He never regained his cheerfulness, and at length died by his own hand.*

That Delamere, if he had needed the royal mercy, would have found it, is not very probable. It is certain that every advantage, which the letter of the law gave to the government, was used against him without scruple or shame. He was in a

different situation from that in which Stamford stood. The indictment against Stamford had been removed into the House of Lords during the session of parliament, and therefore could not be prosecuted till that House should reassemble. All the peers would then have voices, and would be judges as well of law as of fact. But the bill against Delamere was not found till after the prorogation.† He was, therefore, within the jurisdiction of the Court of the Lord High Steward. This court, to which belongs, during a recess of parliament, the cognizance of treasons and felonies committed by temporal peers, was then so constituted that no prisoner charged with a political offence could expect an impartial trial. The crown named a lord high steward. The lord high steward named, at his discretion, certain peers to sit on their accused brother. The number to be summoned was indefinite. No challenge was allowed. A simple majority, provided that it consisted of twelve, was sufficient to convict. The high steward was sole judge of the law; and the lords triers formed merely a jury to pronounce on the question of fact. Jeffreys was appointed nigh steward. He selected thirty triers; and the selection was characteristic of the man and of the times. All the thirty were, in politics, vehemently opposed to the prisoner. Fifteen of them were colonels of regiments, and might be removed from their lucrative commands at the pleasure of the king. Among the remaining fifteen were the lord treasurer, the principal secretary of state, the steward of the household, the comptroller of the household, the captain of the band of gentlemen pensioners, the queen's chamberlain, and other persons who were bound by strong ties of interest to the court. Nevertheless, Delamere had some great advantages over the humbler culprits who had been arraigned at the Old Bailey. There the jurymen, bitter partisans, taken for a single day by courtly sheriffs from the mass of society, and speedily sent back

* The trial in the Collection of State Trials; Bramston's Memoirs, Burnet, i. 647; Lords' Journals, Dec. 20, 1689.

† Lords' Journals, Nov. 9, 10, 16, 1685.

to mingle with that mass, were under no restraint of shame, and, being little accustomed to weigh evidence, followed with. out scruple the directions of the bench. But in the High Steward's Court every trier was a man of some experience in grave affairs. Every trier filled a considerable space in the public eye. Every trier, beginning from the lowest, had to rise separately, and to give in his verdict, on his honor, before a great concourse. That verdict, accompanied with his name, would go to every part of the world, and would live in history. Moreover, though the selected nobles were all Tories, and almost all placemen, many of them had begun to look with uneasiness on the king's proceedings, and to doubt whether the case of Delamere might not soon be their own.

Jeffreys conducted himself, as was his wont, insolently and unjustly. He had, indeed, an old grudge to stimulate his zeal. He had been chief justice of Chester when Delamere, then Mr. Booth, represented that county in parliament. Booth had bitterly complained to the Commons that the dearest interests of his constituents were intrusted to a drunken jackpudding.* The revengeful judge was now not ashamed to resort to artifices which even in an advocate would have been culpable. He reminded the lords triers, in very significant language, that Delamere had, in parliament, objected to the bill for attainting Monmouth a fact which was not, and could not be, in evidence. But it was not in the power of Jeffreys to overawe a synod of peers, as he had been in the habit of overawing common juries. The evidence for the crown would probably have been thought amply sufficient on the western circuit, or at the city sessions, but could not, for a moment, impose on such men as Rochester, Godolphin, and Churchill; nor were they, with all their faults, depraved enough to condemn a man to death against the plainest rules of justice. Grey, Wade, and Goodenough, were produced, but could only repeat what they had heard said by Monmouth and by Wildman's emissaries. The principal witness for the prosecution, a miscreant named Saxton, who had been concerned in the rebellion, and was now laboring to earn his pardon by swearing against all who were obnoxious to the government, was proved by overwhelming evidence to have told a series of falsehoods. All the triers, from Churchill, who, as junior baron, spoke first, up to

Speech on the Corruption of the Judges in Lord Delamero's arks, 1694

the treasurer, pronounced, on their honor, that Delamere was not guilty. The gravity and pomp of the whole proceeding made a deep impression even on the Nuncio, accustomed as he was to the ceremonies of Rome - ceremonies which, in solemnity and splendor, exceed all that the rest of the world can show.* The king, who was present, and was unable to complain of a decision evidently just, went into a rage with Saxton, and vowed that the wretch should first be pilloried before Westminster Hall for perjury, and then sent down to the west to be hanged, drawn, and quartered for treason.†

The public joy at the acquittal of Delamere was great. The reign of terror was over. The innocent began to breathe freely, and false accusers to tremble. One letter, written on this occasion, is scarcely to be read without tears. The widow of Russell, in her retirement, learned the good news with mingled feelings. "I do bless God," she wrote, "that he has caused some stop to be put to the shedding of blood in this poor land. Yet when I should rejoice with them that do rejoice, I seek a corner to weep in. I find I am capable of no more gladness; but every new circumstance, the very com paring my night of sorrow, after such a day, with theirs of joy, does, from a reflection of one kind or another, rack my uneasy mind. Though I am far from wishing the close of theirs like mine, yet I cannot refrain giving some time to lament mine was not like theirs."‡

