At his death he shewed much stayedness, as appeared by all his gestures, but especially by his speaking to the people without any commotion and with his ordinary gestures; and his giving his watch to the Earl of Caithness, telling him with a smile that it was fit for men to pay their debts, and therefore having promised him that watch he would now perform it. And I remember that I having told him, a little before his death, that the people believ'd he was a coward and expected he would die timorously, he said to me he would not die as a Roman braving death, but he would die as a Christian without being affrighted. Yet some concluded that he dy'd without courage, because he shifted to lay down his head, and protracted time by speaking at all the corners of the scaffold, which was not usual, and buttoning his doublet twice or thrice after he was ready to throw it off. The scaffold was full of such friends in mourning as he had given up in list, and who were contained in a warrant subscribed by the Commissioner: these carried his body to the Magdalene Chapel, from whence it was convoy'd to his ordinary burial place at Kilmun.' pp. 33-47.

This passage terminates all controversy about the means by which Argyll's death was effected, and consequently leaves no doubt about the character of Monk. It corresponds, with remarkable minuteness, to the narrative of Burnet, a zealous and avowed partisan, but an honest writer, whose account of facts is seldom substantially erroneous, though it be often inaccurate in points of form and detail. Baillie, the Principal of the College of Glasgow, a contemporary, who died before Burnet's History was written, agrees in ascribing the death of Argyll to the treachery of Monk; and Cunningham, a well-informed writer, who was travelling tutor to John Duke of Argyll, mentions the same fact in his History of Great Britain. The relation of Burnet, corroborated by the evidence of Baillie and Cunningham, was adopted by Mr Laing, whose acuteness and integrity in the investigation of facts, and in the estimate of authorities, have never been surpassed by any historian. With such an agreement of testimony on one side, and with none on the other, Mr Fox, in his Historical Fragment, relates this action of Monk as an instance of the baseness which appears in every conspicuous part of his life, and which, on this occasion, prompted him to produce letters of friendship and confidence to take ' away the life of a nobleman, the zeal and cordiality of whose 'cooperation with him, proved by such documents, was the chief ground of his execution; thus gratuitously surpassing in infamy those miserable wretches who, to save their own lives, are sometimes persuaded to impeach and swear away the lives of their accomplices.'

* Fox's History, 22.

The justice of Mr Fox's remark was not, and indeed could not, be controverted by those who admitted the reality of the fact which suggested it. The admirers of Monk were therefore driven to the necessity of disputing the fact. The late Mr Rose took the field on the occasion, in his Observations on Mr Fox's History; and, not content with his own investigation, he procured his Northern friends to make a diligent search into the Records of the Parliament, the Council, and the Justiciary in Scotland; and he concludes, that it is hardly possible to con⚫ceive that stronger evidence could be found to establish a negative than is produced to prove the falsehood of the Bishop's 'charge.' Both Mr Laing and Mr Sergeant Heywood sufficiently showed + the unreasonableness of Mr Rose's conclusion. The publication of the present volume ascertains, beyond the possibility of doubt, the meanness of Monk, the veracity of Burnet, and the extreme danger of such dogmatical assertions as that which has been last quoted from Mr Rose. One of the greatest aggravations of Monk's guilt has hitherto been unobserved. In his correspondence with the English Government, when Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, he uniformly represents Argyll as an enemy of the Protector's authority; and that nobleman, who was too sagacious not to discover the opinion of the English general, probably thought it necessary, to his own safety, to make strong professions of attachment to the Protectoral Government in his letters to Monk. This language, we know, did not deceive that officer: He did not believe its sincerity. Yet he afterwards sent these letters to the Scotch Parliament, to convince them of what he did not himself believe, that Argyll was a hearty friend of Cromwell. Had the letters contained legal proof of any treason beyond mere compliance, it is impossible not to suppose that they would have been preserved by the Scotch Government, and adverted to by Mackenzie in justification of their proceedings. These letters were not made public at the time when a justification of such questionable proceedings would naturally have been sought for, nor is it known that they have escaped destruction; and it seems reasonable to conclude that they contained only language of adulation towards Cromwell, and perhaps of hostility to the Stuarts, adopted by Argyll for his own safety, which, when

This is not the only testimony on the subject left by Mackenzie. In his work on the Criminal Law, the production of Argyll's letters to Monk is clearly referred to in illustration of a point in the Scotch law of evidence. In our review of Mr Sergeant Heywood's Vindication of Mr Fox, we formerly quoted the passage. Vol. XVIII. p. 334.

suddenly disclosed in a Parliament drunk with loyalty, was sufficient to intimidate and silence his friends.

This is not the only Tory attempt to falsify English history, which has been detected during the present year. The once famous controversy concerning the author of ΕΙΚΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ is at length decided. It had been disputed for a century and a half whether that book was the genuine work of Charles I., whose name it bears, or the composition of Dr Gauden, Bishop of Exeter, which, by a pious fraud, he ascribed to that Monarch, in order to increase its effect on the public feelings. The dispute was kept up even to our own times, in the historical works of Hume and Laing. The former of these historians, beginning with a very dexterous diffidence, tries to lure his readers into a belief of the genuineness of the work, which he calls the best prose composition at that time to be found in the English language. It passed through fifty editions in a twelvemonth; and it was long thought almost impious to entertain doubts of the authorship of a royal and sacred work. That it was, however, the composition of Gauden, is now certain, from some of his letters to the Earl of Bristol, preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. * After alluding to the secret which Lord Bristol had it seems penetrated in two of these letters, he proceeds in the third to press it strongly, as the ground of his claim to the bishopric of Winchester, which had then become vacant. I confess I thought myself some⚫ what redeemed beyond other men from court solicitations, by • his Majesty and his Highness being conscious to my most signal service; which I well know is to be kept secret, as fit only for royal and noble breasts. Nor could I prudently expect, upon • that account only, any extraordinary instance of his Majesty's favour, without putting the world upon a dangerous curiosity; if in other respects I had been unconspicuous, which I thank God I was not, but sufficiently known to all the English world by those many great and public works I had done to the hazard of my estate, liberty, and life.' Among these, he goes on to enumerate his Hieraspistes' and Hiera Dacrua,' neither of which is likely to be very familiar to our readers. He then observes, that it is the wonder of the better world to see me hitherto exposed to so incompetent and inconvenient a condition; which looks so like a banishment more than pre• ferment-drawing me much against my genie from a very happy privacy to a conspicuity, attended with toil and tenuity, which are next neighbours to contempt. These considerations.

