ling, canting Presbyterian, and said, "Richard, Richard, don't thou think we will hear thee poison the court. Richard, thou art an old fellow, and an old knave; thou hast written books enough to load a cart, every one as full of sedition, I might say of treason, as an egg is full of meat; hadst thou been whipped out of thy writing trade forty years ago, it had been happy. Thou pretendest to be a preacher of the gospel of peace; as thou hast one foot in the grave, 'tis time for thee to begin to think what account thou intendest to give; but leave thee to thyself, and I see thou wilt go on as thou hast begun; but by the grace of God, I will look after thee. I know thou hast a mighty party, and I see a great many of the brotherhood in corners, waiting to see what will become of their mighty don, and a doctor of the party [doctor Bates] at your elbow, but by the grace of Almighty God, I will crush you all." The chief-justice having directed the jury, they found him guilty, without going from the bar, and fined him five hundred marks, to lay in prison till he paid it, and be bound to his good behaviour for seven years. Mr. Baxter continued in prison* about two years, and when the court changed its measures, his fine was remitted, and he was released.

* Dr. Grey has given us, with apparent approbation, what he calls a characteristical epitaph, drawn up for Mr. Baxter by the Rev. Thomas Long, prebendary of Exeter. It shews what different colours a character can receive, according to the dispositions of those who draw the picture; and how obnoxious Mr. Baxter was to some, whose calumnies and censure the reader perhaps will think was trae praise. It runs thus: "Hic jacet Richardus Baxter, theologus armatus, loiolita reformatus, heresiarcha ærianus, schismaticorum antesignanus; cujus pruritus disputandi¶ peperit scriptandi cacoëthes nutrivit, prædicandi zelus intemperatus maturavit ecclesiæ scabiem. Qui dissentit ab iis, quibuscum consentit maximó: tum sibi, cum aliis nonconformis præteritis, præsentibus et futuris: regum et episcoporum juratus hostis: ipsumq; rebellium solemne fœdus. Qui natus erat per septuaginti annos, et octoginta libros, ad perturbandas regni respublicas, et ad bis perdendam ecclesiam Anglicanam; magnis tamen excidit ausis. Deo gratias." Grey's Examination, vol. 2. p. 281, note. ED.

T "These words (says the author of the article, Baxter, in the Biographia Britannica) are an allusion to sir Henry Wotton's monumental inscription in Eton-chapel, Hic jacet bujus sententiæ primus author, disputandi pruritus ecclesiarum scabies :' i. e. Here lies the first author of this opinion, The itch of disputing is the leprosy of the churches.'" This writer has given the above epitaph in English, thus: "Here lies Richard Baxter, a militant divine, a reformed Jesuit, a brazen heresiarch, and the chief of schismatics, whose itch of disputing begat, whose humour of writing nourished, and whose intemperate zeal in preaching brought to its utmost height, the le prosy of the church; who dissented from those with whom he most agreed: from himself, as well as all other nonconformists, past, present, and to come; the sworn enemy of kings and bishops, and in himself the very bond of rebels: who was born, through seventy years and eighty books, to disturb the peace of the kingdom, and twice to attempt the ruin of the church of England: in the endeavour of which mighty mischiefs he fell short. For which thanks be to God." Biographia Britannica, vol. 2. p. 18, second edition.-ED.

The rebellion of the duke of Monmouth furnished the court with a plausible handle to carry the prosecution of the whigs and dissenters to a farther extremity. There was a considerable number of English fugitives in Holland at this time, some on political accounts, and others on the score of religion. The king, being apprehensive of danger from thence, obliged the prince of Orange to dismiss the duke of Monmouth from his court, and to break all those officers who had waited upon him, and who were in his service; this precipitated the counsels of the malecontents, and made them resolve upon a rash and ill-concerted invasion, which proved their ruin. The earl of Argyle, imagining all the Scots Presbyterians would revolt, sailed to the north of Scotland with a very small force, and was defeated with the effusion of very little blood, before the declaration* which he brought with him could have any effect. After him the duke of Monmouth, with the like precipitate rashness, landed June 11, with an inconsiderable force at Lyme in Dorsetshire; and though he was joined by great numbers in the west country, he was defeated by the king's forces, made prisoner, and executed on Tower-hill; as was the earl of Argyle at Edinburgh.

