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THE RYE-HOUSE PLOT, AND THE TRIALS OF

RUSSELL AND SIDNEY.

A.D. 1683. The latter part of the reign of Charles II.

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(From the Popular History of England,' by Charles Knight.)

in-trigu'-er, one who plots

fac-tion, an inferior party in a state
ad'-vo-ca-cy, the act of pleading
le-git-i-mate, lawful

u-surp', to seize and hold in possession
without right

un-os-ten-ta'-tious, modest, without show or boastfulness

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in-dict'-ment, an accusation, a charge ca-bal' (n.), a private council, an intrigue

co-er'-cion, forcible restraint, or check
o'-vert, open, public

com'-pass (v.), to encircle, to obtain
de-po-si'-tion, the act of bearing witness
par-ti'-ci-pa-tor, a partaker

now was wanting to

NOTHING, say the Memoirs of James,* make the king perfectly easy in his affairs but the duke's assistance in the management of them. The discovery of a cursed conspiracy, which in part they had providentially escaped, but still in great measure hung over their heads, hasted the duke's readmission into business for their mutual security.' The providential escape was from the assassination of the king and the duke, which, it was alleged, was intended to be accomplished at Rye House, in Hertfordshire. Keeling, a vintner, communicated to one of the Secretaries of State, that a plot had been devised for engaging forty men to waylay the king and his brother, as they returned from Newmarket, at a farmhouse called the Rye, belonging to Rumbold, a maltster; that the king returning sooner than was expected, that scheme was given up, and a general insurrection was projected by certain eminent persons, amongst whom were the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Essex, Lord Howard of Escrick, and Lord William Russell. Some of the inferior persons accused were first apprehended. The Rye-House Plot was in every mouth. The place was not so well known to Londoners as at the present day, when hundreds of summer holiday-folks go to make merry at the Rye House, on the pleasant banks of the Lea. It was then described as a place so convenient for such a villainy as scarce to be found in England; besides the closeness of the way over a river by a bridge, gates to pass, a strong hedge on one side, brick walls on the other.' The Rye-House Plot appears to have been a real conspiracy amongst obscure men. That the Whig

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* Duke of York, the King's brother, afterwards James II.

leaders participated in the design of assassination was not considered probable even amongst royalists of the time. Upon the committal to the Tower of Russell, Essex, and Sidney, Evelyn writes, "The Lords Essex and Russell were much deplored, few believing they had any evil intention against the king or the church. Some thought they were cunningly drawn in by their enemies, for not approving some late counsels and management relating to France, to Popery, to the persecution of the Dissenters, &c.' The Duke of Monmouth, Lord Grey, Sir Thomas Armstrong, and two others, for whose arrest a proclamation was made, escaped. The trials of three minor conspirators were hurried on, and they were convicted on the evidence of their associates. On the 13th of July, Lord Russell was brought to trial. From the first he gave himself up for lost. As he entered the Tower he told his servant Taunton that he was sworn against, and that his enemies would have his life. Taunton hoped that his master's enemies had no such power. 'Yes,' said Russell, 'the devil is loose!'

According to the political creeds of men of a past age, it has been customary to speak of Russell and Sidney as martyrs in the cause of liberty, or as scoundrels who had no just notions of government. To regard the conduct and character of either of these eminent men with enthusiastic admiration, is to us as impossible as to consider them as selfish and ambitious intriguers, ready to plunge the nation into civil war for the advancement of a faction, or the advocacy of a wild theory of a republic. Their notions of a political perfectibility were essentially different. Russell, the calm and practical representative of a great party, sought to attain freedom under a monarchy sufficiently checked by a Parliament, and to exercise religion under a Protestant establishment, tolerant to all forms of dissent but that of Roman Catholicism. Popery was his one great terror, and not unreasonably so. He was violent towards Papists, because he regarded Popery as an idolatrous and bloody religion." * The political principles of Algernon Sidney were essentially different. He was the last of the old Commonwealth-men, of the school of Vane. He hated the legitimate tyranny of Charles as much as he hated the usurped power of Cromwell. He disliked Popery rather with the dislike of the philosopher than that of the Christian. Neither Russell nor Sidney contemplated the removal of political evils by the assassination of the king. When Charles gave for his reason for denying mercy to

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*He was their relentless and persecuting enemy, when his party was all powerful, for reasons which he thus expressed :-'As for the share I had in the prosecution of the Popish plot, I take God to witness that I proceeded in it in the sincerity of my heart, being then really convinced, as I am still, that there was a conspiracy against the king, the nation, and the Protestant religion.'

