that, if he thought it could do him any service, he 1683. would come in, and run fortunes with him. He answered, it would be of no advantage to him to have his friends die with him. Tillotson and I went in the coach with him to the place of execution. Some of the crowd that filled the streets wept, while others insulted: he was touched with the tenderness that the one gave him, but did not seem at all provoked by the other. He was singing psalms a great part of the way: and said, he hoped to sing better very soon. As he observed the great crowds of people all the way, he said to us, I hope I shall quickly see a much better assembly. When he came to the scaffold, he walked about it four or five times. Then he turned to the sheriffs, and delivered his paper. He protested, he had always been far from any designs against the king's life or government: he prayed God would preserve both, and the protestant religion. He wished all protestants might love one another, and not make way for popery by their animosities. The substance of the paper he gave them was, 561 first a profession of his religion, and of his sincerity Russel's last speech. in it that he was of the church of England: but wished all would unite together against the common enemy that churchmen would be less severe, and dissenters less scrupulous. He owned, he had a great zeal against popery, which he looked on as an idolatrous and bloody religion: but that, though he was at all times ready to venture his life for his religion or his country, yet that would never have carried him to a black or wicked design. No man ever had the impudence to move to him any thing with relation to the king's life: he prayed heartily He 1683. for him, that in his person and government he might be happy both in this world and in the next. protested, that in the prosecution of the popish plot he had gone on in the sincerity of his heart; and that he never knew of any practice with the witnesses. He owned, he had been earnest in the matter of the exclusion, as the best way, in his opinion, to secure both the king's life and the protestant religion and to that he imputed his present sufferings but he forgave all concerned in them; and charged his friends to think of no revenges. He thought his sentence was hard: upon which he gave an account of all that had passed at Shepherd's. From the heats that were in choosing the sheriffs, he concluded that matter would end as it now did : and he was not much surprised to find it fall upon himself: he wished it might end in him: killing by forms of law was the worst sort of murder. He concluded with some very devout ejaculations. After he had delivered this paper, he prayed by himself: then Tillotson prayed with him. After that he prayed again by himself: and then undressed himself, and laid his head on the block, without the least change of countenance: and it was cut off at two strokes. This was the end of that great and good man : on which I have perhaps enlarged too copiously: but the great esteem I had for him, and the share I had in this matter, will, I hope, excuse it. His speech was so soon printed, that it was selling about the streets an hour after his death: upon which the court was highly inflamed. So Tillotson and I were appointed to appear before the cabinet council. Tillotson had little to say, but only that lord Russel had shewed him his speech the day be- 1683. fore he suffered; and that he spoke to him, what he thought was incumbent on him, upon some parts of it, but he was not disposed to alter it". I was longer before them. I saw they apprehended I had 562 penned the speech. I told the king, that at his lady's desire I writ down a very particular journal of every passage, great and small, that had happened during my attendance on him: I had just ended it, as I received my summons to attend his majesty: so, if he commanded me, I would read it to him which upon his command I did. I saw they were all astonished at the many extraordinary things in it the most important of them are set down in the former relation. The lord keeper asked me, if I intended to print that. I said it was only intended for his lady's private use. The lord keeper, seeing the king silent, added, You are not to think the king is pleased with this, because he says nothing. This was very mean. He then asked me, if I had not studied to dissuade the lord Russel from putting many things in his speech. I said, I had discharged my conscience to him very freely in every particular: but he was now gone: so it was impossible to know, if I should tell any thing of what had passed between us, whether it was true or false: I desired therefore to be excused. The 1683. duke asked me, if he had said any thing to me in confession. I answered, that if he had said any thing to me in confidence, that was enough to restrain me from speaking of it. Only I offered to take my oath, that the speech was penned by him o Jesuitical. S. Quære, what that word (penned) means? See antea, 558. The paper does not seem clear and ingenuous enough for the character of such a man as my lord Russel, and at such a time with him. He was certainly a very honest man, and truly meant the good of his country in all this transaction, and that only. But he was legally convicted, as to the crime, in law, and the evidence of it. It would have been the same with those who engaged in the revolution, if they had not succeeded; and that is his best defence. See lord Grey's paper (lately, 1757, published in print) relating to this plot, where lord Russel seems to have been very early and deep in it, as to an insurrection. But be all this as it may, what have bad princes, with their instruments, to answer for hereafter, who, by iniquitous acts of pretended government, force unhappy subjects to resist them, for the sake of necessary defence, and who, if they happen to fail, are treated as criminals, and put often to cruel deaths by those very tyrants that provoked them; acting against them (and making it a justification) under the letter and colour of laws, instituted only and avowedly for the protection and security of good government. Is not this murder in the sight of an all-judging God? Would not such princes be far safer in this world, and happier in that to come, if, in such cases, they pardoned their miserable subjects, and amended their own future administration of power? I have often thought it a great unhappiness to my lord Russel, and it must have been matter of much uneasiness to a man of his principles and virtues, (public and private,) to have been connected in any undertaking with the men of the characters he united himself with, on this occasion. Monmouth, Shaftsbury, Howard, Gray, Armstrong, &c. Essex, Sidney, and Hampden, were better men in themselves than the others; but the two first were republicans, (the earl of Essex inclined to be so, as lord Gray's paper says. See antea, 538. not very strange with regard to him,) and Hampden (antea, 539.) then an infidel, or pretending to be so. Scarcely any one of them all could give any credit to the cause. (Lady Russell, in her letter to the king, professing her own belief, that the paper her lord delivered to the sheriffs was his, and not doctor Burnet's, intimates, that an argument for its having been composed by the latter was drawn from O. self, and not by me. The duke, upon all that passed 1683. in this examination, expressed himself so highly offended at me, that it was concluded I would be ruined. Lord Halifax sent me word, that the duke looked on my reading the journal as a studied thing, to make a panegyric on lord Russel's memory. Many pamphlets were writ on that occasion and I was heavily charged in them all, as the adviser, if not the author, of the speech. But I was advised by all my friends to write no answer, but to bear the malice that was vented upon me with silence; which I resolved to do. married the At this time prince George of Denmark came Prince George of into England to marry the duke's second daughter. Denmark The prince of Hanover P had come over two years princess before to make addresses to her: but he was scarce Anne. got hither, when he received orders from his father not to proceed in that design; for he had agreed a match for him with his brother the duke of Zell for his daughter, which [however it] did at that time more accommodate the family, [it proved very unhappy afterwards to the prince himself.] The marriage that was now made with the brother of Denmark did not at all please the nation: for we knew that the proposition came from France. So it was 563 apprehended, that both courts reckoned they were sure that he would change his religion: in which we have seen, since that time, that our fears were ill grounded. He has lived in all respects the hap the use of some phrases familiar to him. See this letter in Lord John Russell's Life of Lord Russell, page 238. Dr. Lingard remarks, that Burnet, after the revolution, owned the plan and order of this speech P Afterwards our king. O. |