Chapter XXXVI - England Under James the Second

by Charles Dickens

　　King James the Second was a man so very disagreeable, that even thebest of historians has favoured his brother Charles, as becoming,by comparison, quite a pleasant character. The one object of hisshort reign was to re-establish the Catholic religion in England;and this he doggedly pursued with such a stupid obstinacy, that hiscareer very soon came to a close.

　　The first thing he did, was, to assure his council that he wouldmake it his endeavour to preserve the Government, both in Churchand State, as it was by law established; and that he would alwaystake care to defend and support the Church. Great publicacclamations were raised over this fair speech, and a great dealwas said, from the pulpits and elsewhere, about the word of a Kingwhich was never broken, by credulous people who little supposedthat he had formed a secret council for Catholic affairs, of whicha mischievous Jesuit, called Father Petre, was one of the chiefmembers. With tears of joy in his eyes, he received, as thebeginning of his pension from the King of France, five hundredthousand livres; yet, with a mixture of meanness and arrogance thatbelonged to his contemptible character, he was always jealous ofmaking some show of being independent of the King of France, whilehe pocketed his money. As - notwithstanding his publishing twopapers in favour of Popery (and not likely to do it much service, Ishould think) written by the King, his brother, and found in hisstrong-box; and his open display of himself attending mass - theParliament was very obsequious, and granted him a large sum ofmoney, he began his reign with a belief that he could do what hepleased, and with a determination to do it.

　　Before we proceed to its principal events, let us dispose of TitusOates. He was tried for perjury, a fortnight after the coronation,and besides being very heavily fined, was sentenced to stand twicein the pillory, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate one day, andfrom Newgate to Tyburn two days afterwards, and to stand in thepillory five times a year as long as he lived. This fearfulsentence was actually inflicted on the rascal. Being unable tostand after his first flogging, he was dragged on a sledge fromNewgate to Tyburn, and flogged as he was drawn along. He was sostrong a villain that he did not die under the torture, but livedto be afterwards pardoned and rewarded, though not to be everbelieved in any more. Dangerfield, the only other one of that crewleft alive, was not so fortunate. He was almost killed by awhipping from Newgate to Tyburn, and, as if that were notpunishment enough, a ferocious barrister of Gray's Inn gave him apoke in the eye with his cane, which caused his death; for whichthe ferocious barrister was deservedly tried and executed.

　　As soon as James was on the throne, Argyle and Monmouth went fromBrussels to Rotterdam, and attended a meeting of Scottish exilesheld there, to concert measures for a rising in England. It wasagreed that Argyle should effect a landing in Scotland, andMonmouth in England; and that two Englishmen should be sent withArgyle to be in his confidence, and two Scotchmen with the Duke ofMonmouth.

　　Argyle was the first to act upon this contract. But, two of hismen being taken prisoners at the Orkney Islands, the Governmentbecame aware of his intention, and was able to act against him withsuch vigour as to prevent his raising more than two or threethousand Highlanders, although he sent a fiery cross, by trustymessengers, from clan to clan and from glen to glen, as the customthen was when those wild people were to be excited by their chiefs.As he was moving towards Glasgow with his small force, he wasbetrayed by some of his followers, taken, and carried, with hishands tied behind his back, to his old prison in Edinburgh Castle.James ordered him to be executed, on his old shamefully unjustsentence, within three days; and he appears to have been anxiousthat his legs should have been pounded with his old favourite theboot. However, the boot was not applied; he was simply beheaded,and his head was set upon the top of Edinburgh Jail. One of thoseEnglishmen who had been assigned to him was that old soldierRumbold, the master of the Rye House. He was sorely wounded, andwithin a week after Argyle had suffered with great courage, wasbrought up for trial, lest he should die and disappoint the King.He, too, was executed, after defending himself with great spirit,and saying that he did not believe that God had made the greaterpart of mankind to carry saddles on their backs and bridles intheir mouths, and to be ridden by a few, booted and spurred for thepurpose - in which I thoroughly agree with Rumbold.

