titution was extremely
infirm, complained loudly. "It is very well," he said, "for young
gentlemen to sit down to their suppers and their wine at two o'clock in
the morning; but some of us old men are likely to be of as much use here
as they; and we shall soon be in our graves if we are forced to keep
such hours at such a season." [767] So strongly was party spirit
excited that this appeal was disregarded, and the House continued to sit
fourteen or fifteen hours a day. The chief opponents of the bill were
Rochester, Nottingham, Normanby and Leeds. The chief orators on the
other side were Tankerville, who, in spite of the deep stains which
a life singularly unfortunate had left on his public and private
character, always spoke with an eloquence which riveted the attention
of his hearers; Burnet, who made a great display of historical learning;
Wharton, whose lively and familiar style of speaking, acquired in the
House of Commons, sometimes shocked the formality of the Lords; and
Monmouth, who had always carried the liberty of debate to the verge of
licentiousness, and who now never opened his lips without inflicting
a wound on the feelings of some adversary. A very few nobles of great
weight, Devonshire, Dorset, Pembroke and Ormond, formed a third party.
They were willing to use the Bill of Attainder as an instrument of
torture for the purpose of wringing a full confession out of the
prisoner. But they were determined not to give a final vote for sending
him to the scaffold.

The first division was on the question whether secondary evidence of
what Goodman could have proved should be admitted. On this occasion
Burnet closed the debate by a powerful speech which none of the Tory
orators could undertake to answer without premeditation. A hundred and
twenty-six lords were present, a number unprecedented in our history.
There were seventy-three Contents, and fifty-three Not Contents.
Thirty-six of the minority protested against the decision of the House.
[768]

The next great trial of strength was on the question whether the bill
should be read a second time. The debate was diversified by a curious
episode. Monmouth, in a vehement declamation, threw some severe and well
merited reflections on the memory of the late Lord Jeffreys. The title
and part of the ill gotten wealth of Jeffreys had descended to his son,
a dissolute lad, who had lately come of age, and who was then sitting in
the House. The young man fired at hearing