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 Armstrong the report that the guards were certainly remiss, and the thing quite feasible (ibid, p. 150). Evidence was forthcoming also that, on the failure of the Rye House plot, Armstrong offered still to intercept the king and the duke on their homeward journey, provided money and men could be immediately procured. The king himself declared that when Armstrong had come to him abroad, nearly thirty years before, with the gift of money, he had confessed that he had come, employed by Cromwell, to kill him; and on 28 June 1683, a proclamation was issued for his apprehension. Armstrong, being greatly depressed at this turn of events, went to Romsey (Copies, p. 109) one night, in fear for him as well as for himself, 'and did importune me to be gone with the first, and in the meantime to keep close, for that I was mightily hunted after.' He himself, assuming the name of Mr. Henry Lawrence, succeeded in escaping and hiding himself in Leyden. But the reward to seize him was heavy, 'equal to the greatest' ( Hist. p. 1043), and out of it Chudleigh, the king's envoy, oftered 5,000 guilders. In May 1684 a spy at Leyden gave the desired information, the States issued the necessary order of acquiescence, and Armstrong (too much surprised to plead his Dutch birth) was carried to Rotterdam, loaded with irons, and placed on board the yacht Catherine. The Catherine anchored at Greenwich 10 June 1684 ( MS., Brief Historical Relations, All Souls, Oxford); Sydney Godolphin signed a warrant the same day to captain Richardson, keeper of Newgate, to receive the prisoner; and thither, still in irons, he was conveyed on the morrow, 11 June. He was stripped of anything he had of value; he was searched; a bill of exchange was found in his pocket between one Hayes, a merchant at London, and another merchant at Leyden, and Hayes was at once committed to Newgate for complicity with a traitor. Armstrong was not allowed to see his family and friends except in the presence of his gaolers; and, all money having been taken from him, he was unable to obtain the assistance of counsel (State Trials for High Treason, 35 Charles II). In three days, 14 June, he was taken to King's Bench, Guildhall, attended by his daughter, Jane Mathews, another being repulsed. Titus Oates was one of his accusers; Jeffries was his judge. His claim was for a proper trial, under the statute 5 and 6 Edward VI, c. 11. Jeffries denied his right to be heard on the ground that he was an outlaw and a traitor, and sentenced him to death in spite of his protests and his daughter's shrieks. On the 18th his wife and daughters applied in vain for a writ of error to Lord Keepr North, Jeffries himself, and other officials. Armstrong was executed on Friday, 20 June 1684. Huggons (Reinarks on Burnet's Hist. p. 269) relates: 'I saw that unhappy man go to die;  … he threw about his arms as far as the rope that tied him would permit …  he turned about his head, shrugged up his shoulders, with convulsions and distortions of his countenance.' At the scaffold he became so resigned as to astonish those who knew his hot temper. He was met by Tenison, who took charge of a written paper he gave him protesting his innocence.

His body was quartered; his head was fixed at Westminster Hall, between the heads of Bradshaw and Cromwell (, p. 1043). On 1 July Armstrong's protest was given to the world; a general feeling prevailed, fortified by the legal opinion of Sir John Hawles, Solicitor-General, that a great injustice had been done, since no outlawed person ever was denied his trial before (, Hist, of Stuarts, p. 686); and in 1689, after examination of Dame Katharine Armstrong, the widow, and her daughters, a sum of 5,000l. was ordered to be paid to them, and the attainder was reversed. Five years elapsed before this was carried out by William and Mary in 1694.

[True Account and Declaration of the Horrid Conspiracy, published by command of James II, 1685; Biographia Britannica, where the Scaffold Paper is in extenso; Russell's Life of Lord Russell, p. 257; Clarendon's Hist.; Kennet's Chronicle.] 

ARMSTRONG, WILLIAM (fl. 1596), a famous border mosstrooper, was generally known as, from his castle of Morton Tower or Kinmont, afterwards called Sark, on the Sark water, in the parish of Canonbie, Dumfriesshire. He is said to have been a near relation of the equally famous John Armstrong, of Gilnockie, and in the 'Register of the Privy Council of Scotland' (iv. 796) he is mentioned as one of the principals of the clan Armstrong. The earliest notice of him is under date 22 Oct. 1569 as entering a pledge for himself and kin (ii. 44), and he again appears, 5 March, 1570, as making submission in respect of feuds between him and the Turnbulls (iii. 169). Will is said to have been of great size and strength — 'the starkest man in Teviotdale' — and he and his sons brought together as many as three hundred men, who were the dread of the English border. With his followers he accompanied the Earl of Angus to Stirling in 1585 to displace the Earl of Arran, when it is reported that, not satisfied with emptying