[1] Sir Francis Pemberton was born 1625, entered Emmanuel College 1640,
entered the Inner Temple 1645, was called 1654, was made a bencher 1671,
a serjeant 1675, and was imprisoned by the House of Commons for an
alleged breach of privilege in the same year. He was made a Judge of the
King's Bench in 1679, and took part as such in several trials connected
with the Popish Plot; he was discharged in 1680, returned to the bar,
and replaced Scroggs as Chief-Justice of the King's Bench in 1681. He
was moved to the Common Pleas in 1683, to allow Sir Edmund Saunders, who
had advised in the proceedings against the City of London, to act as
judge in the case. He was dismissed from his office of judge in the same
year, about five weeks after Lord Russell's trial. Returning to the bar,
he helped to defend the Seven Bishops, but was imprisoned by the
Convention Parliament for a judgment he had given six years before
against Topham, the serjeant-at-arms, who had claimed to be without his
jurisdiction. He bore on the whole a high character for independence and
honesty; and it is curious to learn that he lived to advise the Earl of
Bedford whether Lord Russell's attainder would prevent his son
succeeding to the earldom.
[2] Sir Robert Sawyer was born in 1633, entered Magdalene College,
Cambridge, in 1648, where he was chamber-fellow with Pepys, joined the
Inner Temple and went the Oxford circuit. He was elected to the House of
Commons for Chipping Wycombe in 1673, and assisted in drafting the
Exclusion Bill. He appeared for the Crown in most of the State Trials of
this period. He afterwards led in the defence of the Seven Bishops, took
part in the Convention Parliament, and was expelled from the House on
account of his conduct in Armstrong's case. He was re-elected and became
Chief-Justice of the King's Bench in 1691, and died in 1692.
[3] Heneage Finch, first Earl of Aylesford, was born about 1647: he was
educated at Westminster and Christ Church. He entered the Inner Temple,
became Solicitor-General in 1679, being elected to the House of Commons
for the University of Oxford in the same year. He was deprived of office
in 1686, and defended the Seven Bishops. He sat in the House of Commons
in 1685, in all Parliaments from the Convention Parliament (1689) till
he became a peer in 1703, under the title of Baron Guernsey. He was made
Earl of Aylesford on the accession of George I. (1714), and died in
1719.
[4] See vol. i. p. 240.
[5] Francis North, Lord Guilford (1637-1685), the third son of the
fourth Lord North, was educated at various Presbyterian schools and St.
John's College, Cambridge. He was called to the bar in 1661, and with
the help of the Attorney-General, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, soon acquired a
large practice. After holding various provincial posts, he became
Solicitor-General in 1671. He entered Parliament in 1673, and became
Attorney-General the same year, becoming Chief-Justice of the Common
Pleas in 1675. He always strongly supported Charles II.'s government,
temporising during the Popish Plot, and being chiefly responsible for
the execution of Colledge. He became Lord Keeper in 1682, and was raised
to the peerage in 1683: but during his tenure of office was much vexed
by intrigues, particularly by the conduct of Jeffreys, who had succeeded
him in the Common Pleas. He is now chiefly remembered on account of the
very diverting and interesting life of him written by his brother Roger.
[6] Pollexfen. See Note in Alice Lisle's trial, vol. i. p. 241.
[7] Sir John Holt (1642-1710) was called to the bar in 1663. He appeared
for Danby on his impeachment in 1679, and was assigned to be counsel for
Lords Powys and Arundell of Wardour, who were impeached for
participation in the Popish Plot in 1680, but against whom the
proceedings were stopped after Stafford's conviction. He appeared for
the Crown in several trials preceding that of Lord Russell, and having
expressed an opinion in favour of the Quo Warranto proceedings against
the City of London was appointed Recorder, knighted, and called as a
serjeant in 1685. He was deprived of the recordership after a year on
refusing to pass sentence of death on a deserter, a point which owed its
importance to Charles II.'s attempts to create a standing army; but as
he continued to be a serjeant, he was unable thenceforward to appear
against the Crown. He acted as legal assessor to the Convention called
after the flight of James II., as a member of the House of Commons took
a leading part in the declaration that he had abdicated, and was made
Chief-Justice in 1689.
