Before this magistrate was brought for trial, by a jury sufficiently prepossessed in favour of Tory politics, the Rev. Richard Baxter, a dissenting minister, a pious and learned man, of exemplary character, always remarkable for his attachment to monarchy, and for leaning to moderate measures in the differences between the Church and those of his persuasion.  The pretence for this prosecution was a supposed reference of some passages in one of his works to the bishops of the Church of England; a reference which was certainly not intended by him, and which could not have been made out to any jury that had been less prejudiced, or under any other direction than that of Jeffreys.  The real motive was, the desire of punishing an eminent dissenting teacher, whose reputation was high among his sect, and who was supposed to favour the political opinions of the Whigs.  He was found guilty, and Jeffreys, in passing sentence upon him, loaded him with the coarsest reproaches and bitterest taunts.  He called him sometimes, by way of derision, a saint, sometimes, in plainer terms, an old rogue; and classed this respectable divine, to whom the only crime imputed was the having spoken disrespectfully of the bishops of a communion to which he did not belong, with the infamous Oates, who had been lately convicted of perjury.  He finished with declaring, that it was a matter of public notoriety that there was a formed design to ruin the king and the nation, in which this old man was the principal incendiary.  Nor is it improbable that this declaration, absurd as it was, might gain belief at a time when the credulity of the triumphant party was at its height.

Of this credulity it seems to be no inconsiderable testimony, that some affected nicety which James had shown with regard to the ceremonies to be used towards the French ambassador, was highly magnified, and represented to be an indication of the different tone that was to be taken by the present king, in regard to foreign powers, and particularly to the court of Versailles.  The king was represented as a prince eminently jealous of the national honour, and determined to preserve the balance of power in Europe, by opposing the ambitious projects of France at the very time when he was supplicating Louis to be his pensioner, and expressing the most extravagant gratitude for having been accepted as such.  From the information which we now have, it appears that his applications to Louis for money were incessant, and that the difficulties were all on the side of the French court.  Of the historians who wrote prior to the inspection of the papers in the foreign office in France, Burnet is the only one who seems to have known that James’s pretensions of independency with respect to the French king were (as he terms them) only a show; but there can now be no reason to doubt the truth of the anecdote which he relates, that Louis soon after told the Duke of Villeroy, that if James showed any apparent uneasiness concerning