Atrocious Judges Part 9

CHAPTER XII.

WILLIAM SCROGGS.

It was positively a.s.serted in his lifetime, and it has been often repeated since, that Scroggs was the son of a butcher, and that he was so cruel as a judge because he had been himself accustomed to kill calves and lambs when he was a boy. Yet it is quite certain that this solution of Scroggs's taste for blood is a pure fiction, for he was born and bred a gentleman.

His father was a squire, of respectable family and good estate, in Oxfordshire. Young Scroggs was several years at a grammar school, and he took a degree with some credit in the University of Oxford, having studied first at Oriel, and then at Pembroke College. He was intended for the church, and, in quiet times, might have died respected as a painstaking curate, or as Archbishop of Canterbury. But, the civil war breaking out while he was still under age, he enlisted in the king's cause, and afterwards commanded a troop of horse, which did good service in several severe skirmishes. Unfortunately, his morals did not escape the taint which distinguished both men and officers on the Cavalier side. The dissolute habits he had contracted unfitted him entirely for the ecclesiastical profession, and he was advised to try his luck in the law.

He had a quick conception, a bold manner, and an enterprising mind; and prophecies were uttered of his great success if he should exchange the cuira.s.s for the long robe. He was entered as a student at Gray's Inn, and he showed that he was capable, by short fits, of keen application; but his love of profligacy and of expense still continued, and both his health and his finances suffered accordingly.

However, he contrived to be called to the bar; and some of his pot companions being attorneys, they occasionally employed him in causes likely to be won by a loud voice and an unscrupulous appeal to the prejudices of the jury. He practised in the King's Bench, where, although he now and then made a splashy speech, his business by no means increased in the same ratio as his debts. "He was," says Roger North, "a great voluptuary, his debaucheries egregious, and his life loose; which made the Lord Chief Justice Hale detest him." Thinking that he might have a better chance in the Court of Common Pleas, where the men in business were very old and dull, he took the degree of the coif, and he was soon after made a King's Serjeant. Still, however, he kept company with Ken, Guy, and the high-court rakes, and his clients could not depend upon him. His visage being comely, and his speech witty and bold, he was a favorite with juries, and sometimes carried off wonderful verdicts; but, when he ought to have been consulting his chamber in Serjeants' Inn, he was in a tavern or gaming house, or worse place, near St. James's Palace. Thus his gains were unsteady, and the fees which he received were speedily spent in dissipation, so that he fell into a state of great pecuniary embarra.s.sment. On one occasion, he was arrested by a creditor in Westminster Hall as he was about to enter his coach. The process being out of the King's Bench, he complained to that court of a breach of his privileges as a serjeant; but Lord Chief Justice Hale refused to discharge him.

Meanwhile, Serjeant Scroggs was in high favor with Lord Shaftesbury's enemies, who, on the commitment of that turbulent leader to the Tower for breach of privilege, had gained a temporary advantage over him. Through the agency of Chiffinch, superintendent of the secret intrigues of every description which were carried on at Whitehall,[77] he had been introduced to Charles II., and the merry monarch took pleasure in his licentious conversation. What was of more importance to his advancement, he was recommended to the Earl of Danby, the reigning prime minister, as a man that might be useful to the government if he were made a judge. In consequence, on the 23d of October, 1676, he was knighted, and sworn in a justice of the Court of Common Pleas. Sir Allan Broderick, in a letter to "the Honorable Lawrence Hyde," written a few days after, says, "Sir William Scroggs, on Monday, being admitted judge, made so excellent a speech that my Lord Northampton, then present, went from Westminster to Whitehall immediately, and told the king he had, since his happy restoration, caused many hundred sermons to be printed, and which together taught not the people half so much loyalty; therefore, as a sermon, desired his command to have it printed and published in all the market towns in England."

