A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon Part 17

[Sidenote: Penal Laws against Catholics.]

But the general ferment was still more increased by the disappearance of an eminent justice of the peace, who had taken the depositions of Oates against Coleman. Sir Edmondsbury G.o.dfrey was found dead, and with every mark of violence, in a field near London, and was probably murdered by some fanatical persons in the communion of the Church of Rome. But if so, the murder was a great blunder. It was worse than a crime. The whole community were mad with rage and fear. The old penal laws were strictly enforced against the Catholics. The jails were filled with victims. London wore the appearance of a besieged city.

The houses of the Catholics were every where searched, and two thousand of them imprisoned. Posts were planted in the street, that chains might be thrown across them on the first alarm. The military, the train bands, and the volunteers were called out. Forty thousand men were kept under guard during the night. Numerous patrols paraded the streets. The gates of the Palace were closed, and the guards of the city were doubled. Oates was p.r.o.nounced to be the savior of his country, lodged at Whitehall and pensioned with twelve hundred pounds a year.

Then flowed more innocent blood than had been shed for a long period.

Catholics who were n.o.ble, and Catholics who were obscure, were alike judicially murdered; and the courts of justice, instead of being places of refuge, were disgraced by the foulest abominations. Every day new witnesses were produced of crimes which never happened, and new victims were offered up to appease the wrath of a prejudiced people. Among these victims of popular frenzy was the Earl of Stafford, a venerable and venerated n.o.bleman of sixty-nine years of age, against whom sufficient evidence was not found to convict him; and whose only crime was in being at the head of the Catholic party.

Yet he was found guilty by the House of Peers, fifty-five out of eighty-six having voted for his execution. He died on the scaffold, but with the greatest serenity, forgiving his persecutors, and compa.s.sionating their delusions. A future generation, during the reign of George IV., however, reversed his attainder, and did justice to his memory, and restored his descendants to their rank and fortune.

[Sidenote: Persecution of Dissenters.]

If no other ill.u.s.trious victims suffered, persecution was nevertheless directed into other channels. Parliament pa.s.sed an act that no person should sit in either House, unless he had previously taken the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribed to the declaration that the wors.h.i.+p of the Church of Rome was idolatrous. Catholics were disabled from prosecuting a suit in any court of law, from receiving any legacy, and from acting as executors or administrators of estates.

This horrid bill, which outlawed the whole Catholic population, had repeatedly miscarried, but, under influence of the panic which Oates and his confederates created, was now triumphantly pa.s.sed. Charles himself gave his royal a.s.sent because he was afraid to stem the torrent of popular infatuation. And the English nation permitted one hundred and thirty years to elapse before the civil disabilities of the Catholics were removed, and then only by the most strenuous exertions of such a statesman as Sir Robert Peel.

It is some satisfaction to know that justice at last overtook the chief authors of this diabolical infatuation. During the reign of James II., Oates and others were punished as they deserved. Oates's credit gradually pa.s.sed away. He was fined, imprisoned, and whipped at the pillory until life itself had nearly fled. He died unlamented and detested, leaving behind him, to all posterity an infamous notoriety.

But the sufferings of the Catholics, during this reign, were more than exceeded by the sufferings of Dissenters, who were cruelly persecuted.

All the various sects of the Protestants were odious and ridiculous in the eyes of the king. They were regarded as hostile in their sympathies, and treasonable in their designs. They were fined, imprisoned, mutilated, and whipped. An Act of Uniformity was pa.s.sed, which restored the old penal laws of Elizabeth, and which subjected all to their penalty who did not use the Book of Common Prayer, and adhere strictly to the ritual of the Church of England. The oligarchical power of the bishops was restored, and two thousand ministers were driven from their livings, and compelled to seek a precarious support. Many other acts of flagrant injustice were pa.s.sed by a subservient parliament, and cruelly carried into execution by unfeeling judges. But the religious persecution of dissenters was not consummated until the reign of James under whose favor or direction the inhuman Jeffreys inflicted the most atrocious crimes which have ever been committed under the sanction of the law. But these will be more appropriately noticed under the reign of James II. Charles was not so cruel in his temper, or bigoted in his sentiments, as his brother James. He was rather a Gallio than a persecutor. He would permit any thing rather than suffer himself to be interrupted in his pleasures. He was governed by his favorites and his women. He had not sufficient moral elevation to be earnest in any thing, even to be a bigot in religion. He vacillated between the infidelity of Hobbes and the superst.i.tions of Rome. He lived a scoffer, and died a Catholic.

