Speech of

to the

Council.

such a multitude of advisers. But during a quarter of an hour, he remained many of the vulgar not unnaturally alone. Meanwhile the Privy Councilconcluded, from the perplexity of the lors who were in the palace assembled. great masters of the healing art, that The new King came forth, and the malady had some extraordinary took his place at the head of James II. origin. There is reason to believe that the board. He commenced his Privy a horrible suspicion did actually cross administration, according to the mind of Short, who, though skilful usage, by a speech to the Council. He in his profession, seems to have been a expressed his regret for the loss which nervous and fanciful man, and whose he had just sustained, and he promised perceptions were probably confused by to imitate the singular lenity which had dread of the odious imputations to which distinguished the late reign. He was he, as a Roman Catholic, was peculiarly aware, he said, that he had been acexposed. We cannot, therefore, wonder cused of a fondness for arbitrary power. that wild stories without number were But that was not the only falsehood repeated and believed by the common which had been told of him. He was people. His Majesty's tongue had resolved to maintain the established swelled to the size of a neat's tongue. government both in Church and State. A cake of deleterious powder had been The Church of England he knew to be found in his brain. There were blue eminently loyal. It should therefore spots on his breast. There were black always be his care to support and spots on his shoulder. Something had defend her. The laws of England, he been put into his snuff box. Something also knew, were sufficient to make him had been put into his broth. Something as great a King as he could wish to be. had been put into his favourite dish of He would not relinquish his own rights, eggs and ambergrease. The Duchess but he would respect the rights of others. of Portsmouth had poisoned him in a He had formerly risked his life in decup of chocolate. The Queen had poi- fence of his country; and he would still soned him in a jar of dried pears. Such go as far as any man in support of her tales ought to be preserved; for they just liberties. furnish us with a measure of the intelligence and virtue of the generation which eagerly devoured them. That no rumour of the same kind has ever, in the present age, found credit among us, even when lives on which great interests depended have been terminated by unforeseen attacks of disease, is to be attributed partly to the progress of medical and chemical science, but partly also, it may be hoped, to the progress which the nation has made in good sense, justice, and humanity.*

This speech was not, like modern speeches on similar occasions, carefully prepared by the advisers of the sovereign. It was the extemporaneous expression of the new King's feelings at a moment of great excitement. The members of the Council broke forth into clamours of delight and gratitude. The Lord President, Rochester, in the name of his brethren, expressed a hope that His Majesty's most welcome declaration would be made public. The Solicitor General, Heneage Finch, offered to act as clerk. He was a zealous churchman, and, as such, was naturally desirous that there should be some permanent record of the gracious promises which had just been uttered. 648.; Revolution Politics; Higgins on Burnet. What North says of the embarrassment "Those promises," he said," have made and vacillation of the physicians is confirmed so deep an impression on me that I can by the despatches of Van Citters. I have repeat them word for word." He soon been much perplexed by the strange story about Short's suspicions. I was, at one time, produced his report. James read it, inclined to adopt North's solution. But, approved of it, and ordered it to be though I attach little weight to the authority published. At a later period he said not reject the testimony of so well informed that he had taken this step without due and so unwilling a witness as Sheffield. consideration, that his unpremeditated

When all was over, James retired from the bedside to his closet, where, *Welwood, 139.; Burnet, i. 609.; Sheffield's Character of Charles the Second; North's Life of Guildford, 252.; Examen,

of Welwood and Burnet in such a case, I can

expressions touching the Church of enemy to the religion and laws of EngEngland were too strong, and that land. He had triumphed he was on Finch had, with a dexterity which at the throne; and his first act was to the time escaped notice, made them still stronger.*

