Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/362

348 the fire, and of draughts to encourage it. Toope and Cecil gave all the information that they could, but Sindercombe was obstinately silent, and being found guilty by a jury of high treason, was condemned to die on Saturday, the 13th. But the evening before, his sister taking leave of him, contrived to carry some poison to him, and the next morning he was found dead in his bed.

Parliament adjourned a week for the trial and examination of the plot, and appointed a day of thanksgiving on Friday, the 23rd. But though Sindercombe was dead, Sexby was alive, and as murderously inclined as ever, and to prevent interrupting other affairs, we may now follow him also to his exit. Though neither fleet nor money were ready to follow up the blow if successful, the gloomy anabaptist once more set out for England with a tract in his possession, called "Killing no Murder," which was no doubt his own composition, though colonel Titus, after the restoration, claimed the merit of it. This tract, taking it as a settled fact that it was a noble piece of patriotism and virtue to kill a tyrant, pronounced Cromwell a tyrant, and therefore declared that it was a noble deed to kill him. It eulogised Sindercombe as the Brutus or Cato of the time. Sexby, disguised like a countryman, and with a large beard, travelled about distributing this pamphlet, but he was tracked, discovered, and lodged in the Tower. There he either went mad or pretended it, made a voluntary confession, found to be intended only to mislead, and, falling ill, died in the following January.

Malaga.

One of the first things which this second parliament of the protectorate did was to abolish the authority of the major-generals. Cromwell had assured them that they were doing good service in suppressing disturbances, and he told them so again, but there were many complaints of their rigour, especially of their levying heavy fines on the royalists; and parliament, on the 29th of January, voted their withdrawal. The next matter, which occupied them for above three months, was the case of James Naylor, the quaker, which we shall refer to under the review of the religion of this period. Before this was settled, it entered on a far more momentous question—no less than whether they should not make Cromwell king.

Those who take an unfavourable view of the character of Cromwell, who regard him as a base mixture of hypocrisy and ambition, accuse him of having planned and manoeuvred for this object; but there appears no evidence of this, but rather that the continual uneasiness created by the royalist and anabaptist assassins led many seriously to consider the peculiar position of the nation, and the imminent dangers to which it was exposed. That there was nothing betwixt the nation and all its old confusions but the life of one clear-