And now the tide was on the turn. The death of Stafford, witnessed with signs of tenderness and remorse by the populace to whose rage he was sacrificed, marks the close of one proscription. The acquittal of Delamere marks the close of another. The crimes which had disgraced the stormy tribuneship of Shaftesbury had been fearfully expiated. The blood of innocent Papists had been avenged more than tenfold by thre blood of zealous Protestants. Another great reaction had commenced. Factions were fast taking new forms. allies were separating. Old enemies were uniting. Discontent was spreading fast through all the ranks of the party lately dominant. A hope, still indeed faint and indefinite, of victory

Old

* Fu una funzione piena di gravità, di ordine, e di gran speciosità. Adda, Jan. 2, 1686.

The trial is in the Collection of State Trials. Leeuwen, Jan. 1, 19, 1686.

Lady Russell to Dr. Fitzwilliam, Jan. 15, 1686.

and revenge, animated the party which had lately seemed to be extinct. Amidst such circumstances the eventful and troubled year 1685 terminated, and the year 1686 began.

The prorogation had relieved the king from the gentle remonstrances of the Houses; but he had still to listen to remonstrances, similar in effect, though uttered in a tone even more cautious and subdued. Some men who had hitherto served him but too strenuously for their own fame and for the public welfare had begun to feel painful misgivings, and occasionally ventured to hint a small part of what they felt.

During many years the zeal of the English Tory for hereditary monarchy and his zeal for the established religion had grown up together, and had strengthened each other. It had never occurred to him that the two sentiments, which seemed inseparable, and even identical, might one day be found to be not only distinct but incompatible. From the commencement of the strife between the Stuarts and the Commons, the cause of the crown and the cause of the hierarchy had, to all appearance, been one. Charles the First was regarded by the Church as her martyr. If Charles the Second had plotted against her, he had plotted in secret. In public he had ever professed himself her grateful and devoted son, had knelt at her altars, and, in spite of his loose morals, had succeeded in persuading the great body of her adherents that he felt a sincere preference for her. Whatever conflicts, therefore, the honest Cavalier might have had to maintain against Whigs and Roundheads, he had at least been hitherto undisturbed by conflict in his own mind. He had seen the path of duty plain before him. Through good and evil he was to be true to Church and King. But, if those two august and venerable powers, which had hitherto seemed to be so closely connected that those who were true to one could not be false to the other, should be divided by a deadly enmity, what course was the orthodox royalist to take? What situation could be more trying than that in which he would be placed, distracted between two duties equally sacred, between two affections equally ardent? How was he to give to Cæsar all that was Cæsar's, and yet to withhold from God no part of what was God's? None who felt thus could have watched, without deep concern and gloomy forebodings, the dispute between the king and the parliament on the subject of the test. If James could even now be induced to reconsider his course, to let the Houses reassem. ble, and to comply with their wishes, all might yet be well.

Such were the sentiments of the king's two kinsmen, the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester. The power and favor of these noblemen seemed to be great indeed. The younger brother was lord treasurer and prime minister; and the elder, after holding the privy seal during some months, had been appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland. The venerable Ormond took the same side. Middleton and Preston, who, as managers of the House of Commons, had recently learned by proof how dear the established religion was to the loyal gentry of England, were also for moderate counsels.

At the very beginning of the new year these statesmen and the great party which they represented had to suffer a cruel mortification. That the late king had been at heart a Roman Catholic had been, during some months, suspected and whispered, but not formally announced. The disclosure, indeed, could not be made without great scandal. Charles had, times without number, declared himself a Protestant, and had been in the habit of receiving the Eucharist from the bishops of the Established Church. Those Protestants who had stood by him in his difficulties, and who still cherished an affectionate remembrance of him, must be filled with shame and indignation by learning that his whole life had been a lie, that, while he professed to belong to their communion, he had really regarded them as heretics, and that the demagogues who had represented him as a concealed Papist had been the only people who had formed a correct judgment of his character. Even Lewis understood enough of the state of public feeling in England to be aware that the divulging of the truth might do harm, and had, of his own accord, promised to keep the conversion of Charles strictly secret.* James, while his power was still new, had thought that on this point it was advisable to be cautious, and had not ventured to inter his brother with the rites of the Church of Rome. For a time, therefore, every man was at liberty to believe what he wished. The Papists claimed the deceased prince as their proselyte. The Whigs execrated him as a hypocrite and a renegade. The Tories regarded the report of his apostasy as a calumny which Papists and Whigs had, for very different reasons, a common interest in circulating. James now took a step which greatly discon certed the whole Anglican party. Two papers, in which were set forth very concisely the arguments ordinarily used by Ro

* Lewis to Barillon, Feb. 18, 168§.