had been otherwise disposed, the king's speech was more calculated to work on their fears than their affections, to inflame opposition than to conciliate favour, and strongly indicated the violence of his principles. After repeating his promise to govern according to the laws, and to preserve the established religion, he told the commons, that he positively expected they would grant him, during his life, the same revenue which his brother had enjoyed. "I might use many arguments," said he, "to enforce this demand! the benefit of trade, the support of the navy, the necessities of the crown, and the wellbeing of the government itself, which I must not suffer to be precarious: but I am confident that your own consideration, and your sense of what is just and reasonable, will suggest to you whatever might on this occasion be enlarged upon. There is indeed one popular argument," added he, “which may be urged against compliance with my demands. Men may think, that by feeding me from time to time with such supplies as they think convenient, they will better secure frequent meetings of parliament: but as this is the first time I speak to you from the throne, I will answer this argument once for all. I must plainly tell you, that such an expedient would be very improper to employ with ME; and that the best way to engage me to meet you often, is always to use me well."(1)

In return to this imperious speech, which a spirited parliament would have received with indignation, both houses presented an address of thanks, without so much as a debate; and the commons unanimously voted, "That the revenue enjoyed by the late king, at the time of his death, shall be settled on his present majesty during life." Nor did the generosity of the commons stop here. The king having demanded a farther supply for removing the anticipations on the revenue, and other temporary purposes, they revived certain duties on wines and vinegar, which had been granted to the late king; but which, having expired during the bad humours of his latter parliaments, had not been renewed. To these were added some impositions on tobacco and sugar; all which, under the rigid economy of James, rendered the crown, in time of peace, independent of the parliament.(2)

The Scottish parliament went yet farther than that of England. Both lords and commons declared their abhorrence of all the principles and positions derogatory to the king's sacred, supreme, sovereign, absolute authority; of which none, they said, whether single persons or collective bodies, can participate but in dependence on him and by commission from him. They offered, in the name of the nation, to support with their lives and fortunes their present sovereign and his lawful heirs, in the possession of the crown and its prerogatives, against all mortal men: and they annexed the whole excise, both of inland and foreign commodities, for ever to the crown.(3)

This profuse liberality of the parliaments of the two kingdoms, and the general and even abject submission of the two nations, gave the king reason to believe that his throne was as firmly established as that of any European monarch. But while every thing remained in tranquillity at hoine, a storm was gathering abroad to disturb his repose; and which, although dissipated without much trouble, may be considered as a prelude to that great revolution which finally deprived him of his crown, and condemned himself and his posterity to a dependent and fugitive life among foreigners.

The prince of Orange, ever since the proposed exclusion of his father-inlaw, had raised his hopes to the English throne. He had entered deeply into intrigues with the ministers of Charles II.; he had encouraged the parliamentary leaders in their violent opposition; and, unaccountable as it may seem, it appears that he secretly abetted the ambitious views of the duke of Monmouth, though they both aimed at the same object.(4) It is at least certain that he received the duke with great kindness, and treated him with the highest marks of respect, after he had been pardoned by a fond and indulgent father, for his unnatural share in the Rye-house plot, but ordered

(1) Journals, May 19, 1685.

(2) James II. 1685.

(3) Burnet, book iv. Hume, vol. viii. (4) See King James's Mem. in Macpherson's Original Papers, vol. i., and Count D'Avaux's Negotiationa om. i. ii. iii. iv.

to leave the kingdom on a new symptom of disaffection; that on the accession of James II., and when the prince of Orange was professing the strongest attachment to his father-in-law, Monmouth, Argyle, and other English and Scottish fugitives in Holland, were suffered, under his secret protection, to provide themselves privately with necessaries, and to form the plan of an invasion, in hopes of rousing to arms the dissatisfied part of the two kingdoms.(1)

