Elizabeth Gaunt, of Wapping, was burned alive at Tyburn, and one Lindsey was hanged on Tower Hill. The offense with which the poor woman was charged was, having compassed the king's death, by favoring the escape of one Burton, accused of participation in the Rye House plot, into Holland, and giving succor to the same Burton after the battle of Sedgemoor; and the principal witness against her was the execrable Burton himself, whose life she had twice saved.1 The offense of the man who was hanged at Tower Hill was desertion-an offense not then provided for by any recognized martial law. Mrs. Gaunt died like a primitive martyr, declaring at the stake that she had only obeyed the sacred precepts which commanded her to hide the outcast, and not to betray him that wandereth. Two other persons of humble condition were executed in London, where the outrages offered to the remains of the dead were carried to an unusual height, and where the dying speeches of all the prisoners were arbitrarily suppressed. Even the dismembered body of Rumbald was brought up from Scotland; and the slavish sheriffs of London received a royal warrant to set up one of the fetid quarters over one of the city gates, and to deliver the remaining three quarters to the sheriff of Hertford, who was directed by another royal warrant to place them, one at the Rye House, one at Hoddesdon, and the other at Bishop's Stortford.3 obscurer persons had been hanged and quartered. Stamford took the benefit of a subsequent amnesty. The Marquis of Halifax had remained in the ministry during all the atrocities of Jeffreys's campaign, sitting at the council-board with Sunderland, with Rochester, whose vices of drinking and swearing did not prevent his being considered as the head of the high-church party, and with Godolphin, whose business habits were held to be indispensable. Halifax, however, to use his own witticism, had been "kicked up stairs" into the sounding but empty office of president of the council; and now it was resolved to deprive him of office altogether: for James suspected him of a determination to oppose the repeal of the Test and Habeas Corpus Acts, and he had not penetration enough to perceive the danger he ran in driving that crafty and able politician to extremities. Nor would the despotic blunderer delay this dismissal till the approaching session of parliament should be over. That session, as appointed, opened on the 9th of November. Uplifted with his mighty doings during the recess, and with the appearance of universal timidity and submission, James now presumed that the parliament of England would bend before him, and, like the parliament of Paris, content themselves for the future with the honor of receiving his commands and registering his decrees. After speaking briefly of the storm that was past, he told them, in a dictatorial style, that the militia, which had hitherto been so much depended on, was an inefficient force, and that there was nothing but a standing army of welldisciplined troops that could secure the nation at home and abroad. He then stated how he had augmented the army during the late wretched attempt, and called for a supply answerable to the increased expense. And," continued he, "let no man take exception that there are some officers in this army not qualified, according to the late tests, for their employments. The gentlemen, I must tell you, are most of them known to me; and, having formerly served me on several occasions, and always ap proved the loyalty of their principles by their prac tices, I think them now fit to be employed under me: and I will deal plainly with you, that, after having had the benefit of their services in such time In London, as in the west, corruption and bribery were the only checks to infernal cruelty. Thus, Prideaux, who was thrown into the Tower by an arbitrary warrant, upon mere suspicion, bought himself off with £1500; and Hampden, still in prison for his misdemeanor, put aside the new and capital charge of high treason by paying £6000, to be divided between Jeffreys and Father Petre, the king's confessor and chief adviser. The queen's maids of honor, as pocket-money, were allowed to take from £50 to £100 from each of the fair damsels of Taunton who had presented Monmouth with flags and a Bible, and who thus were saved. In consequence of the suspicions of the court and of the disclosures made by Lord Grey, the lords Brandon, Delamere, and Stamford were proceeded against for high treason. Brandon was convicted by perjured witnesses; but, having a sister-in-law in fa- ' of need and danger, I will neither expose them to vor at court,' he escaped, not being, however, enlarged upon bail till fourteen months, nor receiving his pardon till two years after his trial. Delamere, who was tried before the Lord Steward, Jeffreys, and thirty peers, was unanimously acquitted, though the falsehood, and infamy, and perjury of those who swore against him were not more conspicuous than the same vices in the evidence upon which many 1 Roger North was an active counsel against the benevolent and courageous woman. 