The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

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The first division was on the question whether secondary evidence
of what Goodman could have proved should be admitted. On this
occasion Burnet closed the debate by a powerful speech which none
of the Tory orators could undertake to answer without
premeditation. A hundred and twenty-six lords were present, a
number unprecedented in our history. There were seventy-three
Contents, and fifty-three Not Contents. Thirty-six of the
minority protested against the decision of the House.768

The next great trial of strength was on the question whether the
bill should be read a second time. The debate was diversified by
a curious episode. Monmouth, in a vehement declamation, threw
some severe and well merited reflections on the memory of the
late Lord Jeffreys. The title and part of the ill gotten wealth
of Jeffreys had descended to his son, a dissolute lad, who had
lately come of age, and who was then sitting in the House. The
young man fired at hearing his father reviled. The House was
forced to interfere, and to make both the disputants promise that
the matter should go no further. On this day a hundred and
twenty-eight peers were present. The second reading was carried
by seventy-three to fifty-five; and forty-nine of the fifty-five
protested.769

It was now thought by many that Fenwick's courage would give way.
It was known that he was very unwilling to die. Hitherto he might
have flattered himself with hopes that the bill would miscarry.
But now that it had passed one House, and seemed certain to pass
the other, it was probable that he would save himself by
disclosing all that he knew. He was again put to the bar and
interrogated. He refused to answer, on the ground that his
answers might be used against him by the Crown at the Old Bailey.
He was assured that the House would protect him; but he pretended
that this assurance was not sufficient; the House was not always
sitting; he might be brought to trial during a recess, and hanged
before their Lordships met again. The royal word alone, he said,
would be a complete guarantee. The Peers ordered him to be
removed, and immediately resolved that Wharton should go to
Kensington, and should entreat His Majesty to give the pledge
which the prisoner required. Wharton hastened to Kensington, and
hastened back with a gracious answer. Fenwick was again placed at
the bar. The royal word, he was told, had been passed that
nothing which he might say there should be used against him in
any other place. Still he made difficulties. He might confess all
that he knew, and yet might be told that he was still keeping
something back. In short, he would say nothing till he had a
pardon. He was then, for the last time, solemnly cautioned from
the Woolsack. He was assured that, if he would deal ingenuously
with the Lords, they would be intercessors for him at the foot of
the throne, and that their intercession would not be
unsuccessful. If he continued obstinate, they would proceed with
the bill. A short interval was allowed him for consideration; and
he was then required to give his final answer. "I have given it,"
he said; "I have no security. "If I had, I should be glad to
satisfy the House." He was then carried back to his cell; and the
Peers separated, having sate far into the night.770

At noon they met again. The third reading was moved. Tenison
spoke for the bill with more ability than was expected from him,
and Monmouth with as much sharpness as in the previous debates.
But Devonshire declared that he could go no further. He had hoped
that fear would induce Fenwick to make a frank confession; that
hope was at an end; the question now was simply whether this man
should be put to death by an Act of Parliament; and to that
question Devonshire said that he must answer, "Not Content." It
is not easy to understand on what principle he can have thought
himself justified in threatening to do what he did not think
himself justified in doing. He was, however, followed by Dorset,
Ormond, Pembroke, and two or three others. Devonshire, in the
name of his little party, and Rochester, in the name of the
Tories, offered to waive all objections to the mode of
proceeding, if the penalty were reduced from death to perpetual
imprisonment. But the majority, though weakened by the defection
of some considerable men, was still a majority, and would hear of
no terms of compromise. The third reading was carried by only
sixty-eight votes to sixty-one. Fifty-three Lords recorded their
dissent; and forty-one subscribed a protest, in which the
arguments against the bill were ably summed up.771 The peers whom
Fenwick had accused took different sides. Marlborough steadily
voted with the majority, and induced Prince George to do the
same. Godolphin as steadily voted with the minority, but, with
characteristic wariness, abstained from giving any reasons for
his votes. No part of his life warrants us in ascribing his
conduct to any exalted motive. It is probable that, having been
driven from office by the Whigs and forced to take refuge among
the Tories, he thought it advisable to go with his party.772