His temper was easy, but so easy as not to prevent the persecution and ruin of his best supporters, when they had become odious to the nation. If he was incapable of enmity, he was also incapable of friends.h.i.+p. If he hated no one with long-continued malignity, it was only because it was too much trouble to hate perseveringly. But he loved with no more constancy than he hated. He had no patriotism, and no appreciation of moral excellence. He would rather see half of the merchants of London ruined, and half of the Dissenters immured in gloomy prisons, than lose two hours of inglorious dalliance with one of his numerous concubines. A more contemptible prince never sat on the English throne, or one whose whole reign was disgraced by a more constant succession of political blunders and social crimes. And yet he never fully lost his popularity, nor was his reign felt to be as burdensome as was that of the protector, Cromwell, thus showing how little the moral excellence of rulers is ordinarily appreciated or valued by a wilful or blinded generation. We love not the rebukers of our sins, or the opposers of our pleasures. We love those who prophesy smooth things, and "cry peace, when there is no peace." Such is man in his weakness and his degeneracy; and only an omnipotent power can change this ordinary temper of the devotees to pleasure and inglorious gains.

[Sidenote: Execution of Russell and Sydney.]

Among the saddest events during the reign of Charles, were the executions of Lord Russell and Algernon Sydney. They were concerned, with a few other great men, in a conspiracy, which had for its object the restoration of greater liberty. They contemplated an insurrection, known by the name of the _Rye House Plot_; but it was discovered, and Russell and Sydney became martyrs. The former was the son of the Earl of Bedford, and the latter was the brother of the Earl of Leicester.

Russell was a devoted Churchman, of pure morals, and greatly beloved by the people. Sydney was a strenuous republican, and was opposed to any particular form of church government. He thought that religion should be like a divine philosophy in the mind, and had great veneration for the doctrines of Plato. Nothing could save these ill.u.s.trious men. The Duke of York and Jeffreys declared that, if they were not executed, there would be no safety for themselves. They both suffered with great intrepidity, and the friends of liberty have ever since cherished their memory with peculiar fondness.

[Sidenote: Manners and Customs of England.]

[Sidenote: Milton--Dryden.]

Mr. Macaulay, in his recent History, has presented the manners and customs of England during the disgraceful reign of Charles II. It is impossible, in this brief survey, to allude to all those customs; but we direct particularly the attention of readers to them, as described in his third chapter, from which it would appear, that a most manifest and most glorious progress has been made since that period in all the arts of civilization, both useful and ornamental. In those times, travelling was difficult and slow, from the badness of the roads and the imperfections of the carriages. Highwaymen were secreted along the thoroughfares, and, in mounted troops, defied the law, and distressed the whole travelling community. The transmission of letters by post was tardy and unfrequent, and the scandal of coffee-houses supplied the greatest want and the greatest luxury of modern times, the newspaper. There was great scarcity of books in the country places, and the only press in England north of the Trent seems to have been at York. Literature was but feebly cultivated by country squires or country parsons, and female education was disgracefully neglected. Few rich men had libraries as large or valuable as are now common to shopkeepers and mechanics; while the literary stores of a lady of the manor were confined chiefly to the prayer-book and the receipt-book.

