Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/510

496 On his part the prisoner contended that none of the witnesses were to be relied on, because they were swearing against him in order to save their own lives. He also argued that, according to the statute of 25 Edward II., the statute decided not the design to levy war, but the overt act, to constitute treason. But the attorney-general replied that not only to levy war, but to conspire to levy war against the king, to kill, depose, or constrain him, was treason by the statute. Before the jury retired, Russell addressed them, saying, "Gentlemen, I am now in your hands eternally; my honour, my life, and all; and I hope the heats and animosities that are amongst you will not so bias you as to make you in the least inclined to find an innocent man guilty. I call heaven and earth to witness that I never had a design against the king's life. I am in your hands, so God direct you." They returned a verdict of guilty, and Treby, the recorder of London, who had been an active exclusionist, pronounced the sentence of death.

There were active exertions made after his condemnation to obtain a pardon, or at least a commutation of the sentence; but lord Russell himself is said to have entertained no hope that the never-forgiving duke of York would forego his blood. His father, the duke of Bedford, offered one hundred thousand pounds through the duchess of Portsmouth to save his life, but Charles held firm to his purpose, and was steeled even to refuse the money by James. When lord Dartmouth urged that to take his life would remain an unpardonable offence to a great family, whilst something was due to the daughter of the earl of Southampton, and to spare lord Russell would lay an everlasting obligation on the house of Bedford, Charles replied that all that was very true, but that if he did not take Russell's life he would soon have his. The afflicted father made a second and public petition to the king for his son's life, and said that himself, his wife, and children would be content to be reduced for the remainder of their days to bread and water, so that he might be saved.

It was in vain; and though lord Russell, at the earnest entreaty of his family, humbled himself to petition both the king and the duke for a change of sentence, still protesting his innocence of any design against their lives, he told his friends that it was perfectly useless, and would be hawked about the streets when he was hanged, as a proof of his submission. Lady Russell herself presented the petition to the duchess of York, with earnest prayers for her good offices; but the appeal might as well have been made to a stone as to James, who never forgave the smallest injury; and in this case, lord Russell had been as prominent as Shaftesbury in advocating the duke's exclusion from the succession, and to such an offence there could be no pardon in James's heart. Lord Russell did not attempt to palliate his conduct except by asserting that he had acted solely on public grounds, and without any personal animosity towards his highness: and he promised, if his life were spared, to regard his intercession as the highest obligation, and never more to engage in any opposition to him.

An attempt was now made upon him by the prelates, to induce him to admit the doctrine of non-resistance; and it was thought that had he consented to that, his life might have been spared; but that was an apostacy to one of the very greatest of political principles, which no man of noble and upright character could consent to, which would have left him a pitiable object of contempt. Yet Burnet and Tillotson, then dean of Canterbury, laboured hard for this triumph over him, but without effect, and his execution was fixed for the 21st of July. Lord Cavendish nobly offered to manage his escape by changing clothes with him, but neither would he consent to that, for with such people as Charles and James, Cavendish would himself have speedily forfeited his life. When he had taken leave of his devoted wife, who endeavoured to keep down her emotion so as not to unman him, he said, " Now the bitterness of death is passed." The scaffold was not, according to custom, erected on Tower Hill, but in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in order, says Wallace, "that the citizens might be humbled by the spectacle of their once triumphant leader carried in his coach to death through the city; a device which, like most others of the kind, produced an effect contrary to what was intended: the multitude imagined that they beheld virtue and liberty sitting by his side." The trying circumstance to the illustrious prisoner was, that he had to pass Southampton House, the paternal home of his noble-minded wife, and he could not see it without strong emotion, and a few tears. Burnet and Tillotson accompanied him, and whilst Tillotson read prayers, Burnet was ready to write down his last observations. His lordship handed a paper to the sheriff Rich, who had been a zealous co-operator with him in endeavouring to effect the exclusion, saying that he had never loved much speaking, and could not now expect to be well heard, and therefore had set down there what he had to say. He declared that he died in charity with all men, and prayed that the protestants might forget all their animosities, and still combine for the defeat of popery. He declared that he regarded himself far happier than lord Howard, who had purchased his life by the infamy of betraying his associates. Having embraced Tillotson and Burnet, he laid his head on the block, and, like lord Stafford, refusing to give any sign to the executioner, his head was severed from his body at two strokes.

The people testified their sense of this execution by a general groan, and retired in a mood which boded no good to the perpetrators of the deed. The execution was scarcely over, when the town rang in every quarter of the city with the printed statement of the sufferer's last declaration, which, though he gave it to the sheriff in manuscript, was already printed and circulated by the management of his lady.

In this paper lord Russell again denied ever having had or participated in any design against the king's life; he did not deny his endeavour to obtain the exclusion, but defended the measure as necessary to the preservation of protestantism. He denied having consented to the seizure of the guards, but contended that he had at lord Shaftesbury's denounced the scheme, as rendering the next necessary step, the massacre of the guards in cold blood; a thing detestable, and so like a popish practice that he abhorred it. He still denied the justice of his sentence, on the ground that he had not actually levied war on the king, and therefore did not come within the meaning of the act of Edward II. But the