CHAP. V. not more odious than his mercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his mercy and his cruelty were such that each reflects infamy on the other. Our horror at the fate of the simple clowns, the young lads, the delicate women, to whom he was inexorably severe, is increased when we find to whom and for what considerations he granted his pardon. The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be guided in selecting rebels for punishment is perfectly obvious. The ringleaders, the men of rank, fortune and education, those services had been declined. It is clear, therefore, that the Maids of Honour were desirous to have an agent of high station and character. And they were right. For the sum which they demanded was so large that no ordinary jobber could safely be entrusted with the care of their interests. As Sir Francis Warre excused himself from undertaking the negotiation, it became necessary for the Maids of Honour and their advisers to choose somebody who might supply his place; and they chose Penne. Which of the two Pennes, then, must have been their choice, George, a petty broker to whom a percentage on sixty-five pounds was an object, and whose highest ambition was to derive an infamous livelihood from cards and dice, or William, not inferior in social position to any commoner in the kingdom? Is it possible to believe that the ladies who, in January, employed the Duke of Somerset to procure for them an agent in the first rank of the English gentry, and who did not think an attorney, though occupying a respectable post in a respectable corporation, good enough for their purpose, would, in February, have resolved to trust everything to a fellow who was as much below Bird as Bird was below Warre? But, it is said, Sunderland's letter is dry and distant; and he never would have written in such a style to William Penn with whom he was on friendly terms. Can it be necessary for me to reply that the official communications which a Minister of State makes to his dearest friends and nearest relations are as cold and formal as those which he makes to strangers? Will it be contended that the General Wellesley, to whom the Marquis Wellesley, when Governor of India, addressed so many letters beginning with "Sir," and ending with "I have the honour to be your obedient servant," cannot possibly have been his Lordship's brother Arthur? But, it is said, Oldmixon tells a different story. According to him, a Popish lawyer named Brent, and a subordinate jobber, named Crane, were the agents in the matter of the Taunton girls. Now it is notorious that of all our historian Oldmixon is the least trustworthy. H most positive assertion would be of ne value when opposed to such evidence as is furnished by Sunderland's letter. But Oldmixon asserts nothing positively Not only does he not assert positively that Brent and Crane acted for the Maids of Honour; but he does not even assert positively that the Maids of Honour were at all concerned. He goes no further than "It was said," and "It was reported." It is plain, therefore, that he was very imperfectly informed. I do not think it impossible, however, that there may have been some foundation for the rumour which he mentions. We have seen that one busy lawyer, named Bird volunteered to look after the interest of the Maids of Honour, and that they were forced to tell him that they did not want his services. Other persons, and among them the two whom Oldmixon names, may have tried to thrust themselves into so lucrative a job, and may, by pretending to interest at Court, have succeeded in obtaining a little money from terrified families. But nothing can be more clear than that the authorised agent of the Maids of Honour was the Mr. Penne, to whom the Secretary of State wrote; and I firmly believe that Mr. Penne to have been William the Quaker. If it be said that it is incredible that so good a man would have been concerned in so bad an affair, I can only answer that this affair was very far indeed from being the worst in which he was concerned. For these reasons I leave the text, and shall leave it exactly as it originally stood. (1857.) CHAP. ose power and whose artifices have led the multitude into or, are the proper objects of severity. The deluded popuce, when once the slaughter on the field of battle is over, n scarcely be treated too leniently. This rule, so evidently reeable to justice and humanity, was not only not observed: was inverted. While those who ought to have been spared ere slaughtered by hundreds, the few who might with proiety have been left to the utmost rigour of the law were ared. This eccentric clemency has perplexed some writers, d has drawn forth ludicrous eulogies from others. It was ither at all mysterious, nor at all praiseworthy. It may be stinctly traced in every case either to a sordid or to a malignt motive, either to thirst for money or to thirst for blood. In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. Grey. is parts and knowledge, the rank which he had inherited the state, and the high command which he had borne in Le rebel army, would have pointed him out to a just governent as a much fitter object of punishment than Alice Lisle, an William Hewling, than any of the hundreds of ignorant easants whose skulls and quarters were exposed in Somertshire. But Grey's estate was large and was strictly eniled. He had only a life interest in his property; and he uld forfeit no more interest than he had. If he died, is lands at once devolved on the next heir. If he were paroned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was erefore suffered to redeem himself by giving a bond for forty Lousand pounds to the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums other courtiers.* Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the Cochrane. me rank which had been held by Grey in the West of Engnd. That Cochrane should be forgiven by a prince vinctive beyond all example, seemed incredible. But Cochrane is the younger son of a rich family; it was therefore only sparing him that money could be made out of him. His ther, Lord Dundonald, offered a bribe of five thousand unds to the priests of the royal household; and a pardon is granted.† Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Storey. mmissary to the rebel army, and who had inflamed the orant populace of Somersetshire by vehement harangues which James had been described as an incendiary and a 16. Burnet, i. 646., and Speaker Onslow's note; Clarendon to Rochester, May 8. V. CHAP. poisoner, was admitted to mercy. For Storey was able to give important assistance to Jeffreys in wringing fifteen thousand pounds out of Prideaux.* Wade, Good enough, son. None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson. These three chiefs of and Fergu- the rebellion had fled together from the field of Sedgemoor, and had reached the coast in safety. But they had found a frigate cruising near the spot where they had hoped to embark. They had then separated. Wade and Goodenough were soon discovered and brought up to London. Deeply as they had been implicated in the Rye House plot, conspicuous as they had been among the chiefs of the Western insurrection, they were suffered to live, because they had it in their power to give information which enabled the King to slaughter and plunder some persons whom he hated, but to whom he had never yet been able to bring home any crime.