Elizabeth, passed in a time of real conspiracies and most imminent danger, by which every native Roman Catholic priest in England was liable to death as a traitor. This law had never been abrogated, but it had been suffered to sleep in a country where the King's mother, the King's brother, and the King's wife were known Catholics. It was proposed by Halifax, in order to gain popularity for the government, that the Roman Catholic priests, who were living in full security, should be, without notice or warning of any kind, seized and punished under that law. Temple, accustomed to despotic governments, was shocked at such enormous cruelty, which no heathen emperor, in struggling against what he considered a dangerous innovation, ever surpassed, and which it was now proposed to exercise against the teachers of a religion still professed by the majority of Christian Europe, and not much more than a century ago (w), the Creed of England itself. Temple said, "that such a measure was wholly unjust, without giving the priests public notice by proclamation to be gone, or expect the penalties of the law, within a certain time." Much of his life had been passed abroad, and he was, though by no means a man of romantic virtue, confounded at the brutality, wickedness, and reckless injustice of English proceedings. But his proposal was rejected (x), and several

(w) "Her house not antient, whatso'er pretence

Her clergy heralds make in her defence;

A second century not half way run,

Since the new honours of her blood begun."

(x) In consequence of this infernal policy, a persecution was set on foot against the Catholics. Charles Herne was tried at Hereford Assizes for being a popish priest, under the 27 Eliz. c. 2. No other charge was brought or proved against him. Scroggs summed up fairly enough, saying, "I would not shed innocent blood, neither would I let a popish priest escape." He was acquitted. David Lewis was tried for the same offence before Judge Atkyns, at Monmouth. Atkyns is the man who received so severe a rebuke from Lord Stafford; and on this occasion he conducted himself to the prisoner with the greatest brutality. Lewis proved that two of the witnesses against him had said they would wash their hands in his blood, and make a pottage of his head. He was convicted and executed. State Trials, vol. 7, p. 259. Andrew Bromwick

priests were executed as traitors simply for performing Christian rites. When such was the conduct of the accomplished Halifax, who could not plead the study of the law as his excuse, can we wonder at the acts of the bestial Scroggs, and the earthworm North? they were not so criminal as he: the ruling motive of all alike was that selfishness which is, and has ever been, in this island as it was in Carthage, the bane of private and public life, which most public men profess, and some write moral treatises to defend, and each pursued according to the faculties that God had given him, with more or less regard to decency, the objects which that selfishness pointed

out.

The English reign of terror was not yet over; the public thirst of blood was not yet slaked; one more victim was still to fall a martyr to the barbarous delusion of some, and to the unexampled wickedness of others. Hitherto juries had been the chief instruments employed, but that every class might participate in the crime, that the infamy might in the fullest sense of the word be national, the peers were those, who, sent to the scaffold, on evidence quite as absurd as any on which the mobs of Paris acted during the Revolution, not false only, but self-destructive and ridiculous, and completely refuted, a man whom any assembly might have been proud to number among its members. This was Lord Stafford. The fate of this nobleman illustrates most entirely the assertion, that in no despotic country of Europe, was innocence a more impotent defence than in England during the reign of the Stuarts, and under the doctrines of the English law. Lord Stafford, on the 25th of October, 1678, informed the House of Peers, that

and William Atkyns were convicted at Stafford of being priests, and executed. So was William Plessington, at Chester. So was Francis Johnson, at Worcester, 1679. Lionel Anderson, William Russel, Charles Parry, Henry Starkey, James Corker, William Marshal, Alexander Launden, suffered for the same offence, 1680. State Trials, vol. 7, p. 871. But how can one wonder at the cruelty and profligacy of the lawyers in that age, who bore a part in carrying such laws into execution?

having heard of a warrant issued for his apprehension, he thought it right to surrender himself for trial. Nearly two years after his imprisonment began, (April 7, 1680), Lord Russell, and other members of the House of Commons, presented articles of impeachment against him. The charge against him was the same that had been brought against the other victims of Oates,-a traitorous conspiracy to destroy the government and to murder the King.

