ally opposite decisions, slept during more than a century, and was at length revived by the dissolution which took place during the long trial of Warren Hastings. It was then necessary to determine whether the rule laid down in 1679, or the opposite rule laid down in 1685, was to be accounted the law of the land. The point was long debated in both houses; and the best legal and parliamentary abilities which an age pre-eminently fertile both in legal and in parliamentary ability could supply, were employed in the discussion. The lawyers were not unequally divided. Thurlow, Kenyon, Scott, and Erskine maintained that the dissolution had put an end to the impeachment. The contrary doctrine was held by Mansfield, Camden, Loughborough, and Grant. But among those statesmen who grounded their arguments, not on precedents and technical analogies, but on deep and broad constitutional principles, there was little difference of opinion. Pitt and Grenville, as well as Burke and Fox, held that the impeachment was still pending. Both houses, by great majorities, set aside the decision of 1685, and pronounced the decision of 1679 to be in conformity with the law of Parliament.

Of the national crimes which had been committed during the panic excited by the fictions of Oates, the most signal had been the judicial murder of Stafford. The sentence of that unhappy nobleman was now regarded by all impartial persons as unjust. The principal witness for the prosecution had been convicted of a series of foul perjuries. It was the duty of the Legislature, under such circumstances, to do justice to the memory of a guiltless sufferer, and to efface an unmerited stain from a name long illustrious in our annals. A bill for reversing the attainder of Stafford was passed by the Upper House, in spite of the murmurs of a few peers who were unwilling to admit that they had shed innocent blood. The Commons read the bill twice without a division, and ordered it to be committed; but, on the day appointed for the committee, arrived news that a formidable rebellion had

broken out in the west of England. It was consequently necessary to postpone much important business. The reparation due to the memory of Stafford was deferred, as it was supposed, only for a short time. But the misgovernment of James in a few months completely turned the tide of public feeling. During several generations the Roman Catholics were in no condition to demand reparation for injustice, and accounted themselves happy if they were permitted to live unmolested in obscurity and silence. At length, in the reign of King George the Fourth, more than a hundred and forty years after the day on which the blood of Stafford was shed on Tower Hill, the tardy expiation was accomplished. A law annulling the attainder and restoring the injured family to its ancient dignities was presented to Parliament by the ministers of the crown, was eagerly welcomed by public men of all parties, and was passed without one dissentient voice.*

It is now necessary that I should trace the origin and progress of that rebellion by which the deliberations of the houses were suddenly interrupted.

CHAPTER V.

TOWARD the close of the reign of Charles the Second, some Whigs who had been deeply implicated in the plot so fatal to their party, and who knew themselves to be marked out for destruction, had sought an asylum in the Low Countries.

These refugees were, in general, men of fiery temper and weak judgment. They were also under the influence of that peculiar illusion which seems to belong to their situation. A politician driven into banishment by a hostile faction generally sees the society which he has quitted through a false medium. Every object is distorted and discolored by his regrets, his longings, and his resent

*Stat. 5 Geo. IV., c. 46.

ments. Every little discontent appears to him to portend a revolution. Every riot is a rebellion. He can not be convinced that his country does not pine for him as much as he pines for his country. He imagines that all his old associates, who still dwell at their homes and enjoy their estates, are tormented by the same feelings which make life a burden to himself. The longer his expatriation, the greater does this hallucination become. The lapse of time which cools the ardor of the friends whom he has left

behind inflames his. Every month his impatience to revisit his native land increases, and every month his native land remembers and misses him less. This delusion becomes almost a madness when many exiles who suffer in the same cause herd together on a foreign shore. Their chief employment is to talk of what they once were, and of what they may yet be, to goad each other into animosity against the common enemy, to feed each other with extravagant hopes of victory and revenge. Thus they become ripe for enterprises which would at once be pronounced hopeless by any man whose passions had not deprived him of the power of calculating chances.

