JEFFREYS, GEORGE, LORD, better known as "Judge Jeffreys," an English lawyer, whose name has become a proverb of infamy, was born in 1648 at Acton in Denbighshire. His father was a country squire of means so small that he was unable to do more for his son than give him a good legal education. That son, however, soon showed himself possessed of qualities that made him quite independent of aid from without. Charles II. described him as a man who "had no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than ten carted street-walkers." The first half of this character is hardly fair to Jeffreys; the second, true so far as it goes, falls far short of the whole truth. "His legal knowledge," says Macaulay, "was merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind. But he had one of those happily constituted intellects which, across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial facts, go straight to the true point." His manners were marked by a wild and brutal ferocity which was never matched or even approached by the worst of the bullies and prostitutes that he himself ever condemned to be flogged at the cart's-tail. To describe his impudence in brief compass is quite beyond the powers of language. In his wilder moods it ceased to be impudence, or even impudency, and rose into paroxysms of a terrific and half maniacal frenzy. When to these qualities are added the cunning of a wild beast, the cruelty of an inquisitor, and a malignity that gloated and revelled in the shrieks and groans of its unhappy victims, it will be easily seen why the name of Jeffreys is even now hardly ever pronounced by the Englishman without a curse. Jeffreys first rose into notice by attending the assizes at Kingston when every other member of the profession was frightened away by the plague, then raging there. This act would seem to indicate that, until his swinish habits of drunkenness and debauchery had ruined his nerves and sapped his strength, he was not without a certain amount of courage. He worked himself into practice at the Old Bailey, and early became common sergeant, and then Recorder of London. Having in this capacity shown himself a willing tool of the court, he gradually rose till, in 1683, he became chief-justice of the King's Bench. After the failure of Monmouth's mad attempt on his uncle's crown, it was Jeffreys' duty to traverse the western counties and punish all who had been taken in revolt. In this tour, characteristically called "the Bloody Assizes," or Jeffreys' campaign, the chief-justice made it his boast that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. Lord Lonsdale says that his victims numbered 700; Burnet, 600. The list sent by the judges to the Treasury gives 320, which is probably far short of the truth. For these important services he was rewarded by James with the office of Lord High Chancellor, and he continued to serve his patron with his whole soul till the Revolution. When that event deprived him of his only friend, Jeffreys, conscious of danger if not of guilt, tried to fly the kingdom. Disguising himself as a sailor, he lurked at Wapping, watching for a vessel to carry him to the continent. An attorney whom he had brow-beaten and bullied from the bench some time before, recognised him by the ferocious glare of his eyes as he was staring out of a tavern window. The alarm was given, and Jeffreys was only saved from being lynched by the mob by the arrival of a strong guard. He was carried to the Tower of London, where he died April 19, 1689.
JELALABAD or DOOSHAH, an ancient city of Seistan, in Afghanistan, about 250 miles W. of Kandahar, situate 4 miles from the right bank of the Helmoon River, and about 10 miles E. of the Lake Hamoon. This town was
once large and flourishing, and is said to have been almost as populous as Isfahan. At present it only contains about 10,000 inhabitants, and covers not more than a fourth of its ancient area, which is now strewn with broken fragments of its former greatness. There is a good bazaar in the town, and the streets are better laid out than in the generality of eastern cities.