Mr. Justice Scroggs gave himself little trouble with law business that came before the court; but, in addressing grand juries on the circuit, he was loud and eloquent against the proceedings of the "country party," and he still continued to be frequently in the circle at Whitehall, where he took opportunities not only to celebrate his own zeal, but to sneer at Sir John Raynsford, the chief justice of the King's Bench, whose place he was desirous to fill. Chiffinch, and his other patrons of the back-stairs, were in the habit of sounding his praise, and a.s.serting that he was the only man who, as head of the King's Bench, could effectually cope with the manoeuvres of Shaftesbury. This unconquerable intriguer, having been discharged from custody, was again plotting against the government, was preparing to set up the legitimacy of Monmouth, and was a.s.serting that the Duke of York should be set aside from the succession of the throne and prosecuted as a Popish recusant.

The immediate cause of Raynsford's removal was the desire of the government to have a chief justice of the King's Bench on whose vigor and subserviency reliance could be placed, to counteract the apprehended machinations of Shaftesbury.

On the 31st of May, 1678, Sir William Scroggs was sworn into the office, and he remained in it for a period of three years. How he conducted himself in civil suits is never once mentioned, for the attention of mankind was entirely absorbed by his scandalous misbehavior as a criminal judge. He is looked to with more loathing, if not with more indignation, than Jeffreys, for in his abominable cruelties he was the sordid tool of others, and in his subsequent career he had not the feeble excuse of gratifying his own pa.s.sions or advancing his own interests.

Although quite indifferent with regard to religion, and ready to have declared himself a Papist, or a Puritan, or a Mahometan, according to the prompting of his superiors, finding that the policy of the government was to outbid Shaftesbury in zeal for Protestantism, he professed an implicit belief in all the wonders revealed by t.i.tus Oates, in the murder of Sir Edmondbury G.o.dfrey by Papists, and in the absolute necessity for cutting off without pity all those who were engaged in the nefarious design to a.s.sa.s.sinate the king, to burn London, and to extinguish the flames with the blood of Protestants. He thought himself to be in the singularly felicitous situation of pleasing the government while he received shouts of applause from the mob. Burnet, speaking of his appointment, says, "It was a melancholy thing to see so bad, so ignorant, and so poor a man raised up to that great post. Yet he, now seeing how the stream ran, went into it with so much zeal and heartiness that he was become the favorite of the people."[78]

The first of the Popish plot judicial murders--which are more disgraceful to England than the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's is to France--was that of Stayly, the Roman Catholic banker. Being tried at the bar of the Court of King's Bench, Scroggs, according to the old fashion, which had gone out during the Commonwealth, repeatedly put questions to the prisoner, attempting to intimidate him, or to involve him in contradictions, or to elicit from him some indiscreet admission of facts. A witness having stated that "he had often heard the prisoner say he would lose his blood for the king, and speak as loyally as man could speak," Scroggs exclaimed, "_That is, when he spoke to a Protestant!_" In summing up, having run himself out of breath by the violence with which he declaimed against the Pope and the Jesuits, he thus apologised to the jury:--

"Excuse me, gentlemen, if I am a little warm, when perils are so many, murders so secret. When things are transacted so closely, and our king is in great danger, and religion is at stake, I may be excused for being a little warm. You may think it better, gentlemen, to be warm here than in Smithfield. Discharge your consciences as you ought to do. If guilty, let the prisoner take the reward of his crime, for perchance it may be a terror to the rest. I hope I shall never go to that heaven where men are made saints for killing kings."

The verdict of _guilty_ being recorded, _Scroggs, C. J._, said, "Now, you may die a Roman Catholic; and, when you come to die, I doubt you will be found a priest too. The matter, manner, and all the circ.u.mstances of the case, make it plain; you may harden your heart as much as you will, and lift up your eyes, but you seem, instead of being sorrowful, to be obstinate. Between G.o.d and your conscience be it; I have nothing to do with that; my duty is only to p.r.o.nounce judgment upon you according to law--you shall be drawn to the place of execution, where you shall be hanged by the neck, cut down alive," &c. &c.

The unhappy convict's friends were allowed to give him decent burial;[79]

but, because they said a ma.s.s for his soul, his body was, by order of Lord Chief Justice Scroggs, taken out of the grave, his quarters were fixed upon the gates of the city, and his head, at the top of a pole, was set on London Bridge. So proud was Scroggs of this exploit, that he had an account of it written, for which he granted an IMPRIMATUR, signed with his own name.

