Naturally cruel and basely corrupt, habitually excited by continual intoxication, Jeffreys had consecrated to the service of the worst passions an indomitable energy united to rare judicial qualifications. He was never pleasing to Charles II., who had often employed him at the instigation of the Duke of York. "This man," said he, "has neither learning, good sense, nor manners, and more impudence than ten depraved women." Under the reign of the hard and cruel James, Jeffreys abandoned himself without reserve to his savage passions; he was not contented with condemning, torturing, and inflicting the extreme penalties permitted by law against his victims, but he also delighted in taunting the accused, following them with sarcasms and insults to the very foot of the scaffold. The odious task with which he was charged after the insurrection of Monmouth suited his disposition. While at London, Lord Grey, Sir John Cochrane, and a few others purchased their lives by their cowardly revelations. The great judge carried from village to village his bloody tribunal and corps of executioners. Everywhere cynical and cruel, obliging his victims to confess their guilt in order to obtain a day's respite, and executing those on the spot who protested their innocence, he surrounded himself with an atmosphere of such terror that the people dared not speak in favor of the condemned. The friends of Lady Lisle ventured, however, to plead her cause; she was the aged widow of Lord Lisle, a judge during the reign of Charles I., who was but lately assassinated in Scotland, whither he had fled. She had given an asylum to more than one Cavalier during the revolution, and "no woman in England," she said, "mourned more bitterly the death of the king."
Always compassionate, she had concealed a Nonconformist minister and an advocate compromised in the Rye House plot. Both were found in her house; she was ignorant, she declared, of what they were accused; neither of them had been brought to trial, when Lady Lisle was led before the tribunal of Jeffreys. The witnesses one after the other were terrified by the violence of the judge. The jury hesitated, recoiling before the odious sentence that was expected of them. "What liars these Presbyterians are!" cried Jeffreys; "show me a Presbyterian and I'll show thee a lying knave." He threatened to lock up the jury in the hall for the night if they did not hasten their decision. Lady Lisle was condemned to be burned. The clemency of the king mitigated the sentence. The pious woman walked without fear to the scaffold. Some months later, at London, another woman, of a more humble condition, animated by the same charitable spirit, suffered at the stake for assistance she had given to James Burton, compromised, like the protégés of Lady Lisle, in the plots of 1683. "My fault was one which a prince might well have forgiven," said Elizabeth Gaunt as they arranged the straw of her funeral pile; "I did but relieve a poor family, and lo! I must die for it." "The people were moved to tears," relates William Penn, the illustrious founder of Pennsylvania, who was present at the execution. Loud lamentations arose from the western counties. Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Devonshire, and Somersetshire were strewn with corpses, bristling with gibbets, depopulated by exile, transportation, and the sale of the condemned, some of whom, abandoned to the avidity of courtiers, were reduced to slavery in the West Indies. The ladies of honor of the queen shared the fines imposed upon the young girls of Taunton, who had made a part of the deputation sent to welcome Monmouth. Some of the accused ventured to bring their complaints to the foot of the throne. The sister of Benjamin and William Hewling, young men of great promise, presented herself at Whitehall with a petition. Lord Churchill introduced her. "I wish you well to your suit," said he, as they entered; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes; this marble," and he laid his hand on the chimney-piece, "is not harder than the king." James was inexorable. The soldiers wept while leading the young men to the gallows.
The "campaign of Jeffreys," as the king himself called it, was at last completed; he returned to London stained with the blood of his victims, loaded with silent maledictions which weigh even to this day upon his memory. "The air of Somersetshire is tainted with death, and one cannot go a step without encountering some horrible spectacle," wrote Bishop Ken to the king. The assizes of London were opened, directed against the middle class, still obstinately rebellious. Many perished; some compromised like Cornish in the Rye House plot; others convicted for trivial offences, like the physician Bateman, who was hanged and quartered for having dressed the wounds of Titus Oates, that cowardly and cruel instigator of so many crimes, who had received his terrible punishment at the beginning of the reign of James II. Religious persecution was added to political persecution. Never in England were the Nonconformists pursued with such rigor. Jeffreys received the "seals" as a reward for his zeal. Nearly four years later, when he was confined in the Tower, trembling under the popular indignation, Jeffreys protested that he had never surpassed the orders of his master, but had even softened their terror. At St. Germain, James threw upon Jeffreys the overwhelming weight of the "Bloody Assizes." The king and the judge are equally condemned by posterity.
