The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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This speech has often been cited to prove that
James was not so vindictive as he had been called by his enemies.
It seems rather to prove that he by no means deserved the praises
which have been bestowed on his sincerity by his friends.228
Ormond was politely informed that his services were no longer
needed in Ireland, and was invited to repair to Whitehall, and to
perform the functions of Lord Steward. He dutifully submitted,
but did not affect to deny that the new arrangement wounded his
feelings deeply. On the eve of his departure he gave a
magnificent banquet at Kilmainham Hospital, then just completed,
to the officers of the garrison of Dublin. After dinner he rose,
filled a goblet to the brim with wine, and, holding it up, asked
whether he had spilt one drop. "No, gentlemen; whatever the
courtiers may say, I am not yet sunk into dotage. My hand does
not fail me yet: and my hand is not steadier than my heart. To
the health of King James!" Such was the last farewell of Ormond
to Ireland. He left the administration in the hands of Lords
Justices, and repaired to London, where he was received with
unusual marks of public respect. Many persons of rank went forth
to meet him on the road. A long train of eguipages followed him
into Saint James's Square, where his mansion stood; and the
Square was thronged by a multitude which greeted him with loud
acclamations.229
The Great Seal was left in Guildford's custody; but a marked
indignity was at the same time offered to him. It was determined
that another lawyer of more vigour and audacity should be called
to assist in the administration. The person selected was Sir
George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. The
depravity of this man has passed into a proverb. Both the great
English parties have attacked his memory with emulous violence:
for the Whigs considered him as their most barbarous enemy; and
the Tories found it convenient to throw on him the blame of all
the crimes which had sullied their triumph. A diligent and candid
enquiry will show that some frightful stories which have been
told concerning him are false or exaggerated. Yet the
dispassionate historian will be able to make very little
deduction from the vast mass of infamy with which the memory of
the wicked judge has been loaded.
He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but constitutionally
prone to insolence and to the angry passions. When just emerging
from boyhood he had risen into practice at the Old Bailey bar, a
bar where advocates have always used a license of tongue unknown
in Westminster Hall. Here, during many years his chief business
was to examine and crossexamine the most hardened miscreants of a
great capital. Daily conflicts with prostitutes and thieves
called out and exercised his powers so effectually that he became
the most consummate bully ever known in his profession.
Tenderness for others and respect for himself were feelings alike
unknown to him. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric
in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of
maledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his
vocabulary could hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or
the beargarden. His countenance and his voice must always have
been unamiable. But these natural advantages,-for such he seems
to have thought them,-he had improved to such a degree that
there were few who, in his paroxysms of rage, could see or hear
him without emotion. Impudence and ferocity sate upon his brow.
The glare of his eyes had a fascination for the unhappy victim on
whom they were fixed. Yet his brow and his eye were less terrible
than the savage lines of his mouth. His yell of fury, as was said
by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder of the
judgment day. These qualifications he carried, while still a
young man, from the bar to the bench. He early became Common
Serjeant, and then Recorder of London. As a judge at the City
sessions he exhibited the same propensities which afterwards, in
a higher post, gained for him an unenviable immortality. Already
might be remarked in him the most odious vice which is incident
to human nature, a delight in misery merely as misery. There was
a fiendish exultation in the way in which he pronounced sentence
on offenders. Their weeping and imploring seemed to titillate him
voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits by dilating
with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what they were
to suffer. Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an
unlucky adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, "Hangman,"
he would exclaim, "I charge you to pay particular attention to
this lady! Scourge her soundly man! Scourge her till the blood
runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to strip in!
See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly!"230 He was hardly
less facetious when he passed judgment on poor Lodowick
Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied himself a prophet.
"Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy,
easy, easy punishment!" One part of this easy punishment was the
pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with
brickbats.231
By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to that
temper which tyrants require in their worst implements. He had
hitherto looked for professional advancement to the corporation
of London. He had therefore professed himself a Roundhead, and
had always appeared to be in a higher state of exhilaration when
he explained to Popish priests that they were to be cut down
alive, and were to see their own bowels burned, than when he
passed ordinary sentences of death. But, as soon as he had got
all that the city could give, he made haste to sell his forehead
of brass and his tongue of venom to the Court. Chiffinch, who was
accustomed to act as broker in infamous contracts of more than
one kind, lent his aid. He had conducted many amorous and many
political intrigues; but he assuredly never rendered a more
scandalous service to his masters than when he introduced
Jeffreys to Whitehall. The renegade soon found a patron in the
obdurate and revengeful James, but was always regarded with scorn
and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they were, had no
affinity with insolence and cruelty. "That man," said the King,
"has no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than
ten carted street-walkers."232 Work was to be done, however,
which could be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was
sensible of shame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at which a
barrister thinks himself fortunate if he is employed to conduct
an important cause, was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the
qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was
merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind.
But he had one of those happily constituted intellects which,
across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial
facts, go straight to the true point. Of his intellect, however,
he seldom had the full use. Even in civil causes his malevolent
and despotic temper perpetually disordered his judgment. To enter
his court was to enter the den of a wild beast, which none could
tame, and which was as likely to be roused to rage by caresses as
by attacks. He frequently poured forth on plaintiffs and
defendants, barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen,
torrents of frantic abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses. His
looks and tones had inspired terror when he was merely a young
advocate struggling into practice. Now that he was at the head of
the most formidable tribunal in the realm, there were few indeed
who did not tremble before him. Even when he was sober, his
violence was sufficiently frightful. But in general his reason
was overclouded and his evil passions stimulated by the fumes of
intoxication. His evenings were ordinarily given to revelry.
People who saw him only over his bottle would have supposed him
to be a man gross indeed, sottish, and addicted to low company
and low merriment, but social and goodhumoured. He was constantly
surrounded on such occasions by buffoons selected, for the most
part, from among the vilest pettifoggers who practiced before
him. These men bantered and abused each other for his
entertainment. He joined in their ribald talk, sang catches with
them, and, when his head grew hot, hugged and kissed them in an
ecstasy of drunken fondness. But though wine at first seemed to
soften his heart, the effect a few hours later was very
different. He often came to the judgment seat, having kept the
court waiting long, and yet having but half slept off his
debauch, his cheeks on fire, his eyes staring like those of a
maniac. When he was in this state, his boon companions of the
preceding night, if they were wise, kept out of his way: for the
recollection of the familiarity to which he had admitted them
inflamed his malignity; and he was sure to take every opportunity
of overwhelming them with execration and invective. Not the least
odious of his many odious peculiarities was the pleasure which he
took in publicly browbeating and mortifying those whom, in his
fits of maudlin tenderness, he had encouraged to presume on his
favour.
The services which the government had expected from him were
performed, not merely without flinching, but eagerly and
triumphantly. His first exploit was the judicial murder of
Algernon Sidney. What followed was in perfect harmony with this
beginning. Respectable Tories lamented the disgrace which the
barbarity and indecency of so great a functionary brought upon
the administration of justice. But the excesses which filled such
men with horror were titles to the esteem of James. Jeffreys,
therefore, very soon after the death of Charles, obtained a seat
in the cabinet and a peerage. This last honour was a signal mark
of royal approbation. For, since the judicial system of the realm
had been remodelled in the thirteenth century, no Chief Justice
had been a Lord of Parliament.233
Guildford now found himself superseded in all his political
functions, and restricted to his business as a judge in equity.
At Council he was treated by Jeffreys with marked incivility. The
whole legal patronage was in the hands of the Chief Justice; and
it was well known by the bar that the surest way to propitiate
the Chief Justice was to treat the Lord Keeper with disrespect.
James had not been many hours King when a dispute arose between
the two heads of the law. The customs had been settled on Charles
for life only, and
James was not so vindictive as he had been called by his enemies.
