x. 312, though the prisoner's handwriting to a letter was proved in

the usual way by persons who had seen him write, yet this letter was also shown to the jury, along with some of his acknowledged writing, for the purpose of their comparison. It is possible, therefore, that the same may have been done on Sidney's trial, though the circumstance does not appear. Jefferies indeed says, "comparison of hands was allowed for good proof in Sidney's case." _Id._ 313. But I do not believe that the expression was used in that age so precisely as it is at present; and it is well known to lawyers that the rules of evidence on this subject have only been distinctly laid down within the memory of the present generation.

[806] See Harris's _Lives_, v. 347.

[807] _State Trials_, x. 105.

[808] The grand jury of Northamptonshire, in 1683, "present it as very expedient and necessary for securing the peace of this country, that all ill affected persons may give security for the peace;" specifying a number of gentlemen of the first families, as the names of Montagu, Langham, etc., show. _Somers Tracts_, viii. 409.

[809] Ralph, p. 768; Harris's _Lives_, v. 321.

[810] This book of Sherlock, printed in 1684, is the most able treatise on that side. His proposition is that "sovereign princes, or the supreme power in any nation, in whomsoever placed, is in all cases irresistible." He infers from the statute 13 Car. II. declaring it unlawful, under any pretence, to wage war, even defensive against the king, that the supreme power is in him; for he who is unaccountable and irresistible, is supreme. There are some, he owns, who contend that the higher powers mentioned by St. Paul meant the law, and that when princes violate the laws, we may defend their legal authority against their personal usurpations. He answers this very feebly. "No law can come into the notion and definition of supreme and sovereign powers; such a prince is under the direction, but cannot possibly be said to be under the government of the law, because there is no superior power to take cognisance of his breach of it, and a law has no authority to govern where there is no power to punish."--P. 114. "These men think," he says (p. 126), "that all civil authority is founded in consent, as if there were no natural lord of the world, or all mankind came free and independent into the world. This is a contradiction to what at other times they will grant, that the institution of civil power and authority is from God; and indeed if it be not, I know not how any prince can justify the taking away the life of any man, whatever crime he has been guilty of. For no man has power of his own life, and therefore cannot give this power to another; which proves that the power of capital punishments cannot result from mere consent, but from a superior authority, which is lord of life and death." This is plausibly urged, and is not refuted in a moment. He next comes to an objection, which eventually he was compelled to admit, with some discredit to his consistency and disinterestedness. "'Is the power of victorious rebels and usurpers from God? Did Oliver Cromwell receive his power from God? then it seems it was unlawful to resist him too, or to conspire against him; then all those loyal subjects who refused to submit to him when he had got the power in his hands were rebels and traitors.' To this I answer, that the most prosperous rebel is not the higher powers, while our natural prince, to whom we owe obedience and subjection, is in being. And therefore, though such men may get the power into their hands by God's permission, yet not by God's ordinance; and he who resists them does not resist the ordinance of God, but the usurpations of men. In hereditary kingdoms, the king never dies, but the same minute that the natural person of one king dies, the crown descends upon the next of blood; and therefore, he who rebelleth against the father, and murders him, continues a rebel in the reign of the son, which commences with his father's death. It is otherwise, indeed, where none can pretend a greater title to the crown than the usurper, for there possession of power seems to give a right."--P. 127.

Sherlock began to preach in a very different manner as soon as James showed a disposition to set up his own church. "It is no act of loyalty," he told the House of Commons, May 29, 1685, "to accommodate or compliment away our religion and its legal securities." _Good Advice to the Pulpits._

[811] P. 81.

[812] P. 95.

[813] Pp. 98, 100.

[814] P. 100.

[815] This treatise, subjoined to one of greater length, entitled the "Freeholder's Grand Inquest," was published in 1679; but the "Patriarcha" not till 1685.

[816] P. 39.

[817] P. 46.

[818] Collier, 902; _Somers Tracts_, viii. 420.

[819] Dalrymple, appendix 8; _Life of James_, 691. He pretended to come into a proposal of the Dutch for an alliance with Spain and the empire against the fresh encroachments of France, and to call a parliament for that purpose, but with no sincere intention, as he assured Barillon. "Je n'ai aucune intention d'assembler le parlement; ces sont des diables qui veulent ma ruine." Dalrymple, 15.

[820] He took 100,000 livres for allowing the French to seize Luxemberg; after this he offered his arbitration, and on Spain's refusal, laid the fault on her, though already bribed to decide in favour of France. Lord Rochester was a party in all these base transactions. The acquisition of Luxemberg and Strasburg was of the utmost importance to Louis, as they gave him a predominating influence over the four Rhenish electors, through whom he hoped to procure the election of the dauphin as king of the Romans. _Id._ 36.

[821] Dalrymple, appendix 74; Burnet; Mazure, _Hist. de la Révolution de 1688_, i. 340, 372. This is confirmed by, or rather confirms, the very curious notes found in the Duke of Monmouth's pocket-book when he was taken after the battle of Sedgemoor, and published in the appendix to Welwood's _Memoirs_. Though we should rather see more external evidence of their authority than, so far as I know, has been produced, they have great marks of it in themselves; and it is not impossible that, after the revolution, Welwood may have obtained them from the secretary of state's office.

[822] It is mentioned by Mr. Fox, as a tradition in the Duke of Richmond's family, that the Duchess of Portsmouth believed Charles II. to have been poisoned. This I find confirmed in a letter read on the trial of Francis Francia, indicted for treason in 1715. "The Duchess of Portsmouth, who is at present here, gives a great deal of offence, as I am informed, by pretending to prove that the late King James had poisoned his brother Charles; it was not expected, that after so many years' retirement in France, she should come hither to revive that vulgar report, which at so critical a time cannot be for any good purpose." _State Trials_, xv. 948. It is almost needless to say that the suspicion was wholly unwarrantable.

I have since been informed, on the best authority, that Mr. Fox did not derive his authority from a tradition in the Duke of Richmond's family, that of his own mother, as his editor had very naturally conjectured, but from his father, the first Lord Holland, who, while a young man travelling in France, had become acquainted with the Duchess of Portsmouth.