Russell and Sidney were betrayed by Lord Howard of Escrick, and although warned of his danger, Russell, unlike Shaftesbury, refused to flee, saying he had done nothing to make him fear meeting the justice of his country. However, on entering the Tower, he seems to have had a foreboding of his fate, for turning round to his attendant, Taunton, he said he knew that there was “a determination against him to take his life, for the devil is unchained.” “From the moment of his arrest,” writes Bishop Burnet, “he looked upon himself as a dying man, and turned his thoughts wholly to another world. He read much in the Scriptures, particularly in the Psalms. But, whilst he behaved with the serenity of a man prepared for death, his friends exhibited an honourable anxiety to save his life. Lord Essex would not leave his house, lest his absconding might incline a jury to give more credit to the evidence against Lord Russell. The Duke of Monmouth offered to come in and share fortunes with him, if it would do him any service. But he answered, ‘It would be of no advantage to him to have his friends die with him.’”
During the fortnight which elapsed between his arrest and his sentence, Russell’s devoted wife did all that was humanly possible to save her husband’s life, and the night before the trial she wrote to him: “Your friends believe I can do you some service at your trial. I am certainly willing to try; my resolution will hold out, pray let yours. But it may be the Court will not let me. However, do let me try.” Lady Russell not only tried, but succeeded in being of assistance to her husband during his trial, which took place in Westminster Hall on July 13th, 1683. Lord Russell asked his judges if he might have “some one to help his memory,” as he put it, and the request being granted, “My wife,” he said, “is here to do it.” And all through that long summer day, whilst he was being tried for his life, Lady Russell sat by her husband’s side writing down notes of the evidence, and giving him her advice. When the news came, during the course of the trial, that Essex had been found in the Tower with his throat cut, Russell burst into tears. He wept for the fate of his friend, whilst his own misfortunes only made him appear the more serene and indifferent to the malice of his enemies. Jeffries, who presided, took care in his charge to the jury to turn Essex’s untimely end into an additional proof of Russell’s guilt.
Essex had been arrested soon after Russell, and on the same charge, that of being concerned in the Rye House Plot, and was accused of high treason. Taken from his seat at Cassiobury to the Tower, he was placed in the same room which was occupied by his father. It is described in the depositions placed before the Commissioners in William the Third’s time, as being “on the left hand as you go up the mound, after passing the Bloody Tower Gate.” In Dalrymple’s history it is stated that Essex was confined in the same room which his father, Lord Capel, had occupied, and in which Lady Essex’s grandfather, the Earl of Northumberland, had killed himself in Elizabeth’s reign. To this prison Essex was brought in the month of July in the year 1683—a year so fatal to some of England’s truest patriots—and there, as has already been stated, he was found with his throat cut. Whether Essex died by his own hand, or by the hands of others, will never be known. On the whole, the evidence points to suicide; and this is the opinion of the most trustworthy authorities, such as Green and Gardiner.
Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, had been one of the most popular of the liberal leaders in the country. He had held high offices in the State, he had been Ambassador from the court of Charles II. to that of Copenhagen, he had been Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and, for a short time, Prime Minister. The only son of the gallant Lord Capel of Hadham, who had been executed by Cromwell, Essex had every reason to expect some gratitude from the son of the man for whose sake his father had given his life. But with the Stuarts the sense of gratitude was an unknown quantity, and Essex was doomed to share the fates of his friends, Russell and Sidney, accused by the same traitor who had betrayed both them and himself. On the day of Essex’s death, the King and his brother James had been visiting the Tower, a place in which neither of them had set foot for a dozen years. After James’s flight at the Revolution, it was eagerly believed that this visit was in some way connected with Essex’s death. In a curious contemporary print, Essex is seen being murdered by three well-dressed individuals, the position in which his body was found after death being also shown at the same time. In the depositions alluded to above, the sentry at the prison door stated that two men had entered the room on the morning of the Earl’s death, that an alarm was given by Essex’s valet when he found his master’s body on the floor of the closet next his bedroom with his throat cut. Two children deposed that they had seen a hand throwing a razor out of the Earl’s window, that a woman then left the house and picked it up. A sentry, named Robert Meek, who had made some remarks tending to prove that Essex had met with foul play, was found dead soon afterwards in the Tower moat.
Arthur Comte d’Essex
Gate and Portcullis in the Bloody Tower
Bad and heartless as were both the King and his brother James, none can believe that they would commit a cold-blooded murder themselves; and had they hired others to do so, the fact of the brothers having gone that same morning to the fortress gives the idea of murder high improbability, and Essex’s death will remain one of the many unsolved tragic mysteries of the Tower. That the authorities believed the theory of suicide is proved by the register of St Peter’s in the Tower, in which is the following entry: “Arthur, Earl of Essex, cutt his own throat within the Tower, July 13, 1683. Buried in this Chapel.”
But to return to Lord Russell. After his condemnation, and during the few days that were left to him on earth, Russell was visited by Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury, as well as by Bishop Burnet, both of whom urged him to sign a paper declaring his adherence to the principle of non-resistance, which they declared to be an article of Christian faith. Russell said, in answer, that he had always believed in the right of a nation to defend its religion and liberties when they were threatened, expressing his willingness to give up his life in their defence; and if he erred in this, “God,” he said, “would forgive him, as it would be the sin of ignorance.” He also told the prelates that both he and Lady Russell were agreed on this subject, and that nothing could alter their views. Lady Russell was fighting in these days to save the life she valued far above her own; but all was useless; it was a hopeless struggle. “I wish,” said Lord Russell, “that my wife would give over beating every bush for my preservation”; but he added, “if it will be any consolation for her after my death to have done her utmost to save me I cannot blame her.”