His trial began before the whole body of the House of Peers, of whom the Earl of Nottingham was Lord High Steward, on the 30th of November, 1680. Maynard (y) opened the case on behalf of the Commons, in an unfair and wicked speech. He was followed by Sir Francis Winnington and Treby. The managers divided the evidence into two branches; that relating to the general plot, and that relating to the plot in which Lord Stafford was supposed to be more immediately concerned. The witnesses called were, Smith, Dugdale, Praunce, Dennis, Tennison, Oates, and Turberville. Every law and rule of evidence was violated during a great part of their examination, as is shewn by the admission of the documentary evidence, namely, the records of the conviction of Coleman, Ireland, Perkins, Grove, and others, for high treason, other convictions for the murder of Godfrey, a copy of a conviction for endeavouring to suborn Bedloe to retract his evidence, and of another conviction of two persons for conspiring to asperse Oates and Bedloe; of course on the principles, then well understood, of our law, none of these documents should have been admitted. Jeffreys, though his coarseness was greater, seldom carried out the genuine brutality of the English bar of that day farther than Jones and Maynard. When the aged prisoner, whom the humanity of the English law deprived of counsel, except on matters of law, requested that his counsel might stand near him, to argue any point that might arise, these men, worthy of the school of Coke, insisted that they should

(y) "In legal murder none so deeply read."

stand within hearing, not within prompting, lest they might suggest anything beneficial to the prisoner. "When there is cause," said the High Steward, "take the exception." Lord Stafford, at the close of the first day, asked for the depositions of Oates, Dugdale, and Turberville, that he might compare them with the evidence they had given. This simple request, founded on the plainest justice, was opposed by Maynard and his colleagues. Lord Stafford, much exhausted by his labours, requested the respite of a day to refresh his strength and to examine his papers. This was opposed by the managers for the Commons, and ultimately refused by the Court. Condemnation without trial would have been quite as just a proceeding.

Dugdale was contradicted, and his character proved infamous, by the most unexceptionable testimony. Sir Walter Bagot, a county member, the bearer of a name as ancient as the oaks on his estate, in whose blood affection to the English Church has run pure to the present age, proved that Dugdale had, when brought before him as a magistrate at Stafford, long after the time when he described himself conscious of the prisoner's guilt, utterly denied all knowledge of the plot. Similar testimony was brought against the other witnesses. But their evidence was such an affront to reason that no reasonable and honest man would attend to it, and on those who did attend to it demonstration of its falsehood would be flung away. The conduct of the audience was in keeping with the rest of the scene. The spectators shouted, and assaulted the witnesses for the prisoner, and interrupted the proceedings with yells of applause and laughter. The Lord Steward remonstrated. Lord Stafford said, Lord Stafford said, "I thought I was in a Court of justice, and not at a cock-pit or in a theatre." The managers persevered in their insolent and brutal conduct. The prisoner made an admirable defence. A judge, one Atkyns, remarked, in giving his opinion on a point of law, that he gave it in that way lest, if Lord Stafford was acquitted, the verdicts already given, on the evidence of

"The

Oates, Dugdale, and others, should seem erroneous. consequence would be, my Lords," said this true specimen of a lawyer of those days, "that those persons who were executed on those judgments have suffered illegally." He received from the aged prisoner a grave and dignified rebuke; "I hear a strange position; I never heard the like before. It is an argument which I hope will not weigh with your Lordships; for it is better that a thousand persons who are guilty should escape, than that one innocent person should suffer,-much more, then, that it should not be declared that such a judgment was not well given. I say nothing as to the rest, but this struck with me. I am sorry to hear a judge say any such thing, and though I am in such a weak and disturbed condition, I assure your Lordships my blood rises at it." More injustice was yet to be done; and the annals of the first Court of England were to be sullied by an act of brutality, of which the ruffians, who sent their victims to the guillotine in cartloads, would have been ashamed, and of which they were certainly never guilty. The prisoner, almost sinking under his many years and trying difficulties, with many apologies, saying that the shoutings and hootings of the rabble had so disordered him that he hardly knew what he said or did, asked that the clerk might read a paper while he rested for a short time. His request was opposed by those who represented an English House of Commons, and refused by an English House of Lords. Lord Stafford was obliged to read the paper himself. He was convicted of high treason. And when the horrible and torturing part of the sentence was remitted, so deep and wide was the stain of infamy inflicted on the collective English nation by every part of the proceeding, that Lord Russell questioned, in the House of Commons, this exercise of the prerogative; and the sheriffs raised obstacles to a compliance with it: at last, the House of Commons declared, that it would be "content" with the simple decapitation of a man, about whose innocence no doubt whatever

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