When Morgan's examination was over, the counsel for the prosecution addressed the court. "My Lord President Monthault, and you other My Lords Judges of this honourable tribunal; we all know that the butcher fatteneth the lamb before he leadeth it to the slaughter-house, and therefore the care and hospitality pretended to have been shown to the noble person, whose loss we deplore, establishes nothing positively in the prisoner's favour. I shall prove to you, that Lord Sedley liberally rewarded him for his entertainment, and that notwithstanding all the peaceable professions he has this day made, he took great pains to change that Lord's principles, to make him false to the Commonwealth, and also to engage him in an alliance with his family; failing of which, and also suspecting that he gave information to His Highness of the plots then carrying on for restoring tyranny and superstition; he the prisoner was consenting unto, if not aiding and abetting, the murdering and secreting the aforesaid godly Lord. The time chosen for this business was immediately after his receiving a large remittance. To these facts, together with that of the prisoner's concealing a band of desperate malignants, armed with instruments of destruction, I shall, with leave of the court, proceed to call my evidence."
The payment of several sums of money to Lord Sedley, during his residence at Ribblesdale, and the cessation of all demand for remittances from the period of his quitting it, were proved by his tenants; one of whom particularly specified his having sent him a very considerable sum, raised by mortgage of his principal farm, a few days previous to that fixed on for his disappearance. Morgan was now re-examined, who acted the part of a reluctant witness, with too marked partiality for Dr. Beaumont to deceive any who had not been accustomed to the grossest deceptions of fulsome hypocrisy. Much as he said of his hopes that his good old friend and neighbour would meet with favour, he took care to confirm every circumstance to his prejudice. He dwelt on the steadiness of Lord Sedley's principles; the regular communication he had with him, respecting the views of the royalists; the beauty and allurements of Constantia Beaumont, and the evident consternation of the family, together with her extreme grief at the time of Sedley's disappearing. He now hesitated and begged he might be dismissed; but a few threats of imprisonment restored his volubility, and he anticipated the questions of the counsel by stating, that at the command of His Highness he had minutely searched the late residence of the Beaumonts, and at length found a sliding pannel concealing an arched passage, through an extraordinarily thick wall, which, being excavated in one part, formed a small secret chamber or closet, concealed among the buttresses, so as not to be visible on the out-side, and lighted by a small window in the roof; he found, he said, certain proof of its having been recently inhabited, and on removing the floor he discovered, with several arms and implements, the dress of a parliamentary officer; the same which he had seen Lord Sedley wear. Nor was this the only corroborative proof of his having been assassinated in that dark recess, for, on digging lower, they found several bones, which he feared were part of the remains of that unfortunate gentleman.
The incongruity of finding the dress sufficiently perfect to discover its identity, while the body of Sedley was so dismembered by time, that only a few disjointed bones could be discovered, might have convinced the court, that they could not, without incurring great odium, find Dr. Beaumont guilty of murder. But, indeed, they had not time to reflect on the inadmissibility of such vague circumstances in a criminal charge. Lady Bellingham renewed her screams, to give effect, it was presumed, to the workings of compassion for a fond mother, wounded to agony by such a horrid narration. But her screams continued too long, and were too piercing, to proceed from feigned distress, and the intermingled cries of "He is coming again! Save me!" directed the eyes of all to a figure, who was now perceived slowly making his way through the crowd below the bar. It was the aged Evellin advancing with feeble steps; his majestic form clad in a loose, black, serge gown, and his iron-grey hair and beard waving neglected over his breast and shoulders; his arched brows were still more elevated by disdain, while, glancing his eyes from his screaming sister and her trembling husband, he fixed their unextinguished lustre on the President. "I am an evidence for Eusebius Beaumont," said he; "tender me the oath. My name is Allan Neville, and I require to be confronted with Walter De Vallance, calling himself Earl of Bellingham. Let him not escape," continued he, lifting his staff as it were an ensign of authority. "I accuse him of perfidy, calumny, fraud, usurpation, and murder."
Bellingham had more self-command than his guilty consort. His long acquaintance with the terrors of guilt made him ever on his guard. He knew of the preservation of Allan Neville during the civil wars, but he hoped the death of his son might have terminated his days, or irrecoverably clouded his reason; yet he was ever in apprehension of having his title to greatness disproved by a living claimant, though he knew all written documents to confirm his treachery had been destroyed. He had resolved, if ever this man of many woes should burst upon him, to abide by the criminal's last resource, denial of his identity, and solemn protestations of his own innocence: and though the abode of Neville had been so carefully concealed, that no trace of his residence in London had been discovered, even by the vigilance of Oliverian spies, the terrors to which the wretched Bellingham was a constant prey gave him a degree of adroitness in a moment of surprise. Though a coward, when only in the presence of God and his own conscience, the adhesive habits of a practised courtier, gave him effrontery and address when endeavouring to propitiate mankind in his favour.
