308 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[SEPT, 



attainder was afterwards reversed. Jeff- 

 reys' violence in the case of Armstrong-, 

 the biographer, who has a sharp eye for 

 palliatives, attributes to a severe fit of the 

 stone. In the cabinet, to gratify his pa- 

 tron the Duke of York, he proposed the 

 release of the recusants, but was success- 

 fully opposed by the keeper, North. 



On the accession of James, Jeffreys was 

 made a peer j and very shortly afterwards 

 had his revenge upon Gates, in a trial for 

 perjury who on a former occasion had 

 twitted him with his reprimand in the 

 house by inflicting on him a sentence of 

 extraordinary severity ; and in the case 

 of Baxter, his rankling hatred against the 

 Presbyterians had a sweet indulgence. 

 Now came on Monmouth's rebellion ; and 

 Jeffreys' extraordinary commission, as 

 judge and general, for the suppression 

 and punishment of the rebels in the West. 

 But this is all so well known, as to make 

 any detail quite superfluous ; 351 are said 

 to have been executed, and many hun- 

 dreds transported. The sums pocketed 

 by the judge, for commutations, were im- 

 mense ; though the court doubtless shared 

 the spoil. The money exacted from the 

 parents of the twenty-six girls, who, at a 

 school, and under the direction of the 

 mistress, had worked a banner for Mon- 

 mouth in sums of 50, and 110, was 

 given to the queen's maids of honour. 

 The biographer makes a question, whether 

 Jeffreys or his master were most to blame 

 for the severity exercised by the judge 

 under this commission, and sums up the 

 case against the king thus : 



King James put MonmoutH to death, and then 

 sent out his chief justice to punish some western 

 rebels. He refused to respite Lady Lisle for a 

 day, because he had promised the said judge that 

 he would not do so. Either he sent out an order 

 to save the prisoners, after 351 were hung or he 

 made a judge, who had disobeyed his orders, Lord 

 High Chancellor of England, tarnished as that 

 person must have been with a very massacre, if he 

 had no orders for his conduct. The king moreover 

 made a present of a rich man (Prideaux) to the said 

 judge, and permitted the members of his court to 

 enrich themselves at the expence of some poor 

 western widows. 



But what tells trumpet-tongued against 

 Jeffreys, is his insisting upon the miser- 

 able conditions he did with respect to 

 Lady Lisle and Mr. Prideaux 5 his bru- 

 tal exultations at the numbers he had 

 slain; and, be the king's wishes what 

 they might, the impossibility of executing 

 them without such a wretch to carry them 

 into effect. Jeffreys said he was " snub- 

 bed at" for not doing more; but what 

 credit is to be given to this declaration, 

 when he was welcomed by the seals on his 

 return ? 



As chancellor, he was still Jeffreys, and 

 before two months had passed over his 

 head, he accepted 6,000 of Hampden for 

 procuring his pardon. For his subsequent 



career as chief of the " High Commission"" 

 for his treatment of the universities and 

 the bishops, in all which he was the ready 

 tool of the court, we have no space. A 

 few days before his flight, the king took 

 the great seal from Jeffreys not actually 

 dismissing him , but Jeffreys had lost 

 ground with him by adhering to the 

 Church; and he had said, the "chancel- 

 lor was an ill man, and had done many 

 ill things." In the confusion that fol- 

 lowed James's flight, the chancellor had a 

 narrow escape from the vengeance of the 

 mob ; and was placed for security in the 

 tower where a charge of high treason, 

 was laid against him; but he died before 

 he was brought to trial, at the age of 41. 

 So early began and ended his mischievous 

 and profligate course. 



The biographer is apparently an un- 

 practised hand. Things are not always 

 in their places ; the anecdotes have little 

 point in them ; nor are the sentiments al- 

 ways well sustained. But it is an honest 

 book 5 the writer speaks his convictions 

 freely, and sometimes forcibly. 



The Annual Peerage of the British Em- 

 pire ; 1827. In so aristocratic a country 

 as England, where so much real worship 

 in the midst of abundance of professed 

 contempt for what the very worshippers 

 affect to call silly idolatry is directly or 

 indirectly paid to rank and titles, a peerage 

 is a vade-mecum perfectly indispensible. 

 " Peerages" of course there are in plenty 

 how many we know not but with the 

 fast spreading demand, no wonder new 

 ones should start from new candidates, 

 with claims fresh and fresh upon our 

 admiration. Accordingly here are three 

 sister ladies the very graces doubtless of 

 genealogy Anne, Eliza, and Maria Innes, 

 who, very harmlessly it may be thought, 

 very acceptably no doubt to others, and 

 to their own infinite delight in the fasci- 

 nating and certainly not unsuitable occu- 

 pation, have busied themselves in getting 

 up, under Mr. Murray's auspices, a pair 

 of new and beautiful volumes, tastefully 

 decorated, with delicate shadings and 

 brilliant gildings all smooth and glister- 

 ingnot to leave a stain on the purest 

 white kid, that kisses the sweet little 

 hands which may be destined to grasp 

 them. 



With so much eagerness and avidity 

 was the attractive manual seized by the 

 admiring devotees, that the first edition 

 was actually exhausted in three little 

 weeks j and such rapacity on the part of 

 the tufted and tuft-hunting circles has of 

 course whetted the industry of the fair and 

 surely wondering trio to administer still 

 farther to the fond appetite, and make it 

 grow by what it feeds on. Behold the 

 sweets, which the blessed possessors of 

 the second and improved edition will find 

 to tickle their palates. 



" The work embraces the parentage 