New

factions; and the principles of the Rochester was the only member of Triple Alliance would again have guided the cabinet who stood high in our foreign policy. He had therefore the favour of the King. The arrange incurred the bitter animosity of James. general expectation was that ments. The Lord Keeper Guildford could hardly he would be immediately placed at the be said to belong to either of the parties head of affairs, and that all the other into which the court was divided. He great officers of state would be changed. could by no means be called a friend This expectation proved to be well of liberty; and yet he had so great a founded in part only. Rochester was reverence for the letter of the law that declared Lord Treasurer, and thus behe was not a serviceable tool of arbitrary came prime minister. Neither a Lord power. He was accordingly designated High Admiral nor a Board of Admiralty by the vehement Tories as a Trimmer, was appointed. The new King, who and was to James an object of aver- loved the details of naval business, and sion with which contempt was largely would have made a respectable clerk in mingled. Ormond, who was Lord the dockyard at Chatham, determined Steward of the Household and Viceroy to be his own minister of marine. of Ireland, then resided at Dublin. Under him the management of that His claims on the royal gratitude were important department was confided to superior to those of any other subject. Samuel Pepys, whose library and diary He had fought bravely for Charles have kept his name fresh to our time. the First he had shared the exile of No servant of the late sovereign was Charles the Second; and, since the publicly disgraced. Sunderland exerted Restoration, he had, in spite of many so much art and address, employed so provocations, kept his loyalty unstained. many intercessors, and was in possesThough he had been disgraced during sion of so many secrets, that he was the predominance of the Cabal, he had suffered to retain his seals. Godolphin's never gone into factious opposition, obsequiousness, industry, experience, and had, in the days of the Popish Plot and taciturnity, could ill be spared. and the Exclusion Bill, been foremost As he was no longer wanted at the among the supporters of the throne. Treasury, he was made Chamberlain to He was now old, and had been recently the Queen. With these three Lords tried by the most cruel of all calamities. the King took counsel on all important He had followed to the grave a son who questions. As to Halifax, Ormond, should have been his own chief mourner, and Guildford, he determined not yet the gallant Ossory. The eminent ser- to dismiss them, but merely to humble vices, the venerable age, and the domestic and annoy them. misfortunes of Ormond made him an object of general interest to the nation. The Cavaliers regarded him as, both by right of seniority and by right of merit, their head; and the Whigs knew that, faithful as he had always been to the cause of monarchy, he was no friend either to Popery or to arbitrary power. But, high as he stood in the public estimation, he had little favour to expect from his new master. James, indeed, while still a subject, had urged his brother to make a complete change in the Irish administration. Charles had assented; and it had been arranged that, in a few months, there should be a new Lord Lieutenant.*

*The letters which passed between Rochester and Ormond on this subject will be found in the Clarendon Correspondence.

Halifax was told that he must give up the Privy Seal and accept the Presidency of the Council. He submitted with extreme reluctance. For, though the President of the Council had always taken precedence of the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Privy Seal was, in that age, a much more important officer than the Lord President. Rochester had not forgotten the jest which had been made a few months before on his own removal from the Treasury, and enjoyed in his turn the pleasure of kicking his rival up stairs. The Privy Seal was delivered to Rochester's elder brother, Henry Earl of Clarendon.

To Barillon James expressed the "I know strongest dislike of Halifax. him well, I never can trust him. He

shall have no share in the manage- ford's custody: but a marked indignity ment of public business. As to the was at the same time offered Sir George place which I have given him, it will to him. It was determined that Jeffreys. just serve to show how little influence another lawyer of more vigour and he has." But to Halifax it was thought audacity should be called to assist in convenient to hold a very different the administration. The person selected language. "All the past is forgotten," was Sir George Jeffreys, Chief Justice said the King, except the service of the Court of Queen's Bench. The which you did me in the debate on the depravity of this man has passed into Exclusion Bill." This speech has a proverb. Both the great English often been cited to prove that James parties have attacked his memory with was not so vindictive as he had been emulous violence: for the Whigs concalled by his enemies. It seems rather sidered him as their most barbarous to prove that he by no means deserved enemy; and the Tories found it conthe praises which have been bestowed venient to throw on him the blame of on his sincerity by his friends.* all the crimes which had sullied their Ormond was politely informed that triumph. A diligent and candid inhis services were no longer needed in quiry will show that some frightful Ireland, and was invited to repair to stories which have been told concernWhitehall, and to perform the functions ing him are false or exaggerated. Yet of Lord Steward. He dutifully sub- the dispassionate historian will be able mitted, but did not affect to deny that to make very little deduction from the the new arrangement wounded his vast mass of infamy with which the feelings deeply. On the eve of his de-memory of the wicked judge has been parture he gave a magnificent banquet loaded. at Kilmainham Hospital, then just He was a man of quick and vigorous completed, to the officers of the garri- parts, but constitutionally prone to inson of Dublin. After dinner he rose, solence and to the angry passions. filled a goblet to the brim with wine, When just emerging from boyhood he and, holding it up, asked whether he had risen into practice at the Old had spilt one drop. "No, gentlemen: Bailey bar, a bar where advocates have whatever the courtiers may say, I am always used a license of tongue unnot yet sunk into dotage. My hand known in Westminster Hall. Here, does not fail me yet; and my hand is during many years, his chief business not steadier than my heart. To the was to examine and crossexamine the health of King James!" Such was most hardened miscreants of a great the last farewell of Ormond to Ireland. capital. Daily conflicts with prostiHe left the administration in the hands tutes and thieves called out and exerof Lords Justices, and repaired to cised his powers so effectually that he London, where he was received with became the most consummate bully unusual marks of public respect. Many ever known in his profession. Tenderpersons of rank went forth to meet him ness for others and respect for himself on the road. A long train of equi- were feelings alike unknown to him. pages followed him into Saint James's He acquired a boundless command of Square, where his mansion stood; and the rhetoric in which the vulgar exthe Square was thronged by a multi-press hatred and contempt. The protude which greeted him with loud acclamations.t

