26th of March, the same day that there was a vote in [A. D. 1681.] favour of the Exclusion Bill. Charles thereupon formed his determination forthwith to dissolve the parliament, but he kept it a profound secret till the very moment it was to be executed. The Commons having complained of the inconvenience of the Convocation house where they met, the public theatre was fitted up for them, and during this day the King repeatedly came to the spot, and himself gave directions as to the most convenient manner of carrying on the works. During the Sunday he made "the wonderful accommodation he was providing for his faithful Commons" the frequent subject of his discourse, -and every thing indicated a protracted session. On the Monday morning the King came to the House of Lords, as he was wont, in a sedan chair, the crown being secretly carried between his feet. Another chair followed with the curtains drawn, supposed to contain the Lord in waiting. The lid being raised, it was found stuffed with the King's robes. But here a formidable difficulty arose, for they were found to be by mistake the robes of the order of the Garter. So the chair was sent back again for the parliamentary robes, and a member of the House of Lords, who wished to escape from the room to tell what he had seen, was locked up till the chair returned. The King having instantly thrown the proper robes over him, and taken his seat on the throne in the House of Lords, the Black Rod was sent for the Commons, and found them listening in a very careless manner to some tedious remarks of Sir William Jones, an old lawyer, on the Lord Chancellor's "Accord, temp. Ed. III." Going up to the bar of the [A.D. 1681.] House of Lords, there they saw the King with the crown on his head, and heard him say, My Lords and Gentlemen,-all the world may see we are not like to have a good end when the divisions at the beginning are such. Therefore, my Lord Chancellor, do as I have commanded you." Lord Chancellor." My Lords and Gentlemen, his Majesty has commanded me to say that it is his Majesty's royal will and pleasure that this parliament be dissolved, and this parliament is accordingly dissolved."* 66 Charles instantly stepped into his carriage and set off at full speed for Windsor. Shaftesbury, when he had recovered his breath, talked of sitting for the despatch of business in spite of the dissolution, called on his friends not to separate, and sent several messengers to the Commons, entreating them to wait as the Lords were still sitting. But the members of the popular party in both Houses gradually withdrew; Shaftesbury, almost deserted, went out into the streets, where he saw a general dispersion; in a few hours he found Oxford in its state of wonted torpidity, and, by way of relief to his troubled thoughts, he himself hurried off for London.† * 4 Parl. Hist. 1339. Examen, 104. + He had been lodged in Baliol College, to which he presented a magnificent piece of plate as a mark of his gratitude.—Rawleigh Redivivus, Part II. 101. CHAPTER XC. CONCLUSION OF THE LIFE OF LORD SHAFTESBURY. FOR some time after his arrival in London, Shaftesbury flattered himself that the dissolution of the parliament at Oxford, like former violent dissolutions, would aggravate the [APRIL, 1681.] public discontent; but the victory of his opponents was complete, and Charles was enabled from henceforth for the rest of his reign to rule by prerogative, to carry into execution all his plans,-and, though the victim he most panted for escaped him, to execute a bloody revenge upon others who had incurred his resentment. There remained a most formidable popular party, and it was fortunate for the King that neither pecuniary difficulties nor the state of public affairs imposed upon him such a necessity for calling a parliament as, forty years before, had been felt by his father on the Scottish invasion; but there can be no doubt that there was now a considerable reaction in his favour, which arose partly from the general fickleness of the public mind, partly from Shaftesbury's dangerous character and designs being more clearly developed, partly from the proffered concessions to guard against a Popish succession; but, above all, from the discredit into which the Popish Plot had fallen, and the desire of mankind to blame others for their own credulity and folly. Shaftesbury entrenched himself in the city of London, but saw that he would soon be assailed there. The government began the celebration of their triumph with the conviction and execution of Fitzharris, in spite of the resolution of the House of Commons, that, after their impeachment of him, his trial by the course of the common law would be a high breach of their privileges.* Still more alarming was the fate of COLLEGE, "the Protestant Joiner," who, after a bill of indictment against him had been thrown out by a Middlesex grand jury, was carried down into Oxfordshire, under pretence [A. D. 1681.] that he had been guilty of an overt act of treason in that county, by going armed to the parliament, and was there found guilty and put to death, although nothing was satisfactorily proved against him, except that he was a turbulent demagogue, who had gained great distinction by bawling out "No Popery!"