Members of parliament, going along in their coaches, were sometimes forced to take off their hats, and cry, "Sacheverell for ever!" Party was pitted against party. It was a trial of political strength between the two grand political divisions of the country; and the Tories, having got the mob on their side, failed not to encourage their boisterous enthusiasm. But that enthusiasm rose to an excess and took a direction which at last frightened its instigators, for a tremendous riot occurred. Meeting-houses were attacked, and an episcopal chapel was destroyed, because, having no steeple, it was taken for a conventicle. Burnet's house, too, was attacked, and the Bank of England threatened. The riot, however, was happily put down without bloodshed, and at last the miserable trial came to an end by Sacheverell being found guilty.

Kneeling at the bar, the Lord Chancellor pronounced sentence:"You, Henry Sacheverell, doctor in divinity, shall be, and you are hereby enjoined, not to preach during the term of three years next ensuing; and your two printed sermons shall be burnt before the Royal Exchange, at one of the clock in the afternoon, by the common hangman, in the presence of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London."

Of course this was a punishment which the doctor was proud to receive. Sacheverell's party exulted, and had illuminations and bonfires and regalings on barrels of beer.

At the end of the three years' silence, his printer gave him £100 for his sermon; the House of Commons ordered him to preach before them, thanked him for his discourse, and the ministry gave him the rectory of St. Andrew's, Holborn. Such were the consequences of this great trial, which, neither on the part of the prosecution, nor the arraigned, had any associations of moral dignity to save it from the contempt and ridicule of posterity.

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VIII. JACOBITES AND AN INDIAN VICEROY.

WESTMINSTER HALL was built in the days of feudalism. Its earliest history is full of feudal associations. As we look upon its noble architecture, we are irresistibly carried back to feudal times. The chivalrous sentiments, born and bred of feudalism, often prompting to acts at once honourable and wild, generous and lawless, self-denying and violent, are forcibly brought to our recollection while we now walk up and down the old pavement which leads to the line of courts devoted to the peaceful administration of English law, order, and justice. In this last paper on the hall, we shall behold the expiring flashes of medieval chivalry; we shall catch echoes of its dying voice, and also witness signs of the inauguration, or rather proofs of the establishment of another and totally different order of things, involving the system of modern civilization.

Among the distinctive traits of the chivalrous spirits of the middle ages, was the strong devotion of a liege to his lord. It was not devotion to a principle or an office, to an order of things revered and preserved from considerations of convenience or from calm convictions of duty, but devotion to a person-a strong, unreasoning, passionate kind of instinct, which bound the inferior to him whom he deemed his lord-bound him to his fortunes, prosperous or adverse-bound him in bonds of strong and hearty sympathy for life and death. The loyalty of the old barons to their king and his family was of this chivalrous stamp. It was not attachment to the crown and the throne and the constitution, with feelings of affection to the person of the sovereign, growing out of that impersonal sort of attachment; but it was, first and foremost,

attachment to the person of a particular monarch and his race, deemed to have divine right to rule, not deriving his authority in any of the ways pointed out in modern theories of political government, but getting and holding it in some mysterious and direct way from Heaven itself. The loyal knights of the Henries and Edwards were thus chivalrous in their loyalty; and it was this chivalrous love for particular persons and families, regarded as legitimate heirs to the royalty of England, which alone redeems the wars of the Roses from the character of a mere factious squabble. A good deal of the spirit of chivalry survived the extinction of its forms; and nowhere did it linger on so long as in Scotland, where the relations of clanship, so akin to feudalism, even still exist. At the bottom of the great rebellions of 1715 and 1745, when so many Highlanders took up arms in the cause of the Pretender, lay not a little of this sentiment of chivalrous loyalty. There were other sentiments, personal, political, and religious, most base and unworthy, selfish and vindictive, superstitious and tyrannical, blended with this; but not so as to destroy, not so as to prevent its supreme authority in the breasts of many of the unhappy adherents of the Stuart line. They had no notion of a constitutional claim to the throne. Acts of parliament and the will of the people could not set aside, in their estimation, the descent of inheritance. The Stuarts were still their kings, as they had been the kings of their fathers, despite of unconstitutional acts. They would fight for them; they would die for them. Adversity only endeared their persons the more. Not a whit less was Prince Charles a king because he was crownless. The enthusiastic Jacobite saw a kind of celestial halo playing round the brow of the outcast heir, brighter than the gold and jewelled diadem on the head of a son of the house of Hanover.

