other. He was singing psalms a great part of the way, and said he hoped to sing better very soon. As he observed the great crowds of people all the way, he said to us, I hope I shall quickly see a much better assembly." When he came to the scaffold he walked about it four or five times; then he turned to the sheriffs and delivered his paper. He protested he had always been far from any designs against the king's life or government. He prayed God would preserve both, and the protestant religion. He wished all protestants might love one another, and not make way for popery by their animosities.

The substance of the paper he gave them was, first a profession of his religion, and of his sincerity in it; that he was of the church of England; but wished all would unite together against the common enemy; that churchmen would be less severe, and dissenters less scrupulous. He owned he had a great zeal against popery, which he looked on as an idolatrous and bloody religion; but that though he was at all times ready to venture his life for his religion or his country, yet that would never have carried him to a black or wicked design. No man ever had the impudence to move to him anything with relation to the king's life; he prayed heartily for him, that in his person and government he might be happy, both in this world and in the next. He protested that in the prosecution of the popish plot he had gone on in the sincerity of his heart, and that he never knew of any practice with the witnesses. He owned he had been earnest in the matter of the exclusion, as the best way in his opinion to secure both the king's life and the protestant religion; and to that he imputed his present sufferings; but he forgave all concerned in them, and charged his friends to think of no revenges. He thought his sentence was hard; upon which he gave an account of all that had passed at Shepherd's. From the heats that appeared in choosing the sheriffs he concluded that this matter would end as it now did, and he was not much surprised to find it fall upon himself; he wished it might end in him; killing by forms of law was the worst sort of murder. He concluded with some very devout ejaculations. After he had delivered this paper he prayed by himself. Then Tillotson prayed with him. After that he prayed again by himself; and then undressed himself and laid his head on the block, without the least change of countenance, and it was cut off at two strokes*.

This was the end of that great and good man: on which I have enlarged perhaps too copiously; but the great esteem I had for him, and the share I had in this matter, will, I hope, excuse it. His speech was so soon printed, that it was selling about the streets an hour after his death; upon which the court was highly inflamed. So Tillotson and I were appointed to appear before the cabinet council. Tillotson had little to say, but only that lord Russel had showed him his speech the day before he suffered; and that he spoke to him, what he thought was incumbent on him, upon some parts of it, but he was not disposed to alter it. I was longer before them. I saw they apprehended I had penned the speech. I told the king that at his lady's desire I wrote down a very particular journal of every passage, great and small, that had happened during my attendance on him; I had just ended it, as I received my summons to attend his majesty; so, if he commanded me, I would read it to him; which upon his command I did. I saw they were all astonished at the many extraordinary things in it: the most important of them are set down in the former relation. The lord-keeper asked me if I intended to print that. I said it was only intended

The outlines of the life and character of lord Russel have been given in a previous page, and but few remarks need be made upon his trial and execution. The struggle was now wearing a sterner and more determined aspect, that was to decide whether the king or the people were to be the chief sources of political power-every meeting of parliament had warned the former, if he resolved to persevere in aiming at despotism, it must be obtained by pursuing a bloody path. It was determined to proceed and sheriffs were culled, juries packed, and unprincipled judges raised to the bench, to aid the butchery of the freespirited by disguising murder with a legal habit. It mattered little that the evidence against lord Russel was deficient of that required by the statute to convict of treason—if it had been still more imperfect it would have

ended in the same tragedy-his conviction was resolved before he was brought to the bar. This he himself had foreseen-he knew that he was marked as the supporter of popular freedom, and that he was to be slaughtered as a terror to his party. This was confessed by the duke of York, when the earl of Dartmouth warned him that the taking of Russel's life would never be forgiven by a numerous and great family, who, on the other hand, would be bound to him, if the delinquent was pardoned; and that some regard was due to lord Southampton's daughter and her children. The duke replied, "All that is true; but it is as true, that if I do not take his life he will soon have mine." (Dalrymple's Memoirs, Append. ii. 59.) If the duke had not resolved to be a tyrant, he need not havo feared lord Russel.