It seems rather to prove that he by no means deserved the praises
which have been bestowed on his sincerity by his friends.228
Ormond was politely informed that his services were no longer
needed in Ireland, and was invited to repair to Whitehall, and to
perform the functions of Lord Steward. He dutifully submitted,
but did not affect to deny that the new arrangement wounded his
feelings deeply. On the eve of his departure he gave a
magnificent banquet at Kilmainham Hospital, then just completed,
to the officers of the garrison of Dublin. After dinner he rose,
filled a goblet to the brim with wine, and, holding it up, asked
whether he had spilt one drop. "No, gentlemen; whatever the
courtiers may say, I am not yet sunk into dotage. My hand does
not fail me yet: and my hand is not steadier than my heart. To
the health of King James!" Such was the last farewell of Ormond
to Ireland. He left the administration in the hands of Lords
Justices, and repaired to London, where he was received with
unusual marks of public respect. Many persons of rank went forth
to meet him on the road. A long train of eguipages followed him
into Saint James's Square, where his mansion stood; and the
Square was thronged by a multitude which greeted him with loud
acclamations.229
The Great Seal was left in Guildford's custody; but a marked
indignity was at the same time offered to him. It was determined
that another lawyer of more vigour and audacity should be called
to assist in the administration. The person selected was Sir
George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. The
depravity of this man has passed into a proverb. Both the great
English parties have attacked his memory with emulous violence:
for the Whigs considered him as their most barbarous enemy; and
the Tories found it convenient to throw on him the blame of all
the crimes which had sullied their triumph. A diligent and candid
enquiry will show that some frightful stories which have been
told concerning him are false or exaggerated. Yet the
dispassionate historian will be able to make very little
deduction from the vast mass of infamy with which the memory of
the wicked judge has been loaded.
He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but constitutionally
prone to insolence and to the angry passions. When just emerging
from boyhood he had risen into practice at the Old Bailey bar, a
bar where advocates have always used a license of tongue unknown
in Westminster Hall. Here, during many years his chief business
was to examine and crossexamine the most hardened miscreants of a
great capital. Daily conflicts with prostitutes and thieves
called out and exercised his powers so effectually that he became
the most consummate bully ever known in his profession.
Tenderness for others and respect for himself were feelings alike
unknown to him. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric
in which the vulgar express hatred and contempt. The profusion of
maledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his
vocabulary could hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or
the beargarden. His countenance and his voice must always have
been unamiable. But these natural advantages,-for such he seems
to have thought them,-he had improved to such a degree that
there were few who, in his paroxysms of rage, could see or hear
him without emotion. Impudence and ferocity sate upon his brow.
The glare of his eyes had a fascination for the unhappy victim on
whom they were fixed. Yet his brow and his eye were less terrible
than the savage lines of his mouth. His yell of fury, as was said
by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder of the
judgment day. These qualifications he carried, while still a
young man, from the bar to the bench. He early became Common
Serjeant, and then Recorder of London. As a judge at the City
sessions he exhibited the same propensities which afterwards, in
a higher post, gained for him an unenviable immortality. Already
might be remarked in him the most odious vice which is incident
to human nature, a delight in misery merely as misery. There was
a fiendish exultation in the way in which he pronounced sentence
on offenders. Their weeping and imploring seemed to titillate him
voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits by dilating
with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what they were
to suffer. Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an
unlucky adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, "Hangman,"
he would exclaim, "I charge you to pay particular attention to
this lady! Scourge her soundly man! Scourge her till the blood
runs down! It is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to strip in!
See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly!"230 He was hardly
less facetious when he passed judgment on poor Lodowick
Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied himself a prophet.
"Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy,
easy, easy punishment!" One part of this easy punishment was the
pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with
brickbats.231
By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to that
temper which tyrants require in their worst implements. He had
hitherto looked for professional advancement to the corporation
of London. He had therefore professed himself a Roundhead, and
had always appeared to be in a higher state of exhilaration when
he explained to Popish priests that they were to be cut down
alive, and were to see their own bowels burned, than when he
passed ordinary sentences of death. But, as soon as he had got
all that the city could give, he made haste to sell his forehead
of brass and his tongue of venom to the Court. Chiffinch, who was
accustomed to act as broker in infamous contracts of more than
one kind, lent his aid. He had conducted many amorous and many
political intrigues; but he assuredly never rendered a more
scandalous service to his masters than when he introduced
Jeffreys to Whitehall. The renegade soon found a patron in the
obdurate and revengeful James, but was always regarded with scorn
and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they were, had no
affinity with insolence and cruelty. "That man," said the King,
"has no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than
ten carted street-walkers."232 Work was to be done, however,
which could be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was
sensible of shame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at which a
barrister thinks himself fortunate if he is employed to conduct
an important cause, was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the
qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was
merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind.
But he had one of those happily constituted intellects which,
across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial
facts, go straight to the true point. Of his intellect, however,
he seldom had the full use. Even in civil causes his malevolent
and despotic temper perpetually disordered his judgment. To enter
his court was to enter the den of a wild beast, which none could
tame, and which was as likely to be roused to rage by caresses as
by attacks. He frequently poured forth on plaintiffs and
defendants, barristers and attorneys, witnesses and jurymen,
torrents of frantic abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses. His
looks and tones had inspired terror when he was merely a young
advocate struggling into practice. Now that he was at the head of
the most formidable tribunal in the realm, there were few indeed
who did not tremble before him. Even when he was sober, his
violence was sufficiently frightful. But in general his reason
was overclouded and his evil passions stimulated by the fumes of
intoxication. His evenings were ordinarily given to revelry.
People who saw him only over his bottle would have supposed him
to be a man gross indeed, sottish, and addicted to low company
and low merriment, but social and goodhumoured. He was constantly
surrounded on such occasions by buffoons selected, for the most
part, from among the vilest pettifoggers who practiced before
him. These men bantered and abused each other for his
entertainment. He joined in their ribald talk, sang catches with
them, and, when his head grew hot, hugged and kissed them in an
ecstasy of drunken fondness. But though wine at first seemed to
soften his heart, the effect a few hours later was very
different. He often came to the judgment seat, having kept the
court waiting long, and yet having but half slept off his
debauch, his cheeks on fire, his eyes staring like those of a
maniac. When he was in this state, his boon companions of the
preceding night, if they were wise, kept out of his way: for the
recollection of the familiarity to which he had admitted them
inflamed his malignity; and he was sure to take every opportunity
of overwhelming them with execration and invective. Not the least
odious of his many odious peculiarities was the pleasure which he
took in publicly browbeating and mortifying those whom, in his
fits of maudlin tenderness, he had encouraged to presume on his
favour.
The services which the government had expected from him were
performed, not merely without flinching, but eagerly and
triumphantly. His first exploit was the judicial murder of
Algernon Sidney. What followed was in perfect harmony with this
beginning. Respectable Tories lamented the disgrace which the
barbarity and indecency of so great a functionary brought upon
the administration of justice. But the excesses which filled such
men with horror were titles to the esteem of James. Jeffreys,
therefore, very soon after the death of Charles, obtained a seat
in the cabinet and a peerage. This last honour was a signal mark
of royal approbation. For, since the judicial system of the realm
had been remodelled in the thirteenth century, no Chief Justice
had been a Lord of Parliament.233
Guildford now found himself superseded in all his political
functions, and restricted to his business as a judge in equity.
At Council he was treated by Jeffreys with marked incivility. The
whole legal patronage was in the hands of the Chief Justice; and
it was well known by the bar that the surest way to propitiate
the Chief Justice was to treat the Lord Keeper with disrespect.
James had not been many hours King when a dispute arose between
the two heads of the law. The customs had been settled on Charles
for life only, and
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