Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/526

512 offered his oblation on the heretical altar, and was anointed by heretical hands.

On the day of the coronation in England, being St. George's day, the parliament in Scotland met. He called on the Scots to set a good example to the approaching parliament of England in a liberal provision for the crown; and the Scottish estates, as if complimented by this appeal, not only responded to it by annexing the excise to the crown for ever, and offering him besides two hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year for his own life, but declared their abhorrence of "all principles derogatory to the king's sacred, supreme, sovereign, and absolute power and authority." They did more, they passed an act making it death for any one to preach in a conventicle, whether under a roof or in the open air. In England the elections were going on most favourably, and therefore James seized on the opportunity, whilst all appeared smiling and secure, to indulge his appetite for a little vengeance. On the 7th of May, Titus Oates, the enemy of James and of popery, the arch-instrument of the whig agitators, was brought up to the bar of the King's Bench, before the terrible Jeffreys. Death had prevented, in a great measure, the satisfaction of James and the catholics who had been so mercilessly pursued by the wretches who had sworn so freely to popish plots, and caused such torrents of innocent blood to be shed. Dugdalo, Badloe, Carstairs, and others had escaped into the grave; Dugdale, perpetually pursued, in his imagination, by the ghost of lord Stafford and Carstairs, declaring himself unfit to receive better burial than a dog. But two of the chief miscreants, Oates and Dangerfield, remained. Oates was already condemned to pay a fine of one hundred thousand pounds, or remain in prison till paid; but this actual doom of perpetual imprisonment did not satisfy James. When he was now brought up, the court was crowded with people, a large proportion of them being catholics, glad to see the punishment of their ruthless enemy. But if they expected to see him depressed or humbled, in that they were disappointed. He came up bold and impudent as ever. Jeffreys let fly his fiercest Billingsgate at him, but Oates returned him word for word unabashed. On his last trial he had sworn he had attended at a Jesuits' consult on the 24th of April, 1678, in London, but it was now proved beyond doubt, that on that very day Oates was at St. Omer. He had sworn also to being present at the commission of treasonable acts by Ireland, the Jesuit, in London, on the 8th and 12th of August, and on the 2nd of September of the same year. It was now also clearly proved that Ireland left London that year on the 2nd of August, and did not return till the 14th of September. Oates was convicted on both indictments, and was sentenced to pay a thousand marks on each indictment; to be stripped of his clerical habit; to be pilloried in Palace Yard and led round Westminster Hall, with an inscription over his head describing his crime. He was again to be pilloried in front of the Royal Exchange, and after that to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and after two days' interval whipped again from Newgate to Tyburn. If he survived this, which was not expected, he was to be confined for life, and five times every year he was to stand again in the pillory as long as he lived.

If the crimes of this wretch were monstrous, his punishment was equally so. He had the assurance on his trial to call many persons of distinction, including members of parliament, to give evidence in his favour, but he was answered only by bitter reproaches, for having led them into the spilling of much innocent blood. The lash was applied the first day so unmercifully, that thought he endured it for some time, it compelled him to utter the most horrible yells. Several times he fainted, but the flagellation never ceased, and when the flogging ceased, it was doubted whether he were alive. The most earnest entreaties were made to both the king and queen to have the second flogging omitted, but they were both inexorable. Yet the guilty wretch survived through all, though he was said to receive seventeen hundred stripes the second day on his already lacerated body; and so long as James continued on the throne, he was subjected to the pillory his five times a year, and lived to be pardoned at the revolution, and receive a pension of five pounds a week in lieu of that granted him by Charles II.

Dangerfield, who had not only succeeded in destroying so many innocent victims, but who had displayed a villainy and ingratitude of the blackest dye, was also convicted, and was sentenced to pay five hundred pounds, and to be pilloried twice and whipped twice over the same ground as Oates. He was extremely insolent on his trial, but on hearing his sentence he was struck with horror, flew into the wildest exclamations, declared himself a dead man, and chose a text for his funeral sermon. Singularly enough, his end was really at hand. On returning from his whipping, a gentleman named Robert Francis, of Gray's Inn, stepped up to the coach and asked him how his back was. Dangerfield replied by a curse, and Francis thrusting at him with his cane, wounded him in the eye; the wound was declared to occasion his death, though the unmerciful flogging was probably the real cause, and Francis was tried for the murder and hanged.

The meeting of parliament on the 19th of May drew the public attention from these barbarities. Every means had been exerted to influence the elections. In the counties the reaction of toryism, and the effects of the Rye House plot in defeating and intimidating the whigs, gave the court every advantage. In the corporations the deprivation of their ancient charter's made them the slaves of government. But even with those advantages James was not satisfied. Wherever there appeared likely to be any independent spirit shown, agents were sent down to overawe the people, and to force a choice of the government candidate. Even Jeffreys, the blustering lord chief justice, was despatched into Buckinghamshire, to intimidate the countrymen of Hampden, but they showed their ancient spirit and threw out the government man. To other places copies of the exclusion bill and black boxes resembling those said to contain the evidence of the marriage of Charles II. and Lucy "Walters, were sent and burnt before the people. Everywhere the lords-lieutenants of counties and the returning officers were vehement in support of government, and in consequence, when parliament assembled, the great whig opposition which had predominated in the last three parliaments, now presented a mere remnant. A host of new men showed themselves on the benches, only a hundred and fifty out of the