for his lady's private use*. The lord-keeper, seeing the king silent, added, "You are not to think the king is pleased with this, because he says nothing." This was very mean. He then asked me if I had not studied to dissuade the lord Russel from putting many things in his speech. I said I had discharged my conscience to him very freely in every particular; but he was now gone, so it was impossible to know, if I should tell anything of what had passed between us, whether it was true or false; I desired therefore to be excused. The duke asked me if he had said anything to me in confession. I answered, that if he had said anything to me in confidence, that was enough to restrain me from speaking of it. Only I offered to take my oath, that the speech was penned by himself, and not by me. The duke, upon all that passed in this examination, expressed himself so highly offended at me, that it was concluded I would be ruined. Lord Halifax sent me word, that the duke looked on my reading the journal as a studied thing, to make a panegyric on lord Russel's memory. Many pamphlets were written on that occasion; and I was heavily charged in them all, as the adviser, if not the author, of the speech. But I was advised by all my friends to write no answer, but to bear the malice that was vented upon me with silence; which I resolved to do.

At this time, prince George of Denmark came into England to marry the duke's second daughter. The prince of Hanover had come over two years before to make addresses to her; but he was scarcely got hither, when he received orders from his father not to proceed in that design; for he had agreed a match for him with his brother, the duke of Zell, for his daughter, which did at that time more accommodate the family. The marriage that was now made with the brother of Denmark did not at all please the nation; for we knew that the proposition came from France. So it was apprehended, that both courts reckoned they were sure that he would change his religion; in which we have seen, since that time, that our fears were ill grounded. He has lived in all respects the happiest with his princess that was possible, except in one particular; for though there was a child born every year for many years, yet they have all died; so that the most fruitful marriage that has been known in our age has been fatally blasted as to the effect of it.

The affairs abroad were now everywhere in a great fermentation. The emperor had governed Hungary so strangely, as at once to persecute the protestants and to oppress the papists in their liberties, which disposed both to rebel; upon which the malcontents were now in arms, and had possessed themselves of several places in the upper Hungary: which being near Poland, they were managed and assisted by the French ministers in that kingdom, in which the cardinal of Fourbin was the chief instrument. But they not being able to maintain themselves against the emperor's whole force, Tekeli, who was set at their head, offered all submissions to the Turk, and begged his protection. Upon this that great war

*Those who would convert us to the opinion that woman is man's intellectual inferior, must first make us forget that a lady Croke, a countess of Derby, a lady Bankes, and lady Rachael Russel, lived as contemporaries -to say nothing of a galaxy that may be traced through every other period of our history, from Boadicea downwards.

Education and the rules of society throw man more customarily forward in active life, but no one's experience, perhaps, can justify him in saying that he has oftener seen women fail in rising equal to the exertions required, than those whom they submit to as their superiors and love as their guardians. Lady Russel was oue of those who never failed in the hour of extraordinary effort. She cheered her patriot husband during the confinement preceding his trial, and at that trying period she did not forsake him. When the court informed him he might have a clerk to take notes of the evidence, he must have felt strengthened, as he was enabled to reply, "My lords, my wife is here." She was there-and to her dying hour might feel consolation in reflecting that she thus aided him in his time of extremest need. It was not insensibility, it was not the love of display, that made her thus act; but that firmness of mind, that forgetfulness of self, which enables those who cherish virtuous emotions to do

their duty. No Rachael Russel was not a maudlin sentimentalist, who could only weep for those she loved, but a true woman, who exerted herself as long as she could be useful in the cause of him whom she loved the most entirely in this world. Even in that time, when the sternest heart might be forgiven for failing-when the last embrace and the last look were to be exchanged-she did not add to her husband's agony by a fruitless outpouring of grief; she parted from him silently. But when all was over, then did she give vent to the natural sorrow of her heart, and her blindness was attributed to her almost incessant weeping. Reason, however, triumphed at last, and she lived to devote herself to her three children. "Her ladyship's letters, which have been published, are a compound of resigned piety, never-ceasing grief, strong sense, and true patriotism, with strict attention to all domestic duties. She lived to the age of eighty-seven, revered almost as a saint herself, and venerated as the relict of the martyr to liberty and the constitution." She was born in 1636, the second daughter of Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. Her first husband was lord Vaughan, son of the earl of Carberry. She died on the 29th of September, 1723.—Grainger.