[8] This decision and unspecified 'partial and unjust constructions of
law' were the professed ground on which Russell's attainder was
subsequently reversed: see _post_, p. 56. Sir James Stephen (_Hist.
Crim. Law_, vol. i. p. 412) expresses an opinion that the law upon the
subject at the time was 'utterly uncertain.'
[9] Lord Grey was the eldest son of the second Baron Grey of Werk. He
succeeded his father in 1675: he voted for Stafford's conviction, and
was a zealous exclusionist. He was convicted of debauching his
sister-in-law, Lady Henrietta Berkeley, in 1682, and consequently took
no part in Russell's plot. He was arrested in connection with the Rye
House Plot, but escaped to Holland, whence he returned to take part in
Monmouth's rising. He was captured after Sedgemoor, but his life was
spared on his being heavily fined and compelled to give evidence against
his friends. He left England, but returned with William III., during
whose reign he filled several offices. He was created Earl of
Tankerville in 1695, and died in 1701.
[10] Lord Howard, the third Lord Howard of Escrick, was born about 1626.
He entered Corpus College, Cambridge. He served in Cromwell's
Life-guards. As a sectary he seems to have favoured the Restoration. He
was committed to the Tower for secret correspondence with Holland in
1674. After succeeding to the peerage he furthered the trial of his
kinsman Stafford. After giving evidence in this trial (see p. 15), he
gave similar evidence against Algernon Sidney, was pardoned, and died in
obscurity at York in 1694.
[11] The Earl of Essex was the son of the Lord Capel who was one of
Charles I.'s most devoted adherents and lost his life after his vain
defence of Colchester in 1648. The younger Lord Capel was made Earl of
Essex at the Restoration. Though opposed to the Court party by
inclination, he served on various foreign missions, and was
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland from 1672 to 1677. On his return to England
he associated himself with the Country party, and on Danby's fall was
placed at the head of the Treasury Commission, and thereafter followed
Halifax and Sunderland in looking to the Prince of Orange for ultimate
assistance rather than Shaftesbury, who favoured the Duke of Monmouth.
He left the Treasury in 1679, supported Shaftesbury in 1680 on the
Exclusion Bill, and appeared as a 'petitioner' at Oxford in 1680. He
voted against Stafford. He was arrested as a co-plotter with Russell on
Howard's information, and committed suicide in the Tower on the day of
his trial (see p. 16).
[12] Algernon Sidney (1622-1683) was the son of the second Earl of
Leicester, and commanded a troop in the regiment raised by his father,
when he was Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, to put down the Irish rebellion
of 1641. He afterwards came over to England, joined the Parliamentary
forces, and was wounded at Marston Moor. He continued serving in various
capacities, returning for a time to Ireland with his brother, Lord
Lisle, who was Lord-Lieutenant. He was appointed one of the
commissioners to try Charles I., but took no part in the trial. He was
ejected from Parliament in 1653, and adopted a position of hostility to
Cromwell. He remained abroad after the Restoration, though not excepted
from the Act of Indemnity, and lived a philosophic life at Rome and
elsewhere. He tried to promote a rising against Charles in Holland in
1665, and opened negotiations with Louis XIV. during the French war. He
returned to England in 1677 to settle his private affairs, and stayed on
making friends with the leaders of the Opposition, and vainly trying to
obtain a seat in the House of Commons. He quarrelled with Shaftesbury,
who denounced him as a French pensioner (which he probably was), and
seems to have had no connection with his plots. He was arrested on 27th
June, tried by Jeffreys on 7th November, condemned, and executed on 7th
December 1683.
[13] John Hampden (1656-1696) was the second son of Richard Hampden.
