for a native Romish priest to present himself; | communion the violence of his disorder seemed and Charles, it appears, could confess himself in to abate, and he spoke more intelligibly than he no other language than English. Various expe- had done for some time. He sent for his natural dients were thought of by the duke and the am- children, gave them his dying blessing, and rebassador. At last, it was resolved to send to the commended them to his successor. But of the Venetian resident for a priest that spoke English; absent Duke of Monmouth he made no mention, but, as time pressed, the Count of Castelmelhor good or bad. As he was pronouncing his blesswent into the closet where the queen's priests ing on his illegitimate sons, the bishops observed were assembled, and unexpectedly found among that he was the Lord's anointed, and the father them one Huddleston, a priest, who had saved of his country; and thereupon all present fell the king's life after the battle of Worcester, and upon their knees, and Charles raised himself in who, by special act of parliament, had been ex- his bed, and very solemnly blessed them all. empted from all the laws made against the Catho- The queen had sent to excuse her absence, and lics. They put a wig and gown upon this man to implore his pardon for any offence that she to disguise him. Castelmelhor took him to be might have given him. "Alas! poor woman," said instructed by a Portuguese monk of the order of Charles, "it is I that should ask her pardon; and the Barefooted Carmelites, in what he had to do I do it with all my heart." He spoke repeatedly on such an occasion; for Huddleston was no prac- to the Duke of York in terms of tenderness and tised confessor. Then Castelmelhor conducted friendship; he twice recommended to him the him to the door of a room that adjoined the sick Duchess of Portsmouth and his son by her, the chamber; and the Duke of York, being warned young Duke of Richmond; he begged kind treatby Barillon that all was ready, sent out Chiffinchment for the Duchess of Cleveland; nor was his of the back-stairs, who had been accustomed to stage-mistress forgotten. "Do not," said he, “let bring Charles his women, to bring in Huddleston and the host. The Duke of York exclaimed aloud, "The king wills that everybody should retire except the Earls of Bath and Feversham." The physicians went into a closet, the door of which was shut upon them; and Chiffinch came back with the disguised priest. In presenting Huddleston, James said, "Sire, here is a man who once saved your life, and who is now come to save your soul." The king answered, "He is welcome." He then confessed himself with seeming sentiments of devotion and repentance; and the Duke of York assured Barillon that Huddleston had acquitted himself very well as a confessor, and made the king formally promise to declare himself openly a Catholic, if he recovered his health. After confession Charles received absolution, the Romish communion, and even ex-struggle or convulsion. Charles was in the fiftytreme unction. During the three quarters of an hour that all this lasted, the courtiers, attendants, Protestant bishops, and others in the ante-chamber, gazed at one another; none said anything except with their eyes, or in whispers. According to Barillon, the presence in the sick room of Lords Bath and Feversham, who were Protestants, satisfied the bishops a little: but the queen's women and the other priests saw so much going and coming that it was impossible the secret could be kept long.' After Charles had received the All this time, and from the king's being in danger to his death, "prayers," says Evelyn, "were solemnly made in all the churches, especially in both the court chapels, where the chaplains relieved one another every half quarter of an hour from the time he began to be in danger till he expired, according to the form prescribed in the church offices. Those who assisted his majesty's devotions were, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London, Durham and Ely, but more especially Ken, the Bishop of Bath and Wells."-Diary. poor Nelly starve." At these words the bishops were much scandalized. The king often expressed his confidence in God's mercy. Ken, the orthodox Bishop of Bath and Wells, read some prayers, and spoke to him of God; "but the bishop," adds Barillon, "was not officious in saying anything particular to him, or proposing that he should make a profession of his faith; he apprehended a refusal, but feared still more, as I believe, to irritate the Duke of York." Charles was perfectly sensible the whole night, and spoke upon all things with great calmness. At six o'clock in the morning (it was the 6th day of February) he asked what hour it was, and said, “Open the curtains that I may once more see daylight." At ten o'clock his senses were quite gone, and he died half an hour before twelve, without any fifth year of his age, and the twenty-fifth of his reign de facto from the Restoration in 1660; though the formal mode of reckoning in acts of parliament and legal documents is from the death of his father, which makes the duration of his reign thirty-six years. It was instantly "ventilated abroad" that his death was caused by poison administered to make way for the succession of his Popish brother; but it appears to us that this foul rumour, of which we shall soon hear more, rested upon the slenderest of foundations, and that James, with all his faults and hardness of heart, was utterly incapable of committing or permitting any such crime. 