+ Carte's Life of Ormond; Secret Consults

fusion of maledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his vocabulary could hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or the beargarden. His countenance and his voice must always have been unamiable. But these natural advantages, for such he seems to have thought them, he had im

of the Romish Party in Ireland, 1690; Me- proved to such a degree that there were few who, in his paroxysms of rage,

moirs of Ireland, 1716.

could see or hear him without emotion. I had been hardened to that temper Impudence and ferocity sate upon his which tyrants require in their worst brow. The glare of his eyes had a implements. He had hitherto looked fascination for the unhappy victim on for professional advancement to the whom they were fixed. Yet his brow corporation of London. He had thereand his eye were less terrible than the fore professed himself a Roundhead, savage lines of his mouth. His yell of and had always appeared to be in a fury, as was said by one who had often higher state of exhilaration when he heard it, sounded like the thunder of explained to Popish priests that they the judgment day. These qualifications were to be cut down alive, and were he carried, while still a young man, to see their own bowels burned, than from the bar to the bench. He early when he passed ordinary sentences became Common Serjeant, and then of death. But, as soon as he had got Recorder of London. As a judge at all that the City could give, he made the City sessions he exhibited the same haste to sell his forehead of brass and propensities which afterwards, in a his tongue of venom to the Court. higher post, gained for him an unenvi- Chiffinch, who was accustomed to act able immortality. Already might be as broker in infamous contracts of more remarked in him the most odious vice than one kind, lent his aid. He had which is incident to human nature, a conducted many amorous and many delight in misery merely as misery. political intrigues; but he assuredly There was a fiendish exultation in the never rendered a more scandalous serway in which he pronounced sentence vice to his masters than when he introon offenders. Their weeping and im- duced Jeffreys to Whitehall. The ploring seemed to titillate him volup- renegade soon found a patron in the tuously; and he loved to scare them obdurate and revengeful James, but into fits by dilating with luxuriant was always regarded with scorn and amplification on all the details of what disgust by Charles, whose faults, great they were to suffer. Thus, when he as they were, had no affinity with insohad an opportunity of ordering an un-lence and cruelty. "That man," said

no manners, and more impudence than ten carted streetwalkers." Work was to be done, however, which could be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was sensible of shame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at which a barrister thinks himself fortunate if he is employed to conduct an important cause, was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

lucky adventuress to be whipped at the the King, "has no learning, no sense, cart's tail, Hangman," he would exclaim, "I charge you to pay particular attention to this lady! Scourge her soundly, man! Scourge her till the blood runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to strip in! See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly! * He was hardly less facetious when he passed judgment on poor Lodowick Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied himself a prophet. "Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy, easy, easy punishment!" One part of this easy punishment was the pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with brickbats.t

By this time the heart of Jeffreys

* Christmas Sessions Paper of 1678.

The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit, part v. chapter v. In this work, Lodowick, after his fashion, revenges himself on the "bawling devil," as he calls Jeffreys, by a string of curses which Ernulphus, or Jeffreys himself, might have envied. The trial was in January 1677.

His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind. But he had one of those happily constituted intellects which, across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial facts, go straight however, he seldom had the full use. to the true point. Of his intellect, Even in civil causes his malevolent and

*This saying is to be found in many contemporary pamphlets. Titns Oates was never tired of quoting it. See his Εἰκὼν Βασιλική.