On the 19th of July, two days before the day fixed for his execution, Russell wrote a letter to the King that was not to be delivered to Charles until after the writer’s death. In that letter he assured the monarch that “he had always acted for the best interests of the Crown, and that if he had been mistaken he hoped the King’s displeasure would be satisfied with his death, and would not extend to his widow and children.” The following day he received the Blessed Sacrament from Tillotson. “Do you believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith as taught by the Church of England?” asked the Dean; and Russell assenting, “Do you,” continued the Dean, “forgive all your enemies?” “With all my heart,” answered Russell. Then after reading and signing the paper which he intended to give to the Sheriff on the scaffold—his farewell to his country—Russell sent for his wife, who came at once, bringing with her their three children. “Stay and sup with me,” he said to her, “let us eat our last earthly food together.” At ten o’clock that night the parting between these two took place. “Both,” writes Burnet, “were silent and trembling, their eyes full of tears which did not overflow. When she had left, ‘Now,’ said he, ‘the bitterness of death is past.’ Then he broke down: ‘What a blessing she has been to me, and what a misery it would have been if she had been crying to me to turn informer and to be a Lord Howard.’ And then he praised his devoted wife to the good Bishop as she deserved to be praised, for a nobler, more loyal or devoted wife than Rachel, Lady Russell, is not to be found in all history.”

Some of the things Russell said to Burnet on that last evening of his life are well worth recording. Speaking of death he said, “What a great change death made, and how wonderfully those new scenes would strike on a soul.” He had heard, he told Burnet, “how some persons who had been born blind were struck when, by the couching of their cataracts, they obtained their sight; but what,” said he, “if the first thing they saw were the rising sun?”

Lincoln’s Inn Fields was the place chosen for his execution, the scaffold being erected not far from his own house. This was on the 29th of July, and when the Sheriffs arrived to take him they found Russell quietly winding up his watch. “Now,” he said, “I have done with time, and must think henceforward of Eternity.” He then gave the watch as a souvenir to Burnet, that good old Bishop of Salisbury who had clung so closely to his friend in his trials as to a beloved brother, and to whom we owe the touching account of that friend’s last days upon earth.

On the 7th of December of this same year, Algernon Sidney was executed on Tower Hill, having been condemned to death by a picked jury and the infamous Chief-Justice Jeffreys, on the trumped-up charge of conspiring against the life of Charles; only one witness appeared against him, but he was condemned by his writings, which were certainly strongly republican; yet, considering what the rule of the second Charles had become, a man of Algernon Sidney’s lofty spirit, with his love of freedom, could not have written or thought otherwise. It has been well said of him that not only did he write from his judgment but also from his heart, and he informed his readers of that which he felt as well as that which he knew. He was condemned principally for the treatise in which he advocated the rights of subjects, under certain contingencies, to depose their king, and although this paper had never been published, or, in fact, printed, it was sufficient material for Jeffreys, who bullied the jury into a committal against Sidney. Algernon Sidney’s life had been as noble as was his name, but his unbending republican principles had made him the bête noire of both Charles and James, and any evidence by which he could be entrapped into a charge of treason was welcome to them. When he came forth from the Tower to die in the cause of liberty, “Englishmen,” as Dalrymple has finely written, “wept not for him as they had done for Lord Russell, their pulses beat high, their hearts swelled, they felt an unusual grandeur and elevation of mind whilst they looked upon him.” One of the Sheriffs asked Sidney if it was his intention to make a speech upon the scaffold, to which he answered, “I have made my peace with God, and have nothing to say to man,” adding, “I am ready to die, and will give you no further trouble.” His last prayers were for “the good old cause.” When his head lay on the block, the executioner asked him if he would raise it again. “Not till the general resurrection; strike on!” And these were Algernon Sidney’s last words.

James, Duke of Monmouth.
(From a Contemporary Engraving.)

CHAPTER XV

JAMES II.

During the four years in which James the Second misgoverned England, the most interesting events connected with the Tower were the tragedy of the Duke of Monmouth’s death, and the imprisonment of the Seven Bishops.

James was the first of our sovereigns to omit passing the night previous to his coronation in the Tower, and the fortress now ceased entirely to be a royal residence, being given over to the uses which it still fulfils.