　　The Duke of Monmouth, partly through being detained and partlythrough idling his time away, was five or six weeks behind hisfriend when he landed at Lyme, in Dorset: having at his right handan unlucky nobleman called Lord Grey of Werk, who of himself wouldhave ruined a far more promising expedition. He immediately set uphis standard in the market-place, and proclaimed the King a tyrant,and a Popish usurper, and I know not what else; charging him, notonly with what he had done, which was bad enough, but with whatneither he nor anybody else had done, such as setting fire toLondon, and poisoning the late King. Raising some four thousandmen by these means, he marched on to Taunton, where there were manyProtestant dissenters who were strongly opposed to the Catholics.Here, both the rich and poor turned out to receive him, ladieswaved a welcome to him from all the windows as he passed along thestreets, flowers were strewn in his way, and every compliment andhonour that could be devised was showered upon him. Among therest, twenty young ladies came forward, in their best clothes, andin their brightest beauty, and gave him a Bible ornamented withtheir own fair hands, together with other presents.

　　Encouraged by this homage, he proclaimed himself King, and went onto Bridgewater. But, here the Government troops, under the Earl ofFeversham, were close at hand; and he was so dispirited at findingthat he made but few powerful friends after all, that it was aquestion whether he should disband his army and endeavour toescape. It was resolved, at the instance of that unlucky LordGrey, to make a night attack on the King's army, as it lay encampedon the edge of a morass called Sedgemoor. The horsemen werecommanded by the same unlucky lord, who was not a brave man. Hegave up the battle almost at the first obstacle - which was a deepdrain; and although the poor countrymen, who had turned out forMonmouth, fought bravely with scythes, poles, pitchforks, and suchpoor weapons as they had, they were soon dispersed by the trainedsoldiers, and fled in all directions. When the Duke of Monmouthhimself fled, was not known in the confusion; but the unlucky LordGrey was taken early next day, and then another of the party wastaken, who confessed that he had parted from the Duke only fourhours before. Strict search being made, he was found disguised asa peasant, hidden in a ditch under fern and nettles, with a fewpeas in his pocket which he had gathered in the fields to eat. Theonly other articles he had upon him were a few papers and littlebooks: one of the latter being a strange jumble, in his ownwriting, of charms, songs, recipes, and prayers. He was completelybroken. He wrote a miserable letter to the King, beseeching andentreating to be allowed to see him. When he was taken to London,and conveyed bound into the King's presence, he crawled to him onhis knees, and made a most degrading exhibition. As James neverforgave or relented towards anybody, he was not likely to softentowards the issuer of the Lyme proclamation, so he told thesuppliant to prepare for death.

　　On the fifteenth of July, one thousand six hundred and eighty-five,this unfortunate favourite of the people was brought out to die onTower Hill. The crowd was immense, and the tops of all the houseswere covered with gazers. He had seen his wife, the daughter ofthe Duke of Buccleuch, in the Tower, and had talked much of a ladywhom he loved far better - the Lady Harriet Wentworth - who was oneof the last persons he remembered in this life. Before laying downhis head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe, and told theexecutioner that he feared it was not sharp enough, and that theaxe was not heavy enough. On the executioner replying that it wasof the proper kind, the Duke said, 'I pray you have a care, and donot use me so awkwardly as you used my Lord Russell.' Theexecutioner, made nervous by this, and trembling, struck once andmerely gashed him in the neck. Upon this, the Duke of Monmouthraised his head and looked the man reproachfully in the face. Thenhe struck twice, and then thrice, and then threw down the axe, andcried out in a voice of horror that he could not finish that work.The sheriffs, however, threatening him with what should be done tohimself if he did not, he took it up again and struck a fourth timeand a fifth time. Then the wretched head at last fell off, andJames, Duke of Monmouth, was dead, in the thirty-sixth year of hisage. He was a showy, graceful man, with many popular qualities,and had found much favour in the open hearts of the English.