After travelling abroad in his youth he became the intimate friend of
the leaders of the Opposition on his return to England in 1682. He was
arrested with them and tried in 1684, when he was imprisoned on failing
to pay an exorbitant fine. After Monmouth's rising he was tried again
for high treason. As Lord Grey was produced as a second witness against
him, Lord Howard, who had testified before, being the first, he pleaded
guilty, implicating Russell and others by his confession. He was
pardoned, and lived to sit in Parliament after the Revolution; but
falling into obscurity failed to be elected for his native county in
1696, and committed suicide.
[14] Rumsey had been an officer in Cromwell's army, and had served in
Portugal with distinction. He obtained a post by Shaftesbury's
patronage; and with West, a barrister, was responsible for the Rye House
Plot. According to his own account, he was to kill the King, whilst
Walcot was to lead an attack on the guards. He appeared as a witness in
the trials of Walcot and Algernon Sidney, as well as in the present one.
His last appearance before the public was as a witness against Henry
Cornish, one of the leaders of the opposition of the City to the Court
party, whom he and one Goodenough accused of participation in Russell's
plot, and who was tried and executed in 1685. He had offered to give
evidence against Cornish before, in 1683, but the second witness
necessary to prove treason was not then forthcoming. The unsatisfactory
nature of Rumsey's evidence led to Cornish's property being afterwards
restored to his family, while, according to Burnet, 'the witnesses were
lodged in remote prisons for their lives.' Cornish was arrested, tried
and executed within a week.
[15] Walcot was an Irish gentleman who had been in Cromwell's army. He
frequented West's chambers, where he met West and Rumsey, who were the
principal witnesses against him. Rumsey's story was that though Walcot
objected to killing the King, he promised to attack the guards. He was
tried and convicted earlier on the same day.
[16] The following passages seem to give a true account of the measure
of the complicity of Russell and his friends with the Rye House Plot.
[17] Aaron Smith is first heard of as an obscure plotter in association
with Oates and Speke. He was prosecuted in 1682 for supplying seditious
papers to Colledge, and sentenced to fine and imprisonment. He managed
to escape, however, before sentence was pronounced, and was arrested in
connection with the present trial, when, as nothing could be proved
against him, he was sentenced for his previous offence. After the
Revolution he was appointed solicitor to the Treasury; but failing to
give a good account of various prosecutions which he set on foot, he was
dismissed in 1697.
[18] Sir John Cochram or Cochrane was the second son of William
Cochrane, created Earl of Dundonald in 1689. He escaped to Holland at
the time of Russell's trial, took part in Argyle's insurrection in 1685,
turned approver, and farmed the poll tax after the Revolution, but was
imprisoned in 1695 on failing to produce proper accounts.
[19] George Melville was the fourth baron and the first Earl of
Melville. He supported the Royalist cause in Scotland, and tried to
induce a settlement with the Covenanters before the battle of Bothwell
Bridge. He escaped from England after the discovery of the Rye House
Plot, and appeared at the Court of the Prince of Orange. After the
Revolution he held high offices in Scotland till the accession of Anne,
when he was dismissed. He died in 1707.
[20] West was a barrister at whose chambers in the Temple Rumsey,
Ferguson, and other plotters used to meet, and it was alleged that the
Rye House Plot was proposed: said by Burnet to have been 'a witty and
active man, full of talk, and believed to be a determined atheist.'
[21] As to what is treason under 25 Edward III., see _post_, p. 36.
Under 13 Car. II. c. 1 it is treason, _inter alia_, to devise the
deposition of the King; but the prosecution must be within six months of
the commission of the offence.
[22] The question was, 'What is included in the expressions "Imagine the
King's death" and "Levying war against the King"?' The Attorney-General
was evidently placing a gloss on them, which was perhaps justified from
a wider point of view than a merely legal one. However that may be, the
same process was continued till it culminated in the theory of
'constructive treason,' according to which it was laid down in 1794 that
a man who intended to depose the King compassed and imagined his death.
The matter was eventually decided in 1795 by a statute which made such
an intent and others of the same kind treason of themselves. See further
Stephen's _History of Criminal Law_, vol. ii. pp. 243-283.