† But the eyes of England and of all Europe were turned to the fate of the man who had so long held a divided sway with his Sovereign, and by whose destruction it was hoped that all further opposition to the plans of the Court would for ever cease. Early in the morning of the 2d of July, 1681, under a warrant from the Secretary of State, the Earl of Shaftesbury was apprehended at Thanet House, in Aldersgate Street, on + Ibid., 559. *8 St. Tr. 243. a charge of high treason, his papers were seized, and he was carried, under a military escort, to be examined before the Council at Whitehall. Arriving there, he found the Council assembled, and the King had the bad taste to be present, having come from Windsor that morning for the pleasure of seeing his old friend and arch enemy in custody on a capital charge. Certain depositions were read against him made by Irish witnesses, who were to have been examined against the Duke of York and the Queen, and who, accusing Shaftesbury of having suborned them, swore that he had entered into a conspiracy with them, in case he should be worsted in the parliament at Oxford, to carry his measures by an open insurrection, and that he had used many violent and threatening expressions against the King. The prisoner treated this charge with the utmost scorn, desiring to be confronted with the witnesses; and observing that, if he really could treat of such matters with such persons, he was fitter for Bedlam than the Tower. Among his papers was found the draft of an association rather of a dangerous nature; but it was not in his handwriting, and there was nothing to show that he had ever perused it. Upon such evidence he could not be fairly convicted; but, in the hope of the case being strengthened, or of a partial [A.D. 1681.] tribunal, he was committed to take his trial. In James's Memoirs* it is said, that his boldness forsook him when the warrant for his commitment was signed, and that the very rabble hooted him on his way to the Tower. Martyn asserts, with much more probability, that he remained undaunted; that, as he was conducted to prison, he was saluted by vast multitudes with wishes and prayers for his prosperity; and that one among the rest having cried out, "God bless your Lordship! and deliver you from your enemies," he replied, with a smile, "I thank you, sir, but I have nothing to fear: they have much, therefore pray God to deliver them from me." A few days after, one of the Popish Lords whom he had been instrumental in sending to the Tower, affecting great surprise to find him among them, he coolly an swered, “that he had been lately indisposed with an ague, and was come to take some Jesuits' powder."+ It seems certain, however, that, while in the Tower, he offered to expatriate himself, and to spend the remainder of his days in Carolina, a colony which he had assisted to settle, and where he had property, but the King declared " he should be tried by his Peers." The difficulty of the government was to get a bill of indictment found against him by a grand jury. Parliament not sitting, and there being a determination that a parliament should never sit again, this was the only mode of commencing the prosecution. But the first step being gained, all the rest of the process would have been most easy; for the *Vol. i. 713. + Life, by Martyn, ii. 288. Life and Death of Earl of Shaftesbury, published immediately after his death.-Harl. Misc. The aristocratic constitution for this colony was drawn up at his request by Mr. Locke.-Locke's Works, x. 175. indictment being removed before the Court of the Lord High Steward, consisting of Peers selected by the King,-his subsequent trial would have been mere matter of form,-as much as after sentence the warrant to behead him. All regard to truth and justice being set aside, the clever course would have been for the witnesses to have sworn to an overt act of treason in some county where there was a manageable jury; but they had not been properly drilled upon this point, and they represented all the treasonable consults to have taken place [A.D. 1681.] in Thanet House, in the city of London. By a London grand jury alone, therefore, could the bill of indictment be found and London was still in the power of the old liberal corporation. The grand jury was to be summoned by the Sheriffs, and the Sheriffs were Whigs. There were old Bailey Sessions held on the 7th of July, at which regularly the indictment ought to have been preferred; but the AttorneyGeneral waited in the hope of better Sheriffs. Shute and Pilkington, the next couple, were "Whigs and something more.” The trial being delayed, Shaftesbury repeatedly applied by counsel at the Old Bailey and Hicks's Hall, that, according to his