vexation and shame. The
government, however, with its usual folly, treated him so severely that
in a short time the public sympathy was all on his side. A criminal
information was filed in the King's Bench. The defendant took his
stand on the privileges of the peerage but on this point a decision was
promptly given against him nor is it possible to deny that the decision,
whether it were or were not according to the technical rules of English
law, was in strict conformity with the great principles on which all
laws ought to be framed. Nothing was then left to him but to plead
guilty. The tribunal had, by successive dismissions, been reduced to
such complete subjection, that the government which had instituted the
prosecution was allowed to prescribe the punishment. The judges waited
in a body on Jeffreys, who insisted that they should impose a fine
of not less than thirty thousand pounds. Thirty thousand pounds, when
compared with the revenues of the English grandees of that age, may be
considered as equivalent to a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in the
nineteenth century. In the presence of the Chancellor not a word of
disapprobation was tittered: but, when the judges had retired, Sir John
Powell, in whom all the little honesty of the bench was concentrated,
muttered that the proposed penalty was enormous, and that one tenth part
would be amply sufficient. His brethren did not agree with him; nor did
he, on this occasion, show the courage by which, on a memorable day some
months later, he signally retrieved his fame. The Earl was accordingly
condemned to a fine of thirty thousand pounds, and to imprisonment till
payment should be made. Such a sum could not then be raised at a
day's notice even by the greatest of the nobility. The sentence of
imprisonment, however, was more easily pronounced than executed.
Devonshire had retired to Chatsworth, where he was employed in turning
the old Gothic mansion of his family into an edifice worthy of Palladio.
The Peak was in those days almost as rude a district as Connemara now
is, and the Sheriff found, or pretended, that it was difficult to arrest
the lord of so wild a region in the midst of a devoted household and
tenantry. Some days were thus gained: but at last both the Earl and the
Sheriff were lodged in prison. Meanwhile a crowd of intercessors exerted
their influence. The story ran that the Countess Dowager of Devonshire
had obtained admittance to the royal closet, that sh