680; Narrative of Lord Chief Justice North. ais bed to take away Lord Stafford.* Carstairs, too, was gone. His en was 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.t 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. 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 scarcely a friend left. All intelligent 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 endeavors to manage an escape. Though 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 his trial, a ladder of ropes was introduced into his cell. On the day in which he 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. A few years earlier his short neck, his legs uneven 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 Smith's Intrigues of the Popish Plot, 1685. † Burnet, i. 439. See the proceedings in the Collection of State Trials. 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.* 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 favor. Some of those whom he had summoned absented themselves. None of them said any thing 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 misdemeanor. 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.+ 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. * There remain many pictures of Oates. The most striking de scriptions of his person are in North's Examen, 225, in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, and in a broadside entitled, A Hue and Cry after T. O. †The proceedings will be found at length in the Collection of State Trials. |