Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/508

494 Algernon Sidney and Wildman were in close correspondence with the conspirators in Scotland. That at meetings held at the Devil Tavern, it was projected to shoot the king returning from the theatre in a narrow street. That they had hinted something of their design to the duke of Monmouth, but not the killing part of it, but that he had sternly replied they must look on him as a son; and then the relations of this wretched turncoat lawyer assumed all the wildness of a Bluebeard story. Ferguson would hear of nothing but killing. That the new lord mayor, the new sheriffs Rich and North, were to be killed, and their skins stuffed and hung up in Guildhall; the judges were to be flayed, too, and their skins suspended in Westminster Hall, and other great traitors were to have their skins hung up in the parliament house.

Next, Rumsey came in and turned informer, and, improving as he went on, he also accused lord Russell, Mr. Trenchard, Roe, the sword bearer of Bristol, the duke of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Armstrong, lord Grey, and Ferguson. That he had met most of these persons at Shepherd's, a wine merchant, near Lombard Street, and that nothing less was intended by most of them than killing the king and his brother. That Trenchard had promised a thousand foot and three hundred horse in the west, and Ferguson had engaged to raise twelve hundred Scots who had fled to England after the battle of Bothwell Bridge. Shepherd, the wine merchant, was called up, and said that certainly Shaftesbury, before going to Holland, the duke of Monmouth, lords Russell and Grey, Armstrong, Rumsey, and Ferguson had met at his house, and, he was informed, had talked about securing his majesty's guards, and had walked about the court end of the town at night, and reported a very remiss state of the guards on duty. He added, that not obtaining sufficient support, the design, so far as he knew, was laid aside.

On the 26th of June a proclamation was issued for the apprehension of Monmouth, Grey, Russell, Armstrong, Walcot, and others. Monmouth, Grey, Armstrong, and Ferguson made their escape; lord Russell, Sidney, Essex, Wildman, Howard of Escrick, Walcot, and others were taken, then or soon after. Lord Russell was the first secured. He was found quietly seated in his library, and though the messengers had walked to and fro for some time before his door, as if wishing him to get away, he took no steps towards it, but as soon as the officer had shown his warrant, he went with him as though he had been backed by a troop. When examined before the council, he is said, even by his own party, to have made but a feeble defence. He admitted having been at Shepherd's, but only to buy wines. That he understood that some of those whom he had seen there were a crowd of dangerous designers; he should not, therefore, mention them, but only the duke of Monmouth, against whom there could be no such charge. He denied that he had heard there anything about a rising in the west or in Scotland, but only that in the latter country there were many people in distress, ministers and others, whom it would be a great charity to relieve. He was committed to the Tower, and on entering it he said he was sworn against, and they would have his life. His servant replied that he honed matters were not so bad as that, but he rejoined, "Yes! the devil is loose!" He saw the course things were taking; the spirit that was in the ascendant; he knew that he had entered into revolutionary schemes sufficiently for his condemnation, and that the duke of York, who had an old hatred for him, would never let him escape.

Lord Howard was one of the last arrested. He went about after the arrest of several of the others, declaring that there really was no plot; that he knew of none; yet after that it is asserted, and strong evidence adduced for it, that to save his own life he had made several offers to the court to betray his kinsman Russell. Four days before lord Russell's trial, a serjeant-at-arms, attended by a troop of horse, was sent to his house at Knightsbridge, and after a long search discovered him in his shirt in the chimney of his room. His conduct when taken was most cowardly and despicable, and fully justified the character that he had of being one of the most perfidious and base of men. He wept, trembled, and entreated, and, begging a private interview with the king and duke, he betrayed his associates to save himself. Russell had always had a horror and suspicion of him, but he had managed to captivate Sidney by his vehement professions of republicanism, and by Sidney and Essex he had been induced to tolerate the traitor. The earl of Essex was taken at his house at Cassiobury, and was escorted to town by a party of horse. He might have escaped through the assistance of his friends, but he deemed that his flight would tend to condemn his friend Russell, and he refused.

He was a man of a melancholy temperament, but he bore up bravely till he was shut up in the Tower, in the same cell where his wife's grandfather, the earl of Northumberland, in the reign of Elizabeth, had died by his own hands or those of an assassin, and from which his father, the lord Capel, had been led to execution under the commonwealth. He now became greatly depressed. The rest of the prisoners—Sidney, Hampden, Armstrong, Baillie of Jerviswood, and others, both Scotch and English—displayed the most firm bearing before the council, and refused to answer the questions put to them. Sidney told the king and his ministers that if they wished to criminate him, it was not from himself that they would get their information.

The first of the prisoners brought to trial were Walcot, Rouse, and Hone, a joiner, who, on the evidence of West, Keeling, and Rumsey, were condemned and executed as traitors. Walcot and Rouse denied any design of murdering the king or the duke; but Hone, the joiner, confessed having spoken to Goodenough about killing the blackbird and goldfinch, meaning the king and the duke. Meantime, the city, under its new regimé, put on an air of intense loyalty; almost all the other corporations in the kingdom followed their example; neither were the counties behind, pouring in addresses for the condign punishment of the execrable traitors, villains, and infamous miscreants, rebellious spirits, and atheistic monsters, who were seeking his majesty's precious life, which the magistrates of Middlesex declared was worth a hundred millions of theirs.

In this state of the public mind lord Russell was brought to trial on the 13th of July, at the Old Bailey. He was