CH. V. interest; but that interest would be soned. Sir Francis Warre of Hesternot a little heightened if it could be combe, the Tory member for Bridgeshown that, in the season of her great-water, was requested to undertake the ness, she saved, or even tried to save, office of exacting the ransom. He was one single victim from the most fright- charged to declare în strong language ful proscription that England has ever that the maids of honour would not seen. Unhappily the only request that endure delay, that they were determined she is known to have preferred touching to prosecute to outlawry, unless a reathe rebels was that a hundred of those sonable sum were forthcoming, and that who were sentenced to transportation by a reasonable sum was meant seven might be given to her.* The profit thousand pounds. Warre excused himwhich she cleared on the cargo, after self from taking any part in a transmaking large allowance for those who action so scandalous. The maids of died of hunger and fever during the honour then requested William Penn to passage, cannot be estimated at less act for them; and Penn accepted the than a thousand guineas. We cannot commission. Yet it should seem that wonder that her attendants should have a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity imitated her unprincely greediness and which he had often shown about taking her unwomanly cruelty. They exacted off his hat would not have been altoa thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, gether out of place on this occasion. a merchant of Bridgewater, who had He probably silenced the remonstrances contributed to the military chest of the of his conscience by repeating to himself rebel army. But the prey on which that none of the money which he exthey pounced most eagerly was one torted would go into his own pocket; which it might have been thought that that if he refused to be the agent of even the most ungentle natures would the ladies they would find agents less have spared. Already some of the humane; that by complying he should girls who had presented the standard increase his influence at the court, and to Monmouth at Taunton had cruelly that his influence at the court had expiated their offence. One of them already enabled him, and might still had been thrown into a prison where enable him, to render great services to an infectious malady was raging. She his oppressed brethren. The maids of had sickened and died there. Another honour were at last forced to content had presented herself at the bar before themselves with less than a third part Jeffreys to beg for mercy. "Take her, of what they had demanded.* gaoler," vociferated the judge, with one of those frowns which had often struck terror into stouter hearts than hers. She burst into tears, drew her hood over her face, followed the gaoler out of court, fell ill of fright, and in a few hours was a corpse. Most of the young ladies, however, who had walked in the procession, were still alive. Some of them were under ten years of age. All had acted under the orders of their schoolmistress, without knowing that they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honour asked the royal permission to wring money out of the parents of the poor children; and the permission was granted. An order was sent down to Taunton that all these * Locke's Western Rebellion; Toulmin's History of Taunton, edited by Savage; Letter of the Duke of Somerset to Sir F. Warre; Letter of Sunderland to Penn, Feb. 13. 1685, from the State Paper Office, in the Mackintosh Collection. (1848.) The letter of Sunderland is as follows: "Mr. Penne, "Whitehall, Feb. 15. 1685-6. "Her Majesty's Maids of Honour having acquainted me that they designe to employ you and Mr. Walden in making a composition for the high Misdemeanour they have been guilty of, I do at their request hereby let you know that His Majesty has been pleased to and therefore recommend it to Mr. Walden give their Fines to the said Maids of Honour, and you to make the most advantageous composition you can in their behalfe. with the Relations of the Maids of Taunton "I am, Sir, "Your humble servant, "SUNDERLAND." That the person to whom this letter was ad little girls should be seized and impri-dressed was William Penn the Quaker was not *Sunderland to Jeffreys, Sept. 14. 1685. doubted by Sir James Mackintosh who first brought it to light, or, as far as I am aware, No English sovereign has ever given stronger proofs of a cruel nature than James the Second. Yet his cruelty was by any other person, till after the publication of the first part of this History. It has since been confidently asserted that the letter was addressed to a certain George Penne, who appears from an old account book lately discovered to have been concerned in a negotiation for the ransom of one of Monmouth's followers, named Azariah Pinney. If I thought that I had committed an error, I should, I hope, have the honesty to acknowledge it. But, after full consideration, I am satisfied that Sunderland's letter was addressed to William Penn. In not more odious than his mercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his mercy and his cruelty were the same. To which, then, of the two persons who bore that name, George or William, is it probable that the letter of the Secretary of State was addressed? George was evidently an adventurer of a very low class. All that we learn about him from the papers of the Pinney family is that he was employed in the purchase of a pardon for the younger son of a dissenting minister. The whole sum which appears to have passed through George's hands on this occasion was sixty-five pounds. His commission on the transaction must therefore have been small. The only other information which we have about him is that he, some time later, applied to the government for a favour which was very far from being an honour. In England the Groom Porter of the Palace had a jurisdiction over games of chance, and made some very dirty gain by issuing lottery tickets and licensing hazard tables. George appears to have petitioned for a similar privilege in the American colonies. Much has been said about the way in which the name is spelt. The Quaker, we are told, was not Mr. Penne, but Mr. Penn. I feel assured that no person conversant with the books and manuscripts of the seventeenth century will attach any importance to this argument. It is notorious that a proper name was then thought to be well spelt if the sound were preserved. To go no further than the persons who, in Penn's time, held the Great Seal, one of them is sometimes Hyde and William Penn was, during the reign of sometimes Hide: another is Jefferies, Jeffries, James the Second, the most active and powerJeffereys, and Jeffreys: a third is Somers, ful solicitor about the Court. I will quote the Sommers, and Summers: a fourth is Wright words of his admirer Croese. 