Chaste Caleb next, whose chill embraces charm
Women to ice, was yet in treason warm;
Of the ancient race of Jewish nobles come,
Whose title never lay in Christendom.
He appears to have been a man of very great indifference to his domestic concerns; as the Duke of Monmouth, under whose banners he enlisted himself, was generally believed to have an intrigue with Lady Grey. In an account of a mock apparition, which that lady is supposed to witness, she is made to state, "That on Saturday, the 29th of January, 1680, being alone in her closet about nine o'clock at night, she heard a voice behind her, which mildly said, sweetheart. At which she was at first not at all frightened, supposing it to be an apparition, which she says has often of late appeared to her in the absence of her lord, in the shape of a bright star and blue garter, but without hurting, or so much as frightening her." Lord Grey, ignorant or indifferent about these scandalous reports, went step for step with Monmouth in all his projects. He was a man of a restless temper, and lively talents, which he exercised in the service of the popular party. He was deep in the Rye-house Plot, and probably engaged in the very worst part of it; at least, Lord Howard deposed, that Grey was full of expectation of some great thing to be attempted on the day of the king's coming from Newmarket, which was that fixed by the inferior conspirators for his assassination. Upon the trial of Lord Russel, Howard was yet more particular, and said, that upon a dark intimation of an attempt on the king's person, the Duke of Monmouth, "with great emotion, struck his breast, and cried out, 'God so! kill the king! I will never suffer them.' That Lord Grey, with an oath, also observed upon it, that if they made such an attempt, they could not fail." Ramsey charged Lord Grey with arguing with Ferguson, on the project of the rising at Taunton. Grey, on the first discovery of this conspiracy, was arrested, but, filling the officers drunk, he escaped in a boat, and fled into Holland. He was afterwards very active in pushing on Monmouth to his desperate expedition in 1685. He landed with the duke at Lyme, and held the rank of general of horse in his army. Like many other politicians, his lordship proved totally devoid of that courage in executing bold plans, which he displayed in forming or abetting them. At the first skirmish at Bridport he ran away, although the troops he commanded did not follow his example, but actually gained a victory, while he returned on the gallop to announce a total defeat. Monmouth, much shocked, asked Colonel Mathews what he should do with him? who answered, he believed there was not another general in Europe would have asked such a question. Lord Grey, however, fatally for Monmouth, continued in his trust, and commanded the horse at the battle of Sedgemore. There he behaved like a poltroon as formerly, fled with the whole cavalry, and left the foot, who behaved most gallantly, to be cut to pieces by the horse of King James, who, without amusing themselves with pursuit, wheeled, and fell upon the rear of the hardy western peasants. So infamous was Grey's conduct, that many writers at the time, thinking mere cowardice insufficient to account for it, have surmised, some, that he was employed by the king to decoy Monmouth to his destruction; and others, that jealousy of the domestic injury he had received from the duke, induced him to betray the army.[322] This caitiff peer was taken in the disguise of a shepherd, near Holt Lodge, in Dorsetshire; and confessed, that "since his landing in England, he had never enjoyed a quiet meal, or a night's repose." He was conveyed to London, and would probably have been executed, had it not been discovered, that his estate, which had been given to Lord Rochester, was so strictly entailed, that nothing could be got by his death. He, therefore, by the liberal distribution, it is said, of large sums of money, received a pardon from the king, and appeared as a witness on the trial of Lord Delamere; and was ready to do so on that of Hampden; yet he is supposed to have kept some secrets with respect to the politics of the Prince of Orange, in reward of which, he was raised to the rank of an Earl after the Revolution.—Dalrymple's Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 185.
Notwithstanding the attribute which Dryden has ascribed to Lord Grey in this poem, he afterwards proved a man of unprincipled gallantry; and 23d of November, 1682, was tried in the King's Bench for debauching lady Henrietta Berkeley, daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, to whose sister, lady Mary, he was himself married. See State Trials, Vol. III. p. 519.
And canting Nadab let oblivion damn,
Who made new porridge for the paschal lamb.—P. [234.]
Lord Howard of Escricke, although an abandoned debauchee, made occasional pretensions to piety. He was an intimate of Shaftesbury and of Monmouth, but detested by Russel on account of the infamy of his character. Plots, counter-plots, and sham-plots, were at this time wrought like mine and countermine by each party, under the other's vantage-ground. One Fitzharris had written a virulent libel against the court party, which he probably intended to father upon the whigs; but being seized by Sir William Waller, he changed his note, and averred, that he had been employed by the court to write this libel, and to fix it upon the exclusionists; and to this probable story he added, ex mera gratia, a new account of the old Popish Plot. The court resolved to make an example of Fitzharris; they tried and convicted him of treason, for the libel fell nothing short of it. When condemned, finding his sole resource in the mercy of the crown, he retracted his evidence against the court, and affirmed, that Treby, the recorder, and Bethel and Cornish, the two sheriffs, had induced him to forge that accusation; and that Lord Howard was the person who drew up instructions, pointing out to him what he was to swear, and urging him so to manage his evidence, as to criminate the Queen and the Duke of York. The confession of Fitzharris did not save his life, although he adhered to it upon the scaffold. Lord Howard, as involved in this criminal intrigue, was sent to the Tower, where he uttered and published a canting declaration, asserting his innocence, upon the truth of which he received the sacrament. He is said, however, to have taken the communion in lamb's wool, (i. e. ale poured on roasted apples and sugar,) to which profanation Dryden alludes, with too much levity, in the second line above quoted. The circumstance is also mentioned in "Absalom's IX Worthies:"