DUKE OF MONMOUTH.
Readers of English history will remember the important political part played in the last years of Charles’ reign, by his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth. When public feeling ran so high against the Duke of York, and so many Protestants were zealous for the Exclusion Bill, some amongst the latter favoured certain pretensions to the crown which had been put forward on behalf of his nephew. The pretensions were founded upon the alleged existence of a black box containing a contract of marriage between the King and the Duke’s mother, Lucy Walters, which black box made no small stir throughout the country in the year 1680.[102] Two years afterwards, when the Popish plot had ceased to alarm the public, and when the Duke of York’s prospects had begun to brighten, Monmouth endeavoured to revive his popularity, and to reinforce his claims by a progress in the North of England, during which journey he assumed a degree of state proper only to an heir apparent. Attended by a hundred horsemen,—fifty of whom rode before and fifty behind—he occupied a space in the midst of the cavalcade, mounted on a noble charger, and bowing with royal condescension to the crowds, who rent the air with shouts, “A Monmouth, a Monmouth, and no York!” Bells fired from the church steeples, and musketry roared from gates and ramparts, as the gay procession entered town after town. He might be found at fairs and races, rousing the men and wooing the women, and in town halls dining with the burgesses; always affecting royal etiquette, and actually going so far as to touch for the King’s evil. His movements closely watched, were duly reported to the Secretary of State by persons ill-affected towards the bold aspirant, including Shakerley, Governor of Chester Castle, who industriously wrote, day after day, minute descriptions of all Monmouth did in that old city,—a city in which, it may be recollected, Nonconformists had been found to be very numerous some years before.[103]
1682.
According to reports, the whole company of horsemen who rode with the Duke into Chester did not exceed 150, most of them being noted Dissenters. They came shouting, with a company of rabble on foot, whom they had induced to join them by providing drink. The bells rang, except at the Cathedral and St. Peter’s; and there were some bonfires. The Duke went first to the Mayor’s house, where he lodged; and, after a short stay there, he repaired to an inn, where he and his companions sat down at the ordinary, the chaplain being Dr. Fogg, one of the prebendaries. The Duke proceeded to the Cathedral, where he heard a sermon not very pleasant to him or to his associates. The same writer complains of the rabble making a riot, breaking into the Church of St. Peter’s, forcing open the steeple door, and ringing the bells, amongst the rest the fire bell. “Another company,” he adds, “at a bonfire, made by a great Presbyterian, broke the glass windows of an honest Churchman opposite.” Two or three days later, after accustomed healths, such as “Confusion to Popery, and to those that would not be enemies to the Duke of York,” Monmouth’s party expressed great displeasure at a sermon preached before His Grace, in the choir of the Cathedral; and, in general, uttered loud exclamations against the clergy. Having, it is said, spit their venom that way, without one syllable of opposition, they fell to magnifying the last Parliament, and to commending their votes.[104]
At such times as I am describing, people exist who are possessed by an inordinate love of writing, and of publishing what they write, and whose pens resemble the sting of wasps, and of other still more ignoble insects. Pamphleteers of this kind wrote against Dissenters, some whose malignity was greater than their wit, some whose wit kept pace with their malignity. Sir Roger L’Estrange, perhaps, may be reckoned as the most gifted, the most formidable, the most unscrupulous, and the most fierce of this tribe of tormentors. He had narrowly escaped being executed as a spy during the Civil Wars,—he had been shut up in Newgate for several years; and now the memory of his sufferings made him perfectly savage in his attacks upon those whom he identified with his former enemies. He perpetually rang changes upon the miseries of the year ’41, which he accused the popular party of having determined to revive. In his Foxes and Firebrands, and in his Citt and Bumkin, he vilified and lampooned all men of liberal opinions, whether those opinions happened to be ecclesiastical or political. Nonconformists were fools and rebels, and their toleration was inconsistent with order and peace. By abuse of one kind, he sought to force them into the Church, and then, when they had entered, he by another kind of abuse endeavoured to drive them out. Outside they were traitors, inside they were trimmers, so that it was impossible such people as L’Estrange could ever be pleased, let the conduct of Nonconformists be what it might. His career as a party writer, which began after the Restoration, attained its highest point at the period we have reached; and as a reward for his services to the cause of despotism, he obtained from his Royal master the honour of knighthood, an honour more than counterbalanced by the almost universal execration of posterity.[105]
ROYAL DESPOTISM.
Charles, in playing the despot, went on from bad to worse. Municipal corporations, whose freedom is always of primary importance to the interests of this country, were then still more intimately connected with our national liberties than at present—for not only was the administration of justice in cities and boroughs lodged in their hands, not only were juries in Middlesex returned by the City Sheriffs, but the right of election for members of Parliament rested, in a number of cases, not with the citizens and burgesses generally, but with those who were mayors, aldermen, and common councilmen. In many large places, especially London, the Corporation opposed the Court; and therefore no representatives subservient to the Crown could be expected to come from such a quarter. The King, relying upon legal advisers, who preferred cunning to equity, determined to try whether he could not deprive his subjects of their municipal rights by the process of quo warranto.[106] The attempt, made in the Metropolis first, so far succeeded, that the Court of King’s Bench gave judgment against the Corporation; and,—although it allowed the Corporation to retain its privileges, under certain restrictions,—from that time the capital of the kingdom remained powerless in the hands of the sovereign.
1683.
LORD W. RUSSELL.
Constitutional methods of expressing public opinion being suspended, there were men whom desperation drove to think of the patriot’s last resort. They talked of war. Shaftesbury, whose erratic ability and eloquence sometimes helped the cause of liberty, had disappeared from the stage of public affairs, and had, as we have seen, gone over to Holland, where he died. But his restless brain, employed in concocting schemes of insurrection, which at the time came to nothing, had left behind, amongst many Englishmen with whom he had been associated, seeds of discontent, ready to grow into acts of violence. The seeds did grow, and the harvest proved “a heap in the day of grief, and of desperate sorrow.” The Rye House Plot is well known. With any design of assassinating the King, Sidney and Russell—who came within the complications of a plan for forcibly resisting the despotism of Government—had nothing to do. Nothing could be more idle than to talk, as some did, of certain ministers—Owen, Mead, and Griffiths—being engaged in revolutionary designs. The King, when Mead had been summoned, ordered him to be discharged; but Sidney and Russell, it cannot be contradicted, were present at conversations turning upon the subject of an appeal to arms in the cause of freedom. These illustrious men were, as all readers of English history know, tried,[107] condemned, and executed; and as the story of Russell’s last moments belongs to the religious annals of our country, it claims some space on these pages.[108]