Fox "the most important barrier against tyranny, and best-framed protection for the liberty of individuals, that has ever existed in any ancient or modern Commonwealth." This new post, however, he did not hold longer than six months. He had drawn upon himself the implacable hatred of the Duke of York, by steadily promoting, if not originally suggesting, the project of an Exclusion-Bill, which was carried in the Lower House by a majority of seventy nine; and, therefore, we cannot be surprised that a party was constantly at work against him.

*

reckoning of ten. So it was reported to the House, and declared that they who were for the bill were the majority,' though it indeed went on the other side; and, by this means, the bill past." It was speedily made use of, it appears. "There was a

bold forward man (the historian adds) Sheridan, a native of Ireland, whom the Commons committed; and he moved for his Habeas Corpus. Some of the Judges were afraid of the House, and kept out of the way: but Baron Weston had the courage to grant it."

* From the vigorous resistance of the Court, the Church, and the Tories (aided by the restrictions, which the King offered to put upon a Popish successor) it was lost in the House of Lords.

The account of Hume (who, however, is not to be trusted in what relates to his favourite Stuarts) is somewhat different: "Shaftesbury," he informs us, "finding that he possessed no more than the appearance of court-favour, was resolved still to adhere to the popular party, by whose attachment he enjoyed an undisputed superiority in the Lower House, and possessed great influence in the other. The very appearance of court-favour, empty as it was, tended to render him more dangerous. His partisans, observing the progress which he had already made, hoped that he would soon acquire the entire ascendant; and he constantly flattered them, that if they persisted in their purpose, the King from indolence and necessity and fondness for Monmouth would at last be induced, even at the expense of his brother's right, to make them every concession."" (Chap. LXVII.) In the next chapter, after panegyrising the mildness and integrity of Lord Russell, his exemption from ambition, and his VOL. IV.

Upon the King's summoning a parliament at Oxford in March 1681, Shaftesbury joined with several Lords in a petition to prevent it's meeting at that place, but without success. In that parliament, he strenuously supported the Exclusion-Bill: but the Duke of York, through his friends, quickly contrived to make him feel the weight of his resentment. For the zealots in his interest, apprehending that as long as Shaftesbury lived, their scheme of introducing Popery and arbitrary power into the English government must be defeated, and having failed in various attempts to take him off privately, presented a bill of indictment against him at the Old Bailey. It was thrown out, however, by the grand jury, after examinng the witnesses in open court. He was, consequently, discharged from the Tower, where he had been confined (on the evidence of an informer, who charged him with an attempt at subornation) from July till November, 1682, to the great joy of his country; and a medal was struck upon the occasion.

*

In the True Account of the Horrid Conspiracy,'

zealous attachment to the religion and liberties of his country, he represents Shaftesbury as " in most particulars of an opposite character." He had indeed previously admitted, that had he (as some did not scruple to allege) for the sake of throwing an increased odium upon the Papists laid the plan of Titus Oates' plot, he would probably, by rendering it moderate, consistent, and credible, have defeated it's power of producing such prodigious effects upon the popular mind. It would indeed be "an absurdity," as Mr. Fox observes, "equal almost in degree to the belief of the plot itself, to suppose it a story fabricated by that nobleman and the other leaders of the Whig party!"

* This gave birth to an extremely bitter poem under that title from the pen of Dryden, who had previously personified Shaftesbury as the great counsellor of rebellion in his Absalom and Achitophel.'

published in 1685, Shaftesbury is placed foremost among the disaffected. Conscious to himself, the compiler says, of the blackness of his crimes and of the iniquity of the verdict by which he had for the time escaped, and finding he was now within the compass of the justice he had so lately frustrated and contemned, he thenceforth gave over all his quieter and more plausible arts of sedition, whereby he proudly bragged he should in time (as his expression was) leisurely walk his Majesty out of his dominions,' and on a sudden betook himself to more precipitate enterprises. He is elsewhere called the prime engineer, during his time, in contriving and directing all the several motions and parts of the whole conspiracy. At the head of his English accomplices are enumerated, the Duke of Monmouth; Lord Gray of Wark, characterised by "the wickedness of his private life;" the Earl of Essex, guilty of many "ill practices, unworthy the son of such a father;" Lord Howard of Escrick, subsequently the base agent in the legal murther of his two next-named confederates; " Lord Russell, "carried away by a vain air of popularity, and a wild suspicion of losing a great estate by an imaginary return of Popery;" Colonel Algernon Sidney, "who from his youth had professed himself an enemy to the government of his country, and acted accordingly;" William Hampden the younger, who "renewed and continued the hereditary malignity of his house against the Royal Family;" Sir Thomas Armstrong," a debauched atheistical bravo;" Lieutenant Colonel Walcot, "introduced by the Lord Howard (under the character of a stout and able officer) into a strict familiarity with the Earl of

Shaftesbury, from whom he never after parted till his death; accompanying him in his flight into Holland, and returning thence with his corpse, &c. But of all the conspirators (he adds) whether English or Scotch, the man to whom, next the late Earls of Shaftesbury and Argyle, belonged the chief place and precedence in the whole diabolical design, was Robert Ferguson a Scotchman, who with Walcot was named a legatee in Shaftesbury's last will as his special friend.

He is subsequently stated, in this bitter partypublication, to have "redoubled his old exclamations of popery, tyranny, superstitious idolatry, op-. pressions, murthers, Irish witnesses, &c., of whose subornation no man in the three kingdoms could have given a more exact account than himself-his vain-glory, and the conceit of his own dexterity, and his former constant success in making confusions inclining him to fancy (what his flatterers suggested) that the whole city and kingdom were at his beck, and upon the holding up of his finger would presently rise in arms to extirpate the two brothers of Slavery and Popery,' as they were lewdly wont in their private debauches to stile the King and his Royal Highness."

6

The conspirators of the West of England, especially in Taunton and Devonshire, not being sufficiently prompt or forward in their co-operation, he determined to leave England. Thus having seen all his hopes and contrivances dashed in pieces at home, he had nothing left to do (observes the bigoted historian) but to take shelter in a commonwealth, which in his former greatness he had so mortally provoked; there to lead a life of dis

grace and misery, and to die neglected in a country of which he had formerly expressed so great a hatred and yet still retaining so much venomous rancour against his most gracious master, as to profess with his last breath, that he had deservedly received his death's wound (meaning the bruise in his side) and now his death, in that country where he had done his own so much mischief.' * With this view, he embarked for Holland upon his discharge; and, after a dangerous voyage arriving at Amsterdam, took a house in that city. But though he thus escaped the acrimony of his political and spiritual antagonists, he could not elude his old distemper the gout, to which he fell a victim January 22, 1683.

His body, being embalmed, was brought to England, and interred with his ancestors at Winborne St. Giles; and, in 1732, a noble monument with a highly honourable inscription was erected to his memory.

It was a misfortune to this noble personage, that the account of the times in which he lived, and of the government in which he so largely participated, has been transmitted to posterity by his professed enemies. This may, in some measure, account for his not making a very amiable figure in history; so that, while his abilities stand confessed by all, the excellence of his conduct and the integrity of his intentions are hardly acknowledged by any. Neither is it now easily to be imagined, what contrivances

* When he was one of the Commissioners sent thither, in the year 1660, to invite his Majesty home freely and without terms.

+ He applied, also, to be made a Burgher of that city; upon which occasion, it is said, his Delenda est Carthago was suggested to his recollection.