An account of their trial will be found in the next chapter; but there are some circumstances connected with their acquittal in which Jeffreys personally appears.
Seeing how he had acquired such immense favor, there were other lawyers who tried to undermine him by his own arts. One of the most formidable of these was Sir John Trevor, master of the rolls, who, some authors say, certainly would have got the great seal had James remained longer on the throne, but whom Jeffreys had hitherto kept down by reversing his decrees. The chancellor’s alarm was now excited by a report that Sir William Williams (who, from being Speaker of the last Westminster Parliament, and fined ten thousand pounds on the prosecution of the Duke of York, was become the caressed solicitor general to James II.) had a positive promise of the great seal if he could obtain a conviction of the seven bishops.[144] His brutal conduct to them during the whole trial, which was no doubt reported to Jeffreys, would confirm the rumor and increase his apprehensions. The jury having sat up all night without food, fire, or candle, to consider of their verdict, the lord chancellor had, while they were still enclosed, come down to Westminster Hall next morning, and taken his seat in court. When he heard the immense shout arise which soon made the king tremble on Hounslow Heath, he smiled and hid his face in his nosegay, “as much,” observes the relater of the anecdote, “as to say, Mr. Solicitor, I keep my seal.”
However, the part he had taken in sending the bishops to the Tower had caused such scandal, that the University of Oxford would not have him for their chancellor, although, in the prospect of a vacancy, he had received many promises of support. The moment the news arrived of the death of the old Duke of Ormond, his grandson was elected to succeed him; and next day a mandate coming from court to elect Lord Jeffreys, an answer was returned that an election had already taken place, which could not be revoked.
Suspecting that things were now taking an unfavorable turn, he began privately to censure the measures of the court, and to insinuate that the king had acted against his advice, saying, “It will be found that I have done the part of an honest man, but as for the judges they are most of them rogues.”
About this time he was present at an event which was considered more than a counterpoise to recent discomfitures, but which greatly precipitated the crisis by taking away the hope of relief by the rightful succession of a Protestant heir. Being suddenly summoned to Whitehall, he immediately repaired thither, and found that the queen had been taken in labor. Other councillors and many ladies of quality soon arrived, and they were all admitted into her bedchamber. Her majesty seems to have been much annoyed by the presence of the lord chancellor. The king calling for him, he came forward and stood on the step of the bed to show that he was there. She then begged her consort to cover her face with his head and periwig; for she declared “she could not be brought to bed, and have so many men look on her.” However, the fright may have shortened her sufferings; for James III., or “the old pretender,” very speedily made his appearance, and the midwife having made the concerted signal that the child was of the wished-for sex, the company retreated.
Considering the surmises which had been propagated ever since the queen’s pregnancy was announced, that it was feigned, and that a suppositious child was to be palmed upon the world, Jeffreys was lamentably deficient in duty to the king in not having recommended steps to convince the public from the beginning, beyond all possibility of controversy, of the genuineness of the birth. When the story of the “warming-pan” had taken hold of the public mind, many witnesses were examined before the Privy Council to disprove it, but it continued an article of faith with thorough anti-Jacobites during the two succeeding reigns.[145]
The birth of a son, which the king had so ardently longed for, led to his speedy overthrow. Instead of the intrigues between the discontented at home and the Prince and Princess of Orange, hitherto regarded as his successors, being put an end to, they immediately assumed a far more formidable aspect. William, who had hoped in the course of a few years to wield the energies of Britain against the dangerous ambition of Louis XIV., saw that if he remained quiet he should with difficulty even retain the circumscribed power of Stadtholder of the United Provinces. He therefore gladly listened to the representations of those who had fled to Holland to escape from the tyranny exercised in their native country, or who sent secret emissaries to implore his aid; and he boldly resolved to come to England—not as a military conqueror, but for their deliverance, and to obtain the crown with the assent of the nation. That he and his adherents might be protected against any sudden effort to crush them, a formidable fleet was equipped in the Dutch ports, and a considerable army, which had been assembled professedly for a different purpose, was ready on a short notice to be embarked in it.
James, who had been amusing himself by making the pope godfather to his son, and had listened with absolute incredulity to the rumors of the coming invasion, suddenly became sensible of his danger, and to avert it was willing to make any sacrifice to please his people. The slender merit of the tardy, forced, and ineffectual concessions which were offered is claimed respectively by the apologists of the king, of Jeffreys, and of the Earl of Sunderland, but seems due to the last of the three. James’s infatuation was so transcendent,—he was so struck with judicial blindness,—being doomed to destruction, he was so demented,—that, if let alone, he probably would have trusted with confidence to his divine right and the protection of the Virgin, even when William had landed at Torbay. As far as I can discover, from the time when Jeffreys received the great seal, he never originated any measures, wise or wicked, and without remonstrance, he heartily coöperated in all those suggested by the king, however illegal or mischievous they might be. I do not find the slightest foundation for the assertion that, with all his faults, he had a regard for the Protestant religion, which made him stand up in its defence. The “Declaration of Indulgence,” to which he put the great seal, might be imputed to a love of toleration, (to which he was a stranger,) but what can be said of the active part he took in the High Commission Court, and in introducing Roman Catholics into the universities and into the church? The Earl of Sunderland, though utterly unprincipled, was a man of great discernment and courage; he could speak boldly to the king, and he had joined in objecting to the precipitate measures for giving ascendancy to his new religion, which had produced this crisis. His seemingly forced removal from office he himself probably suggested, along with the other steps now taken to appease the people.
Whoever might first propose the altered policy, Jeffreys was the instrument for carrying it into effect, and thereby it lost all its grace and virtue. He took off the suspension of the Bishop of London, and, by a supersedeas under the great seal, abolished the High Commission Court. He annulled all the proceedings respecting Magdalen College, and issued the necessary process for reinstating Dr. Hough and the Protestant fellows. He put the great seal to a general pardon.
But the reaction was hoped for, above all, from the restoration of the city charters. On the 2d of October he sent a flattering message to the mayor and aldermen to come to Whitehall in the evening, that they might be presented at court by “their old recorder.” Here the king told them that he was mightily concerned for the welfare of their body, and that at a time when invasion threatened the kingdom, he was determined to show them his confidence in their loyalty by restoring the rights of the city to the state in which they were before the unfortunate quo warranto proceedings had been instituted in the late reign. Accordingly, on the following day a meeting of the Common Council was called at Guildhall, and the lord chancellor proceeded thither in his state carriage, attended by his purse-bearer, mace-bearer, and other officers, and after a florid speech, delivered them letters patent under the great seal, which waived all forfeitures, revived all charters, and confirmed all liberties the city had ever enjoyed under the king or any of his ancestors. Great joy was manifested; but the citizens could not refrain from showing their abhorrence of the man who brought these glad tidings, and on his return they hissed him and hooted him, and gave him a foretaste of the violence he was soon to experience from an English mob.