But still it was determined to make use of him, and he was subpœnaed to give evidence on the approaching trial of Hampden. He pleaded the promise that his confession should not be used against the prisoners, but he was told that he had cancelled that obligation by his subsequently withdrawing his letter. Seeing by this that he would be dragged before a public court to play the disgraceful part of Lord Howard, he suddenly disappeared from his house in Holborn, and escaped to Holland, where he was well received by Prince William, who was now the grand refuge of English and Scottish refugees of all parties and politics. As Monmouth's escape deprived the court of his evidence, and only one main witness, Lord Howard, could be obtained, the charge of high treason was abandoned, and that of a misdemeanour was substituted. Howard was the chief witness, and Hampden was found guilty and punished by a fine of forty thousand pounds, and imprisoned till paid, besides having to find two securities for his good behaviour during life. When he complained of the severity of the sentence, which was equivalent to imprisonment during the life of his father, he was reminded that his crime really amounted to treason, and therefore was very mild.

On the return of the Duke of York to Scotland, the persecutions of the defeated Covenanters had been renewed there with a fury and diabolical ferocity which has scarcely a parallel in history. Wives were tortured for refusing to betray their husbands, children because they would not discover their parents. People were tortured and then hanged merely because they would not say that the insurrection there was a rebellion, or the killing of Archbishop Sharp was a murder. The fortress of the Bass Rock, Dumbarton Castle, and other strongholds were crammed with Covenanters and Cameronians. Witnesses, a thing unheard of before, were now tortured. "This," says Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, "was agreeable to the Roman law, but not to ours; it was a barbarous practice, but yet of late frequently used amongst us." He also informs us that Generals Dalziel and Drummond had imported thumbscrews from Russia, where they had seen them used, by which they crushed the thumbs of prisoners to compel them to confess. All the laws of evidence were thrown aside, and the accused were condemned on presumptive evidence. On such testimony the property of numbers was forfeited, and the notorious Graham of Claverhouse was enriched by the estate of a suspected Covenanter.

By these torrents of blood, these diabolical engines of iron boots, thumbscrews, and other tortures; by witnesses forced to implicate their neighbours, and a herd of vile caitiffs brought forward to swear away the lives and fortunes of every man who dared to entertain, though he scarcely ventured to avow, a free opinion; by the Church preaching passive obedience; by servile, bullying, and brutal judges; Charles had now completely subdued the spirit of the nation, and had, through the aid of French money, obtained that absolute power which his father in vain fought for.

One of the first uses which he made of this beautiful tranquillity was to destroy the ancient seminaries of freedom—the corporations of the country. Writs of quo warranto were issued, and the corporations, like the nation at large, prostrate at the foot of the polluted throne, were compelled by threats and promises to resign their ancient privileges. "Neither," says Lingard, "had the boroughs much reason to complain. By the renewal of their charters they lost no franchise which it was reasonable they should retain; many acquired rights which they did not previously possess; but individuals suffered, because the exercise of authority was restricted to a smaller number of burgesses, and these, according to custom, were in the first instance named by the Crown."

THE BASS ROCK.

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There, indeed, lay the gist and mischief of the whole matter. Charles cared little what other privileges they enjoyed so that he could deprive them of their most important privilege—their independence, and make them not only slavish institutions, but instruments for the general enslavement of the country. "In the course of time," says the same historian, "several boroughs, by the exercise of those exclusive privileges, which had been conferred on them by ancient grants from the Crown, had grown into nests or asylums of public malefactors, and on that account were presented as nuisances by the grand juries of the county assizes." This was a good reason why those "several boroughs" should have been reformed; but none whatever why all boroughs should be compelled to surrender their independence to a despotic monarch. The great instrument in this sweeping usurpation was the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, a man admirably calculated for the work by his power of coaxing, jeering, browbeating, and terrifying the reluctant corporations. Before he set out on his summer circuit this year, Charles presented him with a ring from his own finger, as a mark of his especial esteem, at the same time giving him a very necessary piece of advice, Chief Justice as he was, to beware of drinking too much, as the weather would be hot. The ring was called Jeffreys' bloodstone, being presented to him just after the execution of Sir Thomas Armstrong.

Though blood had ceased to flow, persecution of the Whigs had not ceased. Sir Samuel Barnardiston, the foreman of the grand jury which had ignored the Bill against Lord Shaftesbury, was not forgotten. He was tried for a libel, and fined ten thousand pounds, and ordered to find security for his good behaviour during life. Williams, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was prosecuted for merely having discharged the duties of his office, in signing the votes; Braddon and Speke were tried and punished severely for slandering the king and duke by charging them with the murder of Essex. And James now indulged his spleen against Titus Oates for his proceedings against the Catholics, and his endeavour to exclude James from the succession. The pretence seized upon was, that Oates and Dutton Colt had declared that the Duke of York was a traitor, and that before he should come to the succession, he should be banished or hanged, the hanging being the fitter. Jeffreys, who tried them, had a particular pleasure in sentencing Oates, who, in the days of his popularity, had hit the rascally lawyer hard. In 1680 Jeffreys had fallen under the censure of Parliament for interfering in its concerns, and they had not only brought him to his knees at their bar, but had compelled him to resign the recordership of London. On the trial of College, the "Protestant joiner," Oates had appealed to Jeffreys, then Serjeant Jeffreys, to confirm a part of his evidence. Jeffreys indignantly said he did not intend becoming evidence for a man like him; whereupon Oates coolly replied, "I don't desire Sir George Jeffreys to become an evidence for me; I have had credit in Parliaments, and Sir George had disgrace in one of them." Jeffreys was stunned by this repartee, and merely replied, "Your servant, doctor; you are a witty man and a philosopher." But now the tide had turned; Jeffreys had the witty man at his mercy, and he fined him and Colt one hundred thousand pounds, or imprisonment till paid, which meant so long as they lived.

Tardy justice was also done to the Catholic peers who were in the Tower. Lord Stafford had fallen the victim of Protestant terrors during the ascendency of the Whigs; Lord Petre died, worn out by his confinement, but the Lords Powis, Arundel, and Bellasis, after lying in durance vile for five years, were brought up by writ of Habeas corpus, and were discharged on each entering into recognisances of ten thousand pounds for himself, and five thousand pounds each for four sureties, to appear at the bar of the House if called for. The judges, now that the Duke of York, the Catholic prince, was in power, could admit that these victims of a political faction "ought in justice and conscience to have been admitted to bail long ago." Danby, too, was liberated on the same terms, though he never could be forgiven by the king or duke for his patronage of Oates, and his zeal in hunting out the plot.