'Quum autem and Wrighte: and a fifth is Cowper and Pennus tanta gratia plurimum apud regem Cooper. The Quaker's name was spelt in valeret, et per id perplures sibi amicos acquithree ways. He, and his father the Admiral reret, illum omnes, etiam qui modo aliqua before him, invariably, as far as I have ob- notitia erant conjuncti, quoties aliquid a rege served, spelt it Penn; but most people spelt postulandum agendumve apud regem esset, it Pen; and there were some who adhered to adire, ambire, orare, ut eos apud regem adjuthe ancient form, Penne. For example, Wil-varet." He was overwhelmed by business of liam the father is Penne in a letter from Dis- this kind, "obrutus negotiationibus curationibrowe to Thurloe, dated on the 7th of Decem- busque.' His house and the approaches to it ber 1654; and William the son is Penne in a were every day blocked up by crowds of pernewsletter of the 22nd of September 1688, sons who came to request his good offices; printed in the Ellis Correspondence. "domus ac vestibula quotidie referta clienRichard Ward's Life and Letters of Henry tium et supplicantium." From the FountainMore, printed in 1710, the name of the Quaker hall papers it appears that his influence was will be found spelt in all the three ways, Penn felt even in the highlands of Scotland. We in the index, Pen in page 197., and Penne in learn from himself that, at this time, he was page 311. The name is Penne in the Commis- always toiling for others, that he was a daily sion which the Admiral carried out with him suitor at Whitehall, and that, if he had chosen on his expedition to the West Indies. Bur- to sell his influence, he could, in little more chett, who became Secretary to the Admiralty than three years, have put twenty thousand soon after the Revolution, and remained in pounds into his pocket, and obtained a hunoffice long after the accession of the House of dred thousand more for the improvement of Hanover, always, in his Naval History, wrote the colony of which he was proprietor. the name Penne. Surely it cannot be thought strange that an old-fashioned spelling, in which the Secretary of the Admiralty persisted so late as 1720, should have been used at the office of the Secretary of State in 1686. I am quite confident that, if the letter which we are considering had been of a different kind, if Mr. Penne had been informed that, in consequence of his earnest intercession, the King had been graciously pleased to grant a free pardon to the Taunton girls, and if I had attempted to deprive the Quaker of the credit of that intercession on the ground that his name was not Penne, the very persons who now complain so bitterly that I am unjust to his memory would have complained quite as bitterly, and, I must say, with much more reason. I think myself, therefore, perfectly justified in considering the names, Penn and Penne, as Such was the position of these two men. Which of them, then, was the more likely to be employed in the matter to which Sunderland's letter related? Was it George or William, an agent of the lowest or of the highest class ? The persons interested were ladies of rank and fashion, resident at the palace, where George would hardly have been admitted into an outer room, but where William was every day in the presence chamber and was frequently called into the closet. The greatest nobles in the kingdom were zealous and active in the cause of their fair friends, nobles with whom William lived in habits of familiar intercourse, but who would hardly have thought George fit company for their grooms. The sum in question was seven thousand pounds, a sum not large when compared with the masses of wealth with which William had 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. constantly to deal, but more than a hundred times as large as the only ransom which is known to have passed through the hands of George. These considerations would suffice to raise a strong presumption that Sunderland's letter was addressed to William, and not to George: but there is a still stronger argument behind. It is most important to observe that the person to whom this letter was addressed was not the first person whom the Maids of Honour had requested to act for them. They applied to him, because another person, to whom they had previously applied, had, after some correspondence, declined the office. From their first application we learn with certainty what sort of person they wished to employ. If their first application had been made to some obscure pettifogger or needy gambler, we should be warranted in believing that the Penne to whom their second application was made was George. If, on the other hand, their first application was made to a gentleman of the highest consideration, we can hardly be wrong in saying that the Penne to whom their second application was made must have been William. To whom, then, was their first application made? It was to Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, a Baronet and a Member of Parliament. The letters are still extant in which the Duke of Somerset, the proud Duke, not a man very likely to have corresponded with George Penne, pressed Sir Francis to undertake the commission. The latest of those letters is dated about three weeks before Sunderland's letter to Mr. Penne. Somerset tells Sir Francis that the town clerk of Bridgewater, whose name, I may remark in passing, is spelt sometimes Bird and sometimes Birde, had offered his services, but that 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. 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, whose power and whose artifices have led the multitude into error, are the proper 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 Marquess 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 historians Oldmixon is the least trustworthy. His most positive assertion would be of no 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 ob 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. As Sir Francis Warre excused himself from undertaking the negotiation, it became neces-taining a little money from terrified families. sary 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 per centage 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 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.) Grey. Storey. Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Commissary to the rebel army, and who had inflamed the ignorant populace of Somersetshire by vehement harangues in which James had been described as an incendiary and a poisoner, was admitted to mercy. For Storey was able to give important assistance to Jeffreys in wringing fifteen thousand pounds out of Prideaux.t enough, objects of severity. The deluded popu- | of the royal household; and a pardon lace, when once the slaughter on the was granted.* field of battle is over, can scarcely be treated too leniently. This rule, so evidently agreeable to justice and humanity, was not only not observed: it was inverted. While those who ought to have been spared were slaughtered by hundreds, the few who might with propriety have been left to the utmost rigour of the law were spared. This eccentric clemency has perplexed some writers, and has drawn forth ludicrous eulogies from others. It was neither at all mysterious nor at all praiseworthy.. It may be distinctly traced in every case either to a sordid or to a malignant motive, either to thirst for money or to thirst for blood. In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. His parts and knowledge, the rank which he had inherited in the state, and the high command which he had borne in the rebel army, would have pointed him out to a just government as a much fitter object of punishment than Alice Lisle, than William Hewling, than any of the hundreds of ignorant peasants whose skulls and quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. But Grey's estate was large and was strictly entailed. He had only a life interest in his property; and he could forfeit no more interest than he had. If he died, his lands at once devolved on the next heir. If he were pardoned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was therefore suffered to redeem himself by giving a bond for forty thousand pounds to the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other courtiers.* Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the same Cochrane. rank which had been held by Grey in the West of England. That Cochrane should be forgiven by a prince vindictive beyond all example, seemed incredible. But Cochrane was the younger son of a rich family; it was therefore only by sparing him that money could be made out of him. His father, Lord Dundonald, offered a bribe of five thousand pounds to the priests * Burnet, i. 646., and Speaker Onslow's note; Clarendon to Rochester, May 8. 1686. None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade, Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson. GoodThese three chiefs of the re- and Ferbellion had fled together from guson. 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 plot 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 arch traitor, as he was often called; and such a search a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely have title were extinct, his granddaughter eluded. It was.confidently reported in the Countess of Pomfret, travelling the coffee houses of London that along the western road, was insulted Ferguson was taken; and this report by the populace, and found that she found credit with men who had excel- could not safely venture herself among lent opportunities of knowing the the descendants of those who had wittruth. The next thing that was heard nessed the Bloody Assizes.* 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 been given to let him escape.* And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his reward. He arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving carnage, mourning, and terror behind him. The hatred with which he was regarded by the people of Somersetshire has no parallel in our history. It was not to be quenched by time or by political changes, was long transmitted from generation to generation, and raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. When he had been many years dead, when his name and * Many writers have asserted, without the slightest foundation, that a pardon was granted to Ferguson by James. Some have been so absurd as to cite this imaginary pardon, which, if it were real, would prove only that Ferguson was a court spy, in proof of the magnanimity and benignity of the prince who beheaded Alice Lisle and burned Elizabeth Gaunt. Ferguson was not only not specially pardoned, but was excluded by name from the general pardon published in the following spring. (London Gazette, March 15. 1685.). If, as the public suspected, and as seems probable, indulgence was shown to him, it was indulgence of which James was, not without reason, ashamed, and which was, as far as possible, kept secret. The reports which were current in London 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. But at the court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge after his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with interest and delight. In his drawingroom and at his table he had frequently talked of the havoc which was making among his disaffected subjects with a glee at which the foreign ministers stood aghast. With his own hand he had penned accounts of what he facetiously called his Lord Chief Justice's campaign in the West. Some hundreds of rebels, His Majesty wrote to the Hague, had been condemned. Some of them had been hanged: more should be hanged: and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It was to no purpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people, and described with pathetic eloquence the frightful state of his diocese. He complained that it was impossible to walk along the highways without seeing some terrible spectacle, and that the whole air of Somersetshire was tainted with death. The King read, and remained, according to the saying of Churchill, hard as the marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. At Wind- Jeffreys sor the great seal of England Chancel was put into the hands of lor. Jeffreys, and in the next London Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour was the reward of the many eminent and faithful services which he had rendered to the crown.t made Lord 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 vindidicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other. Jeffreys, in the Tower, protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond his *Granger's Biographical History. † Burnet, i. 648.; James to the Prince of Orange, Sept. 10. and 24. 1685; Lord Lonsdale's Memoirs; London Gazette, Oct. 1. 1685. |