broke out, all set on by the practices of the king of France; who, while he was persecuting the protestants in his own kingdom, was at the same time encouraging the rebellion of Hungary, and drawing the Turk into Christendom. I need not enlarge further on a matter so well known as the siege of Vienna; which, if it had been as well prosecuted as it was first undertaken, the town would have been certainly taken, and with that the emperor and his family ruined. The king of France drew a great army together near the frontier of Germany, and seemed to depend upon it that the town would be taken, and that he would be called in by the princes of Germany to protect them, and upon that have been chosen emperor. He at the same time sent Humieres with an army into Flanders, upon a pretension to Alost, that would have seemed very strange in any other court but that. He had once possessed himself, during the war, of Alost; but afterwards he drew his troops out of it. So it not being in his hands when the peace of Nimeguen was made, no mention was made of restoring it. But now it was said that, it being once in the king's hands by the right of his arms, it was still his, since he had not expressly renounced it; therefore he now demanded it, or to have Luxembourg given him as an equivalent for it. Humieres finding no resistance in the Spanish Netherlands, destroyed and ruined the country beyond anything it had felt during the whole war. This was the state of affairs abroad at the time of these trials.

All people thought we should see a parliament presently called, from which both the king and the duke might have expected everything that they could desire; for the body of the nation was yet so possessed with the belief of the plot, that probably all elections would have gone as the court directed, and scarcely any of the other party would have had the courage to have stood for an election any where. But the king of France began to apprehend that the king might grow so much the master at home, that he would be no longer in their management; and they foresaw that, what success soever the king might have in a parliament with relation to his own affairs, it was not to be imagined but that a house of commons, at the same time that they showed their submission to the king, would both enable him to resist the progress of the French arms, and address to him to enter into alliances with the Spaniards and the States. So the French made use of all their instruments to divert our court from calling a parliament, and they got the king to consent to their possessing themselves of Luxembourg; for which, I was told, they gave him 300,000l. But I have no certainty of that. Lord Montague told me of it, and seemed to believe it; and lady Portsmouth valued herself on this of Luxembourg as gained by her, and called it the last service she did the court of France*.

At this time I went over into France, chiefly to be out of the way, when I was fallen on almost in every libel; for new sets of addresses were now running about the nation, with more heat and swelled eloquence in them than the former ones: in all which the providential fire of Newmarket was set off with great pomp. And in many of them there were hard things said of lord Russel and his speech, with insinuations that looked towards me.

In France, Rouvigny, who was the lady Russel's uncle, studied to get me to be much visited and known. There my acquaintance with marshal Schomberg began; and by him I was acquainted with marshal Bellefonds, who was a devout man, but very weak. He read the Scriptures much, and seemed to practice the virtues of the desert in the midst of that court. I knew the archbishop of Rheims, who was a rough, boisterous man; he seemed to have good notions of the episcopal duty, in all things except that of the setting a good example to his clergy; for he allowed himself in liberties of all kinds. The duke of Montausier was a pattern of virtue and sincerity, if not too cynical in it. He was so far from flattering the king, as all the rest did most abjectly, that he could not hold from contradicting him, as often as there was occasion for it. And for that reason chiefly the king made him the dauphin's governor to which, he told me, he had applied himself with great care, though, he very frankly added, without success. The exterior of the king was very solemn; the

• Barillon writing, December 1st, 1681, to Louis the Fourteenth, from whom he was ambassador to England, says, "After much bargaining, the king (Charles) has agreed to allow our seizure of Luxembourg, in considera tion of our paying him a million livres," (not 30,0002.)