2 With her own hands she disposed the straw and more combustible materials around her, so as to shorten her agony by a quick fire. Among the weeping spectators was the celebrated Quaker, William Penn, who was then frequently admitted to familiar intercourse with the king. 3 Warrants at the State Paper Office, as quoted by Mackintosh. disgrace nor myself to the want of them, if there should be another rebellion to make them necessary to me.” Without this declaration both Lords and Commons knew very well that he had commissioned Catholic lords to levy Catholic troops against Monmouth, and in the choice of officers had shown a marked preference for men of the ancient religion: and now the old hatred of popery came in to revive the languishing cause of civil liberty, and highchurchmen and low-churchmen, Tories and Whigs, became for a season united. The Commons. in coming to a resolution about a supply, voted an address to his majesty for the discharge of all such officers as refused the Protestant test. James, in It is said also that the infamous Grey had some compunctions vis-reply, said, "Whatever you may do, I will adhere itings, and bargained with James that no life should be taken upon his disclosures. to all my promises." The House was thrown into a ferment, and Mr. John Kok, member for Derby, said, "I hope we are Englishmen, and not to be 1 frightened out of our duty by a few high words." But the majority of the Englishmen there committed him to the Tower for his speech. Still, however, with all their servile loyalty, they were resolute about the popish officers; and the Lords showed equal or superior zeal. The ex-minister Halifax led the van against the court; and Jeffreys, the chancellor and main manager, was checked in his high career of insolence and arrogance, and made to crouch in the dust. On the eleventh day of the session, James, disappointed and furious, prorogued the parliament, which never met again for the dispatch of business; and the houses were deserted and silent till they echoed his expulsion and dethronement, as pronounced by the Convention. A.D. 1686. James had not obtained a sixpence from the late session, but, for a time, he counted upon money from France; his minister, Sunderland, accepted a French pension of 25,000 crowns; and, after some shuffling and an attempt to save a sort of false pride and dignity, the King of England tied himself to the triumphal car of Louis XIV., by which he made his political existence absolutely incompatible with that of his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, and at the same time rendered himself doubly odious to his Protestant subjects, as the ally and tool of one who had waged a most pitiless warfare against the reformed religion in France; for it was just at this critical moment, when Englishmen were filled with doubts and terrors as to the intentions of their popish king, that Louis revoked the tolerant edict of Nantes,' and drove many thousands of his Huguenot subjects to exile. The accounts which these fugitives brought into England added fresh fuel to the fire which was about to break out and consume James and his insane projects. It was known at the time that he and Father Petre were busily engaged in attempts to convert many of the Protestants about court; and, with a standing army encamped upon Hounslow Heath, and which kept still increasing, it was reasonably apprehended that such zealots would not always confine themselves to polemical arguments, persuasions, and promises. Sunderland had privately embraced Catholicism, and, in appearance, adopted all his master's partiality in favor of Roman Catholics. Other converts, both male and female, more openly proclaimed their abandonment of the Protestant faith; and the poet Dryden, the greatest writer of the day, recanted, and wrote, with very unchristian violence, against the Reformation and the established church. Some of these proceedings are a com 1 The edict of Nantes, which is said to have been composed by the great historian De Thou, was passed by Henry IV. in the year 1598. It was suddenly repealed by Louis XIV., on the 18th of October, 1685, just three weeks before the meeting of the English parliament. The atrocious. At Nismes alone 60,000 Protestants were forced, in three days, to abjure their religion. Louis's missionaries were dragoons; cruelties which immediately preceded and followed that measure were whence the proceedings obtained the name (forever memorable, and forever infamous) of dragonnades. 2 James, however, failed in many instances where he had probably expected immediate success. Jeffreys would not change; and it is said of Kirk, that, when urged by the king to turn Catholic, he excused Emperor of Morocco thut if he ever changed his religion he would turn himself by saying, that when in Africa he had given a promise to the thousand Protestant soldiers were cashiered, stripped of their uniforms, and left to wander, hungry and half naked, through the land. Their officers, for the most part, retired into Holland, and gathered round the Prince of Orange. All this was too much for the endurance even of Tories and high-churchmen, and, in despite of the dogma of passive obedience, the pulpits began to resound with warnings and denunciations. To quench the flame in its infancy, James issued letters mandatory to the bishops of England, prohibiting the clergy to preach upon points of controversy, and establishing an ecclesiastical commission with more power than had been possessed by the abominable court over which Laud presided. It was author 66 plete banquet to the cynic. James, like Louis commanded to wear their canonicals in public. Four XIV., reconciled his breaches of the seventh commandment with his ardent religionism. His reigning mistress was Catherine Sedley, who had some of her father's wit, though no pretensions to personal beauty. She was installed at Whitehall, and created Countess of Dorchester; but James and his priests failed in converting her to popery; and the champions of the Protestant church did not disdain to pay court to the orthodox mistress. Rochester, that other pillar of the church, clung to her, while his rival, Sunderland, made common cause with the