After the suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, many of the unfortunate
persons engaged In it fled to London, and took shelter there, 'till
the Act of Indemnity should be published. They who afforded them
shelter, were either of the Monmouth faction, or induced from
principles of humanity, to administer to their safety: what would
become of the world, if our friends were always to forsake us in
distress? There lived then in London an amiable lady, attached to no
party, who enjoyed a large fortune, which she spent in the exercise of
the most extensive beneficence. She made it her business to visit the
Jails, and the prisoners who were most necessitous and deserving,
she relieved. Her house was an asylum for the poor; she lived but for
charity, and she had every hour the prayers of the widow and orphan
poured out to her. It happened that one of the rebels found shelter in
her house; she suffered him to be screened there; she fed and cloathed
him. The King had often declared that he would rather pardon those
who were found in arms against him, than the people who harboured, or
secretly encouraged them. This miscreant, who sometimes ventured out
at night to a public house, was informed, that the King had made
such a declaration, and it entered into his base heart to betray his
benefactress. He accordingly went before a magistrate, and lodged an
information, upon which the lady was secured, brought to a trial, and
upon the evidence of this ungrateful villain, cast for her life. She
suffered at a stake with the most resigned chearfulness, for when
a woman is convicted of treason, it seems, she is sentenced to be
burnt[B]. The reader will easily judge what sort of bowels that King
must have, who could permit such a punishment to take place upon
a woman so compleatly amiable, upon the evidence of a villain so
consummately infamous, and he will, we are persuaded, be of opinion
that had his Majesty possessed a thousand kingdoms, he deserved to
lose them all for this one act of genuine barbarity.