WILLIAM AJTD MAllT.

65

blessings the protection which those dark walls, made famousby so many crimes and sorrows, afforded him against the furyof the multitude.* Soon, however, he became sensible thathis life was still in imminent peril. For a time he flatteredhimself with the hope that a writ of Habeas Corpus wouldliberate him from his confinement, and that he should be ableto steal away to some foreign country, and to hide himself withpart of his ill gotten wealth from the detestation of mankind:but, till the government was settled, there was no Courtcompetent to grant a writ of Habeas Corpus; and, as soon asthe government had been settled, the Habeas Corpus Actwas suspended.** Whether the legal guilt of murder could bebrought home to Jeffreys may be doubted. But he was morallyguilty of so many murders that, if there had been no other wayof reaching his life, a retrospective Act of Attainder would havebeen clamorously demanded by the 'whole nation. A disposi-tion to triumph over the fallen has never been one of the be-setting sins of Englishmen: but the hatred of which Jeffreyswas the object was without a parallel in our history, and par-took but too largely of the savageness of his own nature. Thepeople, where he was concerned, were as cruel as himself, andexulted in his misery as he had been accustomed to exult in themisery of convicts listening to the sentence of death, and offamilies clad in mourning. The rabble congregated before hisdeserted mansion in Duke Street, and read on the door, withshouts of laughter, the bills which announced the sale of hisproperty. Even delicate women, who had tears for high-waymen and housebreakers, breathed nothing but vengeanceagainst him. The lampoons on him which were hawked aboutthe town were distinguished by an atrocity rare even in those

* Halifax MS. in the British Museum.

** The Life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys; Finch’s speech inGrey’s Debates, March 1. 16S£.

Macaulay, History. V . 5

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xiv.

1689.