queen, who was jealous, and, with the confessor, who considered a mistress of such decided Protestantism a very dangerous appendage. Between them, the queen, confessor, and prime minister prevailed upon the king to send his mistress into Ire-ized to search out and call before it even those land, where a good estate had been given to her. The convert, Sunderland, then rose, and his rival, Rochester, sunk. The ministry was, in fact, converted into a close cabal of seven persons: the king, Sunderland, Father Petre, and the Catholic lords, Bellasis, Powis, Arundel, and Dover, who assembled sometimes in Sunderland's house and sometimes in the apartments of Chiffinch, of the backstairs. Roger Palmer, earl of Castlemaine by right of his wife's prostitution to the late king, was sent on an embassy to Rome, and an ambassador from the pope was openly received in London. After a few preludes in the courts of law, where it was endeavored to convert the Test Act into a dead letter, James, with blind and headlong haste, proceeded to assert a dispensing, a suspending, and a repealing power over all laws or acts of parliament whatsoever, and to put Catholics into the highest civil and military offices, from which the Protestants were dismissed. By means of quo warranto writs the corporations throughout the kingdom were remodeled; papists were admitted into all of them, and papists were made lieutenants of counties, sheriffs, and justices of the peace. In Scotland, where the parliament had been dissolved because it betrayed the same dread of popery as that of England, the same measures were resorted to, and the highchurch Tory ministry was dismissed to make room for one of an entirely Catholic complexion. In Ireland the Protestants, who alone had been intrusted with arms, were disarmed by Tyrconnel, who was declared, even by one of his own party, to be" madman enough to ruin ten kingdoms." Indeed, in that country the scales were entirely turned, and the Protestants were treated in all things as badly as they had been accustomed to treat the papists ever since the days of Elizabeth. The revenues of the church were in good part given to popish bishops and priests, who were not merely permitted but Turk. Admiral Herbert, though a professed libertine and a man of extravagant habits, resigned his lucrative offices rather than comply. 1 The lady was daughter of the very witty and profligate Sir Charles Sedley. Charles II., who had more taste in female beauty, used to say that one might faucy his brother's mistresses were given to him by his father confessor as penances, they were all so ugly. According to Horace Walpole, Miss Sedley (ennobled into the Countess of Dor chester) was accustomed to wonder what James chose his mistresses for. "We were none of us handsome," said she; "and if we had wit, he had not enough to find it out."-Reminiscences. who seemed to be suspected of offenses;” and to plotting rival, Sunderland, was disappointed, for his lucrative office of lord treasurer was put into commission. Nearly at the same time Rochester's brother, Lord Clarendon, was recalled from Ireland, and Tyrconnel, with the title of lord deputy, was left to govern that country. Even D'Adda, the pope's minister, saw clearly that James was ruining his cause by precipitation; and the wary Italian informed his court that men's minds were imbittered by the belief that Rochester had been dismissed because he would not turn Catholic, and that there was a design for the extermination of all Protestants. Yet still James kept his course, and looked, with satisfaction and pride, to his encampment on Hounslow Heath, in which were now inclosed 15.000 men, horse and foot. He caused Samuel Johnson, a clergyman of the establishment, who had been chaplain to Lord Russell, to be sentenced to pay a fine, to be pilloried three several times, and to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, for writing an address to the soldiers to remind them that they were freeborn Englishmen. He attempted to convert his daughter, the Princess Anne, and to deprive his daughter Mary, the princess of Orange, of her right of the succession; and, looking neither to the right nor to the left, he went on more openly to assail the chartered rights of public bodies. of Westminster, but the new ecclesiastical commission took up the Cambridge case, and summarily deprived Pechell, the vice-chancellor, of his office, and suspended him from the mastership of Magdalen College. James then commanded the Fellows of Magdalen to elect as their master one Antony Farmer, a concealed papist. The Fellows petitioned his majesty, but finding him not to be moved, they exercised their own undoubted right, and elected Doctor Howe. The ecclesiastical commission declared this election to be void, and then a new mandate was issued to the college to elect Parker, bishop of Oxford, who had several qualifications which Farmer had not, but who was also suspected of being a papist in disguise.' The Fellows, with unexpected spirit, stuck to the master of their own choosing, and Howe exercised his authority in spite of the ecclesiastical commission and the king. In the course of a summer progress, James arrived at Oxford, summoned the members of Magdalen into his presence, chid them for their disobedience, and told them to go away and choose the Bishop of Oxford, or else they should certainly feel the weight of his sovereign displeasure. Here was a call upon passive obedience from the very lips of the Lord's anointed; but still the Fellows insisted on their right, and answered him respectfully but firmly. Then they were privately warned that, like the corporations, they