I must not run the risk of disgusting my readers by a detailed account of Scroggs's enormities on the trials of Coleman, Ireland, Whitebeard, Langhord, and the other victims whom he sacrificed to the popular fury under pretence that they were implicated in the Popish plot. Whether sitting in his own court at Westminster, or at the Old Bailey in the city of London, as long as he believed that government favored the prosecutions, by a display of all the unworthy arts of cajoling and intimidation he secured convictions. A modern historian, himself a Roman Catholic priest, says, with temper and discrimination, "The Chief Justice Scroggs, a lawyer of profligate habits and inferior acquirements, acted the part of prosecutor rather than of judge. To the informers he behaved with kindness, even with deference, suggesting to them explanations, excusing their contradictions, and repelling the imputation on their characters; but the prisoners were repeatedly interrupted and insulted; their witnesses were browbeaten from the bench, and their condemnation was generally hailed with acclamations, which the court rather encouraged than repressed."

Meanwhile the chief justice went the circuit; and although the Popish plot did not extend into the provinces, it may be curious to see how he demeaned himself there. Andrew Bromwich being tried before him capitally, for having administered the sacrament of the Lord's supper according to the rites of the church of Rome, thus the dialogue between them proceeded:--

_Prisoner._--"I desire your lordship will take notice of one thing, that I have taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and have not refused any thing which might testify my loyalty." _Scroggs, C. J._--"That will not serve your turn; you priests have many tricks. What is that to giving a woman the sacrament several times?" _Prisoner._--"My lord, it was no sacrament unless I be a priest, of which there is no proof."

_Scroggs._--"What! you expect we should prove you a priest by witnesses who saw you ordained? We know too much of your religion; no one gives the sacrament in a wafer, except he be a Popish priest: you gave that woman the sacrament in a wafer: _ergo_, you are a Popish priest." Thus he summed up: "Gentlemen of the jury, I leave it upon your consciences whether you will let priests escape, who are the very pests of church and state; you had better be rid of one priest than three felons; so, gentlemen, I leave it to you."

After a verdict of guilty, the chief justice said, "Gentlemen, you have found a good verdict, and if I had been one of you I should have found the same myself." He then p.r.o.nounced sentence of death, describing what seemed to be his own notion of the divine Being, while he imputed this blasphemy to the prisoner: "You act as if G.o.d Almighty were some omnipotent mischief, that delighted and would be served with the sacrifice of human blood."

Scroggs was more and more eager, and "ranted on that side more impetuously," when he observed that Lord Shaftesbury, who, although himself too shrewd to believe in the Popish plot, had been working it furiously for his own purposes, was taken into office on the formation of Sir William Temple's new scheme of administration, and was actually made president of the council. But he began to entertain a suspicion that the king had been acting a part against his inclination and his judgment, and, having ascertained the real truth upon this point, he showed himself equally versatile and violent by suddenly going over to the opposite faction. Roger North gives the following racy account of his conversion:--

"It fell out that when the Earl of Shaftesbury had sat some short time in the council, and seemed to rule the roast, yet Scroggs had some qualms in his political conscience; and coming from Windsor in the Lord Chief Justice North's coach, he took the opportunity and desired his lordship to tell him seriously if my Lord Shaftesbury had really so great power with the king as he was thought to have. His lordship answered quick, 'No, my lord, no more than your footman hath with you.' Upon that the other hung his head, and, considering the matter, said nothing for a good while, and then pa.s.sed to other discourse. After that time he turned as fierce against Oates and his plot as ever before he had ranted for it."

The first Popish plot case which came on after this conversion was the trial of Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, against whom Oates and Bedloe swore as stoutly as ever; making out a case which implicated, to a certain degree, the queen herself. But Chief Justice Scroggs now sneered at the marvellous memory or imagination of Oates; and, taking very little notice, in his summing up, of the evidence of Bedloe, thus concluded:--

"If you are unsatisfied upon these things put together, and, well weighing, you think the witnesses have not said true, you will do well to acquit." _Bedloe._--"My lord, my evidence is not right summed up."

_Scroggs, C. J._--"I know not by what authority this man speaks.

