Note 74 — CONTROVERSY BETWEEN DRYDEN AND STILLINGFLEET, CONCERNING THE DUCHESS OF YORK’S PAPER.

During the parliamentary struggles of 1680, the Commons used many arbitrary measures to support their authority, and especially by summarily committing those who, having expressed by petition to the king their abhorrence of addresses for calling a parliament, were called abhorrers. “Scarce a day passed, but some abhorrer was dragged before them, and committed to the custody of the serjeant at arms, at the pleasure of the House; and this strange despotism they exercised with so much wantonness, as well as cruelty, that Mr Treby was pleased to say, they kept an hawk, (meaning the said serjeant,) and they must every day find flesh for him. And the quantity he was this sessions gorged with, gave rise to this proverbial expression—Take him, Topham! [the name of the serjeant,] in all discourse of peremptory commitment.”—North’s Examen, p. 561. These arbitrary commitments are elsewhere censured by Dryden, particularly in the Postscript to the History of the League.—See p. 179.