she could not justly be tried for harbouring him, and indeed her only CAMEO IX. son had joined the royal standard against the invaders.

Nothing, however, availed her. Jeffreys summed up in his most savage and abusive manner, and stormed at the jury for retiring. The foreman when they came back said that the evidence was not clear that she knew that Hickes had been with the army. Jeffreys then grew more furious, declared it was certain, forbade further speech, and when the jury had thus been baited into finding a verdict of guilty, he pronounced sentence that she should be burnt alive, the legal penalty of treason for women not noble.

Strong interest was made for the good and pious lady, Lord Feversham himself interceding; but James said he had pledged himself to the Chief Justice not to pardon her, and he only commuted her sentence into beheading. She walked calmly to the place of execution, and with her last breath prayed for the King. Hickes was afterwards taken and executed.

At Salisbury there were only a few whippings for indiscreet words; but at Dorchester the gaol was overflowing with the deluded men who had risen on Monmouth's landing. There were hundreds to try, and Jeffreys was in haste, having heard of Lord Keeper Guildford's death, and the assurance of the Great Seal to himself. So to save time, he gave out that the persons who pleaded guilty should find him a merciful judge. Mistrusting his tender mercies, a smaller proportion than he expected did so, and of those who pleaded "not guilty," he hanged thirteen the next day, including the constable of Chardstock, for having been robbed of a sum of money by Monmouth's men, for the payment of the militia. When this man attempted a defence, the judge exclaimed, "Villain, I see thee with a halter round thy neck!"

Whether pleading guilty or not guilty, 292 were sentenced the next day, of whom 74 were executed, and in their own villages, where their ghastly remains were exposed.

At Exeter only thirty-three suffered; but Somersetshire was in terrible case, in spite of the exertions of Bishop Ken. There were 1,100 citations for high treason altogether, between Wells and Taunton, and at the latter place the twenty-six poor girls who had embroidered the banner, were kept in a loathsome dungeon till their friends compounded for them by heavy fines, which were actually presented to the Queen's maids of honour, as the price of their intercession. Two hundred and thirty-nine persons were executed, others sent in herds to the West Indies. Bristol was the last place in this "Bloody Assize.” There were only three cases of treason here; but Jeffreys had the satisfaction of bullying the mayor and aldermen, coarsely and passionately, but not quite undeservedly, for their custom of selling convicted felons to the planters in the West Indies.

Jeffreys was often half drunk, and was in bad health, so as sometimes hardly to know what he said; but his barbarities were the most fright

G 2

Alice Lisle.

1688.

CAMEO IX.

The

Bloody
Assize.

1688

ful ever committed in the name of the law. Three hundred and thirty executions altogether, 800 transportations and heavy fines, or rather briberies, from those who escaped.

Brutal as was Jeffreys, it is impossible to acquit the King of permitting these atrocities knowingly. The one seems to have enjoyed them ; the other to have been actuated by that cruelty which is born of terror, and to have imagined his best policy to be a severity, the actual effect of which he perhaps hardly realized. Jeffreys himself said that his instructions were more terrible than his sentences, and that in the main he was approved, was shown by his being promoted to be Lord Chancellor and Baron of Wem. His own father refused to see him, so shocked was his family at his cruelties, and the appointment was the more scandalous that he had a very slight knowledge of his profession. Old Serjeant Maynard, who was past eighty, the most practised of lawyers, and called the father of the Bar, was the only person who could ever put his bullying temper down for a moment. Once, when Jeffreys had rudely reproached him with being so old as to have forgotten the law, the Serjeant answered: "True, Sir George, I have forgotten more law than you ever learnt.

The miserable rebellion entailed a few more prosecutions. Another poor lady was actually burnt in London-Mrs. Gaunt, of Wapping— for assisting a fugitive to escape. She died like a martyr, declaring she had obeyed the precepts of the Gospel, which bade her shelter the wanderer and outcast.

The rebellion had really strengthened James's hands considerably. The regiments he had brought over from Holland had been only volunteers raised on speculation in England for William's service on condition of their return if needed. These were now added to the few troops of guards, infantry, and dragoons, who had been maintained by Charles II. for special services, such as the guarding his person and palaces, garrisoning the fortresses in England and at Tangier, and reducing the Scottish Covenanters. It was James's desire to keep together this regular army and add to it; but almost the whole country was against his doing so. The recollection of the dominion of Cromwell's army was still fresh and galling, and these soldiers were far worse men, and worse tyrants than the stern but moral and orderly Ironsides. As there were no barracks, they were quartered for the most part in public-houses, and often made themselves very offensive to the neighbourhood. Besides, there was a strong suspicion that such a force in the King's hand might be used to bring in Popery, and this sentiment was fanned by the report of a sermon by the French Bishop of Valence, in which Louis XIV. was praised as not only putting down heresy himself, but encouraging his brother monarch to do the same.

