A considerable harvest here arose from compositions levied upon the friends of twenty-six young virgins who presented the invader with colors, which they had embroidered with their own hands. The fund was ostensibly for the benefit of “the queen’s maids of honor,” but a strong suspicion arose that the chief justice participated in bribes for these as well as other pardons. He thought that his peculium was encroached upon by a letter from Lord Sunderland, informing him of “the king’s pleasure to bestow one thousand convicts on several courtiers, and one hundred on a favorite of the queen—security being given that the prisoners should be enslaved for ten years in some West India island.” In his remonstrance he said that “these convicts would be worth ten or fifteen pounds apiece,” and, with a view to his own claim, returned thanks for his majesty’s gracious acceptance of his services. However, he was obliged to submit to the royal distribution of the spoil.
Where the king did not personally interfere, Jeffreys was generally inexorable if he did not himself receive the bribe for a pardon. Kiffin, a Nonconformist merchant, had agreed to give three thousand pounds to a courtier for the pardon of two youths, his grandsons, who had been in Monmouth’s army; but the chief justice would listen to no circumstances of mitigation, as another was to pocket the price of mercy. Yet, to a buffoon who attended him on the circuit and made sport by his mimicry, in an hour of revelry at Taunton, he tossed the pardon of a rich culprit, expressing a hope “that it might turn to good account.”
The jails at Taunton being incapable of containing all the prisoners, it was necessary to adjourn the commission to Wells, where the same horrible scenes were again acted, notwithstanding the humane exertions of that most honorable man, Bishop Ken, who afterwards, having been one of the seven bishops prosecuted by King James, resigned his see at the Revolution, rather than sign the new tests.
The Cornishmen had all remained loyal, and the city of Bristol[131] only remained to be visited by the commission. There were not many cases of treason here, but Jeffreys had a particular spite against the corporation magistrates, because they were supposed to favor dissenters, and he had them very much in his power by a discovery he made, that they had been in the habit of having in turn assigned to them prisoners charged with felony, whom they sold for their own benefit to be transported to Barbadoes. In addressing the grand jury, (while he complained of a fit of the stone, and was seemingly under the excitement of liquor,) he said,—
“I find a special commission is an unusual thing here, and relishes very ill; nay, the very women storm at it, for fear we should take the upper hand of them too; for by-the-bye, gentlemen, I hear it is much in fashion in this city for the women to govern and bear sway.” Having praised the mild and paternal rule of King James, he thus proceeded: “On the other hand, up starts a puppet prince, who seduces the mobile into rebellion, into which they are easily bewitched; for I say rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft. This man, who had as little title to the crown as the least of you, (for I hope you are all legitimate,) being overtaken by justice, and by the goodness of his prince brought to the scaffold, he has the confidence, (good God, that men should be so impudent!) to say that God Almighty did know with what joyfulness he did die, (a traitor!) Great God of heaven and earth! what reason have men to rebel? But, as I told you, rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft: Fear God and honor the king is rejected for no other reason, as I can find, but that it is written in St. Peter. Gentlemen, I must tell you I am afraid that this city hath too many of these people in it, and it is your duty to find them out. Gentlemen, I shall not stand complimenting with you; I shall talk with some of you before you and I part, I tell you; I tell you I have brought a besom, and I will sweep every man’s door, whether great or small. Certainly, here are a great many of those men whom they call Trimmers; a Whig is but a mere fool to those; for a Whig is some sort of a subject in comparison of these; for a Trimmer is but a cowardly and base-spirited Whig; for the Whig is but the journeyman prentice that is hired and set over the rebellion, whilst the Trimmer is afraid to appear in the cause.” He then opens his charge against the aldermen for the sale of convicts, and thus continues: “Good God! where am I?