2 Dépêche de M. Barillon au Roi, dated February 18 (new style), 1685; Huddleston's Brief Account in State Tracts, and in Sir H. Ellis's Letters; Evelyns Diary: Letter to the Rev. Francis Roper, fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, in Sir H. Ellis's Collection. CHAPTER V.-CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY.-A.D. 1685. JAMES II. ACCESSION, A.D. 1685-flight, a.d. 1688. Accession of James II -His speech to the council-He shows his Popish predilections-He retaliates for past injuries-He overstrains the royal prerogative-James pensioned by Louis XIV. His coronation -Titus Oates brought to trial-His severe punishment-Dangerfield tried and murdered-Parliament assembled -The king's opening speech and proposals-Compliance of parliament-The Earl of Argyle lands in Scotland - He levies war against the king-His defeat and capture- His execution-Execution of Rumbold and Colonel Ayloffe -Executions and punishments in Scotland-The Duke of Monmouth makes a hostile landing in EnglandHis popularity-He publishes his "Declaration"-His pretension to the crown-His first military proceedings -Quarrels among his chief followers-Monmouth's progress to Taunton-His flattering reception-He assumes the title and prerogatives of royalty-His further military proceedings-Battle of Sedgemoor-Defeat of Monmouth's army-The duke's capture-His hopeless attempts upon the clemency of James- His behaviour on the scaffold-Attempts of the bishops to procure his assent to the doctrine of non-resistance-His executionExecutions made by Colonel Kirke after the battle of Sedgemoor-Jeffreys' campaign-Iniquitous execution of Mrs. Lisle-Continued executions of Judge Jeffreys-He is appointed lord-chancellor-Cruelties exercised on those whose lives were spared. S little less vicious than his brother, was more quiet in his pleasures, and was possessed of a strong sense of decorum and stateliness. "The face of the whole court," says Evelyn a few days later, "was exceedingly changed into a more solemn and moral behaviour; the new king affecting neither profaneness nor buffoonery." When the ministers and great officers waited upon James, to surrender their offices and charges into his majesty's hands, he returned them all back to them with gracious words. By the advice of the council, his first declaration was printed and dispersed all over the country, as containing matter of great satisfaction to a jealous people; and a proclamation was set forth to continue all magistrates and authorities whatsoever; thus making the transition of government almost imperceptible, and causing the new reign to appear no more than a continuation of the former one. But all these and other measures began to lose their value when the king was seen, on the first Sunday after his brother's burial,' going to mass publicly with all the ensigns of royalty, and ordering the doors of his Romish chapel to be set wide open. The Duke of Norfolk, who carried the sword of state, stopped at the unlawful threshold. My lord," said the king, "your father would have gone further." "Your ma S soon as his brother was dead James hastened to the council, and thus addressed the members of it: "My lords, before I enter any other business, I think fit to say something to you. Since it hath pleased almighty God to place me in this station, and I am now to succeed so good and gracious a king, as well as so very kind a brother, it is proper for me to declare to you that I will en deavour to follow his example, and particularly in that of his great clemency and tenderness to his people. I have been reported to be a man fond of arbitrary power; but that is not the only falsehood which has been reported of me: and I shall make it my endeavour to preserve this government, both in church and state, as it is now by law established. I know the principles of the Church of England are favourable to monarchy; and the members of it have shown themselves good and loyal subjects; therefore I shall aways take care to defend and support it. I know, too, that the laws of England are sufficient to make the king as great a monarch as I can wish; and as I shall never depart from the just rights and prerogative of the crown, so I shall never invade any man's property. I have often before ventured my life in defence of this nation; and shall go as far as any man in pre-jesty's father would not have gone so far," reserving it in all its just rights and liberties." On the same afternoon at four o'clock James was proclaimed in the very same forms as his grandfather James I., after the death of Queen Elizabeth. The people answered with acclamations, and not a shadow of opposition appeared anywhere. In the evening there was great kissing of hands at Whitehall, the queen being in her bed, but putting forth her hand. James, though any manner of pomp, and soon forgotten."