　　The atrocities, committed by the Government, which followed thisMonmouth rebellion, form the blackest and most lamentable page inEnglish history. The poor peasants, having been dispersed withgreat loss, and their leaders having been taken, one would thinkthat the implacable King might have been satisfied. But no; he letloose upon them, among other intolerable monsters, a Colonel Kirk,who had served against the Moors, and whose soldiers - called bythe people Kirk's lambs, because they bore a lamb upon their flag,as the emblem of Christianity - were worthy of their leader. Theatrocities committed by these demons in human shape are far toohorrible to be related here. It is enough to say, that besidesmost ruthlessly murdering and robbing them, and ruining them bymaking them buy their pardons at the price of all they possessed,it was one of Kirk's favourite amusements, as he and his officerssat drinking after dinner, and toasting the King, to have batchesof prisoners hanged outside the windows for the company'sdiversion; and that when their feet quivered in the convulsions ofdeath, he used to swear that they should have music to theirdancing, and would order the drums to beat and the trumpets toplay. The detestable King informed him, as an acknowledgment ofthese services, that he was 'very well satisfied with hisproceedings.' But the King's great delight was in the proceedingsof Jeffreys, now a peer, who went down into the west, with fourother judges, to try persons accused of having had any share in therebellion. The King pleasantly called this 'Jeffreys's campaign.'The people down in that part of the country remember it to this dayas The Bloody Assize.

　　It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old lady, Mrs. AliciaLisle, the widow of one of the judges of Charles the First (who hadbeen murdered abroad by some Royalist assassins), was charged withhaving given shelter in her house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor.Three times the jury refused to find her guilty, until Jeffreysbullied and frightened them into that false verdict. When he hadextorted it from them, he said, 'Gentlemen, if I had been one ofyou, and she had been my own mother, I would have found herguilty;' - as I dare say he would. He sentenced her to be burnedalive, that very afternoon. The clergy of the cathedral and someothers interfered in her favour, and she was beheaded within aweek. As a high mark of his approbation, the King made JeffreysLord Chancellor; and he then went on to Dorchester, to Exeter, toTaunton, and to Wells. It is astonishing, when we read of theenormous injustice and barbarity of this beast, to know that no onestruck him dead on the judgment-seat. It was enough for any man orwoman to be accused by an enemy, before Jeffreys, to be foundguilty of high treason. One man who pleaded not guilty, he orderedto be taken out of court upon the instant, and hanged; and this soterrified the prisoners in general that they mostly pleaded guiltyat once. At Dorchester alone, in the course of a few days,Jeffreys hanged eighty people; besides whipping, transporting,imprisoning, and selling as slaves, great numbers. He executed, inall, two hundred and fifty, or three hundred.

　　These executions took place, among the neighbours and friends ofthe sentenced, in thirty-six towns and villages. Their bodies weremangled, steeped in caldrons of boiling pitch and tar, and hung upby the roadsides, in the streets, over the very churches. Thesight and smell of heads and limbs, the hissing and bubbling of theinfernal caldrons, and the tears and terrors of the people, weredreadful beyond all description. One rustic, who was forced tosteep the remains in the black pot, was ever afterwards called 'TomBoilman.' The hangman has ever since been called Jack Ketch,because a man of that name went hanging and hanging, all day long,in the train of Jeffreys. You will hear much of the horrors of thegreat French Revolution. Many and terrible they were, there is nodoubt; but I know of nothing worse, done by the maddened people ofFrance in that awful time, than was done by the highest judge inEngland, with the express approval of the King of England, in TheBloody Assize.

　　Nor was even this all. Jeffreys was as fond of money for himselfas of misery for others, and he sold pardons wholesale to fill hispockets. The King ordered, at one time, a thousand prisoners to begiven to certain of his favourites, in order that they mightbargain with them for their pardons. The young ladies of Tauntonwho had presented the Bible, were bestowed upon the maids of honourat court; and those precious ladies made very hard bargains withthem indeed. When The Bloody Assize was at its most dismal height,the King was diverting himself with horse-races in the very placewhere Mrs. Lisle had been executed. When Jeffreys had done hisworst, and came home again, he was particularly complimented in theRoyal Gazette; and when the King heard that through drunkenness andraging he was very ill, his odious Majesty remarked that suchanother man could not easily be found in England. Besides allthis, a former sheriff of London, named Cornish, was hanged withinsight of his own house, after an abominably conducted trial, forhaving had a share in the Rye House Plot, on evidence given byRumsey, which that villain was obliged to confess was directlyopposed to the evidence he had given on the trial of Lord Russell.And on the very same day, a worthy widow, named Elizabeth Gaunt,was burned alive at Tyburn, for having sheltered a wretch whohimself gave evidence against her. She settled the fuel aboutherself with her own hands, so that the flames should reach herquickly: and nobly said, with her last breath, that she had obeyedthe sacred command of God, to give refuge to the outcast, and notto betray the wanderer.

