BRITAIN. 



amcnt 



Ived. 



i79. 



. against tlie king's ministers, they examined 

 Buckingham and Arlington at their bar, they com- 

 plained repeatedly against Lauderdale, tlicy pre- 

 pared to impeach Danby, and supp! (used 

 almost as often as they were asked. The king, on 

 the other hand, endeavoured to oppose the sentiment:; 

 of liberty, by setting on foot a bill in the House of 

 Lords, for imposing the oath of non-resistance on 

 members of parliament, and on all in public stations. 

 But after it was carried through the lords, Charles 

 found he could not venture it in the commons. 



In vain Charles hoped, by giving his brother's 

 d'lughter in marriage to the Prince of Orange, to re- 

 cover th.- popularity which lie and his brother had 

 lost. Wh'le, the minds of men were agitated by the 

 obvious designs of Charles, by abhorrence at the 

 bigotry of the Duke, and by a general consternation 

 for the siK'ty of the Protestant religion, the rumour 

 of a Popish plot, for th,> universal massacre of the 

 Protestants, gained a ready and too facile belief. 

 The reporters of this design were obscure persons. 

 Kirby, a chemist ; Tong, a weak credulous cler- 

 gyman ; and Titus Dates, likewise a clergyman, 

 but one of the most abandoned of miscreants, de- 

 posed to an account of a plot formed among the 

 Papists, for burning London, putting the Protes- 

 tants to death, and assassinating the king and his 

 brother. By making the king an object of the 

 pretended assassination, the suspicion was prevented 

 of its having been forged by the contrivance ot the 

 disaffected. The alarm spread instantly over the na- 

 tion ; accident after accident, arising in a manner un- 

 paralleled in history, concurred to maintain the delu- 

 sion ; letters were seized, which discovered the Duke 

 of York's correspondence with France, against the 

 religion and interests of his country ; Danby's cor- 

 respondence was also detected, which involved Charles 

 in similar disgrace. Above all, the murder of God- 

 frey, who, in his office of magistrate, had made pub- 

 lic the plot, made every Protestant imagine he felt 

 the dagger at his throat. 



This plot was greedily adopted as an engine against 

 the court, by the popular party ; more, it may be be- 

 lieved, from blind credulity, than from deliberate in- 

 justice ; yet the proceedings that were founded upon 

 it were truly disgraceful. Coleman, father Ireland, 

 Grove, Pickering, and other innocent men, suffered 

 death for the supposed conspiracy, on the contradic- 

 tory testimony of incredible witnesses, and after trials 

 in which the judge and juries seemed to be the abet- 

 tors of perjury. For two years, the Protestant cre- 

 dulity and vengeance were satiated from time to time 

 with such legal murders, till the execution of the ve- 

 nerable Lord Straflord called forth some pity and re- 

 morse in the public mind. In the midst of these fu- 

 rious proceedings, the parliament, which had sat for 

 17 years, was dissolved. The succeeding one was 

 actuated by the same immeasurable hatred of Popery 

 on the one hand, which throws so much discredit on 



their judgment and charity ; and, on the other hand, Uri; 



by a jealousy of the king' 1 , power, and a regard to i 



the cause of civil liberty, which, though debased by '''"*"!.' 



Kineetion with baser prejudices in religion, was 

 ultimately conducive to the greatest public good. It is 

 to this parliament that we are indebted for theHabeat j.^^ 

 Corpus act, the moat important barrier that was ever Co , fi ',j, wt 

 raised against the personal oppression of the subject pasjtd, 

 in a mod -m or ancient commonwealth. The stand- 

 ing army, and the king's guards, were in the same 

 session voted to be illegal. But the inefficacy of mere 

 laws in defence of the subject, when opposed to un- 

 principled administrations, had been so sensibly f. It, 

 that the commons justly deemed their work incom- 

 plete, unless the Duke of York were excluded Irpm 

 the succession to the crown. A bill, therefore, for 

 the purpose of excluding him VT88 prepared, and (>. 

 ed the House of Commons ; but being vigorously 

 resisted by the court, by the church, and by the To- 

 ries, it was lost in the House of Lords. The restric- 

 tions offered by the king to be put upon a Popish 

 successor, are supposed to have been among the most 

 powerful of those means to which he was indebted 

 for success in opposing the bill. During these agi- 

 tations, the Duke of York, at the king's desire, had 

 retired to Brussels ; but an indisposition of the king's 

 brought him back to England, to be ready in case 

 of any similar accident, to assert his right to the 

 throne. After prevailing upon Charles to disgrace 

 his natural son, the Duke of Monmouth, who had 

 become exceedingly popular, James retired to Scot- 

 land, under pretence of quieting the apprehensions of 

 the English nation, but in reality to strengthen his 

 interests in that part of the kingdom. This seces- 

 sion served still more to inflame the country party, 

 who were strongly attached to Monmouth, and were 

 resolved to support him against the Duke of York. 



The milder administration in Scotland, which had 

 taken place under Tweedale and Murray, was of short 

 continuance. Lauderdale, at first the friend and as- Proceed, 

 sociate in government of those Scottish patriots, and m S s '" 

 a favourer of the Presbyterians, abandoned the inter- 

 ests of his country and humanity, and his administra- 

 tion relapsed into the same tyranny from which he 

 had relieved it. The object of the court in sanction- 

 ing his oppressions, was to make Scotland, in its state 

 of servitude, an instrument to accomplish the servi- 

 tude of England ; and it was an article in Charles's 

 second treaty with the French monarch, to which 

 Lauderdale was privy, Jiat the Scotch army was to 

 be brought to co-operate with the French troops for 

 the establishment of Charles's absolute power, hi 

 proportion as the severities of government increased, 

 the field and armed conventicles of the Scottish Pres- 

 byterians grew more numerous. Yet it was not un- 

 til these severities had been carried to the last ex- 

 treme, it was not until the letters of intercommuning * 

 had been issued, that law-burrows f had been taken, 

 out by the king against his whole subjects ; and that 



* Letters of intercommuning, were writs of outlawry against those who failed to appear at the council, and confess their 

 guilt in attending conventicles. At a moderate computation, IT, 000 persons of either sex were objects of persecution on this 

 charge. 



f-An individual, by an application on oath, may obtain, by the Scotch law, a law-burrows, corresponding nearly to swear- 

 ing the peace against anj one, a process, which had hitherto been only applicable to individuals ; a government swearing th 

 peace against its subjects, was a new spectacle. By these writs, the persons were bound, under penalty of being outlawed, to 

 do what it was not in their power, to prevent conventicles. 