(Dalrymple's Memoirs, Append. 31.) According to this authority Barillon made the bargain with Charles in person. Barillon represents Montague in the blackest light as a traitor to his country.

first time I happened to see him was when the news came of the raising the siege of Vienna, with which, Schomberg told me, he was much struck, for he did not look for it. While I was at court, which was only for four or five days, one of the king's coaches was sent to wait on me, and the king ordered me to be well treated by all about him, which upon that was done, with a great profusion of extraordinary respects; at which all people stood amazed. Some thought it was to encourage the side against the court, by this treatment of one then in disgrace. Others more probably thought, that the king, hearing I was a writer of history, had a mind to engage me to write on his side. I was told a pension would be offered me. But I made no steps towards it; for though I was offered an audience of the king, I excused it, since I could not have the honour to be presented to that king by the minister of England *. I saw the prince of Condé but once, though he intended to see me oftener. He had a great quickness of apprehension, and was thought the best judge in France both of wit and learning. He had read my history of the Reformation, that was then translated into French, and seemed pleased with it. So were many of the great lawyers; in particular, Harlay, then attorney-general, and now first president of the court of parliament of Paris. The contests with Rome were then very high; for the assembly of the clergy had passed some articles very derogatory to the papal authority. So many fancied that matter might go to a rupture; and Harlay said very publicly that, if that should happen, I had laid before them a good plan to copy from.

Bellefonds had so good an opinion of me, that he thought instances of devotion might have some effect on me; so he made the duchess La Valiere think that she might be an instrument in converting me; and he brought a message from her, desiring me to come to the grate to her. I was twice there; and she told me the steps of her conversion, and of her coming into that strict order of the Carmelites, with great humility, and much devotion. Treville, one of the duchess of Orleans's admirers, was so struck with her death, that he had lived in retreat from that time, and was but newly come to appear again. He had great knowledge, with a true sense of religion; he seemed to groan under many of the corruptions of their church. He, and some others whom I knew of the Sorbon, chiefly Faur, Pique, and Brayer, seemed to think that almost everything among them was out of order, and wished for a regular reformation; but their notion of the unity of the church kept them still in a communion that they seemed uneasy in. And they said very freely, they wondered how any one, that was once out of their communion, should desire to come back into it. They were generally learned only in one point; Faur was the best read in ecclesiastical history of any man I saw among them; and I never knew any of that church that understood the Scriptures so well as Pique. They declared themselves for abolishing the papal authority, and for reducing the pope to the old primacy again. They spoke to me of the bishops of France, as men that were both vicious and ignorant; they seemed now to be against the pope; but it was only because he was in the interests of the house of Austria; for they would declare him infallible the next day after he should turn to the interest of France. So they expected no good, neither from the court nor from the clergy. I saw St. Amour, the author of the journal of what passed at Rome, in the condemnation of the five propositions of Jansenius. He seemed to be a sincere and worthy man, who had more judgment than either quickness or learning. He told me, his whole life had been one campaign against the Jesuits; and spoke of them as the great plague of the church. He lamented also that sharpness of style with which his friend Arnauld treated the protestants; for which, he said, both he and all his friends blamed him. I was carried by a bishop to the Jesuits at St. Anthony's. There I saw P. Bourdaloue, esteemed one of the greatest preachers of the age, and one of the honours of his order. He was a man of a sweet temper, not at all violent against protestants; on the contrary, he believed good men among them might be saved, which was a pitch of

The reason for his being well received by the French monarch, whilst Mr. Montague was treated but coolly, was considered, by the carl of Dartmouth, to arise from our author having flattered Louis in his work, "The History of the Rights of Princes;" but lord Preston, our then ambassador at Paris, thought it proceeded from a

belief that the doctor was influential with the discontented party in England; and Mr. Montague had required money, which was then not very abundant in the French coffers-Dalrymple's Memoirs, Appendix, 80; Oxford ed. of this work.

charity that I had never observed in any of the learned of that communion. I was also once with P. de la Chaise, the king's confessor, who was a dry man. He told me how great a man they would make me, if I would come over to them.

