chap.

XIV.

11189 .

G6 nrsTOBY of England.

days. Hanging would be too mild a deatli for him: a graveunder the gibbet too respectable a resting place: he ought tobe whipped to death at the cart’s tail: he ought to be torturedlike an Indian: he ought to be devoured alive. The streetpoets portioned out all his joints with cannibal ferocity, andcomputed how many pounds of steaks might be cut from hiswell fattened carcass. Nay, the rage of his enemies was suchthat, in language seldom heard in England, they proclaimedtheir wish that he might go to the place of wailing and gnashingof teeth, to the worm that never dies, to the fire that is neverquenched. They exhorted him to hang himself in his garters,and to cut His throat with his razor. They put up horribleprayers that he might not be able to repent, that he might diethe same hardhearted, wicked Jeffreys that he had lived.* Hisspirit, as mean in adversity as insolent and inhuman in pros-perity, sank down under the load of public abhorrence. Hisconstitution, originally bad, and much impaired by intem-perance, was completely broken by distress and anxiety. Hewas tormented by a cruel internal disease, which the mostskilful surgeons of that age were seldom able to relieve. Onesolace was left to him, brandy. Even when he had causes totry and councils to attend, he had seldom gone to bed sober.Now, when he had nothing to occupy his mind save terriblerecollections and terrible forebodings, he abandoned himselfwithout reserve to his favourite vice. Many believed him to bebent on shortening his life by excess. He thought it better,

* See, among many other pieces, Jeffreys’s Elegy, the Letter to theLord Chancellor exposing to him the sentiments of the people, the Elegyon Dangerfield, Dangerfield’s Ghost to Jeffreys, the Humble Petition ofWidows and fatherless Children in the West, the Lord Chancellor’s Dis-covery and Confession made in the time of his sickness in the Tower;IlickeringiH’s Ccremonymonger; a broadside entitled “0 rare show! Orarosight! 0 strange monster! The like not in Europe I To be seen near TowerHill, a few doors beyond the Lion’s den."