THE INTERREGNUM.

were therefore not traitors. The Judges admitted that thiswould have been a good defence if the prisoners had actedunder the authority of an usurper who, like Henry the Fourthand Richard the Third, bore the regal title, but declaredthat such a defence could not avail men who had indicted,sentenced, and executed one who, in the indictment, in thesentence, and in the death warrant, was designated as King.It followed, therefore, that whoever should support a Regentin opposition to James would run great risk of being hanged,drawn, and quartered, if ever James should recover supremepower; but that no person could, without such a violationof law as Jeffreys himself would hardly venture to commit, bepunished for siding with a King who was reigning, thoughwrongfully, at Whitehall, against a rightful King who was inexile at Saint Germains. *

It should seem that these arguments admit of no reply;and they were doubtless urged with force by Danby, whohad a wonderful power of making every subject which hetreated clear to the dullest mind, and by Halifax, who, infertility of thought and brilliancy of diction, had no rivalamong the orators of that age. Yet so numerous and power-ful were the Tories in the Upper House that, notwithstandingthe weakness of their case, the defection of their leader, andthe ability of their opponents, they very nearly carried theday. A hundred Lords divided. Forty-nine voted for aRegency, fifty-one against it. In the minority were the na-tural children of Charles, the brotliers-in-law of James, theDukes of Somerset and Ormond, the Archbishop of Yorkand eleven Bishops. No prelate voted in the majority exceptCompton and Trelawney.**

* Slat. 2 lien. I. c. 1.: Lord Coke’s Institutes, part iii. chap. i.; Trialof Cook for high treason, in the Collection of Stale Trials; Burnet, i. 813.and Swift’s note.

“ Lords’ Journals, Jan. 29.16SJ; Clarendon’s Diary; Evelyn’s Diary;Cillers; Eachard's History of the Revolution; Burnet, i. 813.; Historyof the Reestablishment of the Government, 1089. The numbers of theContents and Not Contents are not given in the journals, and aredifferently reported by different writers. I have followed Clarendon,who look the trouble to make out lists of the majority and minority.