　　After all this hanging, beheading, burning, boiling, mutilating,exposing, robbing, transporting, and selling into slavery, of hisunhappy subjects, the King not unnaturally thought that he could dowhatever he would. So, he went to work to change the religion ofthe country with all possible speed; and what he did was this.

　　He first of all tried to get rid of what was called the Test Act -which prevented the Catholics from holding public employments - byhis own power of dispensing with the penalties. He tried it in onecase, and, eleven of the twelve judges deciding in his favour, heexercised it in three others, being those of three dignitaries ofUniversity College, Oxford, who had become Papists, and whom hekept in their places and sanctioned. He revived the hatedEcclesiastical Commission, to get rid of Compton, Bishop of London,who manfully opposed him. He solicited the Pope to favour Englandwith an ambassador, which the Pope (who was a sensible man then)rather unwillingly did. He flourished Father Petre before the eyesof the people on all possible occasions. He favoured theestablishment of convents in several parts of London. He wasdelighted to have the streets, and even the court itself, filledwith Monks and Friars in the habits of their orders. He constantlyendeavoured to make Catholics of the Protestants about him. Heheld private interviews, which he called 'closetings,' with thoseMembers of Parliament who held offices, to persuade them to consentto the design he had in view. When they did not consent, they wereremoved, or resigned of themselves, and their places were given toCatholics. He displaced Protestant officers from the army, byevery means in his power, and got Catholics into their places too.He tried the same thing with the corporations, and also (though notso successfully) with the Lord Lieutenants of counties. To terrifythe people into the endurance of all these measures, he kept anarmy of fifteen thousand men encamped on Hounslow Heath, where masswas openly performed in the General's tent, and where priests wentamong the soldiers endeavouring to persuade them to becomeCatholics. For circulating a paper among those men advising themto be true to their religion, a Protestant clergyman, namedJohnson, the chaplain of the late Lord Russell, was actuallysentenced to stand three times in the pillory, and was actuallywhipped from Newgate to Tyburn. He dismissed his own brother-in-law from his Council because he was a Protestant, and made a PrivyCouncillor of the before-mentioned Father Petre. He handed Irelandover to Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell, a worthless, dissoluteknave, who played the same game there for his master, and whoplayed the deeper game for himself of one day putting it under theprotection of the French King. In going to these extremities,every man of sense and judgment among the Catholics, from the Popeto a porter, knew that the King was a mere bigoted fool, who wouldundo himself and the cause he sought to advance; but he was deaf toall reason, and, happily for England ever afterwards, went tumblingoff his throne in his own blind way.

　　A spirit began to arise in the country, which the besottedblunderer little expected. He first found it out in the Universityof Cambridge. Having made a Catholic a dean at Oxford without anyopposition, he tried to make a monk a master of arts at Cambridge:which attempt the University resisted, and defeated him. He thenwent back to his favourite Oxford. On the death of the Presidentof Magdalen College, he commanded that there should be elected tosucceed him, one Mr. Anthony Farmer, whose only recommendation was,that he was of the King's religion. The University plucked upcourage at last, and refused. The King substituted another man,and it still refused, resolving to stand by its own election of aMr. Hough. The dull tyrant, upon this, punished Mr. Hough, andfive-and-twenty more, by causing them to be expelled and declaredincapable of holding any church preferment; then he proceeded towhat he supposed to be his highest step, but to what was, in fact,his last plunge head-foremost in his tumble off his throne.

