Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/544

530 Charles I., and was now upwards of eighty years of age, took part, and several officers of the army, including Charles Fox, paymaster of the forces, voted on the popular side of the question. Of course they were dismissed. But the house now having broken the ice, voted an address to the king on the subject of maintaining inviolate the test act. When they went into committee for the supply, the king demanded one million two hundred thousand pounds, the house proposed four hundred thousand pounds. They were afterwards willing to advance the sum to seven hundred thousand pounds, but ministers put the motion for the original sum to the vote, and were defeated. The next day the commons went in procession to "Whitehall, with their Address regarding the test. James received them sullenly, and told them that whatever they pleased to do, he would abide by all his promises. This was saying that he would violate the test act as he had done. On returning to their house, John Coke of Derby said he hoped they were all Englishmen, and were not going to be frightened from their duty by a few high words. As the house had been careful to avoid any expressions disrespectful to the king, they resented this manly but incautious speech, and committed Coke to the Tower. The court took courage at this proceding, but though the commons had not all at once recovered their independent tone, the discontent was strongly fermenting, and though Seymour had at first in vain called on them to examine the abases of the franchise during the last election, they now took up the question, and Sir John Lowther of Cumberland, another tory member, headed this movement. The same spirit in the same day broke out in the lords. Though they had voted thanks for the address, Halifax now contended that that was merely formal, and the earl of Devonshire, William Cavendish, the bosom friend of the late lord Russell, and viscount Mordaunt, afterwards the celebrated earl of Peterborough, proposed to consider the king's speech, and vehemently denounced a standing army. What was still more significant was, that Compton, the bishop of London, a royalist, and the son of a royalist, that earl of Northampton who had fought for Charles I., and who had, moreover, been the educator of the two princesses, not only spoke for himself, but for the whole bench and church, and declared that the constitution, civil and ecclesiastic, was in danger. Here was a quick end of the doctrine of non-resistance. Jeffreys endeavoured to reply to these ominous harangues, but the bully of the bench, where he had it all his own way, here cut a very different figure. He was scarified in a style of refined sarcasm, against which his coarse Billingsgate was worse than harmless; it recoiled upon his own head, and this brutal monster, cowardly as he was insolent, sunk prostrate (before the whole house, and even gave way to a dastardly flood of tears of shame. James, astonished and enraged, but not warned by this first breath of the rising tempest, the next morning hurried to the house of lords and prorogued parliament till the 10th of February; but it never met again, being repeatedly prorogued, till the national spirit arose which drove him from the throne.

The prorogation of parliament was followed by the trial of three whig leaders of eminence. These were Gerard, lord Prandon, the eldest son of the earl of Macclesfield, Hampden, the grandson of the patriot, and Henry Booth, lord Delamere. Hampden and Gerard were accused afresh of having been concerned in the Rye House plot, Delamere of having been in league with Monmouth. Grey, earl of Stamford, had been on the eve of being tried by the peers on a similar charge of concern in the Rye House plot, but the prorogation defeated that, and he was soon after liberated. These were the men against whom Grey had been induced to give information, and who, with Wade and Goodenough, were witnesses. Hampden and Gerard wore tried at the Old Bailey and condemned. But Grey had stipulated that their lives should be safe, and they were redeemed by their relatives at a heavy price. Delamere, as a peer of the realm, was tried by a high court of peers, and as he was accused of having been engaged with Monmouth, his life was in danger. Jeffreys was appointed lord high steward, and he selected thirty peers as triers, all of whom were in politics opposed to Delamere, and half of them ministers and members of the royal household. He did not stop there, but as he had a personal spite against Delamere for having complained of him to parliament when lord chief justice of Chester, and called him a drunken jackpudding, he did his best personally to condemn him. But spite of the murderous bias with which the villainous judge had contrived the prisoner's death, the lord triers unanimously acquitted him. This was a fact that equally electrified James and the country. Both saw that there was a spirit abroad that was no longer to be trifled with. The public openly rejoiced; the infatuated tyrant raged, but took no warning. The very tories who had carried the crown hitherto through every attempt, the established church which had preached non-resistance, saw the gulf, to the edge of which their principles had brought them. Their loyalty paused at the threshold of Romanism, and the destruction of the safeguards of the liberty of the subject. The deadly artifices which an abandoned judge and a lawless monarch had employed against the life of Delamere, might soon be practised against every one of them. The spell of despotism, therefore, was broken. The spirit of an unconquerable suspicion had reached the very cabinet and the household of the Romish king, and his power was at an end.

But the greater the danger the more recklessly the bigotry-blinded monarch rushed upon it. His father had been bent on destroying the constitution, but stood firm to the Anglican church; James was resolved to root out both church and constitution together; but to his narrow intellect it never occurred that if his father lost his head in attempting half this impossible enterprise, his danger was double in aiming at the whole. At the very beginning of the year 1686 he took a sudden stride in the direction of avowed Romanism, and during the whole year he marched forward with an insane hardihood that struck the boldest and most adventurous of his friends with consternation. The fact as to whether Charles II. had died a catholic or protestant was still a matter of dispute. A few knew the truth, more surmised, but the bulk of the people still believed him to have been a protestant. James determined to sweep away the remaining delusion. He therefore brought forth the two papers from Charles's strong box, and challenged the whole bench of bishops to refute them. He especially called on Sancroft,