ord was
to be found indicating that three years of banishment had made the King
wiser, that he had repented of a single error, that he took to himself
even the smallest part of the blame of that revolution which had
dethroned him, or that he purposed to follow a course in any respect
differing from that which had already been fatal to him. All the
charges which had been brought against him he pronounced to be utterly
unfounded. Wicked men had put forth calumnies. Weak men had believed
those calumnies. He alone had been faultless. He held out no hope that
he would consent to any restriction of that vast dispensing power to
which he had formerly laid claim, that he would not again, in defiance
of the plainest statutes, fill the Privy Council, the bench of justice,
the public offices, the army, the navy, with Papists, that he would not
reestablish the High Commission, that he would not appoint a new set of
regulators to remodel all the constituent bodies of the kingdom. He did
indeed condescend to say that he would maintain the legal rights of the
Church of England; but he had said this before; and all men knew what
those words meant in his mouth. Instead of assuring his people of his
forgiveness, he menaced them with a proscription more terrible than any
which our island had ever seen. He published a list of persons who had
no mercy to expect. Among these were Ormond, Caermarthen, Nottingham,
Tillotson and Burnet. After the roll of those who were doomed to death
by name, came a series of categories. First stood all the crowd
of rustics who had been rude to His Majesty when he was stopped at
Sheerness in his flight. These poor ignorant wretches, some hundreds in
number, were reserved for another bloody circuit. Then came all persons
who had in any manner borne a part in the punishment of any Jacobite
conspirator; judges, counsel, witnesses, grand jurymen, petty jurymen,
sheriffs and undersheriffs, constables and turnkeys, in short, all
the ministers of justice from Holt down to Ketch. Then vengeance was
denounced against all spies and all informers who had divulged to the
usurpers the designs of the Court of Saint Germains. All justices of
the peace who should not declare for their rightful Sovereign the moment
that they heard of his landing, all gaolers who should not instantly set
political prisoners at liberty, were to be left to the extreme rigour of
the law. No exception was made in favour of a justice or of a gaoler
w