Argyle, who was first ready, sailed for Scotland with three vessels, carrying arms and ammunition; and, soon after his arrival in the Highlands, he found himself at the head of two thousand men.. But the king's authority was too firmly established in Scotland to be shaken by such a force. Early made sensible of this, Argyle was afraid to venture into the low country; where, if he had been able to keep the field, he might have met with support from the covenanters. At any rate, he ought to have hazarded the attempt, before the ardour of his adherents had leisure to cool, or his well-wishers time to discern his danger, instead of waiting for an accession of strength among his mountains. But his situation, it must be owned, was at all times discouraging. Government, apprized of his intended invasion, had ordered all the considerable gentry of his clan to be thrown into prison. The whole militia of the kingdom, to the number of twenty-two thousand men, were soon under arms; and a third part of them, with all the regular forces, were now on their march to oppose him. The marquis of Athol pressed him on one side; lord Charles Murray on the other; the duke of Gordon hung upon his rear; the earl of Dumbarton met him in front. His arms and ammunition were seized; his provisions cut off. In this desperate extremity, he endeavoured to force his way into the disaffected part of the western counties. He accordingly crossed the river Levan, and afterward the Clyde; but no person showed either courage or inclination to join him. His followers, who had suffered all the hardships of famine and fatigue, gradually deserted; and he himself, being made prisoner, was carried to Edinburgh, and immediately executed on a former iniquitous sentence.(2) Two English gentlemen excepted, his adherents, by dispersing themselves, escaped punishment. Meanwhile, the duke of Monmouth, according to agreement, had landed in the west of England; and so great was his popularity, that, although accompanied only by about fourscore persons, the number of his adherents soon increased to five thousand. At the head of these, who were chiefly of the lower class, he entered Taunton; where he was received with such extraordinary expressions of joy, that he issued a declaration asserting the legiti macy of his birth, and assumed the title of king. From Taunton he marched to Bridgewater, where he was received with equal affection, and proclaimed king by the magistrates, with all the formalities of their office. His followers hourly increased; and he was obliged every day, for want of arms, to dismiss great numbers who crowded to his standard. He only, perhaps, needed conduct and abilities to have overturned his uncle's throne. Conscious of his want of these, as well as of resources, the nobility and gentry kept at a distance. He had no man of talent or courage to advise with in the closet, or to assist him in the field. Lord Gray, his general of horse, and whom he had the weakness to continue in command, was to his own knowledge a coward; and he himself, though personally brave, allowed the expectation of the people to languish, without attempting any bold enterprise.(3)

Notwithstanding this imprudent caution, and the news of Argyle's miscarriage, Monmouth's followers continued to adhere to him, after all his hopes of success had failed, and when he had even thoughts of providing for his own safety by flight. Roused to action by such warm attachment, and encouraged by the prospect of seizing an unexpected advantage, he attacked the king's forces, under the earl of Feversham, at Sedgemoor, near Bridgewater; and had it not been for his own misconduct, and the cowardice of

(1) Sec King James's Mem. in Macpherson's Original Papers, vol. i., and count D'Avaux's Negotia igns, tom. i. if. iii. iv. (3) Burnet. Kennet. Ralph

(2) Burnet. Wodrow. Hume.

lord Gray, he might have gained a decisive victory. Though Gray and the cavalry fled in the beginning of the action, the undisciplined infantry gallantly maintained the combat for three hours; and the duke himself, besides his errors in generalship, quitted the field too early for an adventurer contending for a crown.(1) About fourteen hundred of the rebels were killed in the battle and pursuit, and nearly an equal number made prisoners.

Monmouth himself, with a single attendant, escaped to a considerable distance from the scene of action; but his horse at length failing him, he was reduced to the necessity of travelling on foot, and changed clothes with a peasant, in order to conceal himself from his pursuers. In that humble disguise, he was found lying in the bottom of a ditch, covered with weeds. He had in his pocket some green pease, which had been his only food for several days; and his spirits being exhausted with hunger and fatigue, he burst into tears, and behaved otherwise in a manner unworthy of his character. Even on his arrival in London, allured by the fond hope of life, he was induced to make the meanest submissions, in order to procure a pardon ;(2) though he might have been sensible, from the greatness of his own offences, and the king's unfeeling disposition, that he could expect no mercy. After that hope failed him, he behaved with becoming dignity; and discovered great firmness and composure at his execution, though accompanied with many horrid circumstances.(3)

Had James used his victory with moderation, this fortunate suppression of a rebellion in the beginning of his reign would have tended much to strengthen his authority; but the cruelty with which it was prosecuted, and the delusive prospects which it opened for his zeal to popery and unlimited power, proved the chief cause of his ruin. Such arbitrary principles had the court infused into its servants, that the earl of Feversham, immediately after the battle of Sedgemoor, and while the soldiers were yet fatigued with slaughter, ordered above twenty of the insurgents to be hanged, without any form of trial. But this instance of illegal severity was forgotten in the superior inhumanity of colonel Kirk, whose military executions were attended with circumstances of wanton cruelty and barbarity. On his first entry into Bridgewater, he not only hanged nineteen prisoners without the least inquiry into the nature of their guilt, but ordered a certain number to be executed while he and his company should drink the king's health; and observing their feet to quiver, in the agonies of death, he commanded the drums to beat and the trumpets to sound, saying he would give them music to their dancing !(4)

