of government." A certain check which Charles imposed on the Chief Justice, an instance of which he had recently experienced after the trial of Rosewell, was removed. At the same time, Jeffreys was unfortunate enough to fall a victim to the tortures of the stone. The effects of having his arbitrary principles encouraged, and his fiery temper aggravated by a painful disease were soon to shew themselves. They can. not be said to be evident at the trial of that arch purjurer Titus Oates, which was the first important trial over which Jeffreys presided under the new reign. This infamous wretch had been cast in £100,000 damages in an action for slander brought against him by the Duke of York in which Jeffreys had presided, and being unable to pay, had been committed to the King's Bench prison, from whence he was brought to stand his trial on two indictments for perjury. At the trial of the first indictment Jeffreys behaved with fairness, rejected improper evidence on behalf of the Crown, and though he summed up in the most decided way for a conviction, it was justified by the evidence; the second trial was shorter and the summing up more violent. Oates was convicted on both counts and a week later came up for judgment. The sentence was severe, in fact it can hardly have been supposed that he would survive it. Fines, pillorying, and a flogging on a Wednesday from Aldgate to Newgate, and on the following Friday from Newgate to Tyburn. Here was an opportunity for Jeffreys to indulge in, according to Macaulay and Campbell, his favourite amusement of passing a ferocious sentence. But no, the sentence was delivered by Wythens, who expressed his regret that he could not carry it further and give judgment of death upon him.

Strong testimony is given in favour of Jeffreys' conduct at this trial by an evidently unfriendly witness, Lord Ailesbury, who says, "I was greatly surprised at his good temper, and the more because such impudent and reviling expressions never came from the mouth of man as Oates uttered."

The next important trial he presided at exhibits a marked contrast in tone; this was on a charge of seditious libel against the eminent Nonconformist divine Richard Baxter, for reflecting on the Prelates of the Church of England. According to the report of this case Jeffreys gave full scope to his natural violence and prejudice against the Dissenters, and conducted the trial with no pretence of fairness or ordinary decency. He bullied and silenced the defendant's counsel, abused, threatened

and mimicked the defendant, and would not allow him to speak in his defence or call witnesses, and charged the jury to find him guilty. It is interesting to observe how Mr. Irving treats this case; he remarks and truly that we have only a description of it written by the prisoner and his friends, and that any such narrative cannot be implicitly accepted. This is true to a certain extent, but if this description had been grossly wrong there would probably have been some contradiction of it published; and it is not quite fair to attribute to a man of Baxter's character such a perversion of the truth as could alone excuse Jeffreys' conduct. Mr. Irving's other explanation is more probable. He says, "Jeffreys hates all Dissenters; he believed them to be hypocrites who made religion a cloak for treason and sedition, the descendants of the psalm-singing fanatics who had put their King to death." Jeffreys, the Bishops, and all those who joined in the stern suppression of Dissent, did not do so from motives of religious persecution, but of revenge for the past and dread of their resorting once more to civil war for the assertion of their rights. He was probably the fiercer against Baxter because Baxter's trial occurred at a time when a rebellion was imminent which found its strongest support among the Dissenters. He was accordingly only too ready to regard Baxter as one of the fomenters of the coming disturbance and to pour out on his venerable head the vials of his wrath.

This trial took place on May 30th, 1685; on June 11th the Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme.

It is not necessary to relate how he was welcomed by the middle and lower classes of the Western Counties, nor how his hopes were dashed and his cause ruined by his defeat at Sedgmoor. After a time the military executions of Kirke were stopped, and Jeffreys at the head of a Special Commission of five judges was sent down to the West to empty the gaols. It is on his manner of executing this duty that the greatest accusations against him depend. Up to this time, though he may have strained the law in his interpretations of it in the cases of Sidney and Armstrong, and behaved unfairly and truculently in his trials of dissenting ministers, yet it is on his conduct during little more than a month that the lasting obloquy on his name has come. This is how Mr. Irving commences his view of the "Bloody Assize": "If a man of passionate temper, suffering the agonies of a peculiarly cruel disorder, is appointed in his capacity as judge to try, by the comparatively slow process of

law, more than a thousand rebels against the Government of which he is himself an ardent member, at a time when mercy to rebels and mercy in the administration of the law were no parts of the ethics of political strife, it is more than likely that from a combination of such circumstances results will ensue very shocking to modern notions, and all the more appalling if treated by writers whose political prejudices tempt them to forget the differences of thought and spirit that divide one century from another."

The Assize began at Dorchester. There were not many cases for trial connected with the rebellion, but one is the best known of all the cases on the Assize, and the one which is most often quoted against Jeffreys. An old lady named Lisle, the widow of one of Charles the First's judges, was indicted for high treason in harbouring and concealing one John Hicks, a dissenting minister and follower of the Duke of Monmouth.

