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HISTORY OR ENGLAND.

CHAP.XIV.1689 .Case ofDevon-shire.

Case ofOatea.

While the Commons were considering the case of Johnson,the Lords were scrutinising with severity the proceedings whichhad, in the late reign, been instituted against one of their ownorder, the Earl of Devonshire. The judges who had passedsentence on him were strictly interrogated; and a resolutionwas passed declaring that in his case the privileges of thepeerage had been infringed, and that the Court of King’sBench, in punishing a hasty blow by a fine of thirty thousandpounds, had violated common justice and the Great Charter.*

In the cases -which have been mentioned, all parties seem tohave agreed in thinking that some public reparation was due.But the fiercest passions both of Whigs and Tories were soonroused by the noisy claims of a wretch whose sufferings, greatas they might seem, had been trifling when compared with hiscrimes. Oates had come back, like a ghost from the place ofpunishment, to haunt the spots which had been polluted byhis guilt. The three years and a half which followed hisscourging he had passed in one of the cells of Newgate, exceptwhen on certain days, the anniversaries of his perjuries, hehad been brought forth and set on the pillory. He was still,however, regarded by many fanatics as a martyr; and it wassaid that they were able so far to corrupt his keepers that, inspite of positive orders from the government, his sufferingswere mitigated by many indulgences. While offenders, who,compared with him, were innocent, grew lean on the prisonallowance, his cheer was mended by turkeys and chines, caponsand sucking pigs, venison pasties and hampers of claret, theofferings of zealous Protestants.** When James had fled fromWhitehall, and when London was in confusion, it was moved,in the council of Lords which had provisionally assumed the

* Lords’ Journals, May 15. 1689.

** North’s Exainen, 224. North’s evidence is confirmed by severalcontemporary squibs in prose and verse. See also the elxtav (UgotoAotyov,1697.