ffenders. Their weeping and imploring seemed
to titillate him voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits by
dilating with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what they
were to suffer. Thus, when he had an opportunity of ordering an unlucky
adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, "Hangman," he would
exclaim, "I charge you to pay particular attention to this lady! Scourge
her soundly man! Scourge her till the blood runs down! It is Christmas,
a cold time for Madam to strip in! See that you warm her shoulders
thoroughly!" [230] He was hardly less facetious when he passed judgment
on poor Lodowick Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied himself a
prophet. "Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy,
easy, easy punishment!" One part of this easy punishment was the
pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with brickbats.
[231]

By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to that temper
which tyrants require in their worst implements. He had hitherto looked
for professional advancement to the corporation of London. He had
therefore professed himself a Roundhead, and had always appeared to be
in a higher state of exhilaration when he explained to Popish priests
that they were to be cut down alive, and were to see their own bowels
burned, than when he passed ordinary sentences of death. But, as soon
as he had got all that the city could give, he made haste to sell his
forehead of brass and his tongue of venom to the Court. Chiffinch, who
was accustomed to act as broker in infamous contracts of more than one
kind, lent his aid. He had conducted many amorous and many political
intrigues; but he assuredly never rendered a more scandalous service to
his masters than when he introduced Jeffreys to Whitehall. The renegade
soon found a patron in the obdurate and revengeful James, but was always
regarded with scorn and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they
were, had no affinity with insolence and cruelty. "That man," said the
King, "has no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than
ten carted street-walkers." [232] Work was to be done, however, which
could be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was sensible of
shame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at which a barrister thinks himself
fortunate if he is employed to conduct an important cause, was made
Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the qual