And those works which were produced or read were disgraced by licentious ribaldry, which had succeeded religious austerity. The drama was the only department of literature which compensated authors, and this was scandalous in the extreme. We cannot turn over the pages of one of the popular dramatists of the age without being shocked by the most culpable indecency. Even Dryden was no exception to the rule; and his poetry, some of which is the most beautiful in the language, can hardly be put into the hands of the young without danger of corrupting them. Poets and all literary men lived by the bounty of the rich and great, and prospered only as they pandered to depraved pa.s.sions. Many, of great intellectual excellence, died from want and mortification; so that the poverty and distress of literary men became proverbial, and all worldly-wise people shunned contact with them as expensive and degrading. They were hunted from c.o.c.klofts to cellars by the minions of the law, and the foulest jails were often their only resting-place. The restoration of Charles proved unfortunate to one great and immortal genius, whom no temptations could a.s.sail, and no rewards could bribe. He "possessed his soul in patience," and "soared above the Aonian mount," amid general levity and profligacy. Had he written for a pure, cla.s.sic, and learned age, he could not have written with greater moral beauty. But he lived when no moral excellence was appreciated, and his claims on the grat.i.tude of the world are beyond all estimation, when we remember that he wrote with the full consciousness, like the great Bacon, that his works would only be valued or read by future generations. Milton was, indeed, unmolested; but he was sadly neglected in his blindness and in his greatness. But, like all the great teachers of the world, he was sustained by something higher than earthly applause, and labored, like an immortal artist, from the love which his labor excited,--labored to realize the work of art which his imagination had conceived, as well as to propagate ideas and sentiments which should tend to elevate mankind. Dryden was his contemporary, but obtained a greater homage, not because he was more worthy, but because he adapted his genius to the taste of a frivolous and corrupt people. He afterwards wrote more unexceptionably, composed lyrics instead of farces, and satires instead of plays. In his latter days, he could afford to write in a purer style; and, as he became independent, he reared the superstructure of his glorious fame. But Dryden spent the best parts of his life as a panderer to the vices of the town, and was an idol chiefly, in Wills's Coffee House, of lampooners, and idlers, and scandal-mongers. Nor were there many people, in the church or in the state, sufficiently influential and n.o.ble to stem the torrent. The city clergy were the most respectable, and the pulpits of London were occupied with twelve men who afterwards became bishops, and who are among the great ornaments of the sacred literature of their country.

Sherlock, Tillotson, Wake, Collier, Burnet, Stillingfleet, Patrick, Fowler, Sharp, Tennison, and Beveridge made the Established Church respected in the town; but the country clergy, as a whole, were ignorant and depressed. Not one living in fifty enabled the inc.u.mbent to bring up a family comfortably or respectably. The clergyman was disdained even by the county attorney, was hardly tolerated at the table of his patron, and could scarcely marry beyond the rank of a cook or housekeeper. And his poverty and bondage continued so long that, in the times of Swift, the parson was a byword and a jest among the various servants in the households of the great. Still there were eminent clergymen amid the general depression of their order, both in and out of the Established Church. Besides the London preachers were many connected with the Universities and Cathedrals; and there were some distinguished Dissenters, among whom Baxter, Howe, and Alleine if there were no others, would alone have made the name of Puritan respectable.

[Sidenote: Condition of the People.]

The saddest fact, in connection with the internal history of England, at this time, was the condition of the people. They had small wages, and many privations. They had no social rank, and were disgraced by many vices. They were ignorant and brutal. The wages of laborers only averaged four s.h.i.+llings a week, while those of mechanics were not equal to what some ordinarily earn, in this country and in these times, in a single day. Both peasants, and artisans were not only ill paid, but ill used, and they died, miserably and prematurely, from famine and disease. Nor did sympathy exist for the misfortunes of the poor. There were no inst.i.tutions of public philanthropy. Jails were unvisited by the ministers of mercy, and the abodes of poverty were left by a careless generation to be dens of infamy and crime. Such was England two hundred years ago; and there is no delusion more unwarranted by sober facts than that which supposes that those former times were better than our own, in any thing which abridges the labors or alleviates the miseries of mankind. "It is now the fas.h.i.+on to place the golden age of England in times when n.o.blemen were dest.i.tute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman; when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns; and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guinea. But we too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and, in our turn, envied. There is constant improvement, as there also is constant discontent; and future generations may talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as a time when England was truly merry England, when all cla.s.ses were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy the splendor of the rich."