"My Lord President," said he, "I must request that this unhappy maniac may be taken into custody. The sight is too dreadful to the weakened spirits of Lady Bellingham. Being a distant kinsman, we long supported him by our bounty; but his disordered imagination has persuaded him that he is the brother of my countess—that unfortunate and guilty man has been long since numbered with the dead."
Neville answered with stern composure, "Stand forth, David Williams; identify thy true Lord, the son of thy old master, to whom thou hast adhered in all his calamities." Williams instantly complied with the requisition, and Neville, then turning his indignant eyes on the horror-struct Bellingham, exclaimed—"I trusted thee with my life, my fortune, and my honour—I supplicated thy aid—I depended on thy integrity, on our alliance in blood, on a friendship formed in our boy-hood, on a thousand instances of kindness which I have shown thee.—Thou stolest from me a pearl, rich as an empire, threwest at me the worthless shell, and then badest thy plundered brother be grateful for thy mercy. Mine, Walter, is not the voice of a raving mendicant, it sounds not in thine ears as the ingratitude of an eleemosynary pensioner, but as the groan of a perturbed spirit, risen from the grave to demand vengeance."
"Hear me," continued he, as Bellingham hid his face with his cloak. "Am not I the friend of thy youth, the brother of thy wife, the owner of thy lands, castles, of all that thou hast, except that wretched body.—Where is my son? My Eustace; condemned by thee in cold blood at Pembroke, for being faithful to the King who ennobled thee, and was then betrayed by thy treasons! Mark, traitor; at the time that thou unpitying sawest the heir of the greatness thou hast long usurped walk to execution, this innocent man, whom thou art now persecuting, preserved the life of thy only child. And dost thou reproach me with the calamities thou hast brought upon me? Remember what I was, before thy avarice and ambition cancelled the ties of blood and gratitude, crushed me to the earth, and plumed thy borrowed pomp with the wings of my lineal greatness. I am now a lame, old, destitute Loyalist; yet, for ten thousand worlds, I would not cease to be the thing I am, if the alternative must be to become what thou art; a meteor, born in the concussion of the elements; a timorous slave of power, scared into the commission of any action which may prolong a life, miserable in its continuance, tremendous in its close."
He now turned to the judges, who were gazing on him in silent consternation. "Are you," said he, "administrators of the new code of criminal justice, or sworn extirpators of inconvenient rectitude. You see in me the bloody malignant, whom Beaumont cherished for years in the secret chamber. Have I physical strength to assassinate a vigorous youth? This arm was rendered useless at the battle of Marston-Moor; these knees were enfeebled by infirmity, resulting from the hardships I endured at the siege of Pontefract-Castle. Thus maimed and disabled, I was removed from a cave where I was hid by my kind comrades on a wain, concealed under rubbish and fed by my daughter, and by that firm friend, first in a sepulchre, and then among the ruins that sheltered his oppressed family. To justify his innocence, I commit my long painfully-preserved life to your clemency. Condemn me for what I have done for the King, to whom my heart is still faithful; bow my hoary locks to the scaffold; cut off the useless trunk which now only serves to bear the unblemished insignia of the true Earls of Bellingham. I suffer worse than death by looking on the traitor you cherish in your bosom. But before you condemn me, mark my words—Young De Vallance lives—he is beyond your power; he is a firm royalist, and ready, like myself, to die for his King. Hear me yet again. If you determine to bring on your cause the odium of deeming an aged cripple dangerous, let my execution be private; for no pomp of death can quail my courage. On the scaffold I shall proclaim my attachment to the Sovereign, who bestowed my birth-right on that viper—the betrayer of us both. But spare Eusebius Beaumont, the minister of good to friend and foe. Keep him alive to be your beadsman, till you cease to provoke heaven by injustice and rebellion."
The cry of "Let us seek the Lord," was immediately vociferated by the members of the mock tribunal. The President ordered Neville to be taken into custody. "There needs no rush of marshals-men," said he, "to effect your purpose; a child may guard me to my dungeon, and a twine confine me in it. But since I have proved the innocence of Beaumont, give him the liberty I willingly resign."
In these times of pretended freedom, a court of justice assembled to try state-criminals was nothing better than a clumsy engine of destruction, moved at the pleasure of the Protector. Condemnation and acquittal depended not on the facts which were disclosed at the trial, but on the pre-disposition of Cromwell, to whom (as was the usual interpretation of the phrase of seeking the Lord) the President immediately reported the appearance of Neville, his singular accusation of Lord Bellingham, his assertion of the existence of young De Vallance, and also of his change of principles. He suggested the impossibility of convicting Dr. Beaumont of murder; and though his concealing a royalist was now proved, the age, debility, and affinity of Neville, would make a strict execution of the penal ordinances, cruelty instead of justice; and throw an odium on His Highness's administration. Dr. Beaumont appeared to be an inoffensive, quiet character; as to Neville, though a furious, desperate delinquent, his infirmities made him insignificant, and death would probably soon relieve the state from his machinations.