The national sentiment sustained James in his struggle against the insurgents; both Parliament and the Church had demonstrated their loyalty; but the cruelty of his vengeance revolted their honest hearts, and disquieted those who feared the future. An event in France at this time exercised great influence over the spirit of the nation. Louis XIV., led astray by the dangerous intoxication of absolute power, seduced and deceived by flatterers or fanatics, believed himself powerful enough to impose his will upon the consciences of his subjects. Convinced that nothing could resist him, and that the work of conversion was well advanced by preliminary persecutions, he revoked the Edict of Nantes on the 22d of October, 1685. Already a fugitive multitude, inundating the Protestant countries, proved to Europe the religious firmness of the reformed faith, as well as the little value with which arbitrary sovereigns regard the most solemn pledges accorded to their subjects. When the rumor of this intention reached England, Barillon wrote to Louis XIV.: "That which most vexes the English is, that they see no means of preventing that which your Majesty has undertaken. They speak freely in London of what is taking place in France, and many people think, and even say, that it is in consequence of England's not being governed by a Protestant king." And again, some days after the Revocation: "I have spoken to the king in regard to the language used in his court concerning your Majesty, and of the impropriety of allowing such freedom of speech. I said to him that I had not as yet rendered an account of these proceedings to your Majesty, but I prayed him to repress an insolence which ought not to be allowed."
It was not in the power of the English king to stifle this national sentiment; he was obliged to conform to it in a certain measure; the fugitive Protestants were received in England, and their necessities relieved by public charity. I have said that James II. nourished in his heart certain ideas of religious liberty; the horror inspired in his people by the persecution upon the Continent of those of the reformed faith, reanimated in the heart of the king the desire to relieve his Catholic subjects of the burdens weighing upon them. More powerful than he had yet been, deceived by the easy victory gained over the rebels, James resolved to push forward his triumph. The oppression exercised by Louis XIV. against his Protestant people interfered with the plans of James II. in favor of the liberty of the Catholics; the King of England declared himself free from all engagements with France. He had just concluded a defensive alliance with the United Provinces. The policy of Halifax seemed to have great weight in the royal councils, when, on the 20th of October, 1685, on the eve of the opening of the session, Halifax suddenly learned that the king had no further need of his services. James thus gave to the growing opposition a leader most skillful and experienced. It was in the name of principles the most dear to England that the contest was to be waged between the prince and his subjects. James had announced his intention of repealing the Act of Habeas Corpus—an act obtained with great difficulty during the preceding reign, and an object of national pride to the Tories as well as to the Whigs. He projected an increase of the standing army, although the troops he already maintained were a cause of alarm to the most faithful adherents of royalty, even among old Cavaliers who had so recently seen a Republican army impose laws upon both Parliament and king. Finally, in contempt of the most solemn promises made before his people at the time of his accession to the throne, he proposed to open the way to public offices to the Catholics. While waiting for the repeal of the Test Act, the king had already placed a number of Catholic officers at the head of his troops. The final disgrace of Halifax was due to his persevering resistance. He had formally said, "I will never vote for the abolition of the Test Act, or the repeal of the Act of Habeas Corpus."
The Habeas Corpus Act has remained one of the guarantees of individual liberty most justly dear to the English people. The Test Act has been swept away, as it deserved to be, by the progress of justice and religious tolerance: each was a part of the English law, and the king could not violate either without breaking his oath. The profound distrust that the principles of the king inspired even in this Parliament, so loyal and devoted, displayed itself on the day of the opening, when James, in his speech from the throne, announced the additions that he had made to the regular army, expressing at the same time his contempt for the militia, and recalling the weakness they had shown during the insurrection. "I know well," he added, "that you will find among the new officers admitted into my service, men who have not taken the test. They are for the most part personally known to me, and have given me assurances of their fidelity. Besides, to speak frankly, after having used them in a moment of danger, I do not wish them to be disgraced, nor to be myself deprived of their assistance should a new rebellion render them necessary." This was high language: the House of Commons manifested their disapprobation at once. It proposed the increase of the militia, offered to the king seven hundred thousand pounds sterling in place of the twelve hundred thousand demanded by the ministers, and promised that the Catholic officers already in the army should be relieved from the penalties legally imposed upon them, since they could not be lawfully employed without the authority of Parliament. The censure was respectful, notwithstanding its firmness. James was irritated by it. In responding to the address of the Commons he reproached them for their jealousy and distrust, and said: "However you may proceed on your part, I will be very steady in all the promises which I have made to you." "I hope that we are all Englishmen," said John Coke, a noted Tory, "and that we shall not be frightened from our duty by a few high words." The House sent the audacious member to the Tower. Nevertheless, the Lords followed the example of the Commons, and protested against the irregular nominations in the army. On the 20th of November King James prorogued Parliament until the 10th of February, resolved to accomplish alone and by his absolute authority that reform which the public sentiment of his people refused him.