brave. All his virtues were so many crimes in the present suspicious disposition of the court. The chief evidence against him was lord Howard, a man of very bad character, one of the conspirators, who was now contented to take life upon such terms, and to accept of infamous safety. This witness swore that Russel was engaged in the design of an insurrection; but he acquitted him, as did also Ruinsey and West, of being privy to the assassination. His own candour would not allow him to deny the design in which he really was concerned; but his own confession was not sufficient to convict him. To the fact which principally aimed at his life there was but one witness, and the law required two: this was overruled; for justice, during this whole reign, was too weak for the prevailing party. The jury, who were zealous royalists, after a short deliberation, pronounced the prisoner guilty. After his condemnation the king was strongly solicited in his favour. Even money to the amount of two hundred thousand pounds, was offered to the duchess of Portsmouth by the earl of Bedford. But Charles was inexorable. He dreaded the principles and popularity of lord Russel, and resented his former activity in promoting the bill of exclusion. Lord Cavendish, the intimate friend of Russel, offered to effect his escape, by exchanging apparel with him, and remaining a prisoner in his room. The duke of Monmouth sent a message to him, offering to surrender himself, if he thought that step would contribute to his safety. Lord Russel generously rejected both these expedients, and resigned himself to his fate with admirable fortitude. His consort, the daughter and heiress of the earl of Southampton, finding that all supplications were vain, took leave of her husband without shedding a tear; while, as he parted from her, he turned to those about him" Now," said he, "the bitterness

of death is over." Before the sheriffs conducted him to the scaffold, he wound up his watch-" I have now done with time," said he, " and must henceforth think of eternity." The scaffold for his execution was erected in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields; he laid his head on the block without the least change of countenance, and at two strokes it was severed from his body.

The celebrated Algernon Sidney, son to the earl of Leicester, was next brought to his trial. He had been formerly engaged in the parliamentary army against the late king, and was even named on the high court of justice that tried him, but had not taken his seat among the judges. He had ever opposed Cromwell's usurpation, and went into voluntary banishment upon the Restora→ tion. His affairs, however, requiring his return, he ap→ plied to the king for a pardon, and obtained his request. But all his hopes and all his reasonings were formed upon republican principles. For his adored republic he had written and fought, and went into banishment, and ventured to return. It may easily be conceived how obnoxious a man of such principles was to a court that now was not even content with limitations to its power. The ministry went so far as to take illegal methods to procure his condemnation. The only witness that deposed against Sidney was lord Howard, and the law required two. In order, therefore, to make out a second witness, a very extraordinary expedient was adopted. In ransacking his closet some discourses on government were found in his own hand-writing, containing principles favourable to liberty, and in themselves no way subversive of a limited government. By overstraining some of these, they were construed into treason. It was in vain he alleged that papers were no evidence; that it could not be proved they were written by him; that, if proved, the papers themselves contained nothing

criminal. His defence was overruled; the violent and inhuman Jefferies, who was now chief-justice, easily prevailed on a partial jury to declare him guilty; and his execution soon followed.

One can scarcely contemplate the transactions of this reign without horror: such a picture of factious guilt on each side, a court at once immersed in sensuality and blood, a people armed against each other with the most deadly animosity, and no single party to be found with sense enough to stem the general torrent of rancour and factious suspicion.

Hampden was tried soon after; and as there was nothing to affect his life, he was fined forty thousand pounds. Holloway, a merchant of Bristol, who had fled to the West Indies, was brought over, condemned and executed. Sir Thomas Armstrong also, who had fled to Holland, was brought over, and shared the same fate. Lord Essex, who had been imprisoned in the Tower, was found in an apartment with his throat cut; but whether he was guilty of suicide, or whether the bigotry of the times might not have induced some assassin to commit the crime, cannot now be known.

This was the last blood that was shed for an imputation of plots or conspiracies, which continued during the greatest part of this reign. Nevertheless the cruelty and the gloomy suspicion of the duke of York, who, since the dissolution of the last parliament, daily advanced in power, were dreadful to the nation. Titus Oates was fined a hundred thousand pounds for calling him a popish traitor; and he was imprisoned till he could pay it, which he was utterly incapable of. A like illegal sentence was passed upon Dutton Colt, for the same offence. Sir Samuel Barnardiston was fined ten thousand pounds, for having, in some private letters, reflected on the government. Of all those who were con

cerned in the late conspiracy, scarcely one escaped the severity of the court, except the duke of Monmouth, and he was the most culpable of any.

At this period the government of Charles was as absolute as that of any monarch in Europe; but, to please his subjects by an act of popularity, he judged it proper to marry the lady Anne, his niece, to prince George, brother to the king of Denmark. This was one of the last transactions of this extraordinary reign. The king was seized with a sudden fit, which resembled an apoplexy; and though he was recovered from it by bleeding, yet he languished only for a few days, and Feb. 6, then expired, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, 1685. and the twenty-fifth of his reign. During his illness some clergymen of the church of England attended him, to whom he discovered a total indifference. Catholic priests were brought to his bed-side, and from their hands he received the rites of their communion. papers were found in his closet, containing arguments in favour of that persuasion. These were soon after published by James his successor, by which he greatly injured his own popularity and his brother's memory.

Two

CHAPTER XV.

JAMES II.

A. D. 1685-1688.

THE duke of York, who succeeded his brother by the title of king James the Second, had been bred a papist by his mother, and was strongly bigoted to his principles. It is the property of that religion almost ever to contract the sphere of the understanding; and, until people are in some measure disengaged from its preju

dices, it is impossible to lay a just claim to extensive views, or consistency of design. The intellects of this prince were naturally weak; and the education he had received rendered him still more feeble. He therefore conceived the impracticable project of reigning in the arbitrary manner of his predecessor, and of changing the established religion of his country, at a time when his person was hated, and the established religion passionately loved. The people, though they despised the administration of his predecessor, yet loved the king. They were willing to bear with the faults of one whose whole behaviour was a continued instance of affability; but they were by no means willing to grant the same indulgence to James, as they knew him to be gloomy, proud, bigoted, and cruel.

His reign began with acts of imprudence. All the customs, and the greater part of the excise, that had been voted to the late king for his life only, were levied by James, without a new act for that purpose. He likewise went openly to mass with all the ensigns of his dignity, and even sent one Caryl as his agent to Rome, to make submissións to the pope, and to pave the way for the re-admission of England into the bosom of the catholic church. These were but inauspicious symptoms in the very beginning of his reign; but the progress no way fell short of the commencement.

He had, long before the beginning of his reign, had an intrigue with Mrs. Sedley, whom he afterwards created countess of Dorchester; but being now told that as he was to convert his people, the sanctity of his manners ought to correspond with his professions, Mrs. Sedley was discarded, and he resigned himself to the advice of the queen, who was as much governed by priests as he. From the suggestions of these men, and particularly the Jesuits, all measures were taken. One