+ How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all the enemies of the government he was, without doubt, the most deeply criminal. He was the original author of the pl for assassinating the royal brothers. He had written that, Declaration which, for insolence, malignity, and mendacity, stands unrivalled even among the libels of those stormy times. He had instigated Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and then to usurp the crown. It was reasonable to expect that a strict search would be made for the archtraitor, as he was often called; and such a search a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely have eluded. It was confidently reported in the coffee houses of London that, Ferguson was taken; and this report found credit with men who had excellent opportunities of knowing the truth. The next thing that was heard of him was that he was safe on the Continent. It was strongly suspected that he had been in constant communication with the government against which he was constantly plotting, that he had, while urging his associates to every excess of rashness, sent to Whitehall just so much information about their proceedings as might suffice to save his own neck, and that therefore orders had beer given to let him escape.† *Calamy's Memoirs; Commons' Journals, December 26. 1690; Sunderland to Jeffreys, September 14. 1685; Privy Council Book, February 26. 1688. + Lansdowne MS. 1152.; Harl. MS. 6815.; London Gazette, July 20. 1685. Many writers have asserted, with out the slightest foundation, that pardon was granted to Ferguson James. Some have been so absurd to cite this imaginary pardon, which it were real, would prove only that F And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim s reward. He arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving rnage, mourning, and terror behind him. The hatred with hich he was regarded by the people of Somersetshire has no arallel in our history. It was not to be quenched by time or political changes, was long transmitted from generation to -neration, and raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. Then he had been many years dead, when his name and title ere extinct, his granddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret, avelling along the western road, was insulted by the popuce, and found that she could not safely venture herself mong the descendants of those who had witnessed the oody Assizes.* But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was judge after his master's own heart. James had watched e circuit with interest and delight. In his drawingroom d at his table he had frequently talked of the havoc which as making among his disaffected subjects with a glee at ich the foreign ministers stood aghast. With his own and he had penned accounts of what he facetiously called his ord Chief Justice's campaign in the West. Some hundreds rebels, His Majesty wrote to the Hague, had been conmned. Some of them had been hanged: more should be nged: and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It us to no purpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the sguided people, and described with pathetic eloquence the ghtful state of his diocese. He complained that it was possible to walk along the highways without seeing some rible spectacle, and that the whole air of Somersetshire s tainted with death. The King read, and remained, accordg to the saying of Churchill, hard as the marble chimneyeces of Whitehall. At Windsor the great seal of England son was a court spy, in proof of the gnanimity and benignity of the prince o beheaded Alice Lisle and burned zabeth Gaunt. Ferguson was not y not specially pardoned, but was exded by name from the general parI published in the following spring. ordon Gazette, March 15. 168.) as the public suspected, and as seems bable, indulgence was shown to him, vas indulgence of which James was, without reason, ashamed, and which s, as far as possible, kept secret. e reports which were current in ndon at the time are mentioned in the Observator, Aug. 1. 1685. Sir John Reresby, who ought to have been well informed, positively affirms that Ferguson was taken three days after the battle of Sedgemoor. But Sir John was certainly wrong as to the date, and may therefore have been wrong as to the whole story. From the London Gazette, and from Goodenough's confession (Lansdowne MS. 1152.), it is clear that, a fortnight after the battle, Ferguson had not been caught, and was supposed to be still lurking in England. Granger's Biographical History. СПАР. V. CHAP. Jeffreys made Lord Chancel lor. Trial and execution of Cornish. was put into the hands of Jeffreys, and in the next Londo Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour was the r ward of the many eminent and faithful services which he had rendered to the crown.* At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror of the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King attempted to vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other. Jeffreys, in the Tower, protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond his master's express orders, nay, that he had fallen short of them. James, at Saint Germain's, would willingly have had it be lieved that his own inclinations had been on the side of clemency, and that unmerited obloquy had been brought on hin by the violence of his minister. But neither of these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of the other. The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand to be false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it b true in fact, is utterly worthless. hostile to scrupulous One of the The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was about to begin. The government was peculiarly desirous to find victims among the great Whig merchants of the City. They had, in the last reign, been a formidable part of the strength of the opposition. They were wealthy; and their wealth was not, like that of many noblemen and country gentlemen, protected by entail against forfeiture. In the case of Grey, and of men situated like him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty and rapacity at once: but a rich trader might be both hanged and plundered. The commercial grandees, however, though in general Popery and to arbitrary power, had yet been too or too timid to incur the guilt of high treason. most considerable among them was Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the old charter of the City, and had filled the office of Sheriff when the question of the Exclusion Bill occupied the public mind. In politics he was a Whig: his religious opinions leaned towards Presbyterianism: but his temper was cautious and moderate. It is not proved by trustworthy evidence that he ever approached the verge of treason. He had, indeed, when Sheriff, been very unwilling to employ as his deputy a man so violent and unprincipled as Goodenough. When the Rye House plot was discovered, Lonsdale's Memoirs; London Gazette, Oct. 1. 1685. Burnet, i. 648.; James to the Prince of Orange, Sept. 10. and 24. 1685; Lord |