by storm. Showers of shells and redhot bullets
were falling in the streets. The town was on fire in ten places at once.
The peaceful inhabitants derived an unwonted courage from the excess
of their fear, and rose on the soldiers. Thenceforth resistance was
impossible; and a capitulation was concluded. The armies then retired
into quarters. Military operations were suspended during some weeks;
Lewis returned in triumph to Versailles; and William paid a short visit
to England, where his presence was much needed. [9]

He found the ministers still employed in tracing out the ramifications
of the plot which had been discovered just before his departure. Early
in January, Preston, Ashton and Elliot had been arraigned at the Old
Bailey. They claimed the right of severing in their challenges. It was
therefore necessary to try them separately. The audience was numerous
and splendid. Many peers were present. The Lord President and the two
Secretaries of State attended in order to prove that the papers
produced in Court were the same which Billop had brought to Whitehall. A
considerable number of judges appeared on the bench; and Holt presided.
A full report of the proceedings has come down to us, and well deserves
to be attentively studied, and to be compared with the reports of other
trials which had not long before taken place under the same roof. The
whole spirit of the tribunal had undergone in a few months a change so
complete that it might seem to have been the work of ages. Twelve years
earlier, unhappy Roman Catholics, accused of wickedness which had never
entered into their thoughts, had stood in that dock. The witnesses for
the Crown had repeated their hideous fictions amidst the applauding hums
of the audience. The judges had shared, or had pretended to share, the
stupid credulity and the savage passions of the populace, had exchanged
smiles and compliments with the perjured informers, had roared down
the arguments feebly stammered forth by the prisoners, and had not
been ashamed, in passing the sentence of death, to make ribald jests on
purgatory and the mass. As soon as the butchery of Papists was over, the
butchery of Whigs had commenced; and the judges had applied themselves
to their new work with even more than their old barbarity. To these
scandals the Revolution had put an end. Whoever, after perusing the
trials of Ireland and Pickering, of Grove and Berry, of Sidney, Cornish
and Alice Lisle, turns to the trials