As soon as the bill had been read a third time, the attention of
the Peers was called to a matter which deeply concerned the
honour of their order. Lady Mary Fenwick had been, not
unnaturally, moved to the highest resentment by the conduct of
Monmouth. He had, after professing a great desire to save her
husband, suddenly turned round, and become the most merciless of
her husband's persecutors; and all this solely because the
unfortunate prisoner would not suffer himself to be used as an
instrument for the accomplishing of a wild scheme of mischief.
She might be excused for thinking that revenge would be sweet. In
her rage she showed to her kinsman the Earl of Carlisle the
papers which she had received from the Duchess of Norfolk.
Carlisle brought the subject before the Lords. The papers were
produced. Lady Mary declared that she had received them from the
Duchess. The Duchess declared that she had received them from
Monmouth. Elizabeth Lawson confirmed the evidence of her two
friends. All the bitter things which the petulant Earl had said
about William were repeated. The rage of both the great factions
broke forth with ungovernable violence. The Whigs were
exasperated by discovering that Monmouth had been secretly
labouring to bring to shame and ruin two eminent men with whose
reputation the reputation of the whole party was bound up. The
Tories accused him of dealing treacherously and cruelly by the
prisoner and the prisoner's wife. Both among the Whigs and among
the Tories Monmouth had, by his sneers and invectives, made
numerous personal enemies, whom fear of his wit and of his sword
had hitherto kept in awe.773 All these enemies were now
openmouthed against him. There was great curiosity to know what
he would be able to say in his defence. His eloquence, the
correspondent of the States General wrote, had often annoyed
others. He would now want it all to protect himself.774 That
eloquence indeed was of a kind much better suited to attack than
to defence. Monmouth spoke near three hours in a confused and
rambling manner, boasted extravagantly of his services and
sacrifices, told the House that he had borne a great part in the
Revolution, that he had made four voyages to Holland in the evil
times, that he had since refused great places, that he had always
held lucre in contempt. "I," he said, turning significantly to
Nottingham, "have bought no great estate; I have built no palace; I am twenty
thousand pounds poorer than when I entered public
life. My old hereditary mansion is ready to fall about my ears.
Who that remembers what I have done and suffered for His Majesty
will believe that I would speak disrespectfully of him?" He
solemnly declared,--and this was the most serious of the many
serious faults of his long and unquiet life,--that he had nothing
to do with the papers which had caused so much scandal. The
Papists, he said, hated him; they had laid a scheme to ruin him;
his ungrateful kinswoman had consented to be their implement, and
had requited the strenuous efforts which he had made in defence
of her honour by trying to blast his. When he concluded there was
a long silence. He asked whether their Lordships wished him to
withdraw. Then Leeds, to whom he had once professed a strong
attachment, but whom he had deserted with characteristic
inconstancy and assailed with characteristic petulance, seized
the opportunity of revenging himself. "It is quite unnecessary,"
the shrewd old statesman said, "that the noble Earl should
withdraw at present. The question which we have now to decide is
merely whether these papers do or do not deserve our censure. Who
wrote them is a question which may be considered hereafter." It
was then moved and unanimously resolved that the papers were
scandalous, and that the author had been guilty of a high crime
and misdemeanour. Monmouth himself was, by these dexterous
tactics, forced to join in condemning his own compositions.775
Then the House proceeded to consider the charge against him. The
character of his cousin the Duchess did not stand high; but her
testimony was confirmed both by direct and by circumstantial
evidence. Her husband said, with sour pleasantry, that he gave
entire faith to what she had deposed. "My Lord Monmouth thought
her good enough to be wife to me; and, if she is good enough to
be wife to me, I am sure that she is good enough to be a witness
against him." In a House of near eighty peers only eight or ten
seemed inclined to show any favour to Monmouth. He was pronounced
guilty of the act of which he had, in the most solemn manner,
protested that he was innocent; he was sent to the Tower; he was
turned out of all his places; and his name was struck out of the
Council Book.776 It might well have been thought that the ruin of
his fame and of his fortunes was irreparable. But there was about
his nature an elasticity which nothing could subdue. In his
prison, indeed, he was as violent as a falcon just caged, and
would, if he had been long detained, have died of mere
impatience. His only solace was to contrive wild and romantic
schemes for extricating himself from his difficulties and
avenging himself on his enemies. When he regained his liberty, he
stood alone in the world, a dishonoured man, more hated by the
Whigs than any Tory, and by the Tories than any Whig, and reduced
to such poverty that he talked of retiring to the country, living
like a farmer, and putting his Countess into the dairy to churn
and to make cheeses. Yet even after this fall, that mounting
spirit rose again, and rose higher than ever. When he next
appeared before the world, he had inherited the earldom of the
head of his family; he had ceased to be called by the tarnished
name of Monmouth; and he soon added new lustre to the name of
Peterborough. He was still all air and fire. His ready wit and
his dauntless courage made him formidable; some amiable qualities
which contrasted strangely with his vices, and some great
exploits of which the effect was heightened by the careless
levity with which they were performed, made him popular; and his
countrymen were willing to forget that a hero of whose
achievements they were proud, and who was not more distinguished
by parts and valour than by courtesy and generosity, had stooped
to tricks worthy of the pillory.

