378 MERCIEs of the wic/ced!"' Among which 1 cannot forgelt one passage that I saw. Monke and his wife, before they were moov'd to the Tower, while they were yelt prisoners at Lambeth Houst', came one evening to the garden and caused them to be brought downe, only to stare at them. Which was such a barbarisme, for .that man, who had betrcy'd so many poore men to death and misery that never hurt him, but had honor'd him, and trusted their lives and interests with him, to glutt his bloody eies with beholding them in their bondage, as no story can parallel the inhumanity of. Coli. Scroopc, who had bene clear'd by vote as .the collonel was, was afterwards raced out for nothing, and had the honour to die a noble martyr. · Although the collonell was clear'd both for life and estate in the house of commons, yet he not answering the court expectations in publick recantations and dissembled repenlanc('!, and applause of their cruelty to his fellows, the chancellor was cruelly exasperated against him, and there were very high endeavours to have rac'd him h i\lmost all who have written any account of the transactions of those days shew a desire to gratify the faction which then prevailed, and have endeavoured to e::;tablish a notion that great lenity was shewn to all the regicides who were not of the seven excepted: what it was we here lea rn. The English nation ha Ye ]ong dwelt on the hackneyed theme of l<'rench oppression, lettres de cachet, bastilles, &.c. and have affected nn ignorance of what has passed here, in full sight of a British parliament. Those who have viewed the matter near at band know very well that these su perlative powers were not at all more dangerous, nor so much abused in }<ranee as here, uor the · treatment near so rigorous. The prisons of slate were there always under the command of noblemen and military officers, who were little likely to practi se the jailor's arts. The more any ofiice is despised, the more .vile hands will it fUll into, and the more atrociously will it be cx('cuteJ; this reasoning sufficiently establishes the necessity of watching with a j ealous eye the conduct of these ministers of justice, if such they should be called, in a country like this. A more desolating picture of misery long drawn out can hardly be imagined. We shall again have to notice the conduct of this lieutenant of the Tower.
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