SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Hrrroax,

The Life, Progresses, and Rebellion of James Deke of Monmouth, &c. to his Cap- ture and Execution : with a full Account of the Bloody Assize, and copious Bio- graphical Notices. By George Roberts, Author of " The History of 1.3me Regis," &c. In two volume. Longman and Co. The Conquest of Selo& ; with some Introductory Passages in the Life of Major Ge- neral Sir Charles James Napier. By Major General W. F. P. Napier, C.D. Author of " History of the War in the Peninsula and the South of France." Part I Boone. Ts•vaut. Australia. from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay ; with Descriptions of the Natives, their Manners and Customs ; the Geology. Natural l'roductions, Fertility, and Resources of that Region, first Explored cod Surveyed by Order of the Colonial Governmeot. By Clement Hodgkinsun Boone. Froriorr, The Chimes; a Goblin Story of some Bells that Ruog an Old Year Out and a New Year In. By Charles Dickens Chapman and Han.

MR. ROBERTS'S LIFE OF MONMOUTH.

JAMES Duke of MONMOUTH, " the darling of the English people," was indebted for the political eminence that he attained to the vio- lence of party, and the misfortune of his untimely death : for his own abilities were beneath contempt, and he wanted that resolved will which often accompanies folly. According to DE GRAM- MONT, his intellectual weakness was so great, that even with the women of the court of CHARLES the Second his mind quickly un- did the effects of his person and accomplishments—" son esprit ne disoit pas un petit mot en sa faveur." In politics he was the in- strument of more active and able men ; who made use of his hand- some person, his popular manners, and an idle report that CHARLES had been married to his mother, to concentrate the hatred of the Protestant party against the Duke of YORK, and to feed their own ambition. Yet even here his weakness of judgment or resolution beset him ; and his tutor SHAFTESBURY declared he had thrown away three opportunities that God had given him, and termed him " an unfortunate man." War was his profession ; and in a subor- dinate capacity, or against such enemies as the fanatical Cove- nanters at Bothwell Brig, be did well enough ; but opposed to equal force and good generalship, his deficiency would have been conspi- cuous. Of that superior captainship which not only considers the tactics of the campaign but the economical basis on which the army rests, and shapes the principle of the war according to this basis, he had not a particle ; as was fatally apparent in his rash rising in the West of England. His best and perhaps his most attractive quality was his humanity or good-nature ; but, unassisted by firm- ness, it became his bane. Wild ambition, and the incapacity of saying no, made him an instrument of the Whig faction, a puppet in the hands of SHAFTESBURY, and drove him against his own opi- nion into the invasion of the West, and that proclamation of him- self as King which sealed his doom when taken. The same weak- ness tainted his honour. He betrayed to CHARLES the Second all he knew of the Rye-House Plot ; and when taken after the ac- tion of Sedgemoor, he abjectly solicited JAMES the Second for pardon. The only manliness he displayed was on the scaffold: and no efforts of the four divines that attended him, however perti- nacious and indecently cruel to a man about to die, could extract from him a sentence in approval of the Church of England doc- trine of " non-resistance."

Considered as a biography, the Life of the Duke of MONMOUTH is rather bare in itself, though capable of displaying the charac- teristics of the age. LUCY WaLrEas, the mother of our hero, was the daughter of a Welsh squire ; and having only her face for a fortune, she came up to London to realize it. After a career of gallantry, she went to Holland ; where she attracted the notice of the exiled CHARLES, and soon afterwards gave birth to the future Duke of MONMOUTH. Some doubts have been raised as to his paternity ; a claim having been set up for her last protector, the " handsome " SIDNEY the brother of ALGERNON but all the por- traits of the Duke without exception are said to be a handsome likeness of CHARLES the Second. JAMES the Second and some other contemporaries always considered he was SIDNEY'S son. The future Duke was born in 1649; and soon became a favouriteof his reputed father and the Queen HENRIETTA, from the graces of his person and sprightliness of his manner. His intellectual education was grossly neglected, not only during his mother's governance but when she had been persuaded to resign him. In the bodily ac- complishments then in rogue in France he was fully instructed : on the Restoration, he had, by CHARLES'S order, a regular esta- blishment, including a coach and six ; and in 1662 he was brought over to England by the Queen Dowager. Besides a display of personal fondness, the King betrothed him to the heiress of the Earl of BUCCLEUGLI ; created him Duke of ORKNEY, which title he changed for MONMOUTH; and acknowledged him as his natural son,—much against the advice of CLARENDON, who urged that "it would have an ill sound in England with all his people, who thought that those unlawful acts ought to be concealed, and not published and justified."