It is interesting and instructive to compare the fate of
Shrewsbury with the fate of Peterborough. The honour of
Shrewsbury was safe. He had been triumphantly acquitted of the
charges contained in Fenwick's confession. He was soon afterwards
still more triumphantly acquitted of a still more odious charge.
A wretched spy named Matthew Smith, who thought that he had not
been sufficiently rewarded, and was bent on being revenged,
affirmed that Shrewsbury had received early information of the
Assassination Plot, but had suppressed that information, and had
taken no measures to prevent the conspirators from accomplishing
their design. That this was a foul calumny no person who has
examined the evidence can doubt. The King declared that he could
himself prove his minister's innocence; and the Peers, after
examining Smith, pronounced the accusation unfounded. Shrewsbury
was cleared as far as it was in the power of the Crown and of the
Parliament to clear him. He had power and wealth, the favour of
the King and the favour of the people. No man had a greater
number of devoted friends. He was the idol of the Whigs; yet he
was not personally disliked by the Tories. It should seem that
his situation was one which Peterborough might well have envied.
But happiness and misery are from within. Peterborough had one of
those minds of which the deepest wounds heal and leave no scar.
Shrewsbury had one of those minds in which the slightest scratch
may fester to the death. He had been publicly accused of
corresponding with Saint Germains; and, though King, Lords and
Commons had pronounced him innocent, his conscience told him that
he was guilty. The praises which he knew that he had not deserved
sounded to him like reproaches. He never regained his lost peace
of mind. He left office; but one cruel recollection accompanied
him into retirement. He left England; but one cruel recollection
pursued him over the Alps and the Apennines. On a memorable day,
indeed, big with the fate of his country, he again, after many
inactive and inglorious years, stood forth the Shrewsbury of
1688. Scarcely any thing in history is more melancholy than that
late and solitary gleam, lighting up the close of a life which
had dawned so splendidly, and which had so early become
hopelessly troubled and gloomy.

On the day on which the Lords passed the Bill of Attainder, they
adjourned over the Christmas holidays. The fate of Fenwick
consequently remained during more than a fortnight in suspense.
In the interval plans of escape were formed; and it was thought
necessary to place a strong military guard round Newgate.777 Some
Jacobites knew William so little as to send him anonymous
letters, threatening that he should be shot or stabbed if he
dared to touch a hair of the prisoner's head.778 On the morning
of the eleventh of January he passed the bill. He at the same
time passed a bill which authorised the government to detain
Bernardi and some other conspirators in custody during twelve
months. On the evening of that day a deeply mournful event was
the talk of all London. The Countess of Aylesbury had watched
with intense anxiety the proceedings against Sir John. Her lord
had been as deep as Sir John in treason, was, like Sir John, in
confinement, and had, like Sir John, been a party to Goodman's
flight. She had learned with dismay that there was a method by
which a criminal who was beyond the reach of the ordinary law
might be punished. Her terror had increased at every stage in the
progress of the Bill of Attainder. On the day on which the royal
assent was to be given, her agitation became greater than her
frame could support. When she heard the sound of the guns which
announced that the King was on his way to Westminster, she fell
into fits, and died in a few hours.779

Even after the bill had become law, strenuous efforts were made
to save Fenwick. His wife threw herself at William's feet, and
offered him a petition. He took the petition, and said, very
gently, that it should be considered, but that the matter was one
of public concern, and that he must deliberate with his ministers
before he decided.780 She then addressed herself to the Lords.
She told them that her husband had not expected his doom, that he
had not had time to prepare himself for death, that he had not,
during his long imprisonment, seen a divine. They were easily
induced to request that he might be respited for a week. A
respite was granted; but, forty-eight hours before it expired,
Lady Mary presented to the Lords another petition, imploring them
to intercede with the King that her husband's punishment might be
commuted to banishment. The House was taken by surprise; and a
motion to adjourn was with difficulty carried by two votes.781 On
the morrow, the last day of Fenwick's life, a similar petition
was presented to the Commons. But the Whig leaders were on their
guard; the attendance was full; and a motion for reading the
Orders of the Day was carried by a hundred and fifty-two to a
hundred and seven.782 In truth, neither branch of the legislature
could, without condemning itself, request William to spare
Fenwick's life. Jurymen, who have, in the discharge of a painful
duty, pronounced a culprit guilty, may, with perfect consistency,
recommend him to the favourable consideration of the Crown. But
the Houses ought not to have passed the Bill of Attainder unless
they were convinced, not merely that Sir John had committed high
treason, but also that he could not, without serious danger to
the Commonwealth, be suffered to live. He could not be at once a
proper object of such a bill and a proper object of the royal
mercy.