This was my acquaintance on the popish side. I say little of the protestants. They came all to me; so I was well known among them. The method that carried over the men of the finest parts among them to popery was this: they brought themselves to doubt of the whole Christian religion; when that was once done, it seemed a more indifferent thing of what side, or form, they continued to be outwardly. The base practices of buying many over with pensions, and of driving others over with perpetual ill usage, and acts of the highest injustice and violence, and the vile artifices in bringing on and carrying so many processes against most of their churches, as not comprehended within the edict of Nantes, were a reproach both to the greatness of their king and to the justice of their courts. Many new edicts were coming out every day against them, which contradicted the edict of Nantes in the most express words possible; and yet to all these a strange clause was added, that the king did not intend by them to recal, nor to go against any article of the edict of Nantes, which he would maintain inviolable. I knew Spanheim particularly, who was envoy from the elector of Brandenburg, who is the greatest critic of the age in all ancient learning, and is with that a very able man in all affairs, and a frank, cheerful man: qualities that do not always meet in very learned men. After a few months' stay I returned, and found both the king and duke were highly offended at the reception I had met with in France. They did not know what to make of it, and fancied there was something hid under it.

The addresses had now gone round England. The grand juries made after that high presentments against all that were esteemed whigs and nonconformists. Great pains were taken to find out more witnesses. Pardons and rewards were offered very freely. But none came in; which made it evident, that nothing was so well laid, or brought so near execution, as the witnesses had deposed; otherwise people would have been crowding in for pardons. All people were apprehensive of very black designs, when they saw Jeffreys made lord chief justice, who was scandalously vicious, and was drunk every day; besides a drunkenness of fury in his temper, that looked like enthusiasm. He did not consider the decencies of his post; nor did he so much as affect to seem impartial, as became a judge, but ran out upon all occasions into declamations, that did not become the bar, much less the bench. He was not learned in his profession; and his eloquence, though viciously copious, yet was neither correct nor agreeable*. Pemberton was turned out of the common pleas, and Jones was put in his place; and Jeffreys had three judges joined with him in the king's bench fit to sit by him.

George Jeffreys was a native of Acton, in Denbighshire; passing through various grades of his education at Shrewsbury, Westminster, and the Inner Temple. He was never regularly admitted to the degree of barrister; but being at Kingston whilst the assizes were proceeding, in the year 1666, the plague had so thinned the attendance of counsellors that he was persuaded to plead, and he continued to practice without interruption. He was soon after chosen recorder of London, then a Welch judge, and, in 1680, chief-justice of Chester. The following year he was made a baronet, and, in 1683, chief-justice of the king's bench, as mentioned in the text. The other passages of his life will be noticed in future pages. To animadvert upon the brutality of Jeffreys is superfluous every historian confesses that a more cruel minister of justice never scourged a people. For proofs of his rabid fury, both as a counsel and as a judge, the pages of the State Trials may be referred to. Alluding to his conduct at the bar, Somers says, "The law intends that every man shall be exactly just in their several employments, relating to the execution of justice. The serjeant of the king's counsel, sir George Jeffreys, among the rest who prosecute in the king's name, and are consulted in the forming bills of indictment, &c. these, if they would remember it, take an oath as well and truly to serve the people,'

whereof the accused is one, as the king himself; and to minister the king's matters duly and truly after the course of law, and their cunning: not to use their cunning and craft to hide the truth and destroy the accused if they can."-The Security of Englishmen's Lives, p. 72.

Mr. Fox was wrong in remarking that Charles the Second appointed a fitting tool, when he raised Jeffreys to the chief-justiceship; for it is a matter of history, that Charles really objected to him: once saying of him, that "He had neither learning, law, nor good inanners, but more impudence than ten carted whores." And the earl of Sunderland, writing to the earl of Rochester in March, 1683, says, "I spoke to the king of Jeffreys, but I found him very much unresolved, and full of objections against him, as that all the judges would be unsatisfied if he were so advanced, and that he had not law enough."-Singer's Clarendon Corr. i. 83.

Lord Delamere, who was tried and acquitted before Jeffreys, when chief-justice of Chester, on a charge of high treason, founded upon suspicion of his intending to raise a rebellion in that county in aid of Monmouth, said, “Our chiefjustice, sir George Jeffreys, behaves himself more like a jack-pudding than a judge. He was mighty witty upon the prisoners at the bar; he was very full of his jokes upon peopie that came to give evidence, not suffering them to

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