to walk along the highways without
seeing some terrible spectacle, and that the whole air of Somersetshire
was tainted with death. The King read, and remained, according to the
saying of Churchill, hard as the marble chimneypieces of Whitehall. At
Windsor the great seal of England was put into the hands of Jeffreys and
in the next London Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour
was the reward of the many eminent and faithful services which he had
rendered to the crown. [468]

At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror of
the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King attempted to
vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other. Jeffreys, in
the Tower, protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond
his master's express orders, nay, that he had fallen short of them.
James, at Saint Germain's would willingly have had it believed that his
own inclinations had been on the side of clemency, and that unmerited
obloquy had been brought on him by the violence of his minister. But
neither of these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of the
other. The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand to
be false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it be true in fact, is
utterly worthless.

The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was about to
begin. The government was peculiarly desirous to find victims among the
great Whig merchants of the City. They had, in the last reign, been a
formidable part of the strength of the opposition. They were wealthy;
and their wealth was not, like that of many noblemen and country
gentlemen, protected by entail against forfeiture. In the case of Grey
and of men situated like him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty and
rapacity at once; but a rich trader might be both hanged and plundered.
The commercial grandees, however, though in general hostile to Popery
and to arbitrary power, had yet been too scrupulous or too timid to
incur the guilt of high treason. One of the most considerable among them
was Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the old charter of
the City, and had filled the office of Sheriff when the question of the
Exclusion Bill occupied the public mind. In politics he was a Whig: his
religious opinions leaned towards Presbyterianism: but his temper was
cautious and moderate. It is not proved by trustworthy evidence that he
ever approached the verge of treason. He had, inde