ge which may with justice be brought against the
common people is, not that they are inconstant, but that they almost
invariably choose their favourite so ill that their constancy is a vice
and not a virtue.

While the execution of Monmouth occupied the thoughts of the Londoners,
the counties which had risen against the government were enduring all
that a ferocious soldiery could inflict. Feversham had been summoned to
the court, where honours and rewards which he little deserved awaited
him. He was made a Knight of the Garter and Captain of the first and
most lucrative troop of Life Guards: but Court and City laughed at his
military exploits; and the wit of Buckingham gave forth its last feeble
flash at the expense of the general who had won a battle in bed. [434]
Feversham left in command at Bridgewater Colonel Percy Kirke, a military
adventurer whose vices had been developed by the worst of all schools,
Tangier. Kirke had during some years commanded the garrison of that
town, and had been constantly employed in hostilities against tribes of
foreign barbarians, ignorant of the laws which regulate the warfare of
civilized and Christian nations. Within the ramparts of his fortress
he was a despotic prince. The only check on his tyranny was the fear of
being called to account by a distant and a careless government. He might
therefore safely proceed to the most audacious excesses of rapacity,
licentiousness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless dissoluteness, and
procured by extortion the means of indulgence. No goods could be sold
till Kirke had had the refusal of them. No question of right could be
decided till Kirke had been bribed. Once, merely from a malignant whim,
he staved all the wine in a vintner's cellar. On another occasion he
drove all the Jews from Tangier. Two of them he sent to the Spanish
Inquisition, which forthwith burned them. Under this iron domination
scarce a complaint was heard; for hatred was effectually kept down by
terror. Two persons who had been refractory were found murdered; and it
was universally believed that they had been slain by Kirke's order. When
his soldiers displeased him he flogged them with merciless severity: but
he indemnified them by permitting them to sleep on watch, to reel
drunk about the streets, to rob, beat, and insult the merchants and the
labourers.

When Tangier was abandoned, Kirke returned to England. He still
continued to command his old soldiers, who were designat