[23] He had been twice sent to the Tower: once in 1674 in consequence of
the discovery of a secret correspondence with Holland; once in 1681 on a
false charge by Edward Fitzharris of writing the _True Englishman_, a
pamphlet advocating the deposition of Charles II. and the exclusion of
the Duke of York, which was in fact written by Fitzharris, it is
suggested with the purpose of imputing its authorship to the Whigs. It
is no doubt the second of these occasions that is referred to.
[24] Burnet had at this time retired into private life, having lost the
Court favour which he had gained at an earlier period. He had been an
intimate friend of Stafford, and was living on terms of the closest
intimacy with Essex and Russell at the time of their arrest. After
Russell's execution he left the country, and eventually found his way to
the Hague just before the Revolution, where he performed services for
William and Mary requiring the utmost degree of confidence. He landed at
Torbay with William, soon became Bishop of Salisbury, and until the end
of William's life remained one of his most trusted councillors. He
retained a position of great influence under Anne, and died in 1715. In
relation to his evidence in this case, it is interesting to read in his
history that Russell was privy to a plot for promoting a rebellion in
the country and for bringing in the Scotch. He says further: 'Lord
Russell desired that his counsel might be heard to this point of seizing
the guards; but that was denied unless he would confess the fact, and he
would not do that, because as the witnesses had sworn it, it was false.
He once intended to have related the whole fact just as it was; but his
counsel advised him against it'; in fact Russell admitted that he knew
of a traitorous plot, and did not reveal it. 'He was a man of so much
candour that he spoke little as to the fact; for since he was advised
not to tell the whole truth, he could not speak against that which he
knew to be true, though in some particulars it had been carried beyond
the truth.' See too _post_, p. 55.
[25] John Tillotson (1630-1694) was the son of a weaver of Sowerby. He
entered Clare Hall in 1647, and became a a fellow of the same college in
1651. He received an early bias against Puritanism from Chillingworth's
_Religion of Protestants_, and his intercourse with Cudworth and others
at Cambridge. He became tutor to the son of Prideaux, Cromwell's
Attorney-General in 1656; he was present at the Savoy Conference in
1661, and remained identified with the Puritans till the passing of the
Act of Uniformity in 1662; afterwards he became curate of Cheshunt in
Hertfordshire and rector of Keddington in Suffolk. In 1664 he was known
as a celebrated preacher, and was appointed preacher in Lincoln's Inn.
In 1678 and 1680 he preached sermons to the House of Commons and the
King respectively, exhorting the former to legislation against Popery,
and pointing out to the latter that whilst Catholics should be
tolerated, they should not be allowed to proselytise. He attended
Russell on the scaffold, and with Burnet was summoned before the Council
on a suspicion of having helped to compose Russell's published speech.
He acquired great influence after the Revolution; and having exercised
the archiepiscopal jurisdiction of the province of Canterbury during
Sancroft's suspension, became himself archbishop in 1691.
[26] Henry Brooke, the eighth Lord Cobham, after losing Court favour on
the death of Elizabeth, was accused in 1603 of plotting with Aremberg,
the Spanish ambassador, to place Arabella Stuart on the throne, and to
kill the King. His evidence contributed largely to the conviction of Sir
Walter Raleigh of the same treason, and he was tried and convicted the
next day. He was kept in prison till 1617, when he was allowed to go to
Bath on condition that he returned to prison; but he was struck by
paralysis on his way back and died in 1619. See vol. i. pp. 19-57.
[27] Oliver Plunket (1629-1681) was Roman Catholic bishop of Armagh and
titular primate of Ireland. He attained these positions in 1669; in 1674
he went into hiding when the position of the Catholics in England drew
attention to their presence in Ireland. He was arrested, on a charge of
complicity with the Popish Plot in 1678, and eventually tried in the
King's Bench for treason in 1681 by Sir Francis Pemberton, when the law
was laid down as stated above. He was convicted, hung, beheaded and
quartered.
[28] Rumsey says the 19th, Howard the 17th. The 17th was the anniversary
of the Queen's accession.
[29] Thomas Walcot and William Hone, tried for and convicted of
participation in the Rye House Plot.
[30] See _ante_, p. 42.