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 alledged 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 bring him in guilty, and his execution followed soon after. One can scarce 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.

At this period, the government of Charles was as absolute as that of any monarch in Europe; but, happily for mankind, his tyranny was but of short duration. The king was seized with a sudden fit, which resembled an apoplexy; and though he was recovered by bleeding, yet he languished only for a few days, and then expired, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, 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.

Ce este Meiriad. fue el gra el freguese Londres, cilan

D. 1085.

16:

JAMES II.

Stuart.

HE 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.

He went openly to mass with all the ensigns of his dignity, and even sent one Caryl as his agent to Rome, to make submissions to the pope, and to pave the way for the re-admission of England into the bosom of the catholic church.

A conspiracy, set on foot by the duke of Monmouth, was the first disturbance in his reign. He had, since his last conspiracy, been pardoned, but was ordered to depart the kingdom, and had retired to Holland. Being dismissed from thence by the prince of Orange, upon James's accession, he went to Brussels, where finding himself still pursued by the king's severity, he resolved to retaliate, and make an attempt upon the kingdom. He had ever been the darling of the people; and some averred that Charles had married his mother, and owned Monmouth's legitimacy at his death. The duke of Argyle seconded his views in Scotland, and they formed the scheme of a double insurrection; so that while Monmouth should attempt to make a rising in the West, Argyle was also to try his endeavours in the North.

A. D.

Argyle, was the first who landed in Scotland, where 1685. he published his manifestoes, put himself at the head of two thousand five nundred men, and strove to influence the

people in his cause. But a formidable body of the king's forces coming against him, his army fell away; and he himself, after being wounded in attempting to escape, was taken prisoner by a peasant, who found him standing up to his neck in a pool of water. He was from thence carried to Edinburgh, where, after enduring many indignities with a gallant spirit, he was publicly executed.

Meanwhile, Monmouth was by this time landed in Dorsetshire, with scarce a hundred followers. However, his name was so popular, and so great was the hatred of the people both for the person and religion of James, that in four days he had assembled a body of above two thousand men.

Being advanced to Taunton, his numbers had increased to six thousand men; and he was obliged every day, for want of arms, to dismiss numbers who crowded to his standard. He entered Bridgewater, Wells, and Frome, and was proclaimed in all those places; but he lost the hour of action in receiving and claiming these empty honours.

The king was not a little alarmed at his invasion, but still more at the success of an undertaking that at first appeared desperate. Six regiments of British troops were recalled from Holland; and a body of regulars, to the number of three thousand men, were sent, under the command of the earl of Feversham and Churchill, to check the progress of the rebels. They took post at Sedgemore, a village in the neighbourhood of Bridgewater, and were joined by the militia of the country in considerable numbers. It was there that Monmouth resolved, by a desperate effort, to lose his life or gain the kingdom. The negligent disposition made by Feversham invited him to the attack; and his faithful followers shewed what courage and principle could do against discipline and numbers. They drove the royal infantry from their ground, and were upon the point of gaining the victory, when the misconduct of Monmouth, and the cowardice of lord Gray, who commanded the horse, brought all to ruin. This nobleman fled at the first onset; and the rebels being charged in flank by the victorious army, gave way, after a three hours contest. About three hundred were killed in the engagement, and a thousand in the pursuit; and thus ended an enterprise rashly begun, and more feebly conducted.

Monmouth fled from the field of battle above twenty miles, till his horse sunk under him. He then alighted, and changing clothes with a shepherd, fled on foot, attended by a German count, who had accompanied him from Holland. Being quite

exhausted with hunger and fatigue, they both lay down in a field, and covered themselves with fern. The shepherd being found in Monmouth's clothes by the pursuers, increased the diligence of the search; and, by the means of blood-hounds, he was detected in this miserable situation, with raw peas in his pocket, which he had gathered in the fields to sustain life. He wrote the most submissive letters to the king; and that monarch, willing to feast his eyes with the miseries of a fallen enemy, gave him an audience. At this interview the duke fell upon his knees, and begged his life in the most abject terms. He even signed a paper offered him by the king, declaring his own illegitimacy; and then the stern tyrant assured him, that his crime was of such a nature as could not be pardoned. The duke perceiving that he had nothing to hope from the clemency of his uncle, recovered his spirits, rose up, and retired with an air of disdain. He was followed to the scaffold with great compassion from the populace. He warned the executioner not to fall into the same error which he had committed in beheading Russel, where it had been necessary to redouble the blow, But this only increased the severity of the punishment the man was seized with an universal trepidation, and he struck a feeble blow, upon which the duke raised his head from the block, as if to reproach him; he gently laid down his head a second time, and the executioner struck him again and again to no purpose. He at last threw the axe down; but the sheriff compelled him to resume the attempt, and, at two blows more, the head was severed from the body. was the end of James, duke of Monmouth, the darling of the English people. He was brave, sincere, and good-natured, open to flattery, and by that seduced into an enterprise which exceeded his capacity.

Such

But it were well for the insurgents, and fortunate for the king, if the blood that was now shed had been thought a sufficient expiation for the late offence. The victorious army behaved with the most savage cruelty to the prisoners taken after the battle. Feversham, immediately after the victory, hanged up above twenty prisoners.

The military severities of the commanders were still inferior to the legal slaughters committed by judge Jefferies, who was sent down to try the delinquents. The natural brutality of this man's temper was inflamed by continual intoxication. He told the prisoners, that if they would save him the trouble of trying them they might expect some favour, otherwise he would execute the law upon them with the utmost severity.

Many poor wretches were thus allured into a confession, and found that it only hastened their destruction. No less than eighty were executed at Dorchester; and, on the whole, at Exeter, Taunton, and Wells, two hundred and fifty-one are computed to have fallen by the hands of justice.

In ecclesiastical matters, James proceeded with still greater injustice. Among those who distinguished themselves against popery, was one Dr. Sharpe, a clergyman of London, who declaimed with just severity against those who had changed their religion by such arguments as the popish missionaries were able to produce. This being supposed to reflect upon the king, gave great offence at court; and positive orders were given to the bishop of London to suspend Sharpe till his majesty's pleasure should be farther known. The bishop refused to comply; and the king resolved to punish the bishop himself for disobedience.

To effect his design, an ecclesiastical commission was issued out, by which seven commissioners were invested with a full and unlimited authority over the whole church of England. Before this tribunal the bishop was summoned; and not only he, but Sharpe, the preacher, were suspended.

The next step was to allow a liberty of conscience to all sectaries and he was taught to believe, that the truth of the catholic religion would then, upon a fair trial, gain the victory. He therefore issued a declaration of general indulgence, and asserted that non-conformity to the established religion was no longer penal.

To complete his work, he publicly sent the earl of Castlemain ambassador extraordinary to Rome, in order to express his obedience to the pope, and to reconcile his kingdoms to the catholic communion. Never was there so much contempt thrown upon an embassy that was so boldly undertaken. The court of Rome expected but little success from measures so blindly conducted. They were sensible that the king was openly striking at those laws and opinions which it was his business to undermine in silence and security.

The Jesuits soon after were permitted to erect colleges in different parts of the kingdom; they exercised the catholic worship in the most public manner; and four catholic bishops, consecrated in the king's chapel, were sent through the kingdom to exercise their episcopal functions, under the title of apostolic vicars.

Father Francis, a Benedictine monk, was recommended by the king to the university of Cambridge, for the degree of