General were informed by their correspondent that, of all sights, that in which the English most delighted was a hanging, and that, of all hangings within the memory of the oldest man, that of Friend and Parkyns had excited the greatest interest. The multitude had been incensed against Friend by reports touching the exceeding badness of the beer which he brewed. It was even rumoured that he had, in his zeal for the Jacobite cause, poisoned all the casks which he had furnished to the navy. An innumerable crowd accordingly assembled at Tyburn. Scaffolding had been put up which formed an immense amphitheatre round the gallows. On this scaffolding the wealthier spectators stood, row above row; and expectation was at the height when it was announced that the show was deferred. The mob broke up in bad humour, and not without many fights between those who had given money for their places and those who refused to return it.* The cause of this severe disappointment was a resolution suddenly passed by the Commons. A member had proposed that a Committee should be sent to the Tower with authority to examine the prisoners, and to hold out to them the hope that they might, by a full and ingenuous confession, obtain the intercession of the House. The debate appears, from the scanty information which has come down to us, to have been a very curious one. Parties seemed to have changed characters. It might have been expected that the Whigs would have been inexorably severe, and that, if there was any tenderness for the unhappy men, that tenderness would have been found among the Tories. But in truth many of the Whigs hoped that they might, by sparing two criminals who had no power to do mischief, be able to detect and destroy numerous criminals high in rank and office. * L'Hermitage, April 1696. On the other hand, every man who had ever had any dealings direct or indirect with Saint Germains, or who took an interest in any person likely to have had such dealings, looked forward with dread to the disclosures which the captives might, under the strong terrors of death, be induced to make. Seymour, simply because he had gone further in treason than almost any other member of the House, was louder than any other member of the House in exclaiming against all indulgence to his brother traitors. Would the Commons usurp the most sacred prerogative of the Crown? It was for His Majesty, and not for them, to judge whether lives justly forfeited could be without danger spared. The Whigs however carried their point. A Committee, consisting of all the Privy Councillors in the House, set off instantly for Newgate. Friend and Parkyns were interrogated, but to no purpose. They had, after sentence had been passed on them, shown at first some symptoms of weakness: but their courage had been fortified by the exhortations of nonjuring divines who had been admitted to the prison. The rumour was that Parkyns would have given way but for the entreaties of his daughter, who adjured him to suffer like a man for the good cause. The criminals acknowledged that they had done the acts of which they had been convicted, but, with a resolution which is the more respectable because it seems to have sprung, not from constitutional hardihood, but from sentiments of honour and religion, refused to say any thing which could compromise others.* In a few hours the crowd again assembled at Tyburn; and this time the sightseers were not defrauded of their amusement. They saw indeed one sight which they had not Execution of * Commons' Journals, April 1, 1626; Van Cleverskirke, of the 2. 1696; L'Hermitage, April 13' same date. expected, and which produced a greater sensation than the execution itself. Jeremy Collier and two other nonjuring divines of less celebrity, named Cook and Snatt, had attended the prisoners in Newgate, and were in the cart under the gallows. When the prayers were over, and just before the hangman did his office, the three schismatical priests stood up, and laid their hands on the heads of the dying men who continued to kneel. Collier pronounced a form of absolution taken from the service for the Visitation of the Sick, and his brethren exclaimed "Amen!" This ceremony raised a great outcry; and the outcry became louder when, a few hours after the execution, the papers delivered by the two traitors to the Sheriffs were made public. It had been supposed that Parkyns at least would express some repentance for the crime which had brought him to the gallows. Indeed he had, before the Committee of the Com. mons, owned that the Assassination Plot could not be justified. But, in his last declaration, he avowed his share in that plot, not only without a word indicating remorse, but with something which resembled exultation. Was this a man to be absolved by Christian divines, absolved before the eyes of tens of thousands, absolved with rites evidently intended to attract public attention, with rites of which there was no trace in the Book of Common Prayer or in the practice of the Church of England? In journals, pamphlets, and broadsides, the insolence of the three Levites, as they were called, was sharply reprehended. Warrants were soon out. Cook and Snatt were taken and imprisoned: but Collier was able to conceal himself, and, by the help of one of the presses which were at the service of his party, sent forth from his hiding place a defence of his conduct. He declared that he abhorred assassination as much as any of those who railed against him; and his general character warrants us in believing that this declaration was perfectly sincere. But the rash act into which he had been hurried by party spirit furnished his adversaries with very plausible reasons for questioning his sincerity. A crowd of answers to his defence appeared. Preeminent among them in ímportance was a solemn manifesto, signed by the two Archbishops, and by all the Bishops who were then in London, twelve in number. Even Crewe of Durham and Sprat of Rochester set their names to this document. They condemned the proceedings of the three nonjuring divines, as in form irregular, and in substance impious. To remit the sins of impenitent sinners was a profane abuse of the power which Christ had delegated to his ministers. It was not denied that Parkyns had planned an assassination. It was not pretended that he had professed any repentance for planning an assassination. The plain inference was that the divines who absolved him did not think it sinful to assassinate King William. Collier rejoined: but, though a pugnacious controversialist, he on this occasion shrank from close conflict, and made his escape as well as he could under a cloud of quotations from Tertullian, Cyprian, and Jerome, Albaspinæus and Hammond, the Council of Carthage and the Council of Toledo. The public feeling was strongly against the three absolvers. The government however wisely determined not to confer on them the honour of martyrdom. A bill was found against them by the grand jury of Middlesex: but they were not brought to trial. Cook and Snatt were set at liberty after a short detention; and Collier would have been treated with equal lenity if he would have consented to put in bail. But he was determined to do no act which could be construed into a recognition of the usurping government. He was therefore outlawed; and when he died, more than thirty years later, his outlawry had not been reversed.* burne and Lowick. Parkyns was the last Englishman who was tried for high treason under the old system of Trials of Rookprocedure. The first who was tried under wood, Cranthe new system was Rookwood. He was defended by Sir Bartholomew Shower, who in the preceding reign had made himself unenviably con spicuous as a servile and cruel sycophant, had obtained from James the Recordership of London when Holt honourably resigned it, had, as Recorder, sent soldiers to the gibbet for breaches of military discipline, and had justly earned the nickname of the Manhunter. Shower had deserved, if any offender had deserved, to be excepted from the Act of Indemnity, and left to the utmost rigour of those laws which he had shamelessly perverted. But he had been saved by the clemency of William, and had requited that clemency by pertinacious and malignant opposition.† It was doubtless on account of Shower's known leaning towards Jacobitism that he was employed on this occasion. He raised some technical objections which the Court overruled. On the merits of the case he could make no defence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Cranburne and Lowick were then tried and convicted. They suffered with Rookwood; and there the executions stopped.‡ The temper of the nation was such that the government might have shed much more blood The Associawithout incurring the reproach of cruelty. tion. The feeling which had been called forth by the discovery of the plot continued during several weeks to increase day by day. Of that feeling the able men L'Hermitage, April 7. 1696. The Declaration of the Bishops, Collier's Defence, and Further Defence, and a long legal argument for Cook and Snatt will be found in the Collection of State Trials. † See the Manhunter, 1690. + State Trials. |