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170 Glimpses of Our Ancestors. |
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upon as a great and holy cause; and some of them, at least, lived to see the principles they had espoused brought to a successful issue in the Revolution which placed William of Orange on the Throne by a Parliamentary title.* This Revolution, however, though it could not fail to bring consolation to such of the judges of Charles I. as still lived, did not better their condition. Macaulay tells us how one of them, Edmund Ludlow, who, like Cawley, had found a refuge in Switzerland and escaped the assassins by whom another of Cawley's companions, John Lisle, fell, made the experiment of the public feeling towards the Regicides in 1689—the year following the Revolution—by coming over to England, and with what result. He was compelled to make a speedy flight to his old asylum on the banks of the lake of Geneva, and there, in the churchyard of Vevay, he lies buried.
William Cawley'is characterised by Ludlow as "an able and ancient Member of Parliament." He was certainly a consistent politician, and, it would also seem, a charitable and pious man, for he founded and endowed a hospital for ten poor persons in his native city, and had a Chapel erected in it and duly consecrated. The hospital still stands, but is now converted to the use of a Workhouse. A portrait of its founder, at the age of 18, is still preserved there, and the house which he occupied in that part of Chichester called the Pallant is to this day called " Cawley Priory." It is a proof of Cawley's sagacity and insight into the character of men that he alone opposed the proposition to give Colonel Monk, when a prisoner as a Royalist in the Tower, a Commission in the Parliamentary Army.
Cawley left a son, who, in 1660, petitioned for himself and wife to have the estate of his late father restored to him, on |
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* Macaulay says, " The leaders of the Roundhead party in 1643 and the statesmen who, about half a century later, effected the Revolution, had exactly the same object in view. That object was to terminate the contest between the Crown and the Parliament, by giving to the Parliament a supreme control over the executive administration. The statesmen of the Revolution effected this indirectly by changing the dynasty. The Roundheads of 164a, being unable to change the dynasty, were compelled to take a direct course towards their end." |
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