In this mood were many of the outlaws who had assembled on the Continent. The correspondence which they kept up with England was, for the most part, such as tended to excite their feelings and to mislead their judgment. Their information concerning the temper of the public mind was chiefly derived from the worst members of the Whig party; from men who were plotters and libelers by profession; who were pursued by the officers of justice; who were forced to skulk in disguise through back streets, and who sometimes lay hid for weeks in cocklofts and cellars. The statesmen who had been the ornaments of the country party, the statesmen who afterwar guided the counsels of the Convention, would have given advice very different from that which was given by such men as John Wildman and Henry Danvers.

Wildman had served forty years before in the parliamentary army, but had been more distinguished there as

an agitator than as a soldier, and had early quitted the profession of arms for pursuits better suited to his temper. His hatred of monarchy had induced him to engage in a long series of conspiracies, first against the Protector, and then against the Stuarts. But with Wildman's fanaticism was joined a tender care for his own safety. He had a wonderful skill in grazing the edge of treason. No man understood better how to instigate others to desperate enterprises by words which, when repeated to a jury, might seem innocent, or, at worst, ambiguous. Such was his cunning, that, though always plotting, though always known to be plotting, and though long malignantly watched by a vindictive government, he eluded every danger, and died in his bed, after having seen two generations of his accomplices die on the gallows.* Danvers was a man of the same class, hot-headed, but faint-hearted, constantly urged to the brink of danger by enthusiasm, and constantly stopped on that brink by cowardice. He had considerable influence among a portion of the Baptists, had written largely in defense of their peculiar opinions, and had drawn down on himself the severe censure of the most respectable Puritans by attempting to palliate the crimes of Matthias and John of Leyden. It is probable that, had he possessed a little courage, he would have trod in the footsteps of the wretches whom he defended. He was at this time concealing himself from the officers of justice, for warrants were out against him on account of a grossly calumnious paper of which the government had discovered him to be the author.†

It is easy to imagine what kind of intelligence and counsel men such as have been described were likely to send to the outlaws in the Netherlands. Of the general

* Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, book xiv.; Burnet's Own Times, i., 546, 625; Wade's and Ireton's Narratives, Lansdowne MS., 1152; West's information in the Appendix to Sprat's True Account.

+ London Gazette, Jan. 4, 1684; Ferguson MS. in Eachard's History, iii., 764; Grey's Narrative; Sprat's True Account; Danvers's Treatise on Baptism; Danvers's Innocency and Truth vindicated; Crosby's History of the English Baptists.

character of those outlaws, an estimate may be formed from a few samples.

One of the most conspicuous among them was John Ayloffe, a lawyer connected by affinity with the Hydes, and, through the Hydes, with James. Ayloffe had early made himself remarkable by offering a whimsical insult to the government. At a time when the ascendency of the court of Versailles had excited general uneasiness, he had contrived to put a wooden shoe, the established type, among the English, of French tyranny, into the chair of the House of Commons. He had subsequently been concerned in the Whig plot; but there is no reason to believe that he was a party to the design of assassinating the royal brothers. He was a man of parts and courage; but his moral character did not stand high. The Puritan divines whispered that he was a careless Gallio or something worse, and that, whatever zeal he might profess for civil liberty, the saints would do well to avoid all connection with him.*

Nathaniel Wade was, like Ayloffe, a lawyer. He had long resided at Bristol, and had been celebrated in his own neighborhood as a vehement Republican. At one time he had formed a project of emigrating to New Jersey, where he expected to find institutions better suited to his taste than those of England. His activity in electioneering had introduced him to the notice of some Whig nobles. They had employed him professionally, and had, at length, admitted him to their most secret counsels. He had been deeply concerned in the scheme of insurrection, and had undertaken to head a rising in his own city. He had also been privy to the more odious plot against the lives of Charles and James; but he always declared that, though

6845.

Sprat's True Account; Burnet, i., 634; Wade's Confession, Harl. MS.,

Lord Howard of Escrick accused Ayloffe of proposing to assassinate the Duke of York; but Lord Howard was an abject liar; and this story was not part of his original confession, but was added afterward by way of supple ment, and therefore deserves no credit whatever.