— Evelyn. plied the duke. He ordered Huddleston, the priest, to publish a relation of Charles's dying in the communion of the Church of Rome, and he himself became the publisher of two papers, which he declared in his own royal name, and under his signature, were found by him in his 1 "14 Feb.-The king was this night buried very obscurely in a vault under Henry VII's Chapel, at Westminster, without brother's strong box; their tendency being to establish that there could be but one true church, and that that was the Church of Rome; that whosoever set up their own authority against that one true church, whether individuals, nations, or governments, fell immediately into fanaticism; and that, consequently, the Church of England lay as open to that imputation as any of the sects which had arisen out of and separated from it. James triumphantly showed these two papers to Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, who said that he did not think the late king had been so learned in controversy, but that the arguments in the papers were easy to refute. James challenged the archbishop to confute them in writing, if he could; but Sancroft, not anxious to incur the martyrdom of court displeasure, said that it ill became him to enter into a controversy with his sovereign. Nor could James, as king, magnanimously overlook the affronts which had been offered to him as Duke of York, or treat with decent civility any of his old opponents except such as laid their principles and their honour at his feet. When the leading Whigs came up to pay their court in common with the rest of his subjects, most of them were but coldly received; some were sharply reproached for their past be prerogative in regard to points where the nation was most sensitive. Those branches of the revenue which consisted of the customs and of part of the excise, having been granted to the late king for life, stopped by law at his death; but Lord Chiefjustice Jeffreys moved that, without further ado, the king should instantly issue a proclamation, commanding the revenue to be levied and employed as in the former reign; and James followed this congenial advice. To cover this stretch of arbitrary power, the court procured addresses from many public bodies. The barristers and students of the Middle Temple thanked his majesty for extending his royal care to the preservation of the customs, and prayed that there never might be wanting millions as loyal as themselves to sacrifice life and fortune in sup JAMES II. From a print by Vertue after Kneller. haviour; and others were denied access. But another more decided symptom of James's remembrance of past injuries appeared in his ordering Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, to publish a full narrative of the Rye House Plot under the royal authority. "This relation was written with great virulence of expression upon past heats; and in it an averment was made that James knew of 20,000 persons who had been engaged in that plot-an implied menace, which, by the ambiguity of its object, caused every Whig in the nation to think it was levelled at him." James, moreover, though he had promised to call a parliament, had not patience to wait for its assembling, but proceeded at once to stretch the 1 Dalrymple. Other papers were published nearly at the same time by, or with the consent of the king. One of these was an account of the blessed conversion of his first wife, the daughter of the high churchman Clarendon. VOL. II. 1 port of his majesty's sacred person and prerogative in its full extent; and the university of Oxford hastened to declare their faith and true obedience to their sovereign, without any restrictions or limitations of his power. But all these addresses could not blind men to the illegality of the measure, or make them forget the civil wars and the miseries produced by the attempt of this king's father to levy part of the same duties without consent of parliament; and "compliments by public bodies to the sovereign for the breach of the laws, only served to remind the nation that the laws had been broken." Humanity, justice itself, would make us approve and applaud the object of another of James's proceedings by prerogative; but the nation was not then in a state for the exercise of this humanity and justice; and the measure was clearly contrary to law and the constitution, which had repeatedly repudiated this dispensing power in the sovereign. By his royal warrant, he threw open the prisons of England to thousands of Dissenters and Papists, who had been enduring a horrible captivity for conscience' sake. James had taken the earliest opportunity of assuring his friend Barillon that his trust, after God, was in the French king. Louis, to secure him, as he had done his brother, sent him 500,000 Dalrymple. 