Even the inhumanities of Kirk were exceeded by the violence of lord chief justice Jefferys; who showed the astonished nation, that the rigours of law may equal, if not exceed, the ravages of military tyranny. A special commission being issued to this man, whose disposition was brutal and arbitrary, and who had already given several specimens of his character, he set out, accompanied by four other judges, with a savage joy, as to a full harvest of death. He opened his commission first at Winchester, whence he proceeded to Dorchester, Exeter, Taunton, and Wells, carrying every where along with him terror and consternation. The juries, struck with his menaces, gave their verdict with hurry and precipitation; so that many innocent persons are supposed to have suffered. About five hundred prisoners were

(1) Burnet, book iv.

(2) Id. ibid. See also James II., 1685.

(3) Touched with pity, or unmanned by terror, at the noble presence of Monmouth, and the part he was to perform, the executioner struck him three times, without effect: and then threw aside the axe, declaring that he was unable to finish the bloody office. The sheriff obliged him to renew the attempt, and the duke's head was at last severed from bis body.

(4) Burnet. Kennet. Ralph. One story, commonly told of Kirk, is memorable in the history of human treachery and barbarity. A beautiful young maiden, bathed in tears, threw herself at his feet, and pleaded for the life of her brother. The brutal tyrant, inflamed with desire, but not softened into pity, promised to grant her request, provided she would yield to his wishes. She reluctantly complied with the cruel request, without reflecting that the wretch who could make it was unworthy of eredit or confidence. But she had soon reason to know it. After passing the night with him, the wanton and perfidious savage showed her in the morning, from the bed-room window, that beloved brother, for whom she had sacrificed her innocence, hanging on a gibbet, which he had secretly ordered to be erected for the purpose! Rage, indignation and despair took at once possession of her soul, and deprived her for ever of her senses

tried and condemned in all: of these two hundred and fifty were executed: the rest were transported, condemned to cruel whippings, or permitted, as is said, to purchase their pardon of the tyrannical and prostituted chiefjustice.(1)

As if desirous to take upon himself the odium of these severe executions, the king rewarded the inhumanity of Jefferys with a peerage and the office of chancellor; and he took care, on the meeting of parliament, more fully to open the eyes of the nation, and to realize all those apprehensions which had excited the violence of the exclusionists. He plainly told the two houses, that the militia, in which the nation trusted, having been found, during the late rebellion, altogether insufficient for the safety of government, he had increased the regular forces to double their former number; and he demanded a fresh supply for the support of this additional force. He also took notice, that he had dispensed with the test act, in favour of some Roman Catholic officers; and, in order to cut short all opposition, he declared, that having employed them to advantage in the time of need and danger, he was determined neither to expose them afterward to disgrace, nor himself to the want of their service. (2)

Had James used his dispensing power without declaring it, no opposition would probably have been made to this dangerous exercise of prerogative by the present obsequious parliament. But to invade at once the civil constitution, to threaten the established religion, to maintain a standing army, and to require the concurrence of the two houses to all these measures, exceeded the bounds of their patience. The commons took into consideration his majesty's speech: they proceeded to examine the dispensing power of the crown; and they voted an address to the king against it. The lords appointed a day for taking the speech into consideration; and James, afraid that they also would make an application against his dispensing power, immediately proceeded to a prorogation: so imperious was his temper, so lofty the idea which he had entertained of his own authority, and so violent the measures suggested by his own bigotry and that of his priests!(3) By four more prorogations, he continued the parliament during a year and a half; but having in vain tried, by separate applications, to break the firmness of the leading members, he at last dissolved that assembly; and as it was evidently impossible for him to find among his Protestant subjects a set of men more devoted to royal authority, it was universally concluded, that he intended thenceforth to govern wholly without a parliament.

