СНАР. chains at his park gate.* In such spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told over the cider by the Christmas fires of the farmers of Somersetshire. Within the last forty years, peasants, in some districts, well knew the accursed spots, and passed them unwillingly after sunset.† Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. It is certain that the number of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very much exceeded the number of all the political offenders who have been put to death in our island since the Revolution. The rebellions of 1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more formidable aspect than that which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715, or after the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of clemency. Yet all the executions of 1715 and 1745 added together will appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which disgraced the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on this circuit was three hundred and twenty. ‡ Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had been generally odious. But they were, for the most part, men of blameless life, and of high religious profession. They were regarded by themselves, and by a large proportion of their neighbours, not as wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with blood the truth of the Protestant religion. Very few of the convicts professed any repentance for what they had done. Many, animated by the old Puritan spirit, met death, not merely with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain that the ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt of rebellion and on the importance of priestly absolution. The claim of the King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of the clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved the bitter scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of them composed hymns in the dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang while they were undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Zion and to make war on Babylon, * Locke's Western Rebellion. This I can attest from my own childish recollections. Lord Lonsdale says seven hundred; Burnet six hundred. I have followed the list which the Judges sent to the Treasury, and which may still be seen there in the letter book of 1685. See the Bloody Assizes; Locke's Western Rebellion; the Panegyric on Lord Jeffreys; Burnet, i. 648.; Eachard, iii. 775.; Oldmixon, 705. V. would set up his standard, would blow his trumpet, and would CHAP. requite his foes tenfold for all the evil which had been inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noted Hown: their farewell letters were kept as treasures; and, in this way, with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious supplement to the Marian martyrology.* A few cases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, Abraham a retired officer of the parliamentary army, and one of those Holmes. zealots who would own no king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor. His arm had been frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle; and, as no surgeon was at hand, the stout old soldier amputated it himself. He was carried up to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make no submission. "I am an aged man," he said; "and what remains to me of life is not worth a falsehood or a baseness. I have always been a republican; and I am so still." He was sent back to the West and hanged. The people remarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to the gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way sword in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals. "Stop, gentlemen,” he cried: "let me go on foot. There is more in this than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not see." He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a smile, prayed fervently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology for mounting so awkwardly. "You see," he said, "I have but one arm."† tiscombe. Not less courageously died Christopher Battiscombe, a young ChristoTemplar of good family and fortune, who, at Dorchester, an pher Batagreeable provincial town proud of its taste and refinement, was regarded by all as the model of a fine gentleman. Great interest was made to save him. It was believed through the West of England that he was engaged to a young lady of gentle blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at the feet of Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from him with a jest so hideous that to repeat it *Some of the prayers, exhortations, and hymns of the sufferers will be found in the Bloody Assizes. Bloody Assizes; Locke's Western Rebellion; Lord Lonsdale's Memoirs; Account of the Battle of Sedgemoor in CHAP. V. The Hewlings. would be an offence against decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and courageously.* A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant brothers, William and Benjamin Hewling. They were young, handsome, accomplished, and well connected. Their maternal grandfather was named Kiffin. He was one of the first merchants in London, and was generally considered as the head of the Baptists. The Chief Justice behaved to William Hewling on the trial with characteristic brutality. "Yon have a grandfather," he said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you." The poor lad, who was only nineteen, suffered death with so much meekness and fortitude, that an officer of the army who attended the execution, and who had made himself remarkable by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, and said, "I do not believe that my Lord Chief Justice himself could be proof against this." Hopes were entertained that Benjamin would be pardoned. One victim of tender years was surely enough for one house to furnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pretended to be, inclined to lenity. The truth was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations, and whom, therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated intercessors, pleaded strongly for the afflicted family. Time was allowed for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to Whitehall with a petition. Many courtiers wished her success; and Churchill, among whose numerous faults cruelty had no place, obtained admittance for her. "I wish well to your suit with all my heart," he said, as they stood together in the antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes. This marble," and he laid his hand on the chimneypiece," is not harder than the King." The prediction proved true. James was inexorable. Benjamin Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst lamentations in which the soldiers who kept guard round the gallows could not refrain from joining.t Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable to bring home the charge of high treason Bloody Assizes; Locke's Western As to the Hewlings, I have followed respondence, vol. ii. Appendix. The accounts in Locke's Western Rebellion and in the Panegyric on Jeffreys are full of errors. Great part of the account in the Bloody Assizes was written by Kiffin, and agrees word for word with his Memoirs. "You are a دو CHAP. Tutchin. convicted of misdemeanours, and were sentenced to ring not less terrible than that which Oates had underA woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered If the women in the districts where the war had raged, ondemned to be whipped through all the market towns › county of Dorset. She suffered part of her punishment e Jeffreys returned to London; but, when he was no longer e West, the gaolers, with the humane connivance of the strates, took on themselves the responsibility of sparing ny further torture. A still more frightful sentence was ed on a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious PunishIs. He was, as usual, interrupted in his defence by ment of Idry and scurrility from the judgment seat. 1; and all your family have been rebels since Adam. y tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses with you.' sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven rs, and should, during that period, be flogged through ry market town in Dorsetshire every year. The women the galleries burst into tears. The clerk of the arraigns od up in great disorder. "My Lord," said he, "the soner is very young. There are many market towns in r county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortght for seven years." "If he is a young man," said Jeffreys, he is an old rogue. Ladies, you do not know the villain as ell as I do. The punishment is not half bad enough for him. l the interest in England shall not alter it." Tutchin in s despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity, that he ight be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at this onjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it emed highly improbable that the sentence would ever be xecuted, the Chief Justice consented to remit it, in return or a bribe which reduced the prisoner to poverty. The temper f Tutchin, not originally very mild, was exasperated to madess by what he had undergone. He lived to be known as one of the most acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the House of Stuart and of the Tory party.* trans ported. The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was Rebels ight hundred and forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffered death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts should be * See Tutchin's account of his own case in the Bloody Assizes. СНАР. V. carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be emanci- There The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who are now carried from Congo to Brazil. It appears from the best information which is at present accessible that more than one fifth of those who were shipped were flung to the sharks before the end of the voyage. The human cargoes were stowed close in the holds of small vessels. So little space was allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented by unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on one another. They were never suffered to go on deck. The hatchway was constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses. In the dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and death. Of ninety-nine convicts who were carried out in one vessel, twenty-two died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage was performed with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived at their house of bondage were mere skeletons. During some weeks coarse biscuit and fetid water had been doled out to them in such scanty measure that any one of them could easily have consumed the ration which was assigned to five. They were, therefore, in such a state that the * Sunderland to Jeffreys, Sept. 14. 1685; Jeffreys to the King, Sept. 19. 1685, in the State Paper Office. |