　　He had issued a declaration that there should be no religious testsor penal laws, in order to let in the Catholics more easily; butthe Protestant dissenters, unmindful of themselves, had gallantlyjoined the regular church in opposing it tooth and nail. The Kingand Father Petre now resolved to have this read, on a certainSunday, in all the churches, and to order it to be circulated forthat purpose by the bishops. The latter took counsel with theArchbishop of Canterbury, who was in disgrace; and they resolvedthat the declaration should not be read, and that they wouldpetition the King against it. The Archbishop himself wrote out thepetition, and six bishops went into the King's bedchamber the samenight to present it, to his infinite astonishment. Next day wasthe Sunday fixed for the reading, and it was only read by twohundred clergymen out of ten thousand. The King resolved againstall advice to prosecute the bishops in the Court of King's Bench,and within three weeks they were summoned before the Privy Council,and committed to the Tower. As the six bishops were taken to thatdismal place, by water, the people who were assembled in immensenumbers fell upon their knees, and wept for them, and prayed forthem. When they got to the Tower, the officers and soldiers onguard besought them for their blessing. While they were confinedthere, the soldiers every day drank to their release with loudshouts. When they were brought up to the Court of King's Bench fortheir trial, which the Attorney-General said was for the highoffence of censuring the Government, and giving their opinion aboutaffairs of state, they were attended by similar multitudes, andsurrounded by a throng of noblemen and gentlemen. When the jurywent out at seven o'clock at night to consider of their verdict,everybody (except the King) knew that they would rather starve thanyield to the King's brewer, who was one of them, and wanted averdict for his customer. When they came into court next morning,after resisting the brewer all night, and gave a verdict of notguilty, such a shout rose up in Westminster Hall as it had neverheard before; and it was passed on among the people away to TempleBar, and away again to the Tower. It did not pass only to theeast, but passed to the west too, until it reached the camp atHounslow, where the fifteen thousand soldiers took it up and echoedit. And still, when the dull King, who was then with LordFeversham, heard the mighty roar, asked in alarm what it was, andwas told that it was 'nothing but the acquittal of the bishops,' hesaid, in his dogged way, 'Call you that nothing? It is so much theworse for them.'

　　Between the petition and the trial, the Queen had given birth to ason, which Father Petre rather thought was owing to Saint Winifred.But I doubt if Saint Winifred had much to do with it as the King'sfriend, inasmuch as the entirely new prospect of a Catholicsuccessor (for both the King's daughters were Protestants)determined the Earls of Shrewsbury, Danby, and Devonshire, LordLumley, the Bishop of London, Admiral Russell, and Colonel Sidney,to invite the Prince of Orange over to England. The Royal Mole,seeing his danger at last, made, in his fright, many greatconcessions, besides raising an army of forty thousand men; but thePrince of Orange was not a man for James the Second to cope with.His preparations were extraordinarily vigorous, and his mind wasresolved.

　　For a fortnight after the Prince was ready to sail for England, agreat wind from the west prevented the departure of his fleet.Even when the wind lulled, and it did sail, it was dispersed by astorm, and was obliged to put back to refit. At last, on the firstof November, one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight, theProtestant east wind, as it was long called, began to blow; and onthe third, the people of Dover and the people of Calais saw a fleettwenty miles long sailing gallantly by, between the two places. OnMonday, the fifth, it anchored at Torbay in Devonshire, and thePrince, with a splendid retinue of officers and men, marched intoExeter. But the people in that western part of the country hadsuffered so much in The Bloody Assize, that they had lost heart.Few people joined him; and he began to think of returning, andpublishing the invitation he had received from those lords, as hisjustification for having come at all. At this crisis, some of thegentry joined him; the Royal army began to falter; an engagementwas signed, by which all who set their hand to it declared thatthey would support one another in defence of the laws and libertiesof the three Kingdoms, of the Protestant religion, and of thePrince of Orange. From that time, the cause received no check; thegreatest towns in England began, one after another, to declare forthe Prince; and he knew that it was all safe with him when theUniversity of Oxford offered to melt down its plate, if he wantedany money.

　　By this time the King was running about in a pitiable way, touchingpeople for the King's evil in one place, reviewing his troops inanother, and bleeding from the nose in a third. The young Princewas sent to Portsmouth, Father Petre went off like a shot toFrance, and there was a general and swift dispersal of all thepriests and friars. One after another, the King's most importantofficers and friends deserted him and went over to the Prince. Inthe night, his daughter Anne fled from Whitehall Palace; and theBishop of London, who had once been a soldier, rode before her witha drawn sword in his hand, and pistols at his saddle. 'God helpme,' cried the miserable King: 'my very children have forsakenme!' In his wildness, after debating with such lords as were inLondon, whether he should or should not call a Parliament, andafter naming three of them to negotiate with the Prince, heresolved to fly to France. He had the little Prince of Walesbrought back from Portsmouth; and the child and the Queen crossedthe river to Lambeth in an open boat, on a miserable wet night, andgot safely away. This was on the night of the ninth of December.