The king's disappointment in England did not divert him from pursuing the same design in Scotland: and the implicit submission exhibited by the Scottish parliament at its first meeting flattered him with the most pleasing hopes of success. But experience soon convinced him, that those men who had resigned their political freedom with so much seeming indifference, were not to be persuaded to endanger the Protestant faith. Though he demanded, in the most soothing expressions, some indulgence for the Roman Catholics, and supported this request with proposals of advantage to the Scottish nation, the parliament showed no inclination to repeal any of the penal laws. It was therefore prorogued by the commissioner, and soon after dissolved by the king.(4)

Resolute, however, in his purpose, this misguided monarch, in contempt of the general voice of the legislative body of the two kingdoms, determined to support his prerogative of dispensing with the penal statutes against sectaries, by the authority of Westminster-hall. With that view, four judges were displaced, and men of more compliant tempers substituted in their room. A case in point was produced; and sir Edward Herbert, lord chiefjustice of the king's bench, upon the issue declared, that there was nothing whatever with which the king, as supreme lawgiveer, might not dispense.

(1) Burnet. Kennet. Ralph. What rendered these severities less excusable was, that most of the prisoners were persons of low condition, who could never have disturbed the tranquillity of government. Burnet, book iv. (2) Journals, Nov. 9, 1685. (4) Burnet. Wodrow.

(3) Hume, vol. viii.

This decision was confirmed by eleven out of the twelve judges. But the arguments of lawyers, founded upon ancient precedents, had no influence upon the sentiments of the nation. Men in general could not distinguish between a dispensing and a repealing power in the crown; and they justly deemed it unreasonable, that less authority should be necessary to repeal than to enact any statute. If one penal law was dispensed with, any other might undergo the same fate; and by what principal could even the laws that define property, be afterward secured from violation? The test act had ever been considered as the great barrier of the national religion under a popish successor. As such it had been insisted on by the parliament, as such granted by the late king; and as such, during the debates concerning the exclusion bill, it had been recommended by the lord-chancellor. By what magic then, it was asked, by what chicane of law, is it now annihilated, and rendered of no validity ?(1)

Fortified, however, with the opinion of the judges in favour of his dispensing power, James thought himself now authorized to countenance more openly his religious friends. The earl of Powis, with the lords Arundel, Bellasis, and Dover, all zealous Catholics, and who had long managed in private the affairs of the nation, in conjunction with Sunderland, were publicly received at the council-board. Bellasis, soon after, was placed at the head of the treasury, and Arundel succeeded Halifax in the office of privy-seal. The king's apostolical enthusiasm, in a word, which seemed to have divested him of common prudence, made him so desirous of making proselytes, that all men plainly saw the only way to acquire his favour and confidence was to embrace the Catholic faith. Sunderland affected such a change; and, in Scotland, the earls of Murray, Perth, and Melford were brought over to the religion of the court. (2)

These were bold advances; but it was yet only in Ireland, where the majority of the people were already attached to the Romish communion, that the king thought himself at liberty wholly to pull off the mask, and proceed to the full extent of his zeal and violence. Immediately after the accession of James, the duke of Ormond had been recalled from the government of that kingdom; and, on the suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, orders were sent to the lords-justices, under colour of preventing a like insurrection, to recall the arms of the Irish militia, who were all Protestants, and to deposite them in different magazines. Nor did the vigilance of government stop here. Talbot, a violent papist, having been created earl of Tyrconnel, and appointed lieutenant-general of the king's forces in Ireland, dismissed near three hundred Protestant officers, and a great number of private men, under pretence of new modelling the army. The earl of Clarendon went over as ford-lieutenant; but as he had refused to oblige the king, by changing his religion, he soon found that he possessed no credit or authority. He was even a kind of prisoner in the hands of the general; and as he gave all the opposition in his power to the violent measures of the Catholics, he was soon recalled, and Tyrconnel substituted in his place. (3) The unhappy Protestants now saw all the civil authority, as well as the military force, transferred into the hands of their inveterate enemies, and dreaded a renewal of the recent massacres. Great numbers, filled with such apprehensions, left their habitations, and came over to England; where the horror against popery was already roused to the highest pitch, by the frightful tales of the French refugees, who, in consequence of the revocation of the edict of Nantz, had fled from the persecutions of Lewis XIV.

All the more moderate Catholics were sensible that these extravagant measures would ruin the cause they were meant to serve. But the king was so entirely governed by the violent counsels of his queen, an Italian and popish princess, and by those of father Petre his confessor, that the boldness of any measure seems to have been with him a sufficient reason for adopting it. He now not only re-established the court of High Commission, which had been

(1) Sir Robert Atkins. Burnet. Hume.
(3) Clarendon's Letters. Kennet, vol. iii.

(2) Burnet, book iv. James II. 1696.