On the 11th of December 1688, James left Whitehall, a King without a crown, and as he crossed the Thames to reach Lambeth, he dropped the Great Seal into the river, hoping thereby that everything would fall into confusion for the want of that symbol of legitimate authority. The curious Dutch engraving representing the amiable act of the last of our male Stuart monarchs gives a view of old London Bridge, and the Tower beyond, looming large against a wintry sky. On the same day that James threw away the Great Seal of England, his Lord Chancellor, the justly detested Jeffreys, was taken, in the disguise of a common sailor, in a small house at Wapping, as he was about to go on board a collier which would have taken him to Hamburg. Once in the power of the mob, Jeffreys’ life was in deadly peril, and he suffered severely at the hands of the people, but was finally rescued and taken before the Lord Mayor, who, poor man, died in a fit soon after the terrible judge had been brought before him, more revolting in his abject terror of death than even during the Bloody Assizes in the West, when he had condemned shoals of men and women to tortures and death with jibes and ghastly pleasantry. Protected by two regiments of the City train-bands, Jeffreys was taken into the Tower on the 12th of December, and given in charge of Lord Lucas, the Governor. The warrant of Jeffreys’ arrest, which is unique, is among the Tower records, and runs as follows:—“We, the peers of this Realm, being assembled with some of the Privy Council, do hereby will and require you to take into your custody the body of George, Lord Jeffreys (herewith sent to you), and to keep him safe prisoner until further order; for which this shall be your sufficient warrant.” This warrant is signed by thirteen peers, including the Bishop of Winchester. James having fled, and the Great Seal being at the bottom of the Thames, there was no King or Parliament existing at the time the warrant was made out. Jeffreys was half dead with terror when the coach in which he was taken to the Tower entered its gates. All the way from the Mansion House he had implored the soldiers about him to preserve him from the furious rabble that surged around the carriage with ferocious cries of a well-merited hatred. This brute, who had sent scores of innocent people to the block and the gallows, who had rejoiced, like the fiend he was, at the sufferings of his victims as they left his presence for the gibbet, or the plantations, to be sold as slaves, now attempted to excite pity for himself amongst those persons who came to see him in the Tower, by telling them that he had only acted as he had done by the orders of King James, and that James had chidden him for showing too much clemency.