alms, and pay off the small debts for which many were confined. Mrs. Cellier, a professional nurse, was employed by several ladies like herself, Roman Catholics on this mission; and thus she made acquaintance with Dangerfield, whose debts she paid, and then imprudently employed him to collect moneys due to her husband.

He then informed her that he had discovered a plot for murdering the King and Duke of York, and she introduced him to Lady Powys, the wife of one of the noblemen who had been imprisoned for supposed complicity in the Popish plot. She brought the man to the Earl of Peterborough, who took him to the Duke of York. James, without quite believing him, gave him twenty guineas and took him to the King, to whom he showed a paper giving commissions in a Presbyterian army to gentlemen mentioned by name and connected with Shaftesbury. Charles was somewhat uneasy, gave him forty guineas, and bade him be on the watch.

Dangerfield showed two trivial letters from the envoy at Brussels to Shaftesbury, and directed the revenue officers to search the rooms of Colonel Mansel one of the persons nominated to the supposed army, telling them they would find a bundle of lace in a truss of hay. Instead of lace they found perilous-looking papers but these were at once shown to be clumsy forgeries, and Mansel was able to show that Dangerfield had had access to his quarters. The man was sent to Newgate, and there turned about declaring that this was only a sham plot to hide another Popish one of Mrs. Cellier and Lady Powys, and that the proofs would be found in a meal tub at Mrs. Cellier's house. There, indeed, a paper was found, showing the origin of the same plot, Lady Powys was sent to the Tower, but the Grand Jury threw out the bill against her, and when Mrs. Cellier was tried, she showed Dangerfield to be so unworthy of credit that she was acquitted.

Charles's new Parliament was summoned to Oxford, as being more secure than Westminster from the violence of the tumultuous Londoners, but finding it as intractable as the last, he dismissed it after an eight days' session. An unfortunate carpenter, Stephen College, a Presbyterian known as "the Protestant," was accused by Dugdale, and the informers who had sworn away Archbishop Plunket's life, of being concerned in a plot against the King's life at Oxford. The object seems to have been partly to convince the public that Nonconformists were as dangerous as Papists, and partly to frighten him into fabricating evidence against Shaftesbury, after the example of Prance. College however was made

of stouter stuff. The London Grand Jury threw out the Bill against him, but on the ground that the offence was to have been committed at Oxford, he was sent thither to be tried. Oates gave evidence of his innocence, and for that redeeming act lost his pension, and the poor joiner, after being shamefully abused by the judges, was condemned and suffered death.

A higher victim was aimed at, Lord Shaftesbury himself was accused by Dugdale and the Irish witnesses of having tried to suborn them to

CAMEO VI.

1681.

accuse the Queen and Duke of York of complicity in the Popish plot. Fall of He was sent to the Tower, deriding the accusation, and declaring that Shaftebsury. if he could have dealt with such creatures, Bedlam was the fittest place for him. One of the Roman Catholic noblemen, who were still prisoners, owing in great part to his machinations, expressed surprise at his being among them. "I have been lately indisposed with ague," he said, "and am come to take Jesuits' powder."

He offered to leave the kingdom and spend the rest of his life in Carolina, whither an English colony had gone out under his auspices ; but the King insisted on his being tried by his peers, and as these would have been selected by the King, they would have been his personal enemies; but a true bill had first to be found by a Grand Jury, and the Londoners were mostly Whigs, and viewed him as a patriot. While the Crown lawyers were endeavouring to find a sufficient indictment against him, hosts of pamphlets came out against him. Anglicans called him "the Apostle of schism"; Romanists, "the man of sin"; Tories, "Alderman Shiftesbury"; and the poet Dryden published his famous satire, Absalom and Achitophel, names which every one knew to indicate Monmouth and Shaftesbury, marvellously clever and biting in

sarcasm.

