falsehood either of Baber to Barillon, or of Barillon to the French court, would acquit these considerable men. In secret transactions like these, which can only be conducted by knaves, we are justified in suspecting all kinds of knavery and mutual deception. Coleman, the Duke of York's creature, when on his trial for the popish plot, deposed that he had received 2500l. from Barillon to be distributed among members of parliament, but had converted the money to his own use; and though Coleman had, seemingly, a motive to tell a lie, he yet may possibly have spoken the truth in that matter.* These and other suggestions merit a deep consideration; but, after all, the decided bias of the generous mind which proposed the hypothesis was, that Barillon's accounts were true accounts, that the money was really paid and received! Louis XIV. had an obvious motive for these intrigues: their clandestine dealings made him, in a manner, master of both parties in England; and he might either embarrass the king through parliament, if Charles should pretend to an independent course of policy, or cast off and betray parliament when Charles should return to his base subservience.†

A. D. 1679.—The elections for the new parlia

ment were conducted with unusual heat and animosity. The court and the court party neglected no possible bribery, no exertion; but the country party were equally active, and, by making an extravagant use of the popish plot, they had the advantage over their opponents. To avert the storm Charles induced his unpopular 'popish brother to retire to Brussels; but before James went to the Continent he exacted from the king a formal declaration of the illegitimacy of the young Duke of Monmouth, of whose popularity he was already excessively jealous. The new parliament met on the 6th of March. The first thing the Commons did was to quarrel with the king about the election of their Speaker; the next, to renew the attack upon Danby. The Lords resolved the curious constitutional question-and their resolution has in modern times been adopted as a principle-that the proceedings on impeachments begun in one parliament are not affected by a dissolution, but may be taken up and continued in the succeeding parliament, as if no such interruption had taken place. Charles summoned the Commons to Whitehall, where he told them that the two letters taken out of the box were really written by his orders; that he had, therefore, given a full pardon to Danby, but, at the same time, for certain other reasons, he had dismissed him from his service.

preachers;" that the king, finding the dissenters ever active against him and his interests," thought it the cheapest way to take off (as they called it) those bull-wethers the teachers," and employed Sir John Baber to bribe these leaders "with good annual pensions," &c.

Burnet says,-" Whatsoever Coleman did in the main business, he took good care of himself. All his letters were full of their being able to do nothing for want of money; and he made the French ambassador believe he could do his master great service, if he was well supplied: he got 2500 guineas from him, to gain his master some friends; and he applied it all to furnish out his own expense."-Own Time.

Hallam.-Lalrymple.

Although there was no want of precedents in former reigns, the Commons voted an address to the king against the validity of a pardon before trial, and they sent up a message to the Lords demanding justice. The Lords, who were devising how to throw aside the capital charge of treason, had issued a warrant for taking him into custody; but Danby had absconded. The Commons forthwith passed a bill of attainder, to take effect on the 15th of April, if the fallen minister did not previously appear to stand his trial; and the Lords, after some hesitation, adopted the bill. But on the 10th of April Danby surrendered himself, kneeling at the bar of the Lords, who sent him to the Tower. The popular Lord Essex was put at the head of the Treasury, but the chief management of affairs was left to the Earl of Sunderland, now secretary of state, who kept himself in favour by condescensions and connivances with the Duke of Monmouth and the Duchess of Portsmouth. But, by the advice of Sir William Temple, Charles constituted a new council of thirty persons, into which were admitted the most daring and the most popular leaders of the opposition, with the versatile Shaftesbury for their president.* Notwithstanding this calculated kindness, Shaftesbury urged on the Commons to vote the exclusion of the Duke of York from the throne. The accidental burning of a printing-house in Fetter-lane, and the report that the banished James was about returning with a French fleet and army, hastened the blow. And out of doors the great mass of the nation echoed from their hearts the position which Shaftesbury had delivered in parliament a few weeks before" Popery and slavery, like two sisters, go hand-in-hand; and sometimes one goes first, and sometimes the other; but wheresoever the one enters, the other is always following close behind." The Commons, without losing much time, resolved, nemine contradicente, "That the Duke of York being a papist, and the hopes of his coming such to the crown, had given the greatest countenance to the present conspiracies and designs against the king and Protestant religion." They also voted addresses requesting his majesty to banish all papists twenty miles from London, and to put all sea-ports, fortresses, and ships into trusty hands; and, in conclusion of this day's work, they ordered that their Secret Committee should prepare to bring before them all such letters and papers as they had in their custody relating to the Duke of York. Lord Russell, though one of the new council of thirty, was selected to desire the concurrence of the Lords. The latter took time for consideration. Sir William Temple lays these exclusion proceedings to the charge of the aspiring Duke of Monmouth (who had been for some time plotting to prove a lawful marriage

One of the great recommendations of this new council was, that, collectively, the members of it were worth a very large sum of money -"so that they might out of their own stock, upon a pineh, furnish the king, so far as to relieve some great necessity of the crown.” This was specially pointed out by Temple, the author of the scheme, -Sir W. Temple's Works.

