The Life of Judge Jeffreys

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VIII THE JUDICIAL WAR 1681?1683 King Charles endured his acrimonious Parliament until the March of 1681, when, having once more arranged to become a pensioner of Louis XIV., he was enabled to dissolve it, and never summoned another as long as he was King. The Whigs, by the unscrupulous violence of their...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VIII THE JUDICIAL WAR 1681?1683 King Charles endured his acrimonious Parliament until the March of 1681, when, having once more arranged to become a pensioner of Louis XIV., he was enabled to dissolve it, and never summoned another as long as he was King. The Whigs, by the unscrupulous violence of their methods, had to a great extent alienated public opinion; so that when Charles took them by surprise at Oxford and sent his Commons about their business, public feeling was neither shocked nor alarmed. Deprived of Parliament as an arena, the courts of justice and the City Council became the new fields of battle where the contest between Whig and Tory was continued. But in the former field the Whigs were soon worsted. For a time they contrived, by means of friendly Sheriffs, to pack the Middlesex juries; but as soon as the Court had taken over the appointment of the Sheriffs for itself, resistance was hopeless. Judge and jury in the King's hands, there was little chance of salvation for any Whigs who might fall into the clutches of the Crown lawyers. Immediately after the dissolution in March the judicial war began. In such a war Serjeant Jeffreys would naturally be one of the foremost warriors. If the King had lost confidence in him, he had not lost the necessity of his services. He was briefed for the Crown in almost every State trial, until his elevation to the Bench in1683. In spite of his fall he remained one of the King's chief adherents in the City, and was put into positions in which his influence, always considerable, could be best exerted. The King, as leader of the City Militia, was pleased to turn out certain of his officers, Whigs such as Sir Robert Clayton, and to replace them by Tories such as Sir George Jeffreys and his Alderman namesake Sir Robert Jeffr...