eason under the
old system of procedure. The first who was tried under the new system
was Rockwood. He was defended by Sir Bartholomew Shower, who in the
preceding reign had made himself unenviably conspicuous as a servile and
cruel sycophant, who had obtained from James the Recordership of
London when Holt honourably resigned it, and who had, as Recorder,
sent soldiers to the gibbet for breaches of military discipline. By
his servile cruelty he had earned the nickname of the Manhunter. Shower
deserved, if any offender deserved, to be excepted from the Act of
Indemnity, and left to the utmost rigour of those laws which he had so
shamelessly perverted. But he had been saved by the clemency of William,
and had requited that clemency by pertinacious and malignant opposition.
[684] It was doubtless on account of Shower's known leaning towards
Jacobitism that he was employed on this occasion. He raised some
technical objections which the Court overruled. On the merits of the
case he could make no defence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty.
Cranburne and Lowick were then tried and convicted. They suffered with
Rookwood; and there the executions stopped. [685]

The temper of the nation was such that the government might have shed
much more blood without incurring the reproach of cruelty. The feeling
which had been called forth by the discovery of the plot continued
during several weeks to increase day by day. Of that feeling the able
men who were at the head of the Whig party made a singularly skilful
use. They saw that the public enthusiasm, if left without guidance,
would exhaust itself in huzzas, healths and bonfires, but might, if
wisely guided, be the means of producing a great and lasting effect. The
Association, into which the Commons had entered while the King's speech
was still in their ears, furnished the means of combining four fifths of
the nation in one vast club for the defence of the order of succession
with which were inseparably combined the dearest liberties of the
English people, and of establishing a test which would distinguish those
who were zealous for that order of succession from those who sullenly
and reluctantly acquiesced in it. Of the five hundred and thirty members
of the Lower House about four hundred and twenty voluntarily subscribed
the instrument which recognised William as rightful and lawful King of
England. It was moved in the Upper House that the same form should be
adopted; but object