THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



fled before the fight was done, and galloped off in hope of ulti- 

 mately reaching the Hampshire coast, but after hiding them- 

 selves for several days, in various disguises, they were captured, 

 and Monmouth, who had been already condemned by Act of 

 Parliament, was brought to London and executed. 



Perhaps it cannot be said, on a calm review of the facts, that 

 the Duke of Monmouth received anything but what he deserved. 

 He was " the head and front of the offending," and in his person 

 it might be said that the law fairly claimed its due. Not much 

 could have been said on the score of strict justice if the other 

 leaders in the rebellion had shared his fate, but the proceedings 

 of Judge Jeffreys on the circuit, well called the " Bloody 

 Assize," were of such a kind as to make one doubt whether 

 even the guilty were not unwarrantably condemned. Imme- 

 diately after the battle of Sedgemoor, thirteen of the prisoners 

 were hanged without trial, by order of Colonel Kirk, a brutal 

 commander of brutal soldiers, who were called by the satirical 

 nickname of " Kirk's Lambs." Further military executions 

 would, no doubt, have taken place ; but the king decided to 

 have the rebels tried according to the law of the land, a decision 

 which would have been recorded to his advantage had he not 

 chosen the man he did choose to put the law in motion. 



The prisons in the western counties, except Cornwall, which 

 had remained loyal, were crowded with prisoners. On account 

 of the disturbed state of the country there had not been any 

 summer assize on the western circuit, so that the ordinary 

 prisoners remained for trial, but the people who crowded the 

 gaols to overflowing were the captives taken at and after Sedge- 

 moor. For the trial of these a special commission was issued, 

 with Jeffreys, Lord Chief Justice of England, at its head. A 

 second commission was given to Jeffreys alone, appointing him 

 temporarily commander-in-chief of the troops in the west, with 

 the rank of lieutenant-general. 



Now Jeffreys was a man who had risen at the bar by brute 

 force exhibited through his mind. Was there any dirty, disgust- 

 ing case to be taken in hand, any utter scoundrel to be defended, 

 any honest man to be hunted down, Jeffreys was the counsel 

 employed. His knowledge of law was small, but the amount of 

 his brazen hardihood was enormous, and by dint of this ques- 

 tionable quality he acquired a large practice of the baser sort. 

 When the Crown, during the life of Charles II., wanted such 

 talents for the purpose of prosecuting its enemies to death, 

 Jeffreys came forthwith to the front. Ho was rapidly promoted 

 to the highest official dignity at the bar, and when Lord William 

 Russell and Colonel Algernon Sydney were to be tried for com- 

 plicity in the Rye House Plot a plot to waylay and assassinate 

 the king and the Duke of York on their return from Newmarket 

 with which neither of the accused had any real connection, it 

 was recognised as a necessity that Jeffreys should be promoted 

 to the office of their judge. The selection was thoroughly justi- 

 fied by the result. In defiance of the rules of evidence, even 

 such as they were in those days, with brutal browbeating and 

 cross-examining of witnesses from the bench, the prisoners all 

 the while being undefended by counsel, Jeffreys, the judge, 

 helped the Crown lawyers to procure a verdict of guilty ; and 

 having succeeded, he had the indecency to mock the prisoners 

 after having sentenced them to death. 



The public of that day, not over-squeamish, were scandalised 

 at his proceedings, and many about the court made no secret of 

 their disgust for him ; but the man was necessary to such a 

 government as then existed, and the king distinguished him 

 with favour. When James II. succeeded his brother, the Chief 

 Justice found favour in the sight of the new king, to whom ho 

 was as necessary as he had been to Charles. When Monmouth's 

 rebellion had filled the West-country gaols with prisoners, there 

 was no fitter man than Jeffreys to clear them in the only way 

 the Crown meant them to be cleared. 



