The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) 📕

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scaffold. At this time one of the Lords of the Council, who had

probably been bred a Presbyterian, and had been seduced by

interest to join in oppressing the Church of which he had once

been a member, came to the Castle with a message from his

brethren, and demanded admittance to the Earl. It was answered

that the Earl was asleep. The Privy Councillor thought that this

was a subterfuge, and insisted on entering. The door of the cell

was softly opened; and there lay Argyle, on the bed, sleeping, in

his irons, the placid sleep of infancy. The conscience of the

renegade smote him. He turned away sick at heart, ran out of the

Castle, and took refuge in the dwelling of a lady of his family

who lived hard by. There he flung himself on a couch, and gave

himself up to an agony of remorse and shame. His kinswoman,

alarmed by his looks and groans, thought that he had been taken

with sudden illness, and begged him to drink a cup of sack. "No,

no," he said; "that will do me no good." She prayed him to tell

her what had disturbed him. "I have been," he said, "in Argyle's

prison. I have seen him within an hour of eternity, sleeping as

sweetly as ever man did. But as for me ----"


And now the Earl had risen from his bed, and had prepared himself

for what was yet to be endured. He was first brought down the

High Street to the Council House, where he was to remain during

the short interval which was still to elapse before the

execution. During that interval he asked for pen and ink, and

wrote to his wife: "Dear heart, God is unchangeable: He hath