Gentlemen, consider of your verdict."

An acquittal taking place, not only were Oates and Bedloe in a furious rage, but the mob were greatly disappointed, for their belief in the plot was still unshaken, and Scroggs, who had been their idol a few hours ago,[80] was in danger of being torn in pieces by them. Although he contrived to escape in safety to his house, he was a.s.sailed next morning by broadsides, ballads sung in the streets, and libels in every imaginable shape.

On the first day of the following term, he bound over in open court the authors, printers, and signers of some of the worst of them, and made the following speech:--

"I would have all men know that I am not so revengeful in my nature, nor so nettled with this aspersion, that I could not have pa.s.sed by this and more; but the many scandalous libels that are abroad, and reflect on public justice as well as upon my private self, make it the duty of my place to defend the one, and the duty I owe to my reputation to vindicate the other. This is the properest occasion for both. If once our courts of justice come to be awed or swayed by vulgar noise,[81] it is falsely said that men are tried for their lives or fortunes; they live by chance, and enjoy what they have as the wind blows, and with the same certainty. Such a base, fearful compliance made Felix, willing to please the people, leave Paul bound. The people ought to be pleased with public justice, and not justice seek to please the people. Justice should flow like a mighty stream; and if the rabble, like an unruly wind, blow against it, the stream they made rough will keep its course. I do not think that we yet live in so corrupt an age that a man may not with safety be just, and follow his conscience; if it be otherwise, we must hazard our safety to preserve our integrity. As to Sir George Wakeman's trial, I am neither afraid nor ashamed to mention it. I will appeal to all sober and understanding men, and to the long robe more especially, who are the best and properest judges in such cases, for the fairness and equality of my carriage on that occasion. For those hireling scribblers who traduce me,--who write to eat and lie for bread,--I intend to meet with them another way, for, like vermin, they are only safe while they are secret.

And let those vipers, those printers and booksellers by whom they vend their false and braided ware, look to it; they shall know that the law wants not power to punish a libellous and licentious press, nor I resolution to put the law in force. And this is all the answer fit to be given (besides a whip) to those hackney writers and dull observators that go as they are hired or spurred, and perform as they are fed. If there be any sober and good men that are misled by false reports, or by subtlety deceived into any misapprehensions concerning that trial or myself; I should account it the highest pride and the most scornful thing in the world if I did not endeavor to undeceive them. To such men, therefore, I do solemnly declare in the seat of justice, where I would no more lie or equivocate than I would to G.o.d at the holy altar, I followed my conscience according to the best of my understanding in all that trial, without fear, favor, or reward, _without the gift of one shilling, or the value of it directly or indirectly, and without any promise or expectation whatsoever_.[82] Do any think it an even wager, whether I am the greatest villain in the world or not--one that would sell the life of the king, my religion, and country, to Papists for money? He that says great places have great temptations, has a little if not a false heart himself. Let us pursue the discovery of the plot in G.o.d's name, and not balk any thing where there is suspicion on reasonable grounds; but do not pretend to find what is not, nor count him a turncoat that will not betray his conscience, nor believe incredible things. Those are foolish men who think that an acquittal must be wrong, and that there can be no justice without an execution."

Many were bound over; but not more than one prosecution was brought to trial--that against Richard Radley, who was convicted of speaking scandalous words of the Lord Chief Justice Scroggs, and fined 200.

When the Earl of Castlemaine--the complaisant husband of the king's mistress--was brought to trial for being concerned in the plot, Scroggs was eager to get him off, still despising popular clamor. Bedloe being utterly ruined in reputation, Dangerfield was now marched up, as the second witness, to support Oates. He had been sixteen times convicted of infamous offences; and, to render him competent, a pardon under the great seal was produced. But the chief justice was very severe upon him, saying, in summing up to the jury, "Whether this man be of a sudden become a saint because he has become a witness, I leave that to you to consider. Now I must tell you, though they have produced two witnesses, if you believe but one, this is insufficient. In treason, there being two witnesses, the one believed, the other disbelieved, may there be a conviction? I say, no. Let us deal fairly and aboveboard, and so preserve men who are accused and not guilty." The defendant being acquitted, the chief justice was again condemned as a renegade.