would be proceeded against by quo warranto, and inevitably lose every thing. But still the gownmen were firm. The tyrant, astonished and enraged, issued a commission to Cartwright, bishop of Chester, Chief Justice Wright, and Baron Jenner, to examine the state of the college, with full power to alter the statutes and frame new ones. The commissioners arrived at Oxford on the 20th of October, when Cartwright thundered at the devoted college; but Howe maintained his own rights and the rights of the body which had elected him with decorum and firmness; and when, on the second day, the commissioners deprived him of the presidency and struck his name off the books, he entered the ball and boldly protested against all they had done. The chief justice bound him in a thousand pounds to appear in the King's Bench, and Parker was put into possession by force. Then a 1 Estratti delle lettere de Mosignor D'Adda, Nunzio Apostolico, etc. majority of the Fellows were prevailed upon to sub-In Mackintosh, Appendix. A.D. 1687. One of his great objects was to obtain the control of the seminaries and schools. Of these the Charter House in London was a very important one; and, accordingly, he commanded the governors of that establishment to admit into it one Andrew Popham, a papist, without test or oath. But the majority of the governors, headed by the Duke of Ormond, Compton, the suspended bishop of London, and the ex-minister, Lord Halifax, resisted the mandate. Yet, after failing in this attempt, he demanded from the University of Oxford that they should acknowledge a right in Father Petre to name seven Fellows of Exeter College, and from the University of Cambridge the degree of master of arts for one Alban Francis, a Benedictine friar. Both those learned bodies, in spite of their recent declarations of non-resistance, resisted to the very utmost; the Oxford question was referred to the courts "The noble family of Petre (of whom Father Edward Petre was one) in January, 1687, claimed the right of nomination to seven fellow mit "as far as was lawful and agreeable to the statutes of the college." But the weakly, arrogant ships in Exeter College, which had been founded there by Sir W. Pe- king would not be satisfied with this; he insisted tre, in the re.gn of Elizabeth. It was acknowledged on the part of the college, that Sir William and his son had exercised that power, though the latter, as they contended, had nominated only by sufferance. The Bishop of Exeter, the visitor of the college, had, in the reign of James I., pronounced an opinion against the founder's descendants, and a judgment had been obtained against them in the Court of Common Pleas about the same time. Under the sanction of these authorities, the college had for seventy years nominated to these fellowships without disturbance from the family of Petre. Allibone, the Catholic lawyer, contended that this long usage, which would otherwise have been conclusive, deserved little consideration in a period of such iniquity toward Catholics that they were deterred from asserting their civil rights." Before this attempt James had obtained the appointment of one Massey, a Catholic, as dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and had obtained a dispensation for Obadiah Walker, master of University Col lege, Oxford (long a concealed papist), and for two of his fellows of the same faith, together with a license for publishing books of Catholic theology. And Walker had had the courage to establish a printing press and a Catholic chapel in his college. that the Fellows should acknowledge their disobedience and repentance in a written submission. Upon this the Fellows withdrew their former submission, and declared, in writing, that they could not acknowledge they had done any thing amiss. On the 16th of November, Bishop Cartwright pro 1 Parker had passed through the phases of a fanatical puritan preacher during the Commonwealth, and a bigoted high-churchman at the Restoration, when he defended the persecution of his late brethren, and reviled the most virtuous men among them. As soon as he was made bishop of Oxford he was ready to transfer his services to James and the church of Rome. He was a drunkard and many things worse. 2 Cartwright, bishop of Chester, was a pretty good parallel to his brother Parker of Oxford. He, too, had originally been a puritan and had become a flaming high-churchman at the Restoration. He drank as much as Parker, but was not so witty in his cups. nounced the judgment of the commission in the shape of a general deprivation and expulsion. ThLouis in the neighboring kingdom had more power was followed up, in December, by the sentence of the ecclesiastical commission, which incapacitated all and every the Fellows of Magdalen from holding any benefice or preferment in the church-a decree, however, which passed that body only by a majority of one. The intention was to defeat the project of some of the nobility and gentry, who had intended to bestow livings in the church on some of the ejected Fellows. James himself declared that he would look upon any favor shown to the Fellows as a combination against himself; but, notwithstanding his threats, considerable collections were made for them, and his own daughter, the Princess of Orange sent over £200 for their relief; and in the end, though they obtained the honors of martyrdom, they experienced little of its sufferings. Their places in the university were filled by avowed papists or by very doubtful Protestants. But long before this result the king had issued "A Declaration for liberty of conscience;" by which all the penal laws against Protestant