Part 4 (1/2)
[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 a.s.signed to be counsel for Lords Powys and Arundell of Wardour, who were impeached for partic.i.p.ation 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 recorders.h.i.+p after a year on refusing to pa.s.s 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 a.s.sessor 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 Ess.e.x 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 Ess.e.x 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sistance 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 'pet.i.tioner' 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 partic.i.p.ation 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sages 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 a.s.sociation 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 compa.s.sed 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 authors.h.i.+p 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 Ess.e.x 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.