did die. The Duke then obtained his merry
brother's permission to hold a Parliament in
Scotland, which first, with most shameless
deceit, confirmed the laws for securing the
Protestant religion against Popery, and then
declared that nothing must or should prevent
the succession of the Popish Duke. After
this double-faced beginning, it established an
oath which no human being could understand,
but which everybody was to take, as
a proof that this religion was the lawful religion.
The Earl of Argyle, taking it with the
explanation that he did not consider it to
prevent him from favouring any alteration
either in the Church or State, which was not
inconsistent with the Protestant religion or
with his loyalty, was tried for high treason
before a Scottish jury of which the MARQUIS
OF MONTROSE was foreman, and was found
guilty. He escaped the scaffold for that
time, by getting away, in the disguise of a
page, in the train of his daughter, LADY
SOPHIA LINDSAY. It was absolutely proposed
by certain members of the Scottish Council
that this lady should be whipped through
the streets of Edinburgh. But this was too
much even for the Duke, who had the manliness
then (he had very little at most times)
to remark that Englishmen were not accustomed
to treat ladies in that manner. In
those merry times nothing could equal the
brutal servility of the Scottish fawners, but
the conduct of similar degraded beings in
England.

After the settlement of these little affairs,
the Duke returned to England and soon
resumed his place at the Council, and his
office of High Admiral — all by his
brother's favour, and in open defiance of the
law. It would have been no loss to the
country if he had been drowned when his
ship, in going to Scotland to fetch his
family, struck on a sand-bank, and was lost
with two hundred souls on board. But he
escaped in a boat with some friends, and the
sailors were so brave and unselfish that
when they saw him rowing away, they gave
three cheers, while they themselves were
going down for ever.

The Merry Monarch, having got rid of his
Parliament, went to work to make himself
despotic with all speed. Having had the
villany to order the execution of OLIVER
PLUNKET, BISHOP OF ARMAGH, falsely accused
of a plot to establish Popery in that
country by means of a French army — the
very thing this royal traitor was himself
trying to do at home — and having tried to
ruin Lord Shaftesbury, and failed — he turned
his hand to controlling the corporations all
over the country; because, if he could only do
that, he could get what juries he chose, to
bring in perjured verdicts, and could get
what members he chose, returned to
Parliament. These merry times produced and
made Chief Justice of the Court of King's
Bench, a drunken ruffian of the name of
JEFFREYS; a red-faced, swollen, bloated,
horrible creature, with a bullying roaring voice
and a more savage nature, perhaps, than was
ever lodged in any human breast. This
monster was the Merry Monarch's especial
favourite, and he testified his admiration of
him by giving him a ring from his own finger,
which the people used to call. Judge Jeffrey's
Bloodstone. Him the King employed to go
about and bully the corporations, beginning
with London; or, as Jeffreys himself elegantly
called it, "to give them a lick with the rough
side of his tongue." And he did it so
thoroughly, that they soon became the basest
and most sycophantic bodies in the kingdom
— except the University of Oxford, which, in
that respect, was quite pre-eminent and
unapproachable.

Lord Shaftesbury (who died soon after the
King's failure against him), LORD WILLIAM
RUSSELL, the Duke of Monmouth, LORD
HOWARD, LORD JERSEY, ALGERNON SYDNEY,
JOHN HAMPDEN (grandson of the great
Hampden), and some others, used to hold a
council together after the dissolution of the
Parliament, arranging what it might be necessary
to do, if the king carried his Popish plot
to the utmost height. Lord Shaftesbury
having been much the most violent of this
party, brought two violent men into their
secrets — RUMSEY, who had been a soldier in
the Republican army; and WEST, a lawyer.
These two knew an old officer of Cromwell's,
called RUMBOLD, who had married a maltster's
widow, and so had come into possession of a
solitary dwelling called the Rye House, near
Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. Rumbold said
to them what a capital place this house of his
would be from which to shoot at the King,
who often passed there going to and fro from
Newmarket. They liked the idea, and
entertained it. But, one of their body gave
information, and they together with SHEPHERD
a wine merchant. Lord Russell, Algernon
Sidney, LORD ESSEX, LORD HOWARD, and
Hampden, were all arrested.

Lord Russell might have easily escaped but
scorned to do so, being innocent of any wrong;
Lord Essex might have easily escaped, but
scorned to do so, lest his flight should
prejudice Lord Russell. But it weighed upon
his mind that he had brought into their
council Lord Howard, who now turned a
miserable traitor, against a great dislike Lord
Russell had always had of him. He could
not bear the reflection, and destroyed himself
before Lord Russell was brought to trial at
the Old Bailey.

He knew very well that he had nothing to
hope, having always been manful in the
Protestant cause against the two false brothers,
the one on the throne, and the other standing
next to it. He had a wife, one of the noblest
and best of women, who acted as his secretary
on his trial, who comforted him in his
prison, who supped with him on the night
before he died, and whose love and virtue and