t
have been satisfied. But no; he let loose upon them, among other
intolerable monsters, a COLONEL KIRK, who had served against the Moors,
and whose soldiers--called by the people Kirk's lambs, because they bore
a lamb upon their flag, as the emblem of Christianity--were worthy of
their leader. The atrocities committed by these demons in human shape
are far too horrible to be related here. It is enough to say, that
besides most ruthlessly murdering and robbing them, and ruining them by
making them buy their pardons at the price of all they possessed, it was
one of Kirk's favourite amusements, as he and his officers sat drinking
after dinner, and toasting the King, to have batches of prisoners hanged
outside the windows for the company's diversion; and that when their feet
quivered in the convulsions of death, he used to swear that they should
have music to their dancing, and would order the drums to beat and the
trumpets to play. The detestable King informed him, as an acknowledgment
of these services, that he was 'very well satisfied with his
proceedings.' But the King's great delight was in the proceedings of
Jeffreys, now a peer, who went down into the west, with four other
judges, to try persons accused of having had any share in the rebellion.
The King pleasantly called this 'Jeffreys's campaign.' The people down
in that part of the country remember it to this day as The Bloody Assize.

It began at Winchester, where a poor deaf old lady, MRS. ALICIA LISLE,
the widow of one of the judges of Charles the First (who had been
murdered abroad by some Royalist assassins), was charged with having
given shelter in her house to two fugitives from Sedgemoor. Three times
the jury refused to find her guilty, until Jeffreys bullied and
frightened them into that false verdict. When he had extorted it from
them, he said, 'Gentlemen, if I had been one of you, and she had been my
own mother, I would have found her guilty;'--as I dare say he would. He
sentenced her to be burned alive, that very afternoon. The clergy of the
cathedral and some others interfered in her favour, and she was beheaded
within a week. As a high mark of his approbation, the King made Jeffreys
Lord Chancellor; and he then went on to Dorchester, to Exeter, to
Taunton, and to Wells. It is astonishing, when we read of the enormous
injustice and barbarity of this beast, to know that no one struck him
dead on the judgment-seat. It was enough for any man