REFERENCES.--Of all the works which have yet appeared, respecting this interesting epoch, the new History of Macaulay is the most brilliant and instructive. Indeed, the student scarcely needs any other history, in spite of Macaulay's Whig doctrines. He may sacrifice something to effect; and he may give us pictures, instead of philosophy; but, nevertheless, his book has transcendent merit, and will be read, by all cla.s.ses, so long as English history is prized. Mackintosh's fragment, on the same period, is more philosophical, and possesses very great merits. Lingard's History is very valuable on this reign, and should be consulted. Hume, also, will never cease to please. Burnet is a prejudiced historian, but his work is an authority. The lives of Milton, Dryden, and Clarendon should also be read in this connection. Hallam has but treated the const.i.tutional history of these times. See also Temple's Works; the Life of William Lord Russell; Rapin's History.

Pepys, Dalrymple, Rymeri Foedera, the Commons' Journal, and the Howell State Trials are not easily accessible, and not necessary, except to the historian.

CHAPTER XV.

REIGN OF JAMES II.

[Sidenote: Accession of James II.]

Charles II. died on the 6th of February, 1685, and his brother, the Duke of York, ascended his throne, without opposition, under the t.i.tle of _James II._ As is usual with princes, on their accession, he made many promises of ruling by the laws, and of defending the liberties of the nation. And he commenced his administration under good auspices.

The country was at peace, he was not unpopular, and all cla.s.ses and parties readily acquiesced in his government.

He retained all the great officers who had served under his brother that he could trust; and Rochester became prime minister, Sunderland kept possession of the Seals, and G.o.dolphin was made lord chamberlain.

He did not dismiss Halifax, Ormond, or Guildford, although he disliked and distrusted them, but abridged their powers, and mortified them by neglect.

The Commons voted him one million two hundred thousand pounds, and the Scottish parliament added twenty-five thousand pounds more, and the Customs for life. But this sum he did not deem sufficient for his wants, and therefore, like his brother, applied for aid to Louis XIV., and consented to become his pensioner and va.s.sal, and for the paltry sum of two hundred thousand pounds. James received the money with tears of grat.i.tude, hoping by this infamous pension to rule the nation without a parliament. It was not, of course, known to the nation, or even to his ministers, generally.

He was scarcely crowned before England was invaded by the Duke of Monmouth, natural son of Charles II., and Scotland by the Duke of Argyle, with a view of ejecting James from the throne.

Both these n.o.blemen were exiles in Holland, and both were justly obnoxious to the government for their treasonable intentions and acts.

Argyle was loath to engage in an enterprise so desperate as the conquest of England; but he was an enthusiast, was at the head of the most powerful of the Scottish clans, the Campbells, and he hoped for a general rising throughout Scotland, to put down what was regarded as idolatry, and to strike a blow for liberty and the Kirk.

Having concerted his measures with Monmouth, he set sail from Holland, the 2d of May, 1685, in spite of all the efforts of the English minister, and landed at Kirkwall, one of the Orkney Islands. But his objects were well known, and the whole militia of the land were put under arms to resist him. He, however, collected a force of two thousand five hundred Highlanders, and marched towards Glasgow; but he was miserably betrayed and deserted. His forces were dispersed, and he himself was seized while attempting to escape in disguise, brought to Edinburgh, and beheaded. His followers were treated with great harshness, but the rebellion was completely suppressed.

[Sidenote: Monmouth Lands in England.]

