[78] The infamous Oates fared, at the Revolution, not so well as he wished, though much better than he deserved. James II. by the extreme cruelty of the punishment, which Jefferies doomed, and he suffered to be inflicted, contrived to excite the public commiseration even in favour of this miscreant, whose forsworn tongue had occasioned more murders than the dagger of the most sanguinary bravo. After the Revolution he obtained a pardon, or rather remission of his inhuman sentence, to be imprisoned during life, and pilloried five times every year. He was also admitted to the comforts of a pension of L.400 a-year. But, although he bestirred himself to obtain a reversal of his judgement for perjury, and wrote an abusive pamphlet, entitled, a "Picture of the late King James," and dedicated to King William, that cool-headed monarch, and his sagacious council, would never restore him to a capacity of bearing evidence. The Earl of Danby, now Duke of Leeds, who had experienced the danger of his swearing capacity, would consent to the reversal in no other sense, than that, having been condemned to be scourged from Newgate to Tyburn, he should now be scourged back from Tyburn to Newgate. Dryden, therefore, without fear of offence, might venture a stroke of satire at this once formidable person.
[79] The allusion seems to be partly to Bryan Haines, the Tory evidence against Shaftesbury and College, a fellow almost as infamous as Oates; but chiefly, by way of equivoque, to the wicked wag Jee Haines, the comedian, who, amongst other pranks, chose, during the reign of James II., to become Roman Catholic. Whether he took this step from any serious prospect of advantage, or to throw ridicule on the new converts, is somewhat dubious; at least his apostacy was not founded upon conviction for, after the Revolution, he abjured the errors of Popery, spoke a penitentiary prologue, and reconciled himself to the church and theatre of England.
THE END OF THE EIGHTH VOLUME.
Edinburgh:
Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.
Transcriber notes:
Please note, the large curly braces that appear in the book are included here, but the tripple small braces replace missing large braces for those devices that cannot display the large ones. If working well then both types of braces will appear in the verses.
[P.36.] 'wont' changed to 'won't'.
[P.65.] 'Farewel' changed to 'farewell'.