Distinguished among the state trials in Westminster Hall are those of the noblemen who, in 1716 and 1746, were placed at the

bar for taking up arms in the service of the Pretender. The Earl of Derwentwater, Lord Widdrington, the Earls of Nithsdale, Winton, and Carnwath, Viscount Kenmure, and Lord Nairn, were the culprits on the first occasion, and were formally arraigned, all pleading guilty but one, and throwing themselves upon the mercy of King George. Two of them only were executed-Lord Derwentwater and Lord Kenmure-the former declaring that he died a Roman Catholic, and that he regretted having pleaded guilty on his trial. Lord Nithsdale effected his escape from the Tower, through a stratagem of his wife, who changed clothes with her husband, and thus enabled him, in her dress, to pass the sentinels undetected.

After the second Rebellion, in '45, Westminster Hall was employed for the trial of the Earls of Kilmarnock and Cromartie and Lord Balmerino. These noblemen appeared at the bar on the 28th of July, 1746. "Three parts of Westminster Hall," Horace Walpole tells us, "were enclosed with galleries and hung with scarlet, and the whole ceremony was conducted with the most awful solemnity. No part of the royal family was there, which was a proper regard to the unhappy men who were to become their victims. One hundred and thirty-nine lords were present. I had armed myself with all the resolution I could, with the thought of the prisoners' crimes and of the danger past, and was assisted by the sight of the Marquis of Lothian, in weepers for his son, who fell at Culloden; but the first appearance of the prisoners shocked me, and their behaviour melted me." "Kilmarnock and Cromartie

pleaded guilty; the latter especially professing remorse and shedding tears. Balmerino played a very different part, and endeavoured to defend himself. He was a man of wit; and when asked a question by Mr. Murray, Solicitor-General, he inquired who he was, and then added: "Oh! Mr. Murray, I am extremely glad to see you. I have been with several of your relations: the good

lady, your mother, was of great use to us at Perth." Walpole, speaking of Balmerino, observes: "He is the most natural, brave old fellow I ever saw; the highest intrepidity, even to indifference. At the bar he behaved like a soldier and a man; in the intervals of form, with carelessness and humour. At the bar he plays with his finger on the axe, while he talks to the gentleman gaoler; and one day, somebody coming up to listen, he took the blade and held it like a fan between their faces. During the trial, a little boy was near him, but not tall enough to see; accordingly he made room for the child, and placed him near himself."

When brought up for sentence, Kilmarnock and Cromartie sued for mercy; the former pleading with much eloquence, the latter with greater effect, from his allusion to Lady Cromartie, who was on the point of confinement. "My own fate," said he, "is the least part of my suffering; but, my lords, I have involved an affectionate wife, with an unborn infant, as parties of my guilt, to share its penalties. I have involved my eldest son, whose youth and regard for his parents hurried him down the stream of rebellion. I have involved eight innocent children, who must feel their parent's punishment before they know his guilt. Let the silent eloquence of their grief and tears supply my want of persuasion." The lady herself earnestly pleaded for the life of her husband, and other influence was employed on his behalf. The consequence was that he was saved; but it is curious to learn that the child to whom his wife gave birth just afterwards was marked on the neck with an impression like that of a broad axe.

Balmerino did not attempt to awaken pity or ask for mercy. He avowed his loyalty to King James with chivalrous devotion; spoke of his holding a commission under Queen Anne as an act of treason to his lawful prince; and declared that with his full heart he drew the sword in 1745, though his age might have excused him from doing so. Not any intercessions were employed