In 1665, MONMOUTH served under the Duke of YORK in the great sea-fight where OPDAM the Dutch commander was killed ; and he was rapidly advanced by his father in honours and posts of profit ; being made Captain-General in 1670, before he had attained his twenty-first year, and a few years afterwards the office of Com- mander-in-chief was revived in his favour. The Duke distin- guished himself in the French and Dutch wars ; where he served as an auxiliary, first under Loins the Great and afterwards under the Prince of Orange. At home he had distinguished himself less honourably, by directing a cowardly and brutal assault upon Sir Joai COVENTRY for a personal reflection upon the King in the House of Commons : in a brawling frolic with the young Duke of ALBEMARLE and eight others, he murdered a watchman, in the Haymarket ; and the King, to screen MONMOUTH, pardoned the whole.

Had he possessed prudence and principle, and patiently bided his time to take advantage of events, it seems difficult to say to what height he might not have risen, in the conflict of political and reli- gious parties that ensued. But he was the dupe of his own ambi- tion, and of the ambition of other men. An idea of his legitimacy bad been pretty extensively embraced by the vulgar, grounded on an asserted private marriage or betrothal between CHARLES and LUCY WALTERS ; to which a sort of colour was lent by the impru- dence of some of the STUART family, the respectful conduct of the Cavaliers towards the lady, and perhaps the political reports of CnomwELL's agents. MONMOUTH, or at least his followers, contri- buted to strengthen the delusion. The Duke gave himself up to the Protestant party, professed belief in the Popish Plot, advocated the Exclusion Bill, and went all lengths in opposition to the Court. Such, however, was the King's affection, that on the breaking out of the rebellion of the Scotch Covenanters, he appointed him to the command of the Army : but the popular acclamation with which he was received on his return, and some more imprudences, at length induced the King to banish him. The Duke went to Hol- land : but, getting tired of exile, he returned, by SuArrassuax's advice, without leave ; was stripped of his offices; and threw him- self openly into the Opposition. A pamphlet called the Black Box, from the chest which it was said contained the proofs of the King's marriage with Lucy WALTERS, was published, and produced so much effect that CHARLES had all the persons named in the publication called before the Privy Council; and not content with their disavowal of all the knowledge ascribed to them, published a solemn denial of the marriage. Still under the advice of SHAFTES- BURY, Mosuourn made progresses through the counties,—which served as the theme for DRYDEN'S Absalom and Achitophel ; and on these occasions he was received with a kind of royal display; his partisans mustering in regular order, attending him from house to house where he lodged or dined, the rustics crowding to witness the procession, and MONMOUTH himself touching for the evil. These progresses were eventually put an end to by Mossioura's arrest : but, whilst he leisurely travelled to London with the officer, one of his friends posted thither, and met the cavalcade at St. Alban's with a habeas corpus. Some demur was raised as to whe- ther the habeas superseded the warrant ; but the upshot was that MONMOUTH was liberated on bail. The use he made of his liberty was to engage in some schemes of insurrection, which he lacked courage to execute. Soon afterwards, SHAFTESBURY fled to Holland, and died. But MONMOUTH still continued his restless projects, and engaged in the insurrectionary part of the conspiracy called the Rye-House Plot. On its detection, he fled, and concealed himself. The King's kindness was not exhausted: HALIFAX was employed to negotiate an arrangement; and MONMOUTH had several interviews with the King, in which be betrayed his confederates by confessing all he knew, but angered the King so much by withdrawing a sort of submission and general confession he had been induced to sign, that he called him a beast and dishonest fellow. A second exile to the Continent followed : and before another reconciliation, which was in progress, could be effected, the King died; and MONMOUTH, cut off from all hopes of favour under JAMES, and urged by the needy and restless band of political and religious exiles, consented to embark in the insurrection of the West ; which led to his own destruction, and the legal murders of JEFFREYS in the " bloody assize."

