WILLIAM AND MAHY.

Ill

was far better that a few bad men should go unpunished than chap.that all honest men should live in fear of being falsely accused * -

by felons sentenced to the gallows. Chief Justice Holt advisedthe King to let the law take its course. William, never muchinclined to give credit to stories about conspiracies, assented.

The Captain, as he was called, was hanged inSmithfield, andmade a most penitent end.*

Meanwhile, in the midst of discontent, distress and disorder, Meetinghad begun a session of Parliament singularly eventful, a session ment.from which dates a new era in the history of English finance, asession in which some grave constitutional questions, not yetentirely set at rest, were for the first time debated.

It is much to be lamented that any account of this session Sl>le °f

* parties.

which can be framed out of the scanty and dispersed materialsnow accessible must leave many things obscure. The relationsof the parliamentary factions were, during this year, in asingularly complicated state. Each of the two Houses wasdivided and subdivided by several lines. To omit minordistinctions, there was the great line which separated the Whigparty from the Tory party; and there was the great line whichseparated the official men and then' friends and dependents,who were sometimes called the Court party, from those whowere sometimes nicknamed the Grumbletonians and sometimeshonoured with the appellation of the Country party. And thesetwo great lines were intersecting lines. For of the servants ofthe Crown and of their adherents about one half were Whigsand one half Tories. It is also to be remembered that therewas, quite distinct from the feud between Whigs and Tories,quite distinct also from the feud between those who were in andthose who were out, a feud between the Lords as Lords and the

* Narcissus Luttrell’s Diary, January and February; Hop, ' Tan ‘

e l«eb. jo.

and Feb. j 3 j. 1693; Letter to Secretary Trenchard, 1694; New Court Con-trivances or more Sham Plots still, 1693,