Men long remember those for whom they have suffered. Many peasants of the west had perished on the field of battle, under the standards of Monmouth; many more were to suffer severely for their fidelity to him. Already Colonel Kirke, at the head of his regiment from Tangier, overran the insurgent counties, and his "Lambs," as his soldiers were called, in remembrance of the Pascal Lamb--represented on their banner while in Africa--spread everywhere terror and death. At each toast drunk by the officers, a rebel prisoner was executed. The toasts were numerous, the orgies prolonged. The love of money sometimes checked the cruelty of "the Butcher of Taunton." Those who possessed sufficient fortune were sometimes allowed to purchase their lives. Around the inn where Kirke had established his quarters, they waded ankle deep in blood. The country was depopulated; all those who were able to gain the coast embarked for America: they fled from the barbarity of Kirke and from the "justice" of Jeffreys. Guilford, the Keeper of the Seals, had just died, sadly humbled and discouraged towards the end of a life of cowardly servility. King James promised the office to Jeffreys, on his return from the circuit, which he had just undertaken in the western counties--a splendid recompense for "The Bloody Assizes." The great judge resolved to merit the reward. Naturally cruel and basely corrupt, habitually excited by continual intoxication, Jeffreys had consecrated to the service of the worst passions an indomitable energy united to rare judicial qualifications. He was never pleasing to Charles II., who had often employed him at the instigation of the Duke of York. "This man," said he, "has neither learning, good sense, nor manners, and more impudence than ten depraved women." {417} Under the reign of the hard and cruel James, Jeffreys abandoned himself without reserve to his savage passions; he was not contented with condemning, torturing, and inflicting the extreme penalties permitted by law against his victims, but he also delighted in taunting the accused, following them with sarcasms and insults to the very foot of the scaffold. The odious task with which he was charged after the insurrection of Monmouth suited his disposition. While at London, Lord Grey, Sir John Cochrane, and a few others purchased their lives by their cowardly revelations. The great judge carried from village to village his bloody tribunal and corps of executioners. Everywhere cynical and cruel, obliging his victims to confess their guilt in order to obtain a day's respite, and executing those on the spot who protested their innocence, he surrounded himself with an atmosphere of such terror that the people dared not speak in favor of the condemned. The friends of Lady Lisle ventured, however, to plead her cause; she was the aged widow of Lord Lisle, a judge during the reign of Charles I., who was but lately assassinated in Scotland, whither he had fled. She had given an