own HABEAS CORPUS ACT, he might be bailed; but on the suggestion that the Tower was not under the jurisdiction of the Court, and other frivolous excuses, the application, to which he was clearly entitled, was refused. He prepared an indictment against the Justice who had taken the depositions on which he was committed, and against several of the witnesses for a conspiracy to convict him by perjury; but Pemberton, and the other Judges who wished to please the King, would not suffer the indictment to be submitted to a grand jury. In the mean time every exertion was made to poison the public mind, and to prejudice against the accused those who were to decide upon his fate. Innumerable pamphlets issued from the press, denouncing him as "the great agitator, without whose baleful presence all resistance to sound principles in church and state would be at an end." The pulpits rang with the dangers to true religion from the non-conformists, and he was reviled by name as "the Apostle of Schism." The Catholics very excusably joined loudly in the cry against him, and called him "the Man of Sin." Political vituperators branded him as "Mephistophiles," "the Fiend," and " Alderman Shiftsbury." For the purpose of lowering his reputation, a story was revived of his having boasted that he might have been King of Poland when John Sobieski was elected; and a whimsical Narrative was published, giving an account of his election, under the name of "Count Tapsky," which in one sense applied to an operation performed on his side, in conse[A. D. 1681.] quence of the abscess formed there from his wound, and in another to his towering genius, leading him to penetrate the firmament and to touch the stars. But the grand engine which the Court hoped would turn the full flood of public indignation against him was the poetry of Dryden. On the 17th of November, 1681, exactly one week before the bill of indictment was to be prepared against him at the Old Bailey, came out " ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL,' "* the most lively, the most entertaining, the most poetical, the most captivating personal satire ever written. It had the greatest sale of any publication issuing from the press in England down to the end of the reign of Queen Anne, except the Sermon for which Dr. Sacheverell was impeached.† In a few months it had gone through seven large editions, and in a few hours the character of Achitophel was in the mouth of every one. Shadwell and Settle published answers, but of very inferior merit. High hopes were expressed that the witnesses would gain credit with the grand jury against a man so degraded; but such reasoners knew little of faction; for the more Shaftesbury was assailed, the more resolutely did his admirers adhere to him, and they now regarded him with respect, affection, and tenderness, as a martyr in their cause. The 24th of November was the critical day, and when it dawned there seemed a strong probability to many that the STATE TRIALS would be ornamented with " an account of the conviction of Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury for high treason, and of his gallant behaviour on the scaffold." The two Chief Justices, Pemberton and North, presided at the Old Bailey, both devoted tools of the government. The former charged the Grand Jury, and, instead of telling them "that [A.D. 1681.] though the proceeding was ex parte, and not conclusive, a case must be made out against the prisoner, which, if not answered, would be sufficient to convict him of high treason," said, "That which is referred to you is, to consider whether, upon the evidence given to you, there be any reason or ground for the King to call this person to an account. You are not to judge the person; for the honour of the King and the decency of the matter it is not thought fit by the law that persons should be accused and indicted where there is no colour or ground for it: where there is no kind of suspicion of a crime, nor reason to believe that the thing can be proved, it is not for the King's honour to call men to an account; therefore, you are to inquire whether what you hear be any cause or reason for the King to put the party to answer it." The cunning Judge knew well that " BILLA VERA" would have been Shaftesbury's death-warrant. The Attorney-General made the extraordinary application that the witnesses for the Crown might be examined in open Court-so that the Grand Jury might be overawed by the authority of the Judges. *Although Dryden has the merit of the ingenious parallel between Jewish and English history, he was not the first to fix this name on Shaftesbury. On the 9th of July, 1681, exactly a week after his arrest,- -came out a doggerel poem against him, entitled, “The Badger in the Fox-trap," containing these lines: "Besides my titles are as numerous, As all my actions various, still, and humorous; On the authority of Dr. Johnson's father, who was a bookseller.-See Life of Dryden, in the "Lives of the Poets." |