Though the body of the dissenters were not concerned in either of these invasions, they suffered considerably on this occasion. Great numbers of their chief merchants and tradesmen in the city, being taken up by warrants, and secured in jails, and in the public halls; as were many country whig gentlemen, in York-castle, Hull, and the prisons in all parts of England, which had this good effect, that it kept them out of harm's way, while many of their friends were ruined by joining the duke; some from a persuasion that the late king was married to his mother; and others in hopes of a deliverance from Popery and arbitrary power.

The king elated with success, resolved to let both whigs

* A full view of the assertions and purport of the duke of Monmouth's manifesto is given in my History of the Town of Taunton, p. 133-135, It was secretly printed in a private house hired for that purpose at Lambeth by W. C. a man of good sense and spirit, and a stationer in Paternoster-row; who imported the paper. His assistant at the press was apprehended and suffered; he himself escaped into Holland, and absconded into Germany, till he came over with the prince of Orange, who, when he was settled on the throne, appointed him his stationer. William Disney, esq. was tried by a special commission upon an indictment of high-treason, for printing and publishing this declaration, and was convicted, and sentenced to be drawn, hanged, and quartered. Dr. Grey's Examination, vol. 3. p. 403, 404.-ED.

and dissenters feel the weight of the arm of a conqueror : his army lived upon free-quarters in the west, and treated all who were supposed to be disaffected with great rudeness and violence. Some days after Monmouth's defeat, colonel Kirk ordered several of the prisoners to be hung up at Taunton, without any trial or form of law, while he and his company were dancing, revelling, and drinking healths, at a neighbouring window, with a variety of music, from whence they beheld, with a more than brutish triumph, the dreadful spectacle. The jails being full of prisoners, the king appointed lord-chief-justice Jefferies to go the western circuit, whose cruel behaviour surpassed all that had been ever heard of in a civilized nation: he was always drunk, either with wine or vengeance. When the juries found persons not guilty, he threatened and confined them, till they brought in a verdict to his mind, as in the case of the old lady Lisle, who was beheaded, for admitting Mr. Hicks, a Nonconformist minister, into her house, though the jury brought her in three times not guilty; and she solemnly declared, that she knew not that he had been in the duke's army. He persuaded many of the prisoners to plead guilty, in hopes of favour, and then taking advantage of their confession, ordered their immediate execution, without giving them a minute's time to say their prayers. Mr. Tutchin, who wrote the Observator, was sentenced to be imprisoned seven years, and to be whipped once every year through all the towns in Dorsetshire; upon which he petitioned the king that he might be hanged.+ Bishop Burnet says, that in several places in the west, there were executed near six hundred persons, and that the quarters of two or three hundred were fixed upon gibbets, and hung upon trees all over the country for fifty or sixty miles about, to the terror and even annoyance of travellers. The manner in which he treated the prisoners, was barbarous and inhuman; and his behaviour towards some of the nobility and gentry who were well affected, but appeared to the character of some of the criminals, would have amazed one, says bishop Burnet, if done by a bashaw in Turkey. The king had advice of his proceedings every day, and spoke of them in a style neither becoming the majesty nor mercy of a great prince.‡ And * Burnet, vol. 3. p. 43, Edin. edition.

↑ Bennet's Memoirs, p. 374, 375, second edit.

Ibid. p. 44, second edit.