—in Bristol? This city it seems claims the privilege of hanging and drawing among themselves. I find you have more need of a special commission once a month at least. The very magistrates, that should be the ministers of justice, fall out with one another to that degree they will scarcely dine together; yet I find they can agree for their interest if there be but a kid in the case; for I hear the trade of kidnapping is much in request in this city. You can discharge a felon or a traitor, provided they will go to Mr. Alderman’s plantation in the West Indies. Come, come, I find you stink for want of rubbing. It seems the dissenters and fanatics fare well amongst you, by reason of the favor of the magistrates; for example, if a dissenter who is a notorious and obstinate offender comes before them, one alderman or another stands up and says, He is a good man, (though three parts a rebel.) Well, then, for the sake of Mr. Alderman, he shall be fined but five shillings. Then comes another, and up stands another goodman alderman, and says, I know him to be an honest man, (though rather worse than the former.) Well, for Mr. Alderman’s sake, he shall be fined but half a crown; so manus manum fricat; you play the knave for me now, and I will play the knave for you by and by. I am ashamed of these things; but, by God’s grace, I will mend them; for, as I have told you, I have brought a brush in my pocket, and I shall be sure to rub the dirt wherever it is, or on whomsoever it sticks.” “Thereupon,” says Roger North, “he turns to the mayor, accoutred with his scarlet and furs, and gave him all the ill names that scolding eloquence could supply; and so, with rating and staring, as his way was, never left till he made him quit the bench and go down to the criminal’s post at the bar; and there he pleaded for himself as a common rogue or thief must have done; and when the mayor hesitated a little, or slackened his pace, he bawled at him, and stamping, called for his guards, for he was still general by commission. Thus the citizens saw their scarlet chief magistrate at the bar, to their infinite terror and amazement.”
Only three were executed for treason at Bristol; but Jeffreys looking at the end of his campaign to the returns of the enemy killed, had the satisfaction to find that they amounted to three hundred and thirty, besides eight hundred prisoners ordered to be transported.[132]
He now hastened homewards to pounce upon the great seal. In his way through Somersetshire, with a regiment of dragoons as his life-guards, the mayor took the liberty to say that there were two Spokes who had been convicted, and that one of these left for execution was not the one intended to suffer, the other having contrived to make his escape, and that favor might perhaps still be shown to him whom it was intended to pardon. “No!” said the general-judge; “his family owe a life; he shall die for his namesake!” To render such narratives credible, we must recollect that his mind was often greatly disturbed by fits of the stone, and still more by intemperance. Burnet, speaking of his behavior at this time, says, “He was perpetually either drunk or in a rage, liker a fury than the zeal of a judge.”
I shall conclude my sketch of Jeffreys as a criminal judge with his treatment of a prisoner whom he was eager to hang, but who escaped with life. This was Prideaux, a gentleman of fortune in the west of England, who had been apprehended on the landing of Monmouth, for no other reason than that his father had been attorney general under Cromwell. A reward of five hundred pounds, with a free pardon, was offered to any witnesses who would give evidence against him; but none could be found, and he was discharged. Afterwards, two convicts were prevailed upon to say that they had seen him take some part in the insurrection, and he was again cast into prison. His friends, alarmed for his safety, though convinced of his innocence, tried to procure a pardon for him, when they were told “that nothing could be done for him, as the king had given him to the chief justice,” (the familiar phrase for the grant of an estate about to be forfeited.) A negotiation was then opened with Jennings, the avowed agent of Jeffreys for the sale of pardons, and the sum of fifteen thousand pounds was actually paid to him by a banker for the deliverance of a man whose destruction could not be effected by any perversion of the formalities of law.[133]
There is to be found only one defender of these atrocities. “I have indeed sometimes thought,” says the author of A Caveat against the Whigs, “that in Jeffreys’s western circuit justice went too far before mercy was remembered, though there was not above a fourth part executed of what were convicted. But when I consider in what manner several of those lives then spared were afterwards spent, I cannot but think a little more hemp might have been usefully employed upon that occasion.”[134]
A great controversy has arisen, “who is chiefly to be blamed—Jeffreys or James?” Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, declares that “the king never forgave the cruelty of the judge in executing such multitudes in the west against his express orders.” And reliance is placed by Hume on the assertion of Roger North, that his brother, the lord keeper, going to the king and moving him “to put a stop to the fury which was in no respect for his service, and would be counted a carnage, not law or justice, orders went to mitigate the proceedings.”