Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/504

490 in a doom of blood; and the earl's own friends and adherents had not the firmness to refuse selling their names. Argyll, however, disappointed his enemies, by escaping in the disguise of a page to his daughter-in-law, lady Lindsay, and made his way to England, and thence to Holland, where, like many other fugitives from England and Scotland, he took refuge with William of Orange. A decree was immediately issued, ordering him to be put to death whenever taken; his estates, goods, and chattels, to be forfeited to the crown; his name and honours to be extinct; and his posterity to be for ever incapable of holding place, honour, or office. The outraged feeling of the country against so wholesale and shameless a sentence for so trivial an offence as that of dissenting in his place in parliament from some of the provisions of a proposed measure, compelled the court to restore the estates to the earl's son, the marquis of Lorn, but the king took care to strip away his hereditary jurisdictions, and passed them out amongst the creatures of James's Scottish court, to be holden at the royal pleasure—a certain means of securing their adhesion.

James now, whilst the parliament was terror-stricken by this example of royal vengeance, brought in a bill making it high treason in any one to maintain the lawfulness of excluding him from the throne, either on account of his religion or for any other reason whatever. By this he showed to the exclusionists that they must expect a civil war with Scotland if they attempted to bar his way to the throne of England. Deeming himself now secure, he gave way to his natural cruelty of temper, and indulged in tortures and barbarities which seemed almost to cast the atrocities of Lauderdale into the shade. It was his custom to have the prisoners for religion so tortured in the privy council, that even the old hardened courtiers who had stood out the merciless doings of Lauderdale and Middleton, escaped from the board as soon as the iron boots were introduced. But James not only seemed to enjoy the agonies of the sentenced with a peculiar satisfaction, but he made an order that the whole of the privy council should remain during these more than inquisitorial horrors. He was thus employing himself when he was summoned to England by Charles, who assured him that he should be allowed soon to return permanently on condition that he made over part of his parliamentary allowance to the French mistress, the duchess of Portland. James consented, and then returning to Scotland by sea, the country was very nearly relieved from all further apprehensions of him by his being wrecked on the sandbank called the Lemon and Ore, about twelve leagues from Yarmouth. Unfortunately, however, he escaped, though lord O'Brien, the earl of Roxburgh, Sir Joseph Douglas, one of the Hydes, a lieutenant of the frigate, the captain, and above a hundred and thirty other persons perished. His narrow escape had produced no better feeling in him, but on reaching Edinburgh he returned to his favourite exercises of hunting up, torturing, and destroying covenanters, Cameronians, and all who dared to show them any favour. The earls of Perth, Aberdeen, and Queensbury were his unflinching agents. Above two thousand people were outlawed, courts of inquisition were erected all over the west and south of Scotland; the soldiers had orders to shoot down any who would not disavow Cargill's excommunication of the king, and say, "Go bless him!" The persecuted people now began to deem that nothing but their utter destruction would satisfy the ruthless tyrant, and were contemplating shipping themselves to America, when political causes removed James to London.

The duke being allowed to return, and being restored to the office of lord high admiral, and lodged in St. James's Palace, Monmouth, who had been assured that James should be retained in Scotland, also returned from abroad, in spite of the positive command of the king. On the duke of York's return, the tories, who regarded it as a proof of the ascendancy of their principles, framed an address of congratulation, and of abhorrence of Shaftesbury's scheme of association. When Monmouth arrived, the whig party received him with still more boisterous enthusiasm. The city was in a turmoil of delight, but in the blaze of his popularity, Monmouth, conceiving that the whig influence was on the decline, endeavoured to follow the example of Sunderland, who had made his peace with the king, and the duke was readmitted to the cabinet. But Monmouth was too narrowly watched, and though he had sent offers of reconciliation through his wife, the reproaches of Shaftesbury. Russell, and his other partisans, made him draw back, and under pretence of paying a visit to the earl of Macclesfield, he set out as in 1680, in a tour through the provinces.

Nothing could exceed Monmouth's folly on this progress. Had he been the undoubted heir-apparent to the crown, he could not have assumed more airs of royalty; and at a moment when the eyes of both the king and James were following him with jealous vigilance, that folly was the more egregious wherever he came he was met by the nobles and great landowners at the head of their tenantry, most of whom were armed, and conducted in royal state to their houses. He was thus received by the lords Macclesfield, Brandon, Rivers, Colchester, Delaniere, Russell, and Grey, as well as the leading gentry. He travelled attended by a hundred men on horseback, one half of whom preceded and the other followed him. As he approached a town, he quitted his coach and mounted his horse, on which he rode alone in the centre of the procession. On entering the town, the nobles, gentry, and city officials took their places in front, the tenantry and common people fell in behind, shouting, "A Monmouth! a Monmouth! and no York!" Wherever he dined he ordered two hundred covers to be laid for the guests, and the people, conducted by proper officers, passed through the room in at one door and out at another in order to see him, as if he were a king. At Liverpool he did not hesitate to touch for the king's evil. Wherever there were fairs, races, or other public assemblies, he was sure to appear and ingratiate himself with the populace, not only by his flattering bows and smiles, but by entering into their sports. He was a man of amazing agility, and ran races on foot with the most celebrated pedestrians, and after beating them in his shoes, he would run again in his boots, against them in their shoes, and won still. The prizes that he thus gained he gave away at christenings in the evening.

Whilst he was thus exciting the wonder of the common people by his popular acts, accomplishments, and condescensions, the spies of Chiffinch, his father's old agent for secret