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The recusant minority have been heavily censured by our recent historians for consenting to these attainders.
Nor was this Charles's only difficulty. The Confederates declined to abate a jot of their terms. The free exercise of the Catholic religion, an independent Irish parliament, a general pardon, and a reversal of all attainders were amongst their conditions, and they would not take less. These Ormond dared not agree to.
All the persons comprised in this and the forgoing article were indulged with a general pardon of all attainders, outlawries, treasons, misprisons of treason, premunires, felonies, trespasses, and other crimes and misdemeanors whatsoever, committed since the beginning of the reign of James II.; and the lords justices promised to use their best endeavours towards the reversal of such attainders and outlawries as had passed against any of them in parliament.
By the clemency of the Emperor the sentences of W. H. Taft, and W. Wilson have been commuted from the sentence of fifty years imprisonment to imprisonment for life. We hope, in a special supplement, to be able to add the full list of sentences, executions, imprisonments, fines, and attainders that have been promulgated in honour of the birthday of our Imperial Sovereign.
The prohibition of attainders, and ex post facto laws, refers entirely to criminal proceedings, and therefore should be considered as standing by itself; but the other parts of the prohibition are connected by the subject-matter, and ought, therefore, to be construed together.
But the successive destruction of so many other families convinced them that the king intended to rely entirely on the support and affections of foreigners; and they foresaw new forfeitures, attainders, and acts of violence as the necessary result of this destructive plan of administration.
The parliament of England thought it incumbent upon them not only to raise supplies for the maintenance of the war in which the nation was involved, but also to do justice with respect to those who had been injured by illegal or oppressive sentences in the late reigns. The attainders of lord Russel, Algernon Sidney, alderman Cornish, and lady Lisle, were now reversed.
The General Assembly, eighteen years afterwards, did indeed pass an act reversing the convictions and attainders in all but six of the cases; and ordering the distribution of the paltry sum of £578 among the heirs of twenty-four persons, as a kind of compensation to the families of those who had suffered; but this was all nothing, or next to nothing!
Some past attainders were also reversed, and the Archbishop, as well as Lady Jane, her husband, and one of his brothers, were attainted, though not, it would seem, with any present intention of inflicting the full penalty. Early in December, parliament was dissolved.
Such of them as had been more violent in their mutiny, betrayed their guilt by flying or concealing themselves; and the confiscation of their estates, while it increased the number of malecontents, both enabled William to gratify farther the rapacity of his Norman captains, and gave them the prospect of new forfeitures and attainders.
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