We now come to transactions which strikingly prove the innate baseness of his nature in the midst of his pretended openness and jolly good humor. He owed every thing in life to the corporation of the city of London. The freemen, in the exercise of their ancient privileges, had raised him from the ground by electing him common serjeant and recorder, and to the influence he was supposed to have in the Court of Common Council and in the Court of Aldermen must be ascribed his introduction to Whitehall and all his political advancement. But when, upon the failure of the prosecution against Lord Shaftesbury, the free municipal constitution of the city became so odious to the government, he heartily entered into the conspiracy to destroy it. It is said that he actually suggested the scheme of having a sheriff nominated by the lord mayor, and he certainly took a very active part in carrying it into execution. On Midsummer day, having planted Lord Chief Justice North in his house in Aldermanbury, that he might be backed by his authority, he himself appeared on the hustings in Guildhall; and when the poll was going against the court candidates, illegally advised the lord mayor to dissolve the hall, and afterwards to declare them duly elected. He did every thing in his power to push on and to assist the great quo warranto, by which the city was to be entirely disfranchised.[118]

When success had crowned these efforts, and Pilkington and Shute, the former sheriffs, with Alderman Cornish and others, were to be tried before a packed jury for a riot at the election, finding that he had the game in his hand, his insolence knew no bounds. The defendants having challenged the array, on the ground that the sheriffs who returned the panel were not lawfully appointed,[119] as soon as the challenge was read, he exclaimed, “Here’s a tale of a tub indeed!” The counsel for the defendants insisted that the challenge was good in law, and at great length argued for its validity.

Jeffreys.—“Robin Hood
Upon Greendale stood.”

Thompson, Counsel for the Defendants.—“If the challenge be not good, there must be a defect in it either in point of law or in point of fact. I pray that the crown may either demur or traverse.” Jeffreys.—“This discourse is only for discourse sake. I pray the jury may be sworn.” Lord Chief Justice Saunders.—“Ay, ay, swear the jury.” The defendants were, of course, all found guilty; and as there were among them the most eminent of Jeffreys’s old city friends, he exerted himself to the utmost not only in gaining a conviction, but in aggravating the sentence.

But this was only a case of misdemeanor, in which he could ask for nothing beyond fine and imprisonment. He was soon to be engaged in prosecutions for high treason against the noblest of the land, in which his savage taste for blood might be gratified. The Ryehouse plot broke out, for which there was some foundation; and after the conviction of those who had planned it, Lord Russell was brought to trial at the Old Bailey, on the ground that he had consented to it.

Jeffreys, in the late state trials, had gradually been encroaching on the attorney and solicitor general, Sir Robert Sawyer and Sir Heneage Finch, and in Lord Russell’s case, to which the government attached such infinite importance, he almost entirely superseded them. To account for his unexampled zeal, we must remember that the office of chief justice of the King’s Bench was still vacant, Saunders having died a few months before, and Lord Keeper North having strongly opposed the appointment of Jeffreys as his successor.

These trials took place before a commission, at the head of which was placed Pemberton, chief justice of the Common Pleas, to whom a chance was thus afforded of earning a reappointment to the chief justiceship of the King’s Bench, in which he had been superseded by Saunders.

The case of Colonel Walcot was taken first; and here there was no difficulty, for he had not only joined in planning an insurrection against the government, but was privy to the design of assassinating the king and the Duke of York, and in a letter to the secretary of state he had confessed his complicity, and offered to become a witness for the crown. This trial was meant to prepare the public mind for that of Lord Russell, the great ornament of the Whig party, who had carried the exclusion bill through the House of Commons, and, attended by a great following of Whig members, had delivered it with his own hand to the lord chancellor at the bar of the House of Lords. In proportion to his virtues was the desire to wreak vengeance upon him. But the object was no less difficult than desirable, for he had been kept profoundly ignorant of the intention to offer violence to the royal brothers, from the certainty that he would have rejected it with abhorrence; and although he had been present when there were deliberations respecting the right and the expediency of resistance by force to the government after the system had been established of ruling without Parliaments, he had never concurred in the opinion that there were no longer constitutional means of redress; much less had he concerted an armed insurrection. Notwithstanding all the efforts made to return a prejudiced jury, there were serious apprehensions of an acquittal.

Pemberton, the presiding judge, seems to have been convinced that the evidence against him was insufficient; and although he did not interpose with becoming vigor, by repressing the unfair arts of Jeffreys, who was leading counsel for the crown, and although he did not stop the prosecution, as an independent judge would do in modern times, he cannot be accused of any perversion of law; and, instead of treating the prisoner with brutality, as was wished and expected, he behaved to him with courtesy and seeming kindness.

Lord Russell, on his arraignment at the sitting of the court in the morning, having prayed that the trial should be postponed till the afternoon, as a witness for him was absent, and it had been usual in such case to allow an interval between the arraignment and the trial, Pemberton said, “Why may not this trial be respited till the afternoon?” and the only answer being the insolent exclamation, “Pray call the jury,” he mildly added, “My lord, the king’s counsel think it not reasonable to put off the trial longer, and we cannot put it off without their consent in this case.”