Monmouth had agreed to sail in six days from the departure of Argyle; but he lingered at Brussels, loath to part from a beautiful mistress, the Lady Henrietta Wentworth. It was a month before he set sail from the Texel, with about eighty officers and one hundred and fifty followers--a small force to overturn the throne. But he relied on his popularity with the people, and on a false and exaggerated account of the unpopularity of James. He landed at Lyme, in Dorsets.h.i.+re, about the middle of June, and forthwith issued a flaming proclamation, inviting all to join his standard, as a deliverer from the cruel despotism of a Catholic prince, whom he accused of every crime--of the burning of London, of the Popish Plot, of the condemnation of Russell and Sydney, of poisoning the late king, and of infringements on the const.i.tution. In this declaration, falsehood was mingled with truth, but well adapted to inflame the pa.s.sions of the people. He was supported by many who firmly believed that his mother, Lucy Walters, was the lawful wife of Charles II. He, of course, claimed the English throne, but professed to waive his rights until they should be settled by a parliament. The adventurer grossly misunderstood the temper of the people, and the extent to which his claims were recognized. He was unprovided with money, with generals, and with troops. He collected a few regiments from the common people, and advanced to Somersets.h.i.+re.

At Taunton his reception was flattering. All cla.s.ses welcomed him as a deliverer from Heaven, and the poor rent the air with acclamations and shouts. His path was strewed with flowers, and the windows were crowded with ladies, who waved their handkerchiefs, and even waited upon him with a large deputation. Twenty-six lovely maidens presented the handsome son of Charles II. with standards and a Bible, which he kissed, and promised to defend.

[Sidenote: Battle of Sedgemoor.]

[Sidenote: Death of Monmouth.]

But all this enthusiasm was soon to end. The Duke of Albemarle--the son of General Monk, who restored Charles II.--advanced against him with the militia of the country, and Monmouth was supported only by the vulgar, the weak, and the credulous. Not a single n.o.bleman joined his standard, and but few of the gentry. He made innumerable blunders.

He lost time by vain attempts to drill the peasants and farmers who followed his fortunes. He slowly advanced to the west of England, where he hoped to be joined by the body of the people. But all men of station and influence stood aloof. Discouraged and dismayed, he reached Wells, and pushed forward to capture Bristol, then the second city in the kingdom. He was again disappointed. He was forced, from unexpected calamities, to abandon the enterprise. He then turned his eye to Wilts; but when he arrived at the borders of the county, he found that none of the bodies on which he had calculated had made their appearance. At Phillips Norton was a slight skirmish, which ended favorably to Monmouth, in which the young Duke of Grafton, natural son of Charles II., distinguished himself against his half brother; but Monmouth was discouraged, and fell back to Bridgewater.

Meanwhile the royal army approached, and encamped at Sedgemoor. Here was fought a decisive battle, which was fatal to the rebels, "the last deserving the name of _battle_, that has been fought on English ground." Monmouth, when all was lost, fled from the field, and hastened to the British Channel, hoping to gain the Continent. He was found near the New Forest, hidden in a ditch, exhausted by hunger and fatigue. He was sent, under a strong guard, to Ringwood; and all that was left him was, to prepare to meet the death of a rebel. But he clung to life, so justly forfeited, with singular tenacity. He abjectly and meanly sued for pardon from that inexorable tyrant who never forgot or forgave the slightest resistance from a friend, when even that resistance was lawful, much less rebellion from a man he both hated and despised. He was transferred to London, lodged in the Tower, and executed in a bungling manner by "Jack Ketch"--the name given for several centuries to the public executioner. He was buried under St. Peter's Chapel, in the Tower, where reposed the headless bodies of so many noted saints and political martyrs--the great Somerset, and the still greater Northumberland, the two Earls of Ess.e.x, and the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and other great men who figured in the reigns of the Plantagenets and the Tudors.

Monmouth's rebellion was completely suppressed, and a most signal vengeance was inflicted on all who were concerned in it. No mercy was shown, on the part of government, to any party or person.

