Trying To Change A Sovereign.

industry . Weaving , like shoemaking , and indeed all other sedentary occupations , induces profound excogitation , and in this case , as is usual , much reflection impelled excercitation ; in short , John James felt called upon to " ' splain and'spound , " ancl the arena that opened to him was an " unlicensed conventicle" in Bullstake Alley , Whitechapel . Bullstake Alley ! how suggestive of the amusements of our ancestorshow redolent of the associations

, of the propinquitous dead meat market in Aldgate . Well , to Bullstake Alley came blue-smocked slaughtermen from the adjacent shambles to hear " godly Master James " " preach the Word . " It don't even to this day appear very clear what " word" it was that Master James preached . Our only record is from the more than rather tainted source of a " Crown evidence "—a fellow who , refused admittance to the " schism shop , " seems to have poked his head out

of the back window of a neighbouring house ancl heard all he could . I have no doubt that there was not much difficulty in hearing Master James ' s voice from the adjacent premises , and can readily credit that the " testifier " " cried aloud and spared not , " that he banged the cushions adorning the rostrum from which he spouted . Don't you imagine you see it , dear reader— " the big auld Bible" probabllike Burns ' s" ance his father ' s pride "—the ledge at the side

, y , supporting the hour glass P Can't you fancy yon hear the " hum " of the " dour " , audience at some peculiarly savoury " bit ; " or when the " preaching g lass " is turned , intimating that another hour of godly exhortation impended ? though whether the hum then were given as testifying gratification or expostulation this deponent say eth not . Atall events Crown evidence runs away and fetches Mr . Headborough of the Tower Hamlets , who incontinently lays hands on

Mr . James , and hauls him before the resident justice of the peace m Goodman s Fields hard by , who makes out the preacher ' s mittimus to Mr . Keeper of his Majesty ' s Gaol of Newgate . At the trial the king ' s witness swears , and can't be shaken;—there is ' nt much chance of his being shaken , to be sure , for the services of " counsel learned in the law " to cross-examine are in those clays exclusively reserved for his Majesty ; " Culpabilis" must shift as well as he can for himself . The Crown informant then swears that he heard John James

pronounce " that the king was a bloodthirsty ancl tyrannical king , and so of the nobles" [ the italics are my own , for there is evidently an ellipsis in the report here ] , " ancl that the cup of their iniquity was almost filled with the blood of the saints a year ago " [ alluding to the executions following Vernier ' s outbreak—ante , see note ]; " but the putting of the covenanters to death in Scotland hacl ( to fit them" [ i . e . presumablthe king and the nobles ] " for

y destruction ) filled it fuller ; ancl he was sorry he had neglected his opportunity of fighting the Lord ' s battle , but hoped that if ever he had it again he should consider it more fully . " * Poor John James ! A statute , suggested by angry remembrance of the Banquetting House window ancl the scaffold , draped with black thereafore , ancl the men in visors , ancl the block with the staples , - } - hacl within a year enacted that anybody compassing or devising the death of the

king , etc . ( following , of course , the old precedent of 25 th Edward III . ) , should suffer the jienalties of treason ; and that anyone endeavouring by preaching , speaking , writing , printing , etc ., to change their sovereign , should be liable to imprisonment and sundry other pains a , nd penalties . No lawyer , since the revolution , would doubt that the poor small-coal man ' s offence , even if proved , at the very worst only came Avithin the second or minor offence