All these murderous proceedings of Judge Jeffreys had the approbation of King James, and he continued to be one of the king’s principal advisers in all the oppressions and arbitrary measures of his despotic reign. Four years after his legalised massacres in the West of England, Jeffreys wished to steal away to a foreign country, there to hide himself and his ill-gotten wealth from the detestation of mankind; but before he could fulfil his purpose, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. The rabble gathered before his deserted mansion, and read on the door, with shouts of laughter, the bills which announced the sale of his property. Even delicate women, who had tears for highwaymen and housebreakers, breathed nothing but vengeance against him. The street poets portioned out all his joints with cannibal ferocity, and computed how many pounds of steaks might be cut from his well-fattened carcase. He was exhorted to hang himself with his garters, and to cut his throat with his razor. His spirit, as mean in adversity as it had been insolent and inhuman in prosperity, sunk under the load of public abhorrence. His constitution, originally bad and much impaired by drunkenness, was completely broken by distress and by anxiety. He was tortured by a cruel internal disease, which baffled the doctors’ skill. One—only one solace was left to him—brandy. Disease, assisted by strong drink and by misery, did its work with great rapidity. The poor wretch dwindled, in a few weeks, from a portly and even corpulent man to a skeleton; and on the 10th of April 1689, he died at the early age of forty-one.[30] ----- Footnote 30: Macaulay. -----