Lives of the Poets, Volume 1

by Samuel Johnson

This persuasion seems to have had little effect. Portland sent, June 29, a letter to the lords, to tell them, that he "is in custody, as he conceives, without any charge; and that, by what Mr. Waller hath threatened him with, since he was imprisoned, he doth apprehend a very cruel, long, and ruinous restraint:—He, therefore, prays, that he may not find the effects of Mr. Waller's threats, by a long and close imprisonment; but may be speedily brought to a legal trial, and then he is confident the vanity and falsehood of those informations which have been given against him will appear."

In consequence of this letter, the lords ordered Portland and Waller to be confronted; when the one repeated his charge, and the other his denial. The examination of the plot being continued, July 1, Thinn, usher of the house of lords, deposed, that Mr. Waller having had a conference with the lord Portland in an upper room, lord Portland said, when he came down, "do me the favour to tell my lord Northumberland, that Mr. Waller has extremely pressed me to save my own life and his, by throwing the blame upon the lord Conway and the earl of Northumberland."

Waller, in his letter to Portland, tells him of the reasons which he could urge with resistless efficacy in a personal conference; but he overrated his own oratory; his vehemence, whether of persuasion or entreaty, was returned with contempt.

One of his arguments with Portland is, that the plot is already known to a woman. This woman was, doubtless, lady Aubigney, who, upon this occasion, was committed to custody; but who, in reality, when she delivered the commission, knew not what it was.

The parliament then proceeded against the conspirators, and committed their trial to a council of war. Tomkyns and Chaloner were hanged near their own doors. Tomkyns, when he came to die, said it was a "foolish business;" and, indeed, there seems to have been no hope that it should escape discovery; for, though never more than three met at a time, yet a design so extensive must, by necessity, be communicated to many, who could not be expected to be all faithful, and all prudent. Chaloner was attended at his execution by Hugh Peters. His crime was, that he had commission to raise money for the king; but it appears not that the money was to be expended upon the advancement of either Crispe's or Waller's plot.

The earl of Northumberland, being too great for prosecution, was only once examined before the lords. The earl of Portland and lord Conway, persisting to deny the charge, and no testimony, but Waller's, yet appearing against them, were, after a long imprisonment, admitted to bail. Hassel, the king's messenger, who carried the letters to Oxford, died the night before his trial. Hampden escaped death, perhaps, by the interest of his family; but was kept in prison to the end of his life. They, whose names were inserted in the commission of array, were not capitally punished, as it could not be proved that they had consented to their own nomination; but they were considered as malignants, and their estates were seized.

"Waller, though confessedly," says Clarendon, "the most guilty, with incredible dissimulation, affected such a remorse of conscience, that his trial was put off, out of christian compassion, till he might recover his understanding." What use he made of this interval, with what liberality and success he distributed flattery and money, and how, when he was brought, July 4, before the house, he confessed and lamented, and submitted and implored, may be read in the History of the Rebellion, (b. vii.) The speech, to which Clarendon ascribes the preservation of his "dear-bought life," is inserted in his works. The great historian, however, seems to have been mistaken in relating that "he prevailed" in the principal part of his supplication, "not to be tried by a council of war;" for, according to Whitlock, he was, by expulsion from the house, abandoned to the tribunal which he so much dreaded, and, being tried and condemned, was reprieved by Essex; but, after a year's imprisonment, in which time resentment grew less acrimonious, paying a fine of ten thousand pounds, he was permitted to "recollect himself in another country."

Of his behaviour in this part of his life, it is not necessary to direct the reader's opinion. "Let us not," says his last ingenious biographer[85], "condemn him with untempered severity, because he was not a prodigy which the world hath seldom seen, because his character included not the poet, the orator, and the hero."

For the place of his exile he chose France, and stayed some time at Roan, where his daughter Margaret was born, who was afterwards his favourite, and his amanuensis. He then removed to Paris, where he lived with great splendour and hospitality; and, from time to time, amused himself with poetry, in which he sometimes speaks of the rebels, and their usurpation, in the natural language of an honest man.

At last, it became necessary, for his support, to sell his wife's jewels; and being reduced, as he said, at last "to the rump-jewel," he solicited, from Cromwell, permission to return, and obtained it by the interest of colonel Scroop, to whom his sister was married. Upon the remains of a fortune which the danger of his life had very much diminished, he lived at Hall Barn, a house built by himself very near to Beaconsfield, where his mother resided. His mother, though related to Cromwell and Hampden, was zealous for the royal cause, and, when Cromwell visited her, used to reproach him; he, in return, would throw a napkin at her, and say he would not dispute with his aunt; but finding, in time, that she acted for the king, as well as talked, he made her a prisoner to her own daughter, in her own house. If he would do any thing, he could not do less.