197 722 [CIVIL AND MILITARY. livres, which James received with tears of grati- | nation, Titus Oates was again brought up to the tude. Rochester plainly told Barillon, "Your bar of the Court of King's Bench; for James was master must place mine in a situation to be inde- not satisfied with the perpetual imprisonment to pendent of parliaments;" and James renewed his which he was already doomed. This time the abject prayers for more money. At the same time, he outwardly affected an equality with Louis, declared that he would not be governed by French counsels, and that he would maintain the balance of Europe with a steady hand. Captain Churchill, now a lord, and in the highest favour, was sent to Paris to announce in form the accession. Many scruples were entertained both by James and his wife touching the coronation, which ceremony it was necessary should be performed by a Protestant prelate. Priests, and even the Pope himself, were consulted. A quibble was resorted to in order to justify the oath which had to be taken to maintain the Anglican church; and, after taking the solemn vows, the king and queen, upon St. George's Day, were crowned in Westminster Abbey by Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury. As the crown was put upon James's unhappy head, it tottered and almost fell; and it was ob TITUS OATES WHIPPED AT THE CART'S-TAIL. From a Dutch print in the Crowle Pennant, British Museum. "saver" of the nation was tried, not for libels, but for perjury. A vast number of Roman Catholics assembled in Westminster Hall, "in expectation of the most grateful conviction and ruin of Jeffreys was again his judge, and this time his a person who had been so obnoxious to them." brutal severities were unchecked. People expected to see the Protestant champion cower like a whipped spaniel; but it was not so. This exemplary witness boldly challenged the veracity and the character of the witnesses brought against him, particularly objecting to Lord Castlemaine as a Papist; but in impudence and strength of face Oates was a match even for the redoubtable Jeffreys, and the scoundrel had a sort of spirit which the wonderful change in his circumstances could not depress. "Hold your tongue," roared Jeffreys; "you are a shame to mankind." "No, my lord," said the imperturbable Titus, "I am neither a shame to myself or mankind. What I have sworn is true; and I will stand by it to my last breath, and seal it, if occasion be, with my blood." "Twere pity but that it were to be done by thy blood," responded this decent lord chiefjustice. Oates was convicted upon two indictments, and this was his sentence:-1st, He was to pay 1000 marks upon each indictment; 2d, to be stripped of all his canonical habits (a sentence the right of pronouncing which belonged only to the courts ecclesiastical); 3d, he was to stand twice in the pillory; 4th, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate one day, and, two days afterwards, from Newgate to Tyburn; and 5th, he was to stand in the pillory on five days in every year as long as he lived. The sentence was executed without served that, during both the coronation and the the power to inflict torture.' The most severe mercy as long as James and Jeffreys had banquet, he was ill at ease. TITUS OATES IN THE PILLORY. From a Dutch print in the Crowle Pennant, British Museum. On the 7th of May, a fortnight after the coro 1 The gentle Evelyn has this entry in his Diary on the 22d of May, which, it should be remarked, was the day when parliament T death would have been preferable; but Titus's | containing his speech, which he read distinctly body was as tough as his soul, and he survived enough." He told them that he had resolved to to be pardoned and rewarded at the Revolution. Nor did the sight of his humiliating sufferings altogether throw him from that pedestal on which religious zeal had placed him. 66 Bedloe was safe in his grave, and others of the Protestant witnesses had either hid themselves or entered into the pay of the court; but Dangerfield was caught and tried at the King's Bench for writing and publishing a villainous and scandalous libel, called his Narrative. He received judgment to stand twice in the pillory; to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate on one day, and from Newgate to Tyburn on another; and to pay a fine of £500. This handsome scoundrel was not made of such materials as Titus. He was struck with such horror at this terrible sentence that he looked on himself as a dead man, and, accordingly, chose a text for his funeral sermon; but persevered in asserting that all he had delivered in evidence before the House of Commons was true. The whipping was executed in full rigour, as before upon Oates; and it was scarce over before one Mr. Robert Frances, a barrister of Gray's Inn, gave him a wound with his cane, in or near the eye, which, according to the deposition of the surgeons, was the cause of his death." This furious barrister, Mr. Frances, was tried for murder; and, as the popular feeling was violent against him, it was judged proper to permit his conviction and execution. The Scottish parliament assembled on St. George's Day-the day of their majesties' coronation; and the Scots, priding themselves on being the first parliament called by the new king, voted the excise and customs to him and his successors for ever, and a further sum of £25,000 a-year for his life. The English parliament assembled on the 22d of May; and, as the elections had gone greatly in favour of the Tories, it was expected that it would be as prompt and obedient as the Scotch. But not even the Tories were prepared for the repeal of the habeas corpus act, for a general toleration, or for the promotion of Popery; and it was well known that James was aiming at all three. The bishops all took their places. "Then came in the king, with the crown on his head; and, being seated, the commons were introduced; and, the house being full, he drew forth a paper opened: —“Oates, who had but two days before been pilloried at several places and whipped at the cart's tail from Newgate to Aldgate, was this day placed on a sledge, being not able to go by reason of so late scourging, and dragged from prison to Tyburn, and whipped again all the way, which some thought to be very severe and extraordinary: but if he was guilty of the perjuries, and so of the death of many innocents, as I fear he was, his punishment was but what he deserved. I chanced to pass just as execution was doing on him-a strange revolution!" Ralph. call a parliament from the moment of his brother's decease, as the best means of settling all the concerns of the nation, so as to be most easy and happy to himself as well as to his subjects. He repeated, almost word for word, the assurances which he had given to the council on the morning of his brother's death, that he would defend and support the Church of England, and govern according to law; and then continued, "Having given this assurance concerning the care I will have of your religion and property, which I have chosen to do in the same words I used at my first coming to the crown, the better to evidence to you that I spoke them not by chance; and, consequently, that you may firmly rely on a promise so solemnly made." Here he was interrupted by a murmur of satisfaction; and men who had hitherto had their eyes fixed. upon him, now gazed at one another with surprise, joy, and triumph. Resuming his speech, the king told them that he might now reasonably expect a revenue for life such as had been voted to his brother. Here was another murmur, which expressed universal assent. But James, who could not control his arbitrary temper, and who was wholly unfit to manage popular assemblies, continued, "There is one popular argument which I foresee may be used against what I have asked of you. The inclination men have for frequent parliaments, some may think would be the best secured by feeding me, from time to time, by such proportions as they shall think convenient; and this argument, it being the first time I speak to you from the throne, I will answer, once for all, that this would be a very improper method to take with me; and that the best way to engage me to meet you often is always to use me well. I expect, therefore, that you will comply with me in what I have desired, and that you will do it speedily." At these words every face was covered, as it were, with a cloud. But the royal bird of bad augury had not yet done; and he proceeded to announce that news had reached him that very morning, that Argyle, with a rebel band from Holland, had landed in the Western Highlands, and had proclaimed him a usurper and tyrant. Both houses, however, pledged themselves to assist his majesty to the utmost; and, according to Evelyn, "there was another shout of Vive le Roi, and so his majesty retired.” The commons voted thanks to the king for his speech, granted the revenue of £1,200,000 for his life, and everything else that was demanded, as if they were more forward to give than James was to ask. But, shortly after, a very full committee unanimously resolved to "move the house |