Non-conformists as well as Catholics were to be suspended.1 "We have thought fit," said James, by virtue of our royal prerogative, to issue forth this our declaration of indulgence, making no doubt of the concurrence of our two Houses of Parliament when we shall think it convenient for them to meet." The preamble was in other respects irreproachable-it laid down the great and saving virtue of toleration; and the declaration gave leave to all men to meet and serve God after their own manner, publicly as well as privately; it denounced the royal displeasure and the vengeance of the laws against all who should disturb any religious worship; and it granted a free pardon to all the king's loving subjects from penalties, forfeitures, and disabilities incurred on account of religion, the penal laws, &c. But this power of suspending the laws was not to be tolerated by any people pretending to freedom and a constitution; and it was understood by nearly every dissenting Protestant in the land, that the Non-conformists were only coupled with the Catholics for policy and expediency, and that the toleration of the Catholics was only intended as a preparatory step to the triumphant establishment of the church of Rome, which had never yet in any European kingdom tolerated the doctrines and practices of any other church whatsoever. The recent example set by The declaration came out in the Gazette on the 4th of April, 1687. To prepare the way for it, a declaration of indulgence, expressed in much loftier and more absolute language, had been issued by proclamation at Edinburgh: "We, by our sovereign authority, prerogative tion. We allow and tolerate the moderate Presbyterians to meet in royal, and absolute power, do hereby give and grant our royal tolera their private houses, and to hear such ministers as have been or are willing to accept of our indulgence, but they are not to build meeting houses, but to exercise in houses. We tolerate Quakers to meet in their form in any place or places appointed for their worship: and we, by our sovereign authority, &c, suspend, stop, and disable all laws or acts of parliament made or executed against any of our Roman Catholic subjects, so that they shall be free to exercise their religion and to enjoy all; but they are to exercise in houses or chapels: and we cass, annul, and discharge all oaths by which our subjects are disabled from holding offices." The proprietors of church lands were confirmed in their possession, which seemed to be unnecessary so long as the Protestant establishment endured. to alarm than James's declaration, promises, and professions had power to lull and console; and the character, the habits, the habitual conversation of the king and his chief favorites furnished arguments innumerable and unanswerable against the sincerity of any professions of kindness toward the Protestant Dissenters. James's conduct in Scotland could not be forgotten; and Jeffreys's loud denunciations of all the Presbyterians and Non-conformists as kinghaters, rebels, and republicans were still ringing in the ears of the nation. With remarkably few exceptions the large but disunited body of Dissenters rejected the boon as a snare, and prepared to stand by the lately-persecuting but now threatened Episcopal church; and not only the result, in which, as in all human affairs, there was much that was accidental or unforeseen, but also the coolest reasoning on all the circumstances of the case, will justify their preference, and prove that they acted wisely and politically. When the declaration was published, James told the pope's nuncio that he had struck a blow which would make a great noise—that in a general liberty of conscience the Anglican religion would be the first to decline; and the nuncio informed his court that the established church was mortified at the proceeding; that the Anglicans were "a ridiculous sect, who affected a sort of moderation in heresy, by a compost and jumble of all other persuasions; and who, notwithstanding the attachment which they boast of having maintained to the monarchy and the royal family, have proved on this occasion the most insolent and contumacious of men." In other directions James manifested an increasing and an emboldened hatred, not merely of high-churchmen, but of all Protestants whatsoever, except such as were timid and wavering aud ready to do his will. The Dissenters opened their long-closed places of worship, grudging in their intolerance the same boon to the papists; the Presbyterians, the most numerous and influential of all the sects, resisted the solicitations of the court to sanction the dispensing power in the king by sending him addresses of thanks for the benefit allowed them; and many of the minor sects confined themselves to thanks for toleration, and assurances that they would not abuse it. On the 3d of July James obliged the timid and more than half-unwilling ambassador of the pope to go through the honors and ceremonies of a public introduction at Windsor. Crewe, bishop of Durham, and Cartwright, bishop of Chester, were ready instruments in this parade; but the Duke of Somerset, the second peer of the kingdom, who was selected to introduce D'Adda, besought his majesty to excuse him from the performance of an act which by the laws of the land was still considered an overt act of treason. "Do you not know," said James, "that I am above the law?" The duke replied, "Your majesty is so, but I am not." The Duke of Grafton, however, did what Somerset would not, and introduced the nuncio. On the day before this public reception, the parliament, which had been kept from meeting by repeated prorogations, was |