　　At one o'clock on the morning of the eleventh, the King, who had,in the meantime, received a letter from the Prince of Orange,stating his objects, got out of bed, told Lord Northumberland wholay in his room not to open the door until the usual hour in themorning, and went down the back stairs (the same, I suppose, bywhich the priest in the wig and gown had come up to his brother)and crossed the river in a small boat: sinking the great seal ofEngland by the way. Horses having been provided, he rode,accompanied by Sir Edward Hales, to Feversham, where he embarked ina Custom House Hoy. The master of this Hoy, wanting more ballast,ran into the Isle of Sheppy to get it, where the fishermen andsmugglers crowded about the boat, and informed the King of theirsuspicions that he was a 'hatchet-faced Jesuit.' As they took hismoney and would not let him go, he told them who he was, and thatthe Prince of Orange wanted to take his life; and he began toscream for a boat - and then to cry, because he had lost a piece ofwood on his ride which he called a fragment of Our Saviour's cross.He put himself into the hands of the Lord Lieutenant of the county,and his detention was made known to the Prince of Orange at Windsor- who, only wanting to get rid of him, and not caring where hewent, so that he went away, was very much disconcerted that theydid not let him go. However, there was nothing for it but to havehim brought back, with some state in the way of Life Guards, toWhitehall. And as soon as he got there, in his infatuation, heheard mass, and set a Jesuit to say grace at his public dinner.

　　The people had been thrown into the strangest state of confusion byhis flight, and had taken it into their heads that the Irish partof the army were going to murder the Protestants. Therefore, theyset the bells a ringing, and lighted watch-fires, and burnedCatholic Chapels, and looked about in all directions for FatherPetre and the Jesuits, while the Pope's ambassador was running awayin the dress of a footman. They found no Jesuits; but a man, whohad once been a frightened witness before Jeffreys in court, saw aswollen, drunken face looking through a window down at Wapping,which he well remembered. The face was in a sailor's dress, but heknew it to be the face of that accursed judge, and he seized him.The people, to their lasting honour, did not tear him to pieces.After knocking him about a little, they took him, in the basestagonies of terror, to the Lord Mayor, who sent him, at his ownshrieking petition, to the Tower for safety. There, he died.

　　Their bewilderment continuing, the people now lighted bonfires andmade rejoicings, as if they had any reason to be glad to have theKing back again. But, his stay was very short, for the Englishguards were removed from Whitehall, Dutch guards were marched up toit, and he was told by one of his late ministers that the Princewould enter London, next day, and he had better go to Ham. Hesaid, Ham was a cold, damp place, and he would rather go toRochester. He thought himself very cunning in this, as he meant toescape from Rochester to France. The Prince of Orange and hisfriends knew that, perfectly well, and desired nothing more. So,he went to Gravesend, in his royal barge, attended by certainlords, and watched by Dutch troops, and pitied by the generouspeople, who were far more forgiving than he had ever been, whenthey saw him in his humiliation. On the night of the twenty-thirdof December, not even then understanding that everybody wanted toget rid of him, he went out, absurdly, through his Rochestergarden, down to the Medway, and got away to France, where herejoined the Queen.

　　There had been a council in his absence, of the lords, and theauthorities of London. When the Prince came, on the day after theKing's departure, he summoned the Lords to meet him, and soonafterwards, all those who had served in any of the Parliaments ofKing Charles the Second. It was finally resolved by theseauthorities that the throne was vacant by the conduct of King Jamesthe Second; that it was inconsistent with the safety and welfare ofthis Protestant kingdom, to be governed by a Popish prince; thatthe Prince and Princess of Orange should be King and Queen duringtheir lives and the life of the survivor of them; and that theirchildren should succeed them, if they had any. That if they hadnone, the Princess Anne and her children should succeed; that ifshe had none, the heirs of the Prince of Orange should succeed.

　　On the thirteenth of January, one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine, the Prince and Princess, sitting on a throne in Whitehall,bound themselves to these conditions. The Protestant religion wasestablished in England, and England's great and glorious Revolutionwas complete.