*Todd's Life of Walton, I. 139, 147.
B

VOL. XXXVI. No. 71.

I offre to demonstrate, that his Majesty's favour may be 'grounded on the publique services I have done, besides that private one which is consecrated to the highest merit, reputation, and honour in the world; as the urn of royal ashes, and the embalming of a martyred King.'-'This I am sure, whoever hath the tulit alter honores, I may challenge hos ego versiculos feci; and the world thought them heroic and worthy of Augustus. However, no latency of my services should in justice be any prejudice against me, among those few who are both conscious to the merit, and now enjoy the fruit of them." Gauden's widow also, after his death, writes to Lord Bristol,He did also, before his departure, tell me, that your Lordship was privy to that which the world is so perfectly ignorant of.' We may observe, that this modest and disinterested Prelate, at the very moment of his earnest suit, was Bishop of Exeter, and had just received twenty thousand pounds as fines on the renewal of leases, in consequence of the long vacancy. This situation the good Bishop considers as a station of toil and tenuity. In our days, it is notorious that no Bishop of Exeter ever solicits the Bishopric of Winchester; and that no Prelate is ever raised to that rich diocese at the suspicious moment when he publishes useful works on temporary politics. If a mitre could be fairly employed as a premium for ingenious fraud, Gauden might have deserved it, as one of the most successful and perhaps the most excusable of literary impostors.

In the Parliament which was assembled in 1669, and which, after having sat for four Sessions, was dissolved in 1674, Mackenzie distinguished himself in opposition to the administration of the Duke of Lauderdale. In the work before us, he has preserved several of his speeches, as well as some account of those proceedings which appeared to him most important. In a debate on an act which required an oath from merchants, that they imported no goods without payment of duties, Lauderdale observed, That the stealing of the King's customs was a crime; whereupon Sir George Mackenzie replied, that if it was a crime, no man could be forc'd to swear for it. This and all the other passages of that day, join'd with Sir George owning the Burghs, in whom it was alleged he had no proper interest, made his Grace swear, in his return from the Parliament, that he would have

* The verb to own,' is not used in English in the sense which it bears here, namely, to support, or to favour.' It is not to be found in Jameson. This Scottish acceptation of the word is easily derived from one of its English significations, in which it is synonymous with 'to avow.'

that factious young man removed from the Parliament: to effectuate which, he called a Council of his favourites; and it was there contrived, that his election should be quarrel'd, because he only held lands of the Bishop of Ross, but not of his Majesty, and so was not a free baron. But they were at last diverted from this resolution by the Register, who assured them that this would make the people jealous of some close design to overturn their liberties; which, as they believed that gentleman defended upon all occasions, and that he would glory in his exclusion.' Mem. 172.

During this season of opposition, Sir George gives the following particulars of Lauderdale's government, which it is curious to compare with the dedication of the Criminal Law to the same person a short time afterwards.

In this Parliament, the members were rather overaw'd, than gain'd to a compliance; for Lauderdale was become so lazy, and was naturally so violent, and by his Majesty's favour and his own prosperity, was so far raised above all thoughts of fear, that he never consulted what was to be done; nor were the members of Parliament solicited by him, or his friends, upon any occasion; whereas, on the contrary, he would ofttimes vent at his table, that such Acts should be past in spight of all oppositions. But as men naturally admire most any thing at a distance, because of the defects of the object, and of the unconstancy of the admirer, so the people, and even the Parliament, did begin to undervalue Lauderdale; and by his bawdy discourses, and passionate oaths, he lost much of his esteem amongst the Presbyterians: and that raillery and constant speaking, which was his ornament, sometimes, in private conversation, seem'd very.... in a Commissioner; and his prevailing in all that he propos'd, was attributed more to his power than his conduct. Though the Chancellor was suspected to have had some aversion for him, and that it was thought he was in some danger, he so dexterously manag'd his humour, by compliance, gaming and raillery, that Lauderdale, who knew not what it was to dissemble, did doat upon him, and would do nothing without his advice: and amongst other artifices, whereby the Chancellor recommended himself to his favour, I cannot forget two. The first was, that he was most severe in Parliament, as President, to all his own friends, when they oppos'd any act that was presented another was, that he constantly brought into the Session, all the pleas or causes of such as were any way related to the Commissioner; and I remember that he own'd one of Lauderdale's friends, against his own cousin, by which methods he fix'd his court, but lessen'd his reputation: Whereas, on the other hand, the Duke of Hamilton, who had of a long time hated Lauderdale, by his opposition to every thing which might prove a burden to the country, did gain himself more honour, than he could incur hazard. Memoirs, 181, 182.

The lady described in the following passage became afterwards the wife of Bishop Burnet.