[20] West was a barrister at whose chambers in the Temple Rumsey, Ferguson, and other plotters used to meet, and it was alleged that the Rye House Plot was proposed: said by Burnet to have been 'a witty and active man, full of talk, and believed to be a determined atheist.'
[21] As to what is treason under 25 Edward III., see post, p. 36. Under 13 Car. II. c. 1 it is treason, inter alia, to devise the deposition of the King; but the prosecution must be within six months of the commission of the offence.
[22] The question was, 'What is included in the expressions "Imagine the King's death" and "Levying war against the King"?' The Attorney-General was evidently placing a gloss on them, which was perhaps justified from a wider point of view than a merely legal one. However that may be, the same process was continued till it culminated in the theory of 'constructive treason,' according to which it was laid down in 1794 that a man who intended to depose the King compassed and imagined his death. The matter was eventually decided in 1795 by a statute which made such an intent and others of the same kind treason of themselves. See further Stephen's History of Criminal Law, vol. ii. pp. 243-283.
[23] He had been twice sent to the Tower: once in 1674 in consequence of the discovery of a secret correspondence with Holland; once in 1681 on a false charge by Edward Fitzharris of writing the True Englishman, a pamphlet advocating the deposition of Charles II. and the exclusion of the Duke of York, which was in fact written by Fitzharris, it is suggested with the purpose of imputing its authorship to the Whigs. It is no doubt the second of these occasions that is referred to.
[24] Burnet had at this time retired into private life, having lost the Court favour which he had gained at an earlier period. He had been an intimate friend of Stafford, and was living on terms of the closest intimacy with Essex and Russell at the time of their arrest. After Russell's execution he left the country, and eventually found his way to the Hague just before the Revolution, where he performed services for William and Mary requiring the utmost degree of confidence. He landed at Torbay with William, soon became Bishop of Salisbury, and until the end of William's life remained one of his most trusted councillors. He retained a position of great influence under Anne, and died in 1715. In relation to his evidence in this case, it is interesting to read in his history that Russell was privy to a plot for promoting a rebellion in the country and for bringing in the Scotch. He says further: 'Lord Russell desired that his counsel might be heard to this point of seizing the guards; but that was denied unless he would confess the fact, and he would not do that, because as the witnesses had sworn it, it was false. He once intended to have related the whole fact just as it was; but his counsel advised him against it'; in fact Russell admitted that he knew of a traitorous plot, and did not reveal it. 'He was a man of so much candour that he spoke little as to the fact; for since he was advised not to tell the whole truth, he could not speak against that which he knew to be true, though in some particulars it had been carried beyond the truth.' See too post, p. 55.
[25] John Tillotson (1630-1694) was the son of a weaver of Sowerby. He entered Clare Hall in 1647, and became a fellow of the same college in 1651. He received an early bias against Puritanism from Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants, and his intercourse with Cudworth and others at Cambridge. He became tutor to the son of Prideaux, Cromwell's Attorney-General in 1656; he was present at the Savoy Conference in 1661, and remained identified with the Puritans till the passing of the Act of Uniformity in 1662; afterwards he became curate of Cheshunt in Hertfordshire and rector of Keddington in Suffolk. In 1664 he was known as a celebrated preacher, and was appointed preacher in Lincoln's Inn. In 1678 and 1680 he preached sermons to the House of Commons and the King respectively, exhorting the former to legislation against Popery, and pointing out to the latter that whilst Catholics should be tolerated, they should not be allowed to proselytise. He attended Russell on the scaffold, and with Burnet was summoned before the Council on a suspicion of having helped to compose Russell's published speech. He acquired great influence after the Revolution; and having exercised the archiepiscopal jurisdiction of the province of Canterbury during Sancroft's suspension, became himself archbishop in 1691.
[26] Henry Brooke, the eighth Lord Cobham, after losing Court favour on the death of Elizabeth, was accused in 1603 of plotting with Aremberg, the Spanish ambassador, to place Arabella Stuart on the throne, and to kill the King. His evidence contributed largely to the conviction of Sir Walter Raleigh of the same treason, and he was tried and convicted the next day. He was kept in prison till 1617, when he was allowed to go to Bath on condition that he returned to prison; but he was struck by paralysis on his way back and died in 1619. See vol. i. pp. 19-57.
[27] Oliver Plunket (1629-1681) was Roman Catholic bishop of Armagh and titular primate of Ireland. He attained these positions in 1669; in 1674 he went into hiding when the position of the Catholics in England drew attention to their presence in Ireland. He was arrested, on a charge of complicity with the Popish Plot in 1678, and eventually tried in the King's Bench for treason in 1681 by Sir Francis Pemberton, when the law was laid down as stated above. He was convicted, hung, beheaded and quartered.
[28] Rumsey says the 19th, Howard the 17th. The 17th was the anniversary of the Queen's accession.
[29] Thomas Walcot and William Hone, tried for and convicted of participation in the Rye House Plot.