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Russel perceived this irregularity, and desired to have the point argued by counsel: the chief justice told him, that this favor could not be granted, unless he previously confessed the facts charged upon him. The artificial confounding of the two species of treason, though a practice supported by many precedents, is the chief, but not the only hardship of which Russel had reason to complain on his trial. His defence was feeble: and he contented himself with protesting, that he never had entertained any design against the life of the king: his veracity would not allow him to deny the conspiracy for an insurrection. The jury were men of fair and reputable characters, but zealous royalists: after a short deliberation, they brought in the prisoner guilty.

Applications were made to the king for a pardon: even money, to the amount of one hundred thousand pounds, was offered to the duchess of Portsmouth by the old earl of Bedford, father to Russel. The king was inexorable. He had been extremely harassed with the violence of the country party; and he had observed, that the prisoner, besides his secret designs, had always been carried to the highest extremity of opposition in parliament. Russel had even adopted a sentiment similar to what we meet with in a letter of the younger Brutus. Had his father, he said, advised the king to reject the exclusion bill, he would be the first to move for a parliamentary impeachment against him. When such determined resolution was observed, his popularity, his humanity, his justice, his very virtues, became so many crimes, and were used as arguments against sparing him. Charles, therefore, would go no further than remitting the more ignominious part of the sentence which the law requires to be pronounced against traitors. “Lord Russel,” said he, “shall find that I am possessed of that prerogative which, in the case of Lord Stafford, he thought proper to deny me.” As the fury of the country party had rendered it impossible for the king, without the imminent danger of his crown, to pardon so many Catholics, whom he firmly believed innocent, and even affectionate and loyal to him, he probably thought that, since the edge of the law was now ready to fall upon that party themselves, they could not reasonably expect that he would interpose to save them.

Russel’s consort, a woman of virtue, daughter and heir of the good earl of Southampton, threw herself at the king’s feet and pleaded with many tears the merits and loyalty of her father, as an atonement for those errors into which honest, however mistaken, principles had seduced her husband. These supplications were the last instance of female weakness (if they deserve the name) which she betrayed. Finding all applications vain, she collected courage, and not only fortified herself against the fatal blow, but endeavored by her example to strengthen the resolution of her unfortunate lord. With a tender and decent composure they took leave of each other on the day of his execution. “The bitterness of death is now past,” said he, when he turned from her. Lord Cavendish had lived in the closest intimacy with Russel, and deserted not his friend in the present calamity. He offered to manage his escape, by changing clothes with him, and remaining at al hazards in his place. Russel refused to save his own life by an expedient which might expose his friend to so many hardships When the duke of Monmouth by message offered to surrender himself, if Russel thought that this measure would anywise contribute to his safety, “It will be no advantage to me,” he said, “to have my friends die with me.” Some of his expressions discover, not only composure, but good humor, in this melancholy extremity. The day before his execution, he was seized with a bleeding at the nose. “I shall not now let blood to divert this distemper,” said he to Dr. Burnet, who attended him; “that will be done to-morrow.” A little before the sheriffs conducted him to the scaffold, he wound up his watch: “Now I have done,” said he, “with time, and hence forth must think solely of eternity.”

The scaffold was erected in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a place distant from the Tower; and it was probably intended, by conducting Russel through so many streets, to show the mutinous city their beloved leader, once the object of all their confidence, now exposed to the utmost rigors of the law. As he was the most popular among his own party, so was he ever the least obnoxious to the opposite faction; and his melancholy fate united every heart, sensible of humanity, in a tender compassion for him. Without the least change of countenance, he laid his head on the block; and at two strokes, it was severed from his body.

In the speech which he delivered to the sheriffs, he was very anxious to clear his memory from any imputation of ever intending the king’s death, or any alteration in the government: he could not explicitly confess the projected insurrection without hurting his friends, who might still be called in question for it; but he did not purge himself of that design, which, in the present condition of the nation, he regarded as no crime. By many passages in his speech, he seems to the last to have lain under the influence of party zeal; a passion which, being nourished by a social temper, and clothing itself under the appearance of principle, it is almost impossible for a virtuous man, who has acted in public life, ever thoroughly to eradicate. He professed his entire belief in the Popish plot: and he said that, though he had often heard the seizure of the guards mentioned, he had ever disapproved of that attempt. To which he added, that the massacring of so many innocent men in cool blood was so like a Popish practice, that he could not but abhor it. Upon the whole, the integrity and virtuous intentions, rather than the capacity, of this unfortunate nobleman, seem to have been the shining parts of his character.

Algernon Sidney was next brought to his trial. This gallant person, son of the earl of Leicester, had entered deeply into the war against the late king; and though nowise tainted with enthusiasm, he had so far shared in all the counsels of the Independent republican party, as to have been named on the high court of justice which tried and condemned that monarch: he thought not proper, however, to take his seat among the judges. He ever opposed Cromwell’s usurpation with zeal and courage; and after making all efforts against the restoration, he resolved to take no benefit of the general indemnity, but chose voluntary banishment, rather than submit to a government and family which he abhorred. As long as the republican party had any existence, he was active in every scheme, however unpromising, which tended to promote their cause; but at length, in 1677, finding it necessary for his private affairs to return to England, he had applied for the king’s pardon, and had obtained it. When the factions arising from the Popish plot began to run high, Sidney, full of those ideas of liberty which he had imbibed from the great examples of antiquity, joined the popular party; and was even willing to seek a second time, through all the horrors of civil war, for his adored republic.

From this imperfect sketch of the character and conduct of this singular personage, it may easily be conceived how obnoxious he was become to the court and ministry: what alone renders them blamable was, the illegal method which they took for effecting their purpose against him. On Sidney’s trial, they produced a great number of witnesses, who proved the reality of a plot in general; and when the prisoner exclaimed, that all these evidences said nothing of him, he was answered, that this method of proceeding, however irregular, had been practised in the prosecutions of the Popish conspirators; a topic more fit to condemn one party than to justify the other. The only witness who deposed against Sidney was Lord Howard; but as the law required two witnesses, a strange expedient was fallen on to supply this deficiency. In ransacking the prisoner’s closet, some discourses on government were found; in which he had maintained principles, favorable indeed to liberty, but such as the best and most dutiful subjects in all ages have been known to embrace; the original contract, the source of power from a consent of the people, the lawfulness of resisting tyrants, the preference of liberty to the government of a single person. These papers were asserted to be equivalent to a second witness, and even to many witnesses. The prisoner replied, that there was no other reason for ascribing those papers to him as the author, besides a similitude of hand; a proof which was never admitted in criminal prosecutions: that allowing him to be the author, he had composed them solely for his private amusement, and had never published them to the world, or even communicated them to any single person: that, when examined, they appeared by the color of the ink to have been written many years before, and were in vain produced as evidence of a present conspiracy against the government: and that where the law positively requires two witnesses, one witness attended with the most convincing circumstances, could never suffice; much less, when supported by a circumstance so weak and precarious. All these arguments, though urged by the prisoner with great courage and pregnancy of reason, had no influence. The violent and inhuman Jefferies was now chief justice; and by his direction a partial jury was easily prevailed on to give verdict against Sidney. His execution followed a few days after: he complained, and with reason, of the iniquity of the sentence; but he had too much greatness of mind to deny those conspiracies with Monmouth and Russel, in which he had been engaged. He rather gloried, that he now suffered for that “good old cause,” in which, from his earliest youth, he said he had enlisted himself.