On the twenty-eighth of January the execution took place. In
compliment to the noble families with which Fenwick was
connected, orders were given that the ceremonial should be in all
respects the same as when a peer of the realm suffers death. A
scaffold was erected on Tower Hill and hung with black. The
prisoner was brought from Newgate in the coach of his kinsman the
Earl of Carlisle, which was surrounded by a troop of the Life
Guards. Though the day was cold and stormy, the crowd of
spectators was immense; but there was no disturbance, and no sign
that the multitude sympathized with the criminal. He behaved with
a firmness which had not been expected from him. He ascended the
scaffold with steady steps, and bowed courteously to the persons
who were assembled on it, but spoke to none, except White, the
deprived Bishop of Peterborough. White prayed with him during
about half an hour. In the prayer the King was commended to the
Divine protection; but no name which could give offence was
pronounced. Fenwick then delivered a sealed paper to the
Sheriffs, took leave of the Bishop, knelt down, laid his neck on
the block, and exclaimed, "Lord Jesus, receive my soul." His head
was severed from his body at a single blow. His remains were
placed in a rich coffin, and buried that night, by torchlight,
under the pavement of Saint Martin's Church. No person has, since
that day, suffered death in England by Act of Attainder.783

Meanwhile an important question, about which public feeling was
much excited, had been under discussion. As soon as the
Parliament met, a Bill for Regulating Elections, differing little
in substance from the bill which the King had refused to pass in
the preceding session, was brought into the House of Commons, was
eagerly welcomed by the country gentlemen, and was pushed through
every stage. On the report it was moved that five thousand pounds
in personal estate should be a sufficient qualification for the
representative of a city or borough. But this amendment was
rejected. On the third reading a rider was added, which permitted
a merchant possessed of five thousand pounds to represent the
town in which he resided; but it was provided that no person
should be considered as a merchant because he was a proprietor of
Bank Stock or East India Stock. The fight was hard. Cowper
distinguished himself among the opponents of the bill. His
sarcastic remarks on the hunting, hawking boors, who wished to
keep in their own hands the whole business of legislation, called
forth some sharp rustic retorts. A plain squire, he was told, was
as likely to serve the country well as the most fluent gownsman,
who was ready, for a guinea, to prove that black was white. On
the question whether the bill should pass, the Ayes were two
hundred, the Noes a hundred and sixty.784

The Lords had, twelve months before, readily agreed to a similar
bill; but they had since reconsidered the subject and changed
their opinion. The truth is that, if a law requiring every member
of the House of Commons to possess an estate of some hundreds of
pounds a year in land could have been strictly enforced, such a
law would have been very advantageous to country gentlemen of
moderate property, but would have been by no means advantageous
to the grandees of the realm. A lord of a small manor would have
stood for the town in the neighbourhood of which his family had
resided during centuries, without any apprehension that he should
be opposed by some alderman of London, whom the electors had
never seen before the day of nomination, and whose chief title to
their favour was a pocketbook full of bank notes. But a great
nobleman, who had an estate of fifteen or twenty thousand pounds
a year, and who commanded two or three boroughs, would no longer
be able to put his younger son, his younger brother, his man of
business, into Parliament, or to earn a garter or a step in the
peerage by finding a seat for a Lord of the Treasury or an
Attorney General. On this occasion therefore the interest of the
chiefs of the aristocracy, Norfolk and Somerset, Newcastle and
Bedford, Pembroke and Dorset, coincided with that of the wealthy
traders of the City and of the clever young aspirants of the
Temple, and was diametrically opposed to the interest of a squire
of a thousand or twelve hundred a year. On the day fixed for the
second reading the attendance of lords was great. Several
petitions from constituent bodies, which thought it hard that a
new restriction should be imposed on the exercise of the elective
franchise, were presented and read. After a debate of some hours
the bill was rejected by sixty-two votes to thirty-seven.785 Only
three days later, a strong party in the Commons, burning with
resentment, proposed to tack the bill which the Peers had just
rejected to the Land Tax Bill. This motion would probably have
been carried, had not Foley gone somewhat beyond the duties of
his place, and, under pretence of speaking to order, shown that
such a tack would be without a precedent in parliamentary
history. When the question was put, the Ayes raised so loud a cry
that it was believed that they were the majority; but on a
division they proved to be only a hundred and thirty-five. The
Noes were a hundred and sixty-three.786

