ly confirmed the imputation which they were
meant to refute. The King, therefore, thought it better to give out of
his own revenue a liberal compensation for the wrongs which the Commons
had brought to his notice than to place an eccentric and irritable man
in a situation of dignity and public trust. Johnson was gratified with a
present of a thousand pounds, and a pension of three hundred a year for
two lives. His son was also provided for in the public service, [387]

While the Commons were considering the case of Johnson, the Lords were
scrutinising with severity the proceedings which had, in the late reign,
been instituted against one of their own order, the Earl of Devonshire.
The judges who had passed sentence on him were strictly interrogated;
and a resolution was passed declaring that in his case the privileges of
the peerage had been infringed, and that the Court of King's Bench, in
punishing a hasty blow by a fine of thirty thousand pounds, had violated
common justice and the Great Charter, [388]

In the cases which have been mentioned, all parties seem to have agreed
in thinking that some public reparation was due. But the fiercest
passions both of Whigs and Tories were soon roused by the noisy claims
of a wretch whose sufferings, great as they might seem, had been
trifling when compared with his crimes. Gates had come back, like a
ghost from the place of punishment, to haunt the spots which had been
polluted by his guilt. The three years and a half which followed his
scourging he had passed in one of the cells of Newgate, except when on
certain days, the anniversaries of his perjuries, he had been brought
forth and set on the pillory. He was still, however, regarded by many
fanatics as a martyr; and it was said that they were able so far
to corrupt his keepers that, in spite of positive orders from the
government, his sufferings were mitigated by many indulgences. While
offenders, who, compared with him, were innocent, grew lean on the
prison allowance, his cheer was mended by turkeys and chines, capons and
sucking pigs, venison pasties and hampers of claret, the offerings of
zealous Protestants, [389] When James had fled from Whitehall, and when
London was in confusion, it was moved, in the council of Lords which had
provisionally assumed the direction of affairs, that Gates should be
set at liberty. The motion was rejected: [390] but the gaolers, not knowing
whom to obey in that time of anarchy, and desirin