Of the agents of James in punis.h.i.+ng all concerned in the rebellion, there were two, preeminently, whose names are consigned to an infamous immortality. The records of English history contain no two names so loathsome and hateful as Colonel Kirke and Judge Jeffreys.

The former was left, by Feversham, in command of the royal forces at Bridgewater, after the battle of Sedgemoor. He had already gained an unenviable notoriety, as governor of Tangier, where he displayed the worst vices of a tyrant and a sensualist; and his regiment had imitated him in his disgraceful brutality. But this leader and these troops were now let loose on the people of Somersets.h.i.+re. One hundred captives were put to death during the week which succeeded the battle.

His irregular butcheries, however, were not according to the taste of the king. A more systematic slaughter, under the sanctions of the law, was devised, and Jeffreys was sent into the Western Circuit, to try the numerous persons who were immured in the jails of the western counties.

Sir George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench, was not deficient in talent, but was const.i.tutionally the victim of violent pa.s.sions. He first attracted notice as an insolent barrister at the Old Bailey Court, who had a rare tact in cross-examining criminals and browbeating witnesses. According to Macaulay, "impudence and ferocity sat upon his brow, while all tenderness for the feelings of others, all self-respect, all sense of the becoming, were obliterated from his mind. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of his maledictions could hardly be rivalled in the Fish Market or Bear Garden. His yell of fury sounded, as one who often heard it said, like the thunder of the judgment day. He early became common serjeant, and then recorder of London. As soon as he obtained all the city could give, he made haste to sell his forehead of bra.s.s and his tongue of venom to the court." He was just the man whom Charles II. wanted as a tool. He was made chief justice of the highest court of criminal law in the realm, and discharged its duties entirely to the satisfaction of a king resolved on the subjection of the English nation. His violence, at all times, was frightful; but when he was drunk, it was terrific: and he was generally intoxicated. His first exploit was the judicial murder of Algernon Sydney. On the death of Charles, he obtained from James a peerage, and a seat in the Cabinet, a signal mark of royal approbation. In prospect of yet greater honors, he was ready to do whatever James required. James wished the most summary vengeance inflicted on the rebels, and Jeffreys, with his tiger ferocity, was ready to execute his will.

[Sidenote: Brutality of Jeffreys.]

Nothing is more memorable than those "b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sizes" which he held in those counties through which Monmouth had pa.s.sed. Nothing is remembered with more execration. Nothing ever equalled the brutal cruelty of the judge. His fury seemed to be directed with peculiar violence upon the Dissenters. "Show me," said he, "a Presbyterian, and I will show thee a lying knave. Presbyterianism has all manner of villany in it. There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians, but, one way or another, has had a hand in the rebellion." He sentenced nearly all who were accused, to be hanged or burned; and the excess of his barbarities called forth pity and indignation even from devoted loyalists. He boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest.

On a single circuit, he hanged three hundred and fifty; some of these were people of great worth, and many of them were innocent; while many whom he spared from an ignominious death, were sentenced to the most cruel punishments--to the lash of the pillory, to imprisonment in the foulest jails, to mutilation, to banishment, and to heavy fines.

King James watched the conduct of the inhuman Jeffreys with delight, and rewarded him with the Great Seal. The Old Bailey lawyer had now climbed to the greatest height to which a subject could aspire. He was Lord Chancellor of England--the confidential friend and agent of the king, and his unscrupulous instrument in imposing the yoke of bondage on an insulted nation.

[Sidenote: Persecution of the Dissenters.]

At this period, the condition of the Puritans was deplorable. At no previous time was persecution more inveterate, not even under the administration of Laud and Strafford. The persecution commenced soon after the restoration of Charles II., and increased in malignity until the elevation of Jeffreys to the chancellors.h.i.+p. The sufferings of no cla.s.s of sectaries bore any proportion to theirs. They found it difficult to meet together for prayer or exhortation even in the smallest a.s.semblies. Their ministers were introduced in disguise.