He further made himself obnoxious to the charge of having gone over to the Papists, by his conduct on the trial of Mrs. Elizabeth Cellier, who, if she had been prosecuted while he believed that the government wished the plot to be considered real, would unquestionably have been burned alive for high treason, but now was the object of his especial protection and favor. The second witness against her was Dangerfield, who, when he was put into the box, before any evidence had been given to discredit him, was thus saluted by Chief Justice Scroggs:--

"We will not hoodwink ourselves against such a fellow as this, that is guilty of such notorious crimes. A man of modesty, after he hath been in the pillory, would not look a man in the face. Such fellows as you are, sirrah, shall know we are not afraid of you. It is notorious enough what a fellow this is. I will shake all such fellows before I have done with them." _Dangerfield._--"My lord, this is enough to discourage a man from ever entering into an honest principle." _Scroggs, C. J._--"What! Do you, with all the mischief that h.e.l.l hath in you, think to have it in a court of justice? I wonder at your impudence, that you dare look a court of justice in the face, after having been made appear so notorious a villain.

Come, gentlemen of the jury, this is a plain case; here is but one witness in a case of treason; therefore lay your heads together, and say _not guilty_."

Mrs. Cellier was set at liberty, and Dangerfield was committed to occupy her cell in Newgate.

When holding a.s.sizes in the country, he took every opportunity of proclaiming his slavish doctrines. Going the Oxford circuit with Lord Chief Baron Atkyns, he told the grand jury that a pet.i.tion from the lord mayor and citizens of London to the king, for calling a Parliament, was high treason. Atkyns, on the contrary, affirmed "that the people might pet.i.tion the king, and, so that it was done without tumult, it was lawful." Scroggs, having peremptorily denied this, went on to say "that the king might prevent printing and publishing whatever he chose by proclamation." Atkyns mildly remarked, "that such matters were fitter for Parliament, and that, if the king could do this work of Parliament, we were never like to have Parliaments any more." Scroggs, highly indignant, sent off a despatch to the king, stating the unconst.i.tutional and treasonable language of Chief Baron Atkyns. This virtuous judge was in consequence superseded, and remained in a private station till he was reinstated in his office after the revolution.

Before Scroggs was himself prosecuted and dismissed from his office with disgrace, he swelled the number of his delinquencies by an attack on the liberty of the press, which was more violent than any that had ever been attempted by the Star Chamber, and which, if it had been acquiesced in, would have effectually established despotism in this country. Here he was directly prompted by the government, and it is surprising that this proceeding should so little have attracted the notice of historians who have dwelt upon the arbitrary measures of the reign of Charles II. The object was to put down all free discussions, and all complaints against misrule, by having, in addition to a licenser, a process of _injunction_ against printing--to be summarily enforced, without the intervention of a jury, by fine, imprisonment, pillory, and whipping. There was then in extensive circulation a newspaper called "The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, or the History of Papacy," which reflected severely upon the religion now openly professed by the Duke of York and secretly embraced by the king himself. In Trinity term, 1680, an application being made to the Court of King's Bench, on the ground that this newspaper was libellous, Scroggs, with the a.s.sent of his brother judges, granted a rule absolute in the first instance, forbidding the publication of it in future. The editor and printer being served with the rule, the journal was suppressed till the matter was taken up in the House of Commons, and Scroggs was impeached.

The same term he gave the crowning proof of his servility and contempt of law and of decency. Shaftesbury, to pave the way for the exclusion bill, resolved to prosecute the Duke of York as a "Popish recusant." The heir presumptive to the throne was clearly liable to this proceeding and to all the penalties, forfeitures, and disqualifications which it threatened, for he had been educated a Protestant, and, having lately returned from torturing the Covenanters in Scotland, he was in the habit of ostentatiously celebrating the rites of the Romish religion in his chapel in London. An indictment against him was prepared in due form, and this was laid before the grand jury for the county of Middles.e.x by Lord Shaftesbury, along with Lord Russell, Lord Cavendish, Lord Grey de Werke, and other members of the country party. This alarming news being brought to Scroggs while sitting on the bench, he instantly ordered the grand jury to attend in court. The bailiff found them examining the first witness in support of the indictment; but they obeyed orders. As soon as they had entered the court, the chief justice said to them, "Gentlemen of the grand jury, you are discharged, and the country is much obliged to you for your services."