Hicks was taken at "Lady Lisle's house" (as she seems to have been called), and it was proved that he had been with Monmouth's army. The two questions which had to be decided were one of law, whether a person could be convicted as an accessory before the principal had been convicted, and one of fact whether Lady Lisle knew Hicks had been in Monmouth's army. The case against her rested mainly on the evidence of a man named Dunne who had brought Hicks to her house, and it is in the way Jeffreys treated this witness, at whom he repeatedly swore and railed, in the course of his long cross-examination that Sir James Stephen considers "the most disgraceful part of the trial, or rather the most notorious and glaring instance of brutality which occurred in it." It must, however, be said in excuse that Dunne was committing perjury, and that Jeffreys, from his previous examination of another prisoner, knew it. He directed the jury, in answer to a question, that it was equally treason to harbour an unconvicted traitor.

On this point Sir James Stephen says: "The conviction was probably illegal on the ground that Hicks, whom she harboured, had not been convicted before her trial. Her attainder was reversed in Parliament upon this ground, and Foster, relying on the authority of Hale, treats this as good law. It can no doubt be supported by some strong arguments, though others in the contrary direction might be suggested; but the law was vague.

I think this is another of the numerous instances in which there really was no definite law at all, and in which the fact that a particular course was taken by a bad man for a bad purpose has been regarded as proof that the course taken was illegal." The sentence of burning to death was clearly legal. A woman named Merryweather was sentenced to the same punishment in the next reign for high treason, and Barbara Spencer in 1721. The shocking part of the whole business is the fact of a woman being punished by death for merely following the merciful dictates of her heart, and sheltering a wretched fugitive; there must have been many such cases during the great civil war, but no such punishment was inflicted. This is the only case in the Bloody Assize fully reported, for all the others we have to rely, as Mr. Irving states, on the accounts given in a book called the "Bloody Assizes," published in 1687, and republished under other titles such as the "New and Western Martyrologies." As this was published by a man "associated with the violent and scurrilous section of the Whig party" and written by a man named John Tutchin who had been sentenced by Jeffreys to be whipped through all the market towns in Dorsetshire; it seems a fair comment on Mr. Irving's part that "these books must be unhesitatingly pronounced unworthy of more than a most limited and suspicious credence."

That many of the accounts are untrue and exaggerated must be pretty certain, but that the trials were hurried through without decorum or fairness, that every device was used to intimidate prisoners to plead guilty and that ferocious sentences were passed, we can have no doubt. Lord Ailesbury is a witness against him, though a loyal Tory. He advised the King to turn out both Jeffreys and Kirke to shew his abhorrence of their practices. From what occurred in other trials we may be sure that the sufferings of the accused were aggravated by the deportment of their judge. It is his unbridled tongue delighting in bullying, mocking, and reviling that gives us such a terrible impression of the man, whose perverted sense of humour could induce him to indulge his hideous merriment on prisoners in their unfortunate position, and can we doubt that in many other cases, Jeffreys behaved, as Mr. Irving has to admit he behaved, in Lady Lisle's case. "With the religious violence of some mediæval tyrant, butchering in the name of God and Christ, he called on Heaven to witness the canting villainy that beset him at every turn, and in an access of

physical and mental torture, carried out with superfluous brutality the superfluously brutal task that had been allotted to him."

Much more might be said of his conduct in this Assize, his extorting £15,000 from Mr. Prideaux for his release, conduct Mr. Irving does not pretend to excuse; his treatment of the Corporation of Bristol, etc.; but this article is already too long. Jeffreys returned to town on September the 28th, his Majesty was pleased in consideration of his many eminent and faithful services to commit to him the custody of the Great Seal of England with the title of Lord Chancellor.

Here ends the history of Judge Jeffreys. We have made no reference about his relations with and conduct to the City, his interference in elections, his campaigns against the Corporation Charters, or his domestic affairs, and though much of interest took place during his tenure of the Chancellorship, and much discussion has taken place respecting his conduct as an Equity Judge and as a Cabinet Councillor, in discussing which Mr. Irving shews as usual much ability and knowledgethe most interesting part of Jeffreys' career to us was over. It is as a criminal judge that he will always be known and judged, and after all Mr. Irving's efforts we can only say in favour of Jeffreys that he was born in an unfortunate time for a man of his temperament and principles, that his fiery temper, uncontrollable tongue and arbitrary disposition led him to preside over trials so unfairly and indecently, that bad as the standard of his age was he surpassed it, that allowances must be made for the violence of party feelings, and that he has laboured under the misfortune of having his life reported by political opponents sometimes more anxious to be telling than accurate. His conduct on the Bloody Assize, which will for ever condemn him, was partially caused by the tortures of a terrible disease and the orders of a cold and implacable master. We cannot sum up our conclusions better than Mr. Pike has done in his History of Crime: "They (Scroggs and Jeffreys) all had the misfortune to live at a time when cruelty was part of the national character, when prisoners were tortured in gaol, and crowds gloated with eager eyes over an execution for treason. No one regarding this conduct from a modern point of view could extenuate it; no one who has made himself familiar with the past would see in it anything exceptionally bad. We have the good fortune to live at a time