The various phases of MONMOUTH'S career and the traits of the age with which it was connected—favourite, soldier, courtier, party- leader, exile, and commander of a revolt—would form a striking and instructive series of sketches done after the manner of MAC- AULAY but with more attention to philosophical truth. Mr. Ro- BERTS, however, is quite unequal to a comprehensive task of this kind ; and his occasional efforts to exhibit collateral subjects, though not always devoid of interest in themselves, interfere with the pro- gress of the main narrative, and sometimes bewilder the reader. The merit of zeal and industry be possesses. Besides the printed ac- counts in which allusion is made to MONMOUTH, he has consulted manuscripts at the British Museum, and moiled amongst the family, corporation, and Nonconformist chapel records of the West of Eng- land, for particulars regarding the rebellion and the subsequent atrocities of JEFFREYS : and many of his particulars are curious, though subordinate. But the book is rather a collection of mate- rials than a biography ; for the writer wants the skill that would have enabled him to confine himself rigidly to MONMOUTH'S life, and the power to have exhibited it in connexion with the age. Barring the confusion of subjects which this of necessity intro- duces, the reading is pleasant enough. Our extracts will be of a miscellaneous character, and gossipy, like the book.

THE SECOND PROGRESS OF MONMOUTH.

The success of the first progress, only two years before, in gaining the affection of the people and securing partisans, suggested the second effort. The pre- tence was, to take the air, and divert himself at several horse-races in Cheshire. The intention was, to traverse, in company with Lord Colchester, Sir Thome Armstrong, and others, and with a retinue of above a hundred persons, armed and magnificently accoutred, the discontented counties of Lancashire, Stafford- shire, Worcestershire, and Cheshire.

The high gentry of the Whig party met him at the head of their tenants, in different places; and, as the ancient manners of England were not at that time laid aside, most of those who came to meet him were armed. When he ap- proached a town he quitted his meelh and soda into it on horseback; the non

bility and gentry went foremost in a band ; at a distance, and single, rode the Duke; and at a distance behind him, the servants and tenants. When he en- tered the towns, those who received him formed themselves into three ranks,— the nobility, gentry, and burghers being placed in the front, the tenants in the next, and the servants in the last. He gave orders for two hundred covers to be prepared wherever he dined. At dinner, two doors were thrown open, that the populace might enter at the one, walk round the table to see their favourite, and give place to those who followed them by going out at the other : at other times he dined in an open tent in the field, that he might the more see and be seen.

Mr. ROBERTS subscribes to the popular opinion of the brutal cha- racter of KIRK.E, but not to the general impression of his cruelties in the West.

"As all the horrors of this frightful period are connected with Colonel Kirke's command, eome mention must be made of this officer. Bad he un- doubtedly was; but posterity has acted towards him much as it has done to Machiaveli. Executions done where Lord Feversham commanded have been laid to his charge; the form and manner of conducting these have been ad- duced, as if this officer had really suggested some new and more horrible methods, whereas the usual executioner followed the plan that obtained at this day ; his enormous ' Cruelty and Lust' have been celebrated by Pomfret, in a poem under that precise title. The facts, though the subject of poetry, and that have furnished matter to engravers, were long doubted, and have been long since quite disproved: his soldiers, instead of being ironically called 'Lambs' for their barbarous conduct and cruel execution of their commander's orders, were called' Kirke's Lambs' long before they marched into the West of England, from the device of a lamb borne upon the colours of the Fourth Re- giment of Foot, called the Tangier Regiment. •