There were two cla.s.ses whom he had offended, of very different character and power--the witnesses in support of the Popish plot, and the exclusionist leaders. The first began by preferring articles against him to the king in council, which alleged, among other things, that at the trial of Sir George Wakeman "he did browbeat and curb Dr. t.i.tus Oates and Captain Bedloe, two of the princ.i.p.al witnesses for the king, and encourage the jury impanelled to try the malefactors to disbelieve the said witnesses, by speaking of them slightingly and abusively, and by omitting material parts of their evidence; that the said chief justice, to manifest his slighting opinion of the evidence of the said Dr. t.i.tus Oates and Captain Bedloe in the presence of his most sacred majesty and the lords of his majesty's most honorable Privy Council, did dare to say that Dr. t.i.tus Oates and Captain Bedloe always had an accusation ready against any body; that the said lord chief justice is very much addicted to swearing and cursing in his common discourse, and to drink to excess, to the great disparagement of the dignity and gravity of his office."

It seems surprising that such charges, from such a quarter, against so high a magistrate, should have been entertained, although he held his office during the pleasure of the crown. The probability is that, being in favor with the government, it was considered to be the most dexterous course to give him the opportunity of being tried before a tribunal by which he was sure of being acquitted, in the hope that his acquittal would save him from the fangs of an enraged House of Commons.

He was required to put in an answer to the articles, and a day was appointed for hearing the case. When it came on, to give great _eclat_ to the certain triumph of the accused, the king presided in person. Oates and Bedloe were heard, but they and their witnesses were constantly interrupted and stopped, on the ground that they were stating what was not evidence, or what was irrelevant; and, after a very eloquent and witty speech from the chief justice, in the course of which he caused much merriment by comments on his supposed immoralities, judgment was given that the complaints against him were false and frivolous.

But Shaftesbury was not so easily to be diverted from his revenge. On the meeting of Parliament he caused a motion to be made in the House of Commons for an inquiry into the conduct of Lord Chief Justice Scroggs in discharging the Middles.e.x grand jury and in other matters. A committee was accordingly appointed, which presented a report recommending that he should be impeached. The report was adopted by a large majority, and articles of impeachment were voted against him. These were _eight_ in number. The _first_ charged in general terms "that the said William Scroggs, chief justice of the King's Bench, had traitorously and wickedly endeavored to subvert the fundamental laws and the established religion and government of the kingdom of England." The _second_ was for illegally discharging the grand jury, "whereby the course of justice was stopped maliciously and designedly--the presentments of many Papists and other offenders were obstructed--and in particular a bill of indictment against James, Duke of York, which was then before them, was prevented from being proceeded upon." The _third_ was founded on the illegal order for suppressing the Weekly Pacquet newspaper. The three following articles were for granting general warrants, for imposing arbitrary fines, and for illegally refusing bail. The _seventh_ charged him with defaming and scandalizing the witnesses who proved the Popish plot. The _last_ was in these words: "VIII. Whereas the said Sir William Scroggs, being advanced to be chief justice of the Court of King's Bench, ought, by a sober, grave, and virtuous conversation, to have given a good example to the king's liege people, and to demean himself answerably to the dignity of so eminent a station; yet, on the contrary thereof, he doth, by his frequent and notorious excesses and debaucheries, and his profane and atheistical discourses, daily affront Almighty G.o.d, dishonor his majesty, give countenance and encouragement to all manner of vice and wickedness, and bring the highest scandal on the public justice of the kingdom."

These articles were carried to the House of Peers by Lord Cavendish, who there, in the name of all the Commons of England, impeached Chief Justice Scroggs for "high treason, and other high crimes and misdemeanors."