Shaftesbury was actually indicted for compassing and imagining the death of the King, and declaring that he would make England a republic like Holland; but the evidence utterly failed, as did the attempt to overawe the Grand Jury at the Old Bailey. When the officer of the court read out the word Ignoramus, there was shouting that lasted above an hour, bonfires and rejoicings. Charles said, “It is hard that I am the last man to have law and justice in the whole nation."

Shaftesbury was playing at cards when the result was announced to him, perhaps in imitation of the Elector of Saxony's game at chess, and he continued as if nothing had happened.

On his release he attempted to prosecute the false witnesses, but the Court of King's Bench showed causes for having the case tried outside the county of Middlesex, and as this would have removed the cause to a place where his enemies had chosen sheriffs and magistrates he dropped the attempt, and never dared stir beyond London, where his Whig friends protected him.

William of Orange made a visit to his uncle's court early in 1682, perhaps to look after his future interests, but ostensibly to obtain assistance against the encroachments of France, in which object he failed, Charles being too dependent on Louis to quarrel with him. His visit made the Duke of York uneasy, and he obtained permission to come and meet the King at Newmarket Races, and they then agreed that things had so far improved that he might return to England as soon as he had settled the affairs of Scotland.

James embarked at Margate on the 4th of May in the Gloucester frigate. The weather was foggy, and on the Suffolk coast, the Duke, who knew

the soundings full well, cautioned the pilot that he was too near the land; but he was not attended to, and at 5.30 on the morning of the 6th, the vessel was run aground on a sand-bank called the Lemon and Ore. There was at once eight feet of water in the hold, and Sir John Berry, the captain, begged the Duke to go off in the boat to one of the yachts in company. He was very unwilling, but was prevailed on. The boat would only hold six persons besides the rowers, and he called these by name, no one stirring except at his summons. John Churchill was first, brother of a lady to whom James had once been attachedLord Roxburgh and Lord O'Brien did not come-Lords Aberdeen, Winton, and two more gentlemen made up the number. Another boat, overloaded, went down, and the Duke saw Montrose in the water, and though some objected, dragged him in with his own hands; also a poor musician, whom the crew tried to beat off with their oars. Only a poor fiddler! Let us save him!" The man was picked up, but his professional pride swallowed up his gratitude, and he never forgave the expression of poor fiddler!

The boat reached the yacht Mary in safety, and that vessel and the Happy Return sent out all their boats, but the Gloucester foundered before these reached her, and many lives were lost, though a fair number were saved by keeping themselves afloat. The Duchess's almoner, Rouché, was one of these, and the captain, Sir John Berry, clung to a rope. The physician, Sir Charles Scarborough, and the Duke's dog Mumper, had a struggle for a plank, as was testified by Lord Dartmouth when Bishop Burnet in his memoirs published the ill-natured and false story that the Duke had cared to save nothing but his priest and his dog, a bit of spite too often repeated by modern histories.

Immediately after the Duke came back again to England with his wife and family, and was reinstated in his office of Lord High Admiral. This however brought Monmouth home again, almost as a declared rival to his uncle. The young man made an almost royal progress, attended by a suite of a hundred splendidly equipped persons, and was received with princely honours by the Whigs of Lancashire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, and Cheshire. In the towns, processions were formed to meet him, and he rode in state in the midst, giving public dinners to two hundred persons at once, and admitting the public to gaze at him. At Liverpool he even touched for the King's evil, and where there were country sports he took part in them, and delighted the people by his grace and agility. Bells were rung, salutes fired, bonfires lighted, and the air rung with shouts of "A Monmouth, a Monmouth!' and "Soho!" a sort of watchword. Monmouth Street and Soho Square are memorials of his popularity, though the cry seems to have been taken from the square-not the square named from the

cry.

These proceedings were reported, and cut short by his arrest at Stratford, just as he was going to dine in the street with the whole population.

CAMEO VI.

Return of the Duke of York.

1681.

CAMEO VI.

1681.

