In the whole history of the English bar there is no other instance of so rapid an elevation, or of so terrible a fall.
The emaciated corpse was laid, with all privacy, next to the corpse of Monmouth in the chapel of the Tower, [415] The fall of this man, once so great and so much dreaded, the horror with which he was regarded by all the respectable members of his own party, the manner in which the least respectable members of that party renounced fellowship with him in his distress, and threw on him the whole blame of crimes which they had encouraged him to commit, ought to have been a lesson to those intemperate friends of liberty who were clamouring for a new proscription.

But it was a lesson which too many of them disregarded.

The King had, at the very commencement of his reign, displeased them by appointing a few Tories and Trimmers to high offices; and the discontent excited by these appointments had been inflamed by his attempt to obtain a general amnesty for the vanquished.

He was in truth not a man to be popular with the vindictive zealots of any faction.

For among his peculiarities was a certain ungracious humanity which rarely conciliated his foes, which often provoked his adherents, but in which he doggedly persisted, without troubling himself either about the thanklessness of those whom he had saved from destruction, or about the rage of those whom he had disappointed of their revenge.