"About two days after Kirke's arrival in Taunton, he wrote to know what he was to do with the rebels that were in custody and had not been executed. Lord Sunderland informed him, July 14th, that he was to secure them in some prison or other safe place, in order to their trial at the assize. Kirke wrote on the 18th ; the letter was laid before the King, who was well satisfied with his proceedings. Lord Sunderland, 21st July, wrote this; and the King's de- sire that he would secure such of the rebels as were already in custody, as well as those which should be hereafter apprehended, in order to their trial at the next Assizes for Somerset. Kirke allowed some of his men to live at free quarters, (or be billeted upon the people ;) an intolerable hardship, which the Mayor of Bridgwater complained of to the Secretary of State. Bent upon making money, he sold his pretended pardons, for 20/., 301., and 401. each ; which enabled many to get to London and Holland. He wrote, July 22d, to ask for a pardon for three persons. Lord Sunderland, 25th, wrote back, ' that his Majesty does not think fit to do anything of that kind : all such as they shall be tried before my Lord Chief Justice and other the Judges appointed to go the Western circuit; after which, I doubt not but, upon your application, his Majesty will be ready to gratify you in any reasonable request of this na- ture, wherein I shall be very glad to give you my best assistance.'

" The King's friends in Sumereetahire had great occasion to observe the effects of Colonel Kirke's money-making, and to be dissatisfied with it. Com- plaints were laid before the King in consequence. Sunderland, 28th July, wrote to Colonel Kirke that the King was informed that several persons who had been in the late rebellion were at liberty by his order, or at least permis- sion, under pretence of having obtained his Majesty's pardon; and that free quarters for the soldiers are imposed upon the country. The King commanded Lord Sunderland to signify to Colonel Kirke his dislike of these proceedings, and to tell him that he would have him take care that no person who was con- cerned in the rebellion, or any ways abetted the same, be at liberty, but that he be secured according to the Colonel's former directions.

" However unworthy the motives were, true it is that Kirke saved many. Burnet had heard the extraordinary rumours of his cruelties, which, as he be- lieved, he set down as both illegal and inhuman, and mentions that Kirke was only chid for his conduct. Kirke was chid for his pardon-granting."

A SAMPLE OF JEFFREYS.

_ __, • Lord Jeffreys's Charge at Bristol, 21st September 1685.

4‘ GENTLEMEN—I am, by the mercy of God, come to this great and populous city, a city that boasts both of its riches and trade, and may justly indeed claim the next place to the great and populous metropolis of this kingdom. Gentlemen, I find here are a great many auditors who are very intent, as if they expected some formal or prepared speech : but, assure yourselves, we come not to make neither set speeches nor formal declamations, nor to follow a couple of puffing trumpeters; for, Lord, we have seen these things twenty times before. No; we come to do the King's business—a King who is so gra- cious as to use all the means possible to discover the disorders of the nation, and to search out those who indeed are the very pest of the kingdom : to this end and for this purpose are we come to this city. But I find a special com- mission is an unusual thing here, and relishes very ill; nay, the very women storm at it, for fear we should take the upper band of them too,—for, by-the- by, gentlemen, I hear it is much in fashion in this city for the women to govern and bear sway : but, gentlemen, I will not stay you with such needless stories. I will only mention some few things that fall within my knowledge ; for points or matters of law I shall not trouble you, but only mind you of some things that lately hath happened, and particularly in this city (for I have the kalendar of this city in my pocket): and if I do not express my self in so formal or set a declamation, (for, as I told you, I came not to make declamations,) or in so smooth language as you may expect, you must attribute it partly to the pain of the stone, under which I labour, and partly to the unevenness of this day's

journey."