With an escort of soldiers Jeffreys Opened his commission at 

 Winchester, when the only trial connected with Monmouth's 

 rebellion was that of Alice, Lady Lisle, the widow of one of the 

 judges of Charles I. This lady had given shelter to two refugees 

 from the rbel army after the battle of Sedgemoor, and had denied 

 them, when Colonel Penruddock, one of the king's officers, came 

 to search her house. The men were found concealed on the 

 premises (the event furnishes a subject for one of the beautiful 

 frescoes on the walls of the entrance to the House of Commons); 

 she was arrested for having harboured known traitors, and was 

 indicted as a participator in their guilt. Her case was, that she 



did not know the men had been concerned in the rebellion ; that 

 she understood one of them, a minister, was merely persecuted 

 for non-conformity ; and she made this capital point herself 

 for no legal assistance was in those days allowed to prisoner& 

 on trial for treason that it was unreasonable to try her for com- 

 plicity in treason, when the person implicated as the traitor had 

 not been proved one, seeing that he had not been tried at all, 

 and that " peradventure he might afterwards be acquitted as 

 innocent after she had been condemned for harbouring him." 

 This very reasonable objection was overruled by the judge, who 

 himself examined adversely to the prisoner the witnesses for the 

 prosecution, and then summed up in violent language against 

 her. Some accounts, written at the time, report that the jury 

 three times refused to find a verdict, and that it was only in 

 consequence of the threats of the judge that they at length 

 found her guilty. It is but right to say that the account given 

 in the State Trials says nothing about this, though it gives 

 enough to show the disgraceful bias of the judge against the 

 prisoner, and the unjudicial part, and tha.t a violent one, which 

 ho played. He expressed the greatest surprise that the jury 

 should have hesitated so long about their verdict, adding, " If I 

 had been among you, and she had been my own mother, I should 

 have found her guilty." He then passed sentence, the sentence 

 of the law be it observed, not of the judge, " That you be con- 

 veyed hence to the place from whence you came, and from thence 

 you are to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where 

 your body is to be burnt alive till you be dead. And the Lord 

 have mercy on your soul." 



This horrible sentence to death by fire was changed by the 

 royal clemency save the mark to death by beheading, the 

 utmost King James could be induced to grant to a woman. 

 When James himself was sent into exile, an Act of Parliament 

 reversed the attainder of Lady Lisle, on the ground that " the 

 verdict was injuriously extorted by the menaces and violence, 

 and other illegal practices of George, Lord Jeffreys, Baron of 

 Wem, the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench." 



At Salisbury, the next town on the circuit, various punish- 

 ments, including flogging and imprisonment, were passed on rebel 

 sympathisers, who had wished "the cause" good speed; but there 

 were not any actual rebels for trial till the judge came to Dor- 

 chester, where the real campaign began. He charged the grand 

 jury to the effect, that he would punish with the extreme rigour 

 of the law, not only principals, but all aiders and abettors, all 

 who had encouraged traitors, whether by word or deed, and all 

 who had helped any of them to escape. Several hundreds of 

 " true bills " were found, when the meshes of the net were 

 declared to be so ample, and Jeffreys, alarmed for his own 

 convenience if so many prisoners were tried singly, announced 

 that those who would plead guilty '' should find him to be a 

 merciful judge ; but that those who put themselves on their trial, 

 if found guilty, would have very little time to live ; and, there- 

 fore, that such as were conscious they had no defence, had better 

 spare him the trouble of trying them." To show that he was in 

 earnest, he ordered thirteen out of twenty-nine of those first 

 convicted to be hanged in thirty-six hours after sentence, and 

 the remainder the next morning. To one man who objected to 

 the competency of a witness, he exclaimed, "Villain! rebel! 

 methinks I see thee already with a halter about thy neck ; " and 

 this poor man he ordered specially to be hanged first. Two 

 hundred and ninety-two were condemned to death at this town, 

 and seventy-four of them were actually hanged ; the others were 

 sold as slaves, and sent to the plantations in the West Indies. 

 Cruel floggings took place, in addition to these severities, on 

 those who had taken smaller part in the rebellion ; one poor 

 wretch was sentenced to be whipped through every market town 

 in the country for seven years, that is to say, once a fortnight 

 for seven years. 



At Exeter the first man convicted was sent to instant execu- 

 tion. Thirty-seven more suffered death at the same place, and 

 206 were condemned to whipping, slavery in the West Indies, 

 or imprisonment. At Taunton 500 prisoners awaited their trial, 

 and Jeffreys observed, in his address to the grand jury, that "it 

 would not be his fault if he did not purify the place." One 

 hundred and forty-three were ordered for execution, 284 were to 

 be sent to the plantations, and, in order that the rebellious county 

 might be duly warned for the future, Jeffreys ordered some of 

 the condemned men to be executed in the surrounding villages. 

 At Wells the scenes enacted at Taunton were repeated with 