Jefferies, besides satiating himself with blood, got great sums of money, by selling pardons to such as were able to purchase them, from 10l. to fourteen thousand guineas apiece.*

After the executions in the west, the king, being in the height of his power, resolved to be revenged of his old enemies the whigs, by making examples of their chief leaders: alderman Cornish, who had signalized himself in prosecuting the Popish plot, and was frequently in company with the late lord Russel, was taken off the Exchange October 13, and within little more than a week tried, condemned, and executed, in Cheapside, for high-treason, without any tolerable evidence, and his quarters set upon Guildhall. On the same day Mrs. Gaunt, a dissenter, who spent a great part of her life in acts of charity, visiting the jails, and looking after the poor of what persuasion soever, having entertained Burton, one of Monmouth's men, in her house, he, by an unheard-of baseness, while she was looking out for an opportunity to send him out of the kingdom, went out and accused her for harbouring him, and by that means saved his own life by taking away hers: she was burnt alive at Tyburn, and died with great resolution and devotion.† Mr. Bateman a surgeon, Mr. Rouse, Mr. Fernerley, colonel Ayloffe, Mr. Nelthorpe, and others, suffered in like manner. Lord Stamford was admitted to bail, and lord Delamere was tried by his peers, and acquitted. Many who had corresponded with the duke of Monmouth absconded, and had proclamations against them, as John Trenchard, esq. Mr. Speke, and others. But all who suffered in this cause expressed such a zeal for the Protestant religion, which they apprehended in danger, as made great impressions on the spectators. Some say the king was hurried on by Jefferies; but if his own inclinations had not run strong the same way, and if his priests had not thought it their interest to take off so many active Protestants who opposed their measures, they would not have let that butcher loose, says Burnet, to commit so many barbarous acts of cruelty, as struck a universal horror over the body of the nation. It was a bloody summer, and a dangerous time for honest men to live in.

The reader is referred to the History of the Town of Taunton for an ample account of the progress and defeat of the duke of Monmouth, and a minute detail of the subsequent severities of Kirk and Jefferies, p. 135-170.-ED.

t Barnet, p. 45.

VOL. V.

When the king met his parliament November 9, he congratulated them on the success of his arms; but told them, that in order to prevent any new disturbances, he was determined to keep the present army together; and “let no man (says his majesty) take exceptions that some officers are not qualified, for they are most of them known to me for the loyalty of their principles and practices; and therefore, to deal plainly with you, after having had the benefit of their services in a time of need and danger, I will neither expose them to disgrace, nor myself to the want of them."*--Thus we were to have a standing army under Popish officers, in defiance of the penal laws and test. The commons would have given them an act of indemnity for what was past, but the king would not accept it; and because the house was not disposed to his dispensing power, he prorogued them Nov. 20, when they had sat only eleven days; and after many successive prorogations, in the space of two years, dissolved them.†

The prosecution of the dissenters, which was carried on with all imaginable severity this and the last year, forced some of their ministers into the church; but it had a different and more surprising influence upon others, who had the courage in these difficult times, to renounce the church as a persecuting establishment, and to take their lot among the Nonconformists; as the reverend Mr. John Spademan M. A. of Swayton in Lincolnshire; Mr. John Rastrick, vicar of Kirton near Boston; Mr. Burroughs of Frampton ; Mr. Scoffin of Brotherton; Mr. Quip of Moreton; and a few others; who could be influenced by no other principle but conscience in a cause which had nothing in this world to recommend it but truth, attended with bonds and imprisonment, and the loss of all things.

Great were the oppressions of those who frequented the separate meetings in several counties; the informers broke in upon sir John Hartoppe, Mr. Fleetwood, and others, at Stoke-Newington, to levy distresses for conventicles, to the value of 6 or 7,000l.: the like at Enfield, Hackney, and all the neighbouring villages near London.§ The justices and confiding clergy were equally diligent in their several pa

* Gazette, no. 2085.

+ Burnet, p. 70, 71.

Calamy's Abridgment, p. 460, &c. Calamy, p. 372, 373; or Palmer's Nonconformists' Memorial, vol. 2. p. 163 ---168.