The articles being read, the accused, who was present, sitting on the judge's woolsack, was ordered to withdraw. A motion was then made, that he be _committed_; but the previous question was moved and carried, and a motion for an address to suspend him from his office till his trial should be over, was got rid of in the same manner. He was then called in, and ordered to find his bail in 10,000, to answer the articles of impeachment, and to prepare for his trial.

Luckily for him, at the end of three days the Parliament was abruptly dissolved. It would have been difficult to make out that any of the charges amounted to _high treason_; but in those days men were not at all nice about such distinctions, and a dangerous but convenient doctrine prevailed, that, upon an impeachment, the two Houses of Parliament might retrospectively declare any thing to be treason, according to their discretion, and punish it capitally. At any rate, considering that the influence of Shaftesbury in the Upper House was so great, and that Halifax and the respectable anti-exclusionists could not have defended or palliated the infamous conduct of Scroggs, had his case come to a hearing, he could not have got off without some very severe and degrading punishment.

Although he escaped a judicial sentence, his character was so blown upon, and juries regarded him with such horror, and were so much inclined to go against his direction, that the government found that he would obstruct instead of facilitating their designs against the whig leaders, and that it was necessary to get rid of him. After the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament the court was completely triumphant, and, being possessed for a time of absolute power, had only to consider the most expedient means of perpetuating despotism, and wreaking vengeance on the friends of freedom.

Before long, Russell, Sydney, and Shaftesbury were to be brought to trial, that their heads might pay the penalty of the Exclusion Bill; but if Scroggs should be their judge, any jury, whether inclined to Protestantism or to Popery, would probably acquit them.

Accordingly, in the beginning of April, to make room for one who, it was hoped, would have more influence with juries, and make the proceedings meditated against the city of London and other corporations pa.s.s off with less discredit, while he might be equally subservient, Sir William Scroggs was removed from his office of chief justice of the King's Bench. So low had he fallen, that little regard was paid to his feelings, even by those for whom he had sacrificed his character and his peace of mind; and, instead of a "resignation on account of declining health," it was abruptly announced to him that a _supersedeas_ had issued, and that Sir FRANCIS PEMBERTON, who had been a puisne judge under him, was to succeed him as chief justice.

His disgrace caused general joy in Westminster Hall, and over all England; for, as Jeffreys had not yet been clothed in ermine, the name of Scroggs was the by-word to express all that could be considered loathsome and odious in a judge.

He was allowed a small pension, or retired allowance, which he did not long enjoy. When cashiered, finding no sympathy from his own profession, or from any cla.s.s of the community, he retired to a country house which he had purchased, called Wealde Hall, near Brentwood, in Ess.e.x. Even here, his evil fame caused him to be shunned. He was considered by the gentry to be without religion and without honor; while the peasantry, who had heard some vague rumors of his having put people to death, believed that he was a murderer, whispered stories of his having dealings with evil spirits, and took special care never to run the risk of meeting him after dark. His const.i.tution was undermined by his dissolute habits; and, in old age, he was still a solitary selfish bachelor. After languishing, in great misery, till the 25th day of October, 1683, he then expired, without a relation or friend to close his eyes. He was buried in the parish church of South Wealde; the undertaker, the s.e.xton, and the parson of the parish, alone attending the funeral. He left no descendants; and he must either have been the last of his race, or his collateral relations, ashamed of their connection with him, had changed their name; for, since his death, there has been no Scroggs in Great Britain or Ireland. The word was long used by nurses to frighten children; and as long as our history is studied, or our language is spoken or read, it will call up the image of a base and b.l.o.o.d.y-minded villain. With honorable principles, and steady application, he might have been respected in his lifetime, and left an historical reputation behind him. "He was a person of very excellent and nimble parts," and he could both speak and write our language better than any lawyer of the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon alone excepted. He seems to have been little aware of the light in which his judicial conduct would be viewed; for it is a curious fact that the published reports of the State Trials at which he presided were all revised and retouched by himself; and his speeches, which fill us with amazement and horror, he expected would be regarded as proofs of his spirit and his genius. He had excellent natural abilities, and might have made a great figure in his profession; but was profligate in his habits, brutal in his manners, with only one rule to guide him--a regard to what he considered his own interest--without a touch of humanity, wholly impenetrable to remorse.