Carmichael, "a cruel, bloody man," said to have been once a baillie of Edinburgh, where he had carried on business as a merchant and become bankrupt, but who had now, through the patronage of Sharp, obtained a commission from the council to seek out and apprehend all nonconformists and intercommuned persons in the shire of Fife. Headed by Hackston of Rathillet, these men, on Saturday, the 3rd of May, this year, attempted to surprise Carmichael while he was hunting on the moors; but they missed him. In the midst of their fury at this disappointment, a little boy cried out, "There goes the bishop!" They looked as the boy pointed, and saw at a little distance a coach drawn by six horses. "Truly," exclaimed the fanatics, "this is of God: the Lord has delivered the wretch into our hands." Rathillet would not be the leader in the attack, because he had some personal enmity, and might be accused of seeking revenge; but John Balfour, of Kinloch, put himself in the van, and the nine horsemen pushed across Magus-Muir, about four miles west from St. Andrew's, in pursuit of Sharp. As soon as the archbishop saw them he felt that his hour was come; and, turning to his daughter, Isabel, who was with him, he said, "The Lord have mercy on me, my dear child, for I am gone!" The coachman urged his horses to the top of their speed; but it was in vain: the murderers' light nags were soon up with him, the postilion was wounded, the traces were cut, and James Russell, an inhabitant of Kettle, standing by the coach-door, roared “Judas, come forth!" The old man, who had never shown mercy to them or their brethren, implored mercy from them, and offered money and a full pardon. His daughter knelt on the ground with him, wept, and prayed, and tried to shield him with her own person; but the hearts of these men were rendered obdurate by fanaticism; they pulled her away, and Balfour, with one stroke, laid the archbishop at his feet. But life was not extinct. Russell finished the horrible work by hacking the skull to pieces, and then ordering the servants to take away their priest. The band withdrew no farther than to a cottage on the other side of the muir, where they spent the remainder of the day in prayer and thanksgiving, blessing their God for the accomplishment of this glorious work. A few days after the assassins were in the west country, where the effect of their presence was soon manifested. At Glasgow they met Cargill and Spreul, two preachers as fanatic as themselves, and Hamilton, a young man of good family, who had often urged his oppressed brethren to redress their grievances and put down idolatry with the sword. On the 29th of May, the anniversary of the Restoration, about sixty armed men rode into the little burgh of Rutherglen, near Glasgow, put out the bonfires, heard a sermon preached, burnt the acts of parliament hostile to the kirk, and fixed a declaration upon the market-cross. On the Sunday following they held a field-conventicle; and they were so well prepared, that they beat off with loss three troops of

horse that were led against them by the celebrated Graham, of Claverhouse. By the advice of Lauderdale, the army in Scotland was concentrated near Edinburgh; and the king sent down the Duke of Monmouth, who had lately married the great Scottish heiress of Buccleugh. The covenanters had taken Glasgow, had made proclamation that they fought against supremacy, popery, and prelacy, and had issued their commands to the magistrates, to turn out all archbishops, bishops, curates, "and their bairns ;" and, on the 22d of June, when Monmouth came in sight with 5000 regular troops, they had posted themselves, not unskilfully, behind the river Clyde. But they took to praying and preaching when they ought to have stood to their arms, and Monmouth forced the passage of Bothwell-bridge and brought his artillery to play upon them. When some fifteen of their men had fallen they retreated to Hamilton Heath, an eminence at a quarter of a mile's distance. There they repulsed one or two charges, and broke a body of Highlanders; but, their ammunition beginning to fail them, and the duke's artillery to ply them afresh, they quitted their position in disorder, and could not be brought to rally again. What followed was flight and slaughter; four or five hundred were killed, and about twelve hundred were taken prisoners. Under Lauderdale and Sharp the gibbet would have finished what the sword had spared; but the Duke of Monmouth, not less through policy than temper, was disposed to mercy, and the prisoners were treated with comparative humanity. It is maintained by many writers that Shaftesbury and his party encouraged this insurrection, in the hope of seeing the Scots repeat what they had done against Charles I.