The warrant was for passing through the kingdom with a multitude Death of of riotous persons so as to disturb the peace of the realm. He was Shaftesbury bailed out by his friends, Lords Russell and Gray, but at this time the Court was quite in the ascendant. Sir John Moore, a Tory, was Lord Mayor, and attempted to appoint one of the sheriffs by drinking to him as such, reviving a custom which had been put down in the last reign. The citizens would not submit, and elected their own Whig sheriffs. The Lord Mayor called their proceeding a riot, and the judges favoured him, so that his nominees were thrust in, and as they chose the Grand Juries, there was no further chance of bills against Whigs being thrown, but a former sheriff, Pilkington, was prosecuted for having said that the Duke of York had fired the City of London before, and was coming to cut all their throats. He was fined £100,000, and having no such sum, surrendered himself as a prisoner.

Shaftesbury, in despair at the illegal measures of government, tried to persuade Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, and others, to begin an insurrection in the City in favour of Monmouth, but they saw no chance of success; and his plans being suspected, he received warning that he would be arrested.

Disguised as a Presbyterian minister, he left London with a young gentleman named Whelock disguised in like manner. They were detained for ten days at Harwich at a little inn. There one of the maids surprised Mr. Whelock, with his black wig off, showing a fine head of light hair. She told her mistress, who came to warn her guests, promising herself to keep the secret, but saying she could not answer for the maid.

Shaftesbury answered that he entirely trusted her sense of honour, "and as to the maid," he said to his friend, "you must go and make love to her to keep her quiet.”

He safely reached Amsterdam, where he requested to be made a magistrate of the city, which, mindful of his former denunciation of Holland, "Delenda est Carthago," replied, "Carthago, non adhuc deleta, comitem de Shaftesbury in gremio suo recipere vult." He was however soon after seized with a violent attack of gout, and died on the 21st of January, 1682, the second of the Prime Ministers of Charles II. who died in exile, but after a far less respectable career.

Charles thought himself strong enough to issue an inquiry into the powers of the Corporation of London. The lord-keeper North and the judges found some plea for pronouncing against them, and on the 12th of June, 1683, the time-honoured Corporation of London was deprived of its charters, and the lord mayor and sheriffs were henceforth to be nominated by the King. Sir George Jeffreys, on his circuits, examined the charters of the cities he visited, and found flaws in them, bringing back the surrenders thereof. It was said he had made them fall like the walls of Jericho, and England seemed about to be as much at the King's mercy as France was at that of Louis.

Death of Colbert. 1683.

THERE was no question that Louis XIV. was the leading character in | CAMEO VII. Europe, but in 1683 he had a loss that had a great influence in the decay of his latter years. Colbert, his excellent minister, died, it was said, partly from vexation at the preference shown for the more unscrupulous and flattering Louvois; and with him ended the able management of finance which had hitherto supported the King's enormous expense. Yet Colbert had been so much hated as the instrument of oppression that the populace were ready to throw his remains into the gutter, and hardly allowed them to receive Christian burial.

For eleven years, Lauzun had been a captive at Pignerol, where Fouquet had died a repentant man. At last Mademoiselle, by giving a large amount of her wealth to endow the Duke of Maine, son of Madame de Montespan, purchased his liberty and permission to marry him privately, though he was not allowed to appear at Court.

The lady was no longer youthful, and, as already shown, was imperious and conceited though kind-hearted and constant. No doubt she was not easy for a husband to live with, but gratitude might have made Lauzun less selfish and violent towards her. Angry scenes took place, and he is even said to have thrown his boots at her head before they finally parted, he to continue his gay life, she to keep a sort of romantic and literary court at Eu, and to write her own most amusing memoirs.

Louis's next achievement at this time was the reduction of the Algerine pirates who infested the Mediterranean. Provoked by their outrages, he sent his fleet, under the brave Huguenot Admiral Duquesne, to bombard the pirate city. Horrible execution was done by the shells, and the Dey sent back 600 Christian captives and begged