The most vindictive inhumanities were practised by government on the unfortunate prisoners taken at Sedge more. Immediately after the battle, Feversham hanged twenty, and was proceeding in his executions, when the bishop of Bath and Wells informed him that those unhappy men were now by law entitled to a trial, and that tliLir execution was absolute murder. Kirke, who hung up his victims with the same avidity, when he saw the feet of the dying shake, used to say they should have music to their dancing, and ordered his trumpets to sound, and his drums to strike up. Jeffreys, (now ennobled,) was the judge who tried the prisoners in the western circuit. .This atrocious man was not satisfied with the sacrifice of the principals, but charged the juries also to search out the alders and abettors of the rebellion ; and those who, in compassion to the wretched fugitives, had let them be hid in their houses, were denounced as such. It is horrible to relate, that two women, Lady Lisle and Mrs Gaunt, were sentenced to be burnt alive literally, for such acts of compassion. James complained of the unpopularity which Kirke and Jeffreys had drawn upon his name ; but he complained in the days of his misfor tunes, and such cruelties seem to have been but too congenial to the nature of him, who could jocularly style the bloody career of his judge, "Jeffreys' campaign." At the next session of parliament, in November, James assumed a still higher tone of language than he had hitherto used. He spoke openly of the necessity for a larger standing army, and for enabling popish officers to serve without taking the test. Lost as the public mind seemed to be to every feeling for civil liberty, the fears for religion, roused by this indication of the king's intentions, with respect to the Catholics, created some symptoms of independence in a parliament, the most submissive which had sat for 100 years. The commons ventured to address the king, on the necessity of quiet ing the fears of the people on the subject of religion, and to leave the extent of the supply unsettled till they should be satisfied as to the tests. The Lords were pre paring to imitate their example ; and a motion proposed by Compton, bishop of London, actually prevailed, that a day should be fixed for taking the king's speech into consideration ; a motion, by which it was understood, that the king's exercise of the dispensing power should be examined by the peers. But James, alarmed at the first though slight symptoms of resistance, prorogued the parliament, after it had sat but 11 days, and never assembled it again. He soon after dismissed many of his servants and officers, who had voted against his measures. After the prorogation of parliament, he es tablished and regulated a perpetual camp at Hounslow Heath, under pretence of discipline and national defence, but, in reality, with a view to overawe the metropolis.
After the suppression of Monmouth's rebellion and the dismission of parliament, James seems to have been so elated with his success, in establishing arbitrary pow er, that lie proceeded without fear or caution in the se cond great object of his views, the establishMent of the Catholic religion. His exercise of the power of dispens ing with the test, that security which all Protestants be lieved to be the chief barrier against the introduction of popery, was systematically employed to throw every place of honour and emolument under government into the hands of Catholics; and besides offering the lure of offices, the king was active and zealous in making con verts. Sunderland, ever versatile and unprincipled, continued in favour by becoming a convert to the king's religion ; but Rochester and Clarendon, James's own brothers-in-law, though sufficiently subservient to his arbitrary views in civil government, were dismissed from office for their obstinacy in religion. Four Catholic Lords, Fowls, Arundel, Dover, and Bellasis, were ad mitted in.o the Privy council, and these, with Father Petre, the queen's confessor, and James himself, formed a Catholic cabal of seven, NV ho had the whole adminis tration of government.
In Ireland the mask was more completely thrown off, where Talbot, earl of Tyrconnel, in his fury for the Catholic cause, broke the Protestant officers, disbanded the soldiers, and disarmed all the natives of that faith, let loose a Popish banditti to prey upon the inhabitants, and exposed the kingdom to all the terrors of another massacre. The church was now alarmed; and that
spirit of resistance which lay dormant, while the most sacred civil rights of the subject were suffering viola tion,* was awakened by the common fear of Popery, which drove the Tories and High Churchmen to coa lesce, in their common danger, with the Whigs. The common resentment grew still stronger, when James, in violation of established law, issued a neW commission, by which seven commissioners were invested with un limited authority over the whole church of England. By this commission, a sentence of suspension was passed against Sharpe, a clergyman, for declaiming against Popery, and against the Bishop of London for having refused to suspend him,—a sentence which exasperated every true Protestant in the kingdom. Not contented with his suspending power in particular instances, the king issued a proclamation for a general suspension of all penal laws against non-conformity ; an act of libe rality, abstractly considered, but disgraced by the views of the tyrant who passed it. This was followed by a still more incautious display of his zeal in sending the Earl of Castlenktine as his Envoy to the Pope, for the pur pose of restoring the church of England to the bosom of the ancient communion, by a solemn reception of the Pope's nuncio at NVindsor, and of the regular Popish clergy in the habits of their order at court, and by forcing the universities to receive some of his most worthless proselytes to Popery into their benefices.
Ills dispute with the church was brought to a crisis, by his enjoining a second declaration of indulgence, which he ordered to be read by the clergy in all the churches. The clergy, who were known to disapprove of the king's illegal assumption of the dispensing power, almost universally refused obedience to this edict ; and six prelates, Lloyd, bishop of St Asaph, Ken or Bath and Wells, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chi chester, White of Peterborough, and Trclawney of Bristol, concerted with the primate Sanscroft, a petition against the order, to the king. Though the petition (unexceptionable in itself) was privately dOivered, they were summoned to appear before the council ; and on refusing to find bail, were committed for sedition to the Tower. Never was the mind of the people so affect ed, as when they beheld those fathers of the church conveyed to their imprisonment. They were taken by water, to prevent the emotion which the sight of them might create in the city ; but the people shouted when they perceived them at a distance ; they threw them selves with reverence on the ground as they passed ; and the very soldiers who were their guard, knelt and implored the blessing of their prisoners. Their trial for sedition, in framing the petition, came on in the King's Bench. They were attended thither by a train of nobles and respectable commoners. The first coon scl at the bar pleading for them, skewed that they felt the day and the cause to be the greatest for their coun try and themselves in which they should ever be destined to display their abilities—and the audience within and without—all London—all the nation—expected the decision with an awful and deep anxiety. The jury were enclosed all night, and in the morning gave a ver dict for the prisoners. It was received with a shout of joy in the court ; and almost in an instant, a thousand shouts were returned from all parts of London. These were continued from village to village, till they reached the army encamped on Hounslow Heath, which was seized with the sympathetic transport. The king was in lord Feversham's tent, and hearing the camp in an uproar, sent Feversham to enquire into the cause. l lc returned and said, it was nothing but the joy of the sol diers for the discharge of the bishops. " And do you call that nothing !" said the king. " But so much the worse for them." A few days before the acquittal of the bishops, the queen. was delivered of a son,—an event of joy to the king and Papists, and of present mortification to the people, who looked for eventual release from tyranny by the succession of the prince of Orange, but which, by rendering them more impatient of the yoke, accelerated that deliverance which they sought at their own hands.