It might have been expected that the popish plot in England would now fall to the ground; but the king, through personal fears and a selfish policy, permitted it still to take its sanguinary course. On the evidence of Oates, Bedloe, Prance, and one Dugdale, who had taken up the profitable trade of a witness, five jesuits, Whitbread, Fenwick, Harcourt, Gavan, and Turner, with Langhorne, a famous Catholic lawyer, were condemned by the brutal Jeffreys, now recorder of London, and a protestant jury, amidst the shouts of a protestant audience, and they were all executed. Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, and three benedictine friars, were, however, acquitted by the jury, after a trial in which Oates was convicted of barefaced perjury. Yet, a few weeks after this acquittal, eight priests and monks were executed in the provinces for merely exercising their functions.

In the month of August Charles fell sick of a fever at Windsor; and the Duke of York, travelling in disguise, came over to look to his interests. The duke found that the king had recovered, and that his son Monmouth was intrusted with the command of the army, was more than ever popular, and was backed by a powerful and intriguing

party. A violent quarrel between the two dukes was the consequence; and Charles, to preserve his own tranquillity, sent his son to Holland and his brother to Scotland. Monmouth submitted with great reluctance; but his ally, Shaftesbury, consoled him with the assurance that his temporary exile would give him the merits of a martyr in the . eyes of the people, and that parliament would insist on his recall. Charles, in dissolving one parliament and proroguing another, had counted upon a pension of 1,000,000 livres from the French king; but Louis, who had no present occasion for his services, and who feared not his enmity, but knew his weakness, appended some unpalatable conditions to this new money-treaty, which caused it to drop. The Duke of York advised him to make up for the loss of the French livres by a strict economy of his English guineas, so as to be still in a state to do without parliament; and, in

Charles had told Barillon, the French ambassador and money agent, that this would be the sure way," de mettre pour toute sa vie l'Angleterre dans sa dependance."-Dalrymple.....This precious business was carried on by the king, the Duke of York, the French Duchess of Portsmouth, Sunderland, and Churchill (afterwards the great Duke of Marlborough), who was sent to Paris by his master, James, to drive on the bargain. Barillon repeatedly hints to his master that the Duchess of Portsmouth and Lord Sunderland expected gratifications for themselves,-that Sunderland could not be secured without a great deal of money; and, subsequently, Louis ordered the payment of 10,000 pistoles to his lordship, and 5000 to the Duchess of Portsmouth, with a promise of a renewal of these presents if they would keep Charles in the interests of France.Dalrymple, Appendix.

*

the month of October, when parliament was to meet, he prorogued it again, and announced to his council that he would have no session for a year to come. About the same time Shaftesbury was deprived of the presidency of the council; Lord Halifax, Lord Russell, and Sir William Temple retired, and Lord Essex threw up the Treasury in disgust. Essex was succeeded by Hyde, one of the sons of Clarendon, and brother to the Duke of York's first wife; and Hyde, with Sunderland and Godolphin, managed a weak and distracted government. Having lost the king, Louis and Barillon renewed their connexion with the patriots, fancying that matters in England would inevitably end in a civil war. We must pass lightly over the disgraceful plots and intrigues which followed. Mrs. Cellier, a Catholic midwife, who was employed by ladies of quality in various capacities, and among others in distributing alms among the distressed prisoners for conscience sake, found among the inmates of Newgate a very handsome young man named Dangerfield. She discharged the debts for which he was in durance, and introduced him to Lady Powis. Dangerfield, who had. led a most profligate life, and had been branded, whipped, and pilloried as a felon, was not very

At this moment, when Charles was so bold, he did not foresee the failure of his treaty with Louis,-he was still counting on the livres.

nice as to the means by which he testified his gratitude or procured a livelihood. He turned Catholic, and pretended that, by visiting the coffeehouses in the city, he had discovered a dangerous conspiracy of the presbyterians against the king's life and government. Lady Powis and the active midwife introduced him to Lord Peterborough; and his lordship conducted him to the Duke of York, who had lately returned from Scotland. The duke, who had suffered so much from popish plots, turned a ready ear to this Protestant plot, which might bring ruin on his bitterest enemies, the puritans. He gave Dangerfield twenty guineas, and sent him to the king, who gave him forty. Being thus regularly installed in his new trade, Dangerfield, a few days after, gave information that papers and documents of the most convincing kind would be found in the possession of Colonel Mansel, who was to be quarter-master of the presbyterian army. Mansel's lodgings were searched, and a bundle of papers was found behind his bed. But the forgery was clumsy; Mansel proved that the informer had put the papers in his room, and Dangerfield was sent back to Newgate. But the times were favourable for men of his genius; and, shifting his ground with alacrity, he declared that he had been induced by the midwife and Lady Powis to fabricate a plot for the purpose of covering a real one, conducted, not by the presbyterians, but by the catholics; that notes and the documents on which the sham plot was founded were concealed in a meal-tub in Mrs. Cellier's house. And, upon search there, the meal-tub was found and the papers in them. The tables being thus turned, the midwife was sent to Newgate and Lady Powis to the Tower. But the grand-jury ignored the bill against the lady, and the midwife was acquitted upon trial at the Old Bailey.

The

Alarmed at the long recess, people from all parts of the country began to petition the king for the speedy meeting of parliament; and seventeen peers of the realm joined in this prayer. court issued a proclamation against improper petitions, and canvassed for counter-petitions with very considerable success.

A.D. 1680.-Encouraged by the passionate expressions of loyalty and attachment to regular succession set forth in these counter-petitions, Charles ventured to recall his brother from Scotland, and to declare, upon oath before the privy council, that Monmouth was illegitimate. To drive that prince away, Shaftesbury presented the Duke of York to the grand jury of Middlesex as a popish recusant; but the judges balked him by instantly discharging the jury. The Duke of Monmouth, by Shaftesbury's desire, had returned suddenly and secretly to London, some time before the Duke of York. It was midnight when he reached the city; but as soon as his name was heard he was enthusiastically welcomed by the people, who regarded him as their best shield. Charles ordered him to quit the kingdom, but Shaftesbury kept him where he

was; and, as the king could no longer help meeting parliament, the Duke of York was sent back to Edinburgh. James departed full of rage and resentment, and with the conviction that his brother would give him up to ruin to preserve himself. The session was opened on the 21st of October. The Commons instantly began to wreak their vengeance on the counter-petitioners, to fondle the old popish plot, and to patronise Dangerfield and the meal-tub plot. Thus encouraged, the felon accused the Duke of York of having instigated him not only to frame his first story against the presbyterians, but also to murder the king. On the 26th of October Lord Russell carried a motion that the House should take into consideration how to suppress popery and prevent a popish successor; on the 2nd of November the exclusion bill against the Duke of York was introduced, and it was reported on the 8th. The king, who, however, would have sold his brother for 600,000l., tried to divert the storm, but the bill passed the Commons on the 11th of November, and on the 15th, Lord Russell, escorted by the exclusionists, carried it to the Upper House. The king was present at the debate, and personally solicited the peers, who threw out the bill by a majority of 63 to 30. The Commons then turned back to the popish plot, to keep the rancour of the people alive; and Lord Stafford, one of the five lords in the Tower, was brought to trial before his peers, who in such a case were quite ready to concur with the Commons. The witnesses against him were Oates, Dugdale, and Tuberville-a new witness, as deeply sunk in villany and infamy as either of the old practitioners. After Oates and Dugdale had sworn to consultations and commissions from the pope, this Tuberville swore that, five years before, Stafford, being at Paris, had engaged him to assassinate the king. old earl-he was in his seventieth year-made an excellent defence, and, by himself and witnesses, proved discrepancies, flat contradictions, and perjury in the evidence of his accusers; yet the Lords found him guilty by a majority of 55 to 31.* Charles, who had been present at the trial in Westminster Hall, and who was convinced that Stafford was innocent of the imputed treason, yet signed the death-warrant with no other mitigation than that he should be simply beheaded. sheriffs of London (Bethell and Cornish) questioned whether the king had the power to alter the sentence of the Lords, which included or implied all the horrid formalities of hanging, bowelling, &c., and they applied to the two Houses; but Charles was firm; the Lords told the sheriffs that their scruples were unnecessary, and that the

The

The

In the rage of her disappointment because the exclusionists had not succeeded, the Duchess of Portsmouth attended Stafford's trial, "dealing sweetmeats and smiles among his prosecutors." This French mistress had been flattered by the hope-if not by a positive promise that, if the Duke of York should be set aside, her own children, after some unexplained process of legitimation, should succeed to the throne. Shaftesbury, Halifax, and Sunderland deluded her, by turns, in this strange way; and it appears certain that, under her influence, the king several times was more than half disposed to go along with the exclusionists, even without their money.