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Russell, 'If I do not take his life he will soon have mine,' ho was thinking of his father's fate rather than of such danger as that of the Rye House. He told Russell, upon his first examination before the council, that nobody suspected him of any design against his person, but that there was good evidence of his being in designs against his government. Russell was as conscious of his own political importance as Charles was aware that in removing him he removed the great obstacle to the designs which James now steadily advocated with the zeal of a bigot and the blindness of a despot. Arbitrary government,' said Russell to his chaplain, Mr. Johnson, cannot be set up in England without wading through my blood.' The trial of Russell derives its chief interest from a circumstance which associates it with the tenderness, the devotion, the fortitude of woman. The day before the trial, Lady Russell, the daughter of the Earl of Southampton, wrote a note to her husband in these words:"Your friends believing I can do you some service at your trial, I am extremely willing to try; my resolution will hold out; pray let yours. But it may be the Court will not let me; however, do you let me try." On the 13th of July, the forms of indictment having been gone through, and the prisoner having in vain requested a postponement of the trial for a day, that he might produce witnesses not yet arrived, he said, 'May I have somebody to write, to help my memory?? Yes, a servant,' was the answer. 'My wife is here to do it.' And so, by her lord's side, sat that noble wife, calmly doing her office amidst the most exciting scenes. Lord Howard of Escrick appears. He was Russell's relative. To save himself, he offered to criminate his friends. He is put in the witnessbox. His voice falters. We cannot hear you, my lord,' says one of the privy council. Howard explains, "There is an unlucky accident happened which hath sunk my voice; I was but just now acquainted with the fate of my Lord of Essex.' The news ran through the Court that Essex had committed suicide in the Tower. 'This fatal news coming to Hicks's Hall upon the article of my Lord Russell's trial, was said to have no little influence on the jury and all the bench to his prejudice.' The Attorney-General said, 'My Lord Russell was one of the council for carrying on the plot with the Earl of Essex, who hath this morning prevented the hand of justice upon himself. Men doubted whether Essex perished by his own hand. His head was so severed from his body that an executioner could hardly have done more with an axe. There were odd reflections upon it.' † The evidence of Howard and

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* Evelyn, Diary,' July 13.

† Evelyn, 'Diary.'

other witnesses went to show that Russell, before Shaftesbury left the country, had attended a meeting in the city, at which a rising was debated, and there was talk of the feebleness of the king's guard at Whitehall. Howard also asserted that there was a cabal of six persons, Monmouth, Essex, Russell, Sidney, Hampden, and himself; and that one of their objects was to draw the Scotch malcontents to join with them. Russell made a very short defence, in which he solemnly denied the charges imputed to him: 'I have ever looked upon the assassination of any private person as an abominable, barbarous, and inhuman thing, tending to the destruction of all society. How much more the assassination of a prince, which cannot enter into my thoughts without horror and detestation; especially considering him as my natural prince, and one upon whose death such dismal consequences are but too likely to ensue. As for going about to make or raise a rebellion, that likewise is a thing so wicked, and withal impracticable, that it never entered into my thoughts. Had I been disposed to it, I never found, by all my observation, that there was the least disposition or tendency to it in the people. And it is known, rebellion cannot be now made here as in former times, by a few great men.' And yet we cannot doubt that 'a few great men contemplated some coercion of the government perhaps short of rebellion, despairing of 'having things redressed in a legal parliamentary way.' It is difficult to draw the line between legal and illegal resistance when men are hopeless of just government. Russell was convicted of treason, though certainly he was illegally convicted. He had committed no overt act, imagining the king's death, which had brought him within the Statute of Treason of Edward III. The Act of William and Mary annulling his attainder, says that he was 'by partial and unjust constructions of law, wrongfully convicted, attainted, and executed for high treason.' Russell went to death with Christian fortitude. Extraordinary efforts were made to save his life; but Charles was not to be moved even by the offer of a hundred thousand pounds. Russell was beheaded on the 21st of July, on a scaffold erected in Lincoln's Inn Fields. His parting with his noble wife had something more touching than sobs and tears. This flesh you now feel, in a few hours must be cold,' he said. They then kissed and separated, in eloquent silence.

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The trial of Algernon Sidney was postponed till the 21st of November. Pemberton was Chief Justice when Russell was tried. He was removed to make room for Jeffreys. Lord Howard of Escrick was again the chief witness against the friend who had confided in the betrayer's professions of reublicanism. Two witnesses were required by the Statute of

Treason. There was no second living witness against Sidney; that defect was supplied by a manuscript found amongst Sidney's papers, in which treasonable principles were held to be advocated. He approved of conspiracies against Nero and Caligula, and therefore was ready to compass the king's death. Howard's depositions were different from those which he gave on the trial of Russell. Sidney appealed to the jury whether any credit was due to a man who deceived and betrayed his friends, who had said he could not get his own pardon from the king till he had done 'some other jobs.' Of course Sidney was convicted in the utter absence of all legal evidence of treason. He was brought up for judgment on the 26th. When he heard his sentence he prayed God that, 'if at any day the shedding of blood that is innocent must be revenged, let the weight of it fall only on those that maliciously persecute me for righteousness' sake!' Jeffreys, although he had kept his brutal nature in some subjection to decency, then exclaimed, 'I pray God to work in you a temper fit to go into the other world, for I see you are not fit for this.' Sidney stretched out his arm and said, 'My Lord, feel my pulse, and see if I am disordered.' Evelyn records that on the 5th of December he was at a wedding, where he met Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys and Mr. Justice Withings. These great men spent the rest of the afternoon, till eleven at night, in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath the gravity of judges; who had but a day or two before condemned Mr. Algernon Sidney, who was executed the 7th on Tower Hill, on the single witness of that monster of a man, Lord Howard of Escrick, and some sheets of paper taken in Mr. Sidney's study, pretended to be written by him, but not fully proved.' Sidney died with a simple courage and unostentatious composure worthy of his strength of mind. 'When he came on the scaffold, instead of a speech, he told them only that he had made his peace with God; that he came not thither to talk, but to die; put a paper into the sheriff's hand, and another into a friend's; said one prayer as short as a grace; laid down his neck, and bid the executioner do his office.' *

Connected with the other chief participators of the alleged conspiracy, 1683, we may mention that Monmouth was ultimately pardoned; and that Sir Thomas Armstrong was given up by the States of Holland, and executed without a trial upon his sentence of outlawry. He had surrendered within the year, during which the law allows the accused to claim a trial. Jeffreys rudely resisted this legal demand of Armstrong.

* Evelyn, Diary.'

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