Other parliamentary proceedings of this session deserve mention.
While the Commons were busily engaged in the great work of
restoring the finances, an incident took place which seemed,
during a short time, likely to be fatal to the infant liberty of
the press, but which eventually proved the means of confirming
that liberty. Among the many newspapers which had been
established since the expiration of the censorship, was one
called the Flying Post. The editor, John Salisbury, was the tool
of a band of stockjobbers in the City, whose interest it happened
to be to cry down the public securities. He one day published a
false and malicious paragraph, evidently intended to throw
suspicion on the Exchequer Bills. On the credit of the Exchequer
Bills depended, at that moment, the political greatness and the
commercial prosperity of the realm. The House of Commons was in a
flame. The Speaker issued his warrant against Salisbury. It was
resolved without a division that a bill should be brought in to
prohibit the publishing of news without a license. Forty-eight
hours later the bill was presented and read. But the members had
now had time to cool. There was scarcely one of them whose
residence in the country had not, during the preceding summer,
been made more agreeable by the London journals. Meagre as those
journals may seem to a person who has the Times daily on his
breakfast table, they were to that generation a new and abundant
source of pleasure. No Devonshire or Yorkshire gentleman, Whig or
Tory, could bear the thought of being again dependent, during
seven months of every year, for all information about what was
doing in the world, on newsletters. If the bill passed, the
sheets, which were now so impatiently expected twice a week at
every country seat in the kingdom, would contain nothing but what
it suited the Secretary of State to make public; they would be,
in fact, so many London Gazettes; and the most assiduous reader
of the London Gazette might be utterly ignorant of the most
important events of his time. A few voices, however, were raised
in favour of a censorship. "These papers," it was said,
"frequently contain mischievous matter." "Then why are they not
prosecuted?" was the answer. "Has the Attorney-General filed an
information against any one of them? And is it not absurd to ask
us to give a new remedy by statute, when the old remedy afforded
by the common law has never been tried?" On the question whether
the bill should be read a second time, the Ayes were only
sixteen, the Noes two hundred.787

Another bill, which fared better, ought to be noticed as an
instance of the slow, but steady progress of civilisation. The
ancient immunities enjoyed by some districts of the capital, of
which the largest and the most infamous was Whitefriars, had
produced abuses which could no longer be endured. The Templars on
one side of Alsatia, and the citizens on the other, had long been
calling on the government and the legislature to put down so
monstrous a nuisance. Yet still, bounded on the west by the great
school of English jurisprudence, and on the east by the great
mart of English trade, stood this labyrinth of squalid, tottering
houses, close packed, every one, from cellar to cockloft, with
outcasts whose life was one long war with society. The best part
of the population consisted of debtors who were in fear of
bailiffs. The rest were attorneys struck off the roll, witnesses
who carried straw in their shoes as a sign to inform the public
where a false oath might be procured for half a crown, sharpers,
receivers of stolen goods, clippers of coin, forgers of bank
notes, and tawdry women, blooming with paint and brandy, who, in
their anger, made free use of their nails and their scissors, yet
whose anger was less to be dreaded than their kindness. With
these wretches the narrow alleys of the sanctuary swarmed. The
rattling of dice, the call for more punch and more wine, and the
noise of blasphemy and ribald song never ceased during the whole
night. The benchers of the Inner Temple could bear the scandal
and the annoyance no longer. They ordered the gate leading into
Whitefriars to be bricked up. The Alsatians mustered in great
force, attacked the workmen, killed one of them, pulled down the
wall, knocked down the Sheriff who came to keep the peace, and
carried off his gold chain, which, no doubt, was soon in the
melting pot. The riot was not suppressed till a company of the
Foot Guards arrived. This outrage excited general indignation.
The City, indignant at the outrage offered to the Sheriff, cried
loudly for justice. Yet, so difficult was it to execute any
process in the dens of Whitefriars, that near two years elapsed
before a single ringleader was apprehended.788