The gentlemen fancied the militia, raised from their tenants, and officered by themselves, was sufficient for defence against invasion, and when asked what it could do against regular troops, they brought

CAMEO IX.

Power.

in and passed a bill for its better training and greater efficiency, much to the King's displeasure. However, with the supply they granted him, Dispensing together with the property of the Crown, and the money which Louis continued to send him, he kept his army on foot; and though the Test Act excluded Roman Catholics from command, he admitted them by his dispensing power. He was thus at this juncture nearer despotic power than any English Sovereign had been, when he prorogued his first and only Parliament.

CAMEO X. Port Royal 1679.

1670. Clement X.

THE attitude of Louis XIV. towards religious matters was very curious. He was quite as much determined to be his own Pope as Henry VIII. could have been, only he did not say so as openly, and being within reach of the Pope, he was able to get his own way more effectively.

In the first place he made a final ruin of Port Royal. The Duchess of Longueville, who had long been its protector, died in 1679, a woman who by forty-five years of penitence and consistent religious practice had effaced the memory of the aberrations of her early womanhood.

A month later the Archbishop of Paris directed, by the order of the King, that all, save the professed sisters should leave it. Novices and postulants were dispersed into other convents, pensionnaires, many of them, of the highest birth, sent home, and the old nuns were only allowed to remain there as one by one they dropped off through a course of thirty years.

Arnauld withdrew He had thoughts of

The Jansenists, were however not extinguished. to Flanders, where he spent the rest of his life. proceeding to Rome, where Innocent XI. was ready to receive him with all honour, and had even thought of giving him a Cardinal's hat, but he decided otherwise, not being able to trust the possible turns which might make French influence predominate. However some of the best Bishops, especially the saintly Pavillon of Alet, were well known to hold Jansenist opinions, but gave no opportunity for censure; and even to the days of the revolution, there were families, clergy, and religious houses well known to be Jansenist.

The persecution of the Jansenists was one of Louis's compensations for his great struggle with the Pope. As a general rule, all benefices

in France were subject to the Régale, by which the Crown presented to them, and moreover enjoyed their revenues during a vacancy, but there were a certain number of churches in the kingdom, chiefly in the provinces recently acquired, exempt from this rule. On the Ioth of February, 1673, Louis XIV. put forth a declaration, not only claiming the Régale of all Benefices which had not made distinct terms with the Crown, but requiring all the Bishops of sees hitherto exempt to register their oaths of allegiance in order to obtain restitution of the benefices they were stated to be illegally enjoying.

Pavillon of Alet and Caulet of Pamiers sturdily refused to comply with this exaction, and neither registered their oaths, nor would induct nominees of the King to appointments within their dioceses. There was an appeal to the Archbishop of Toulouse, and then to the Pope, Innocent XI., Benedetto Odescalchi, an excellent and upright man, to whom the ambition and tyranny of Louis were most distasteful, and who was not, like most Popes, under Jesuit influence. He supported the two Bishops with all his might, sending briefs of remonstrance to the King, and writing to them privately to persevere.

Bishop Pavillon died in 1679. He had been a noble Bishop, promoting all that was good in his diocese, and providing for the religious training of the poor in the mountains, by sending pairs of ladies, whom he called Régentes, to instruct them. His friend at Pamiers held out, and actually endured from the King the spoiling of all his property, even the funds with which he was rebuilding his cathedral and founding two seminaries for his clergy. He died in August, 1680, and then came a desperate struggle in the cathedral itself, between the Chapter and the Régalistes appointed by the King for the election of a Grand Vicar. Cerle, who was appointed by the old Chapter, was not a moderate man, and in his indignation used expres sions which caused him to be tried, in his absence, by the Parliament of Toulouse, and burnt in effigy in the market-place.

The Pope strengthened his hands by excommunicating all who acknowledged the Régaliste Vicar-General, and the dispute proceeded hotly. Louis convened a Council of Bishops, men who were almost all under the spell of his overmastering character, though many of them were holy and devoted in their lives. The question was an exceedingly difficult one. On the one hand it might be looked on as concerning the liberty of the Gallican Church from the Ultramontane yoke, on the other hand as asserting temporal power instead of spiritual.

The preliminary Council of Bishops decided that the previous decisions and the precedents were uncertain, but for the sake of peace it was better to submit to the Régale. Of course this did not satisfy the Pope, and a general assembly of the clergy was convoked on the Ist of October, 1681. Bossuet was the leading spirit and preached the opening sermon. He was anxious for the lawful freedom of his national church, but on the other hand most desirous to guard against any such rupture with Rome as England had made. The upshot of the conference was that

CAMEO X.

The Régale.

1673.