f fury sounded, as one who often
heard it said, like the thunder of the judgment day. He early became
common serjeant, and then recorder of London. As soon as he obtained
all the city could give, he made haste to sell his forehead of brass
and his tongue of venom to the court." He was just the man whom
Charles II. wanted as a tool. He was made chief justice of the highest
court of criminal law in the realm, and discharged its duties entirely
to the satisfaction of a king resolved on the subjection of the
English nation. His violence, at all times, was frightful; but when he
was drunk, it was terrific: and he was generally intoxicated. His
first exploit was the judicial murder of Algernon Sydney. On the death
of Charles, he obtained from James a peerage, and a seat in the
Cabinet, a signal mark of royal approbation. In prospect of yet
greater honors, he was ready to do whatever James required. James
wished the most summary vengeance inflicted on the rebels, and
Jeffreys, with his tiger ferocity, was ready to execute his will.

[Sidenote: Brutality of Jeffreys.]

Nothing is more memorable than those "bloody assizes" which he held in
those counties through which Monmouth had passed. Nothing is
remembered with more execration. Nothing ever equalled the brutal
cruelty of the judge. His fury seemed to be directed with peculiar
violence upon the Dissenters. "Show me," said he, "a Presbyterian, and
I will show thee a lying knave. Presbyterianism has all manner of
villany in it. There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting
Presbyterians, but, one way or another, has had a hand in the
rebellion." He sentenced nearly all who were accused, to be hanged or
burned; and the excess of his barbarities called forth pity and
indignation even from devoted loyalists. He boasted that he had hanged
more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest.
On a single circuit, he hanged three hundred and fifty; some of these
were people of great worth, and many of them were innocent; while many
whom he spared from an ignominious death, were sentenced to the most
cruel punishments--to the lash of the pillory, to imprisonment in the
foulest jails, to mutilation, to banishment, and to heavy fines.

King James watched the conduct of the inhuman Jeffreys with delight,
and rewarded him with the Great Seal. The Old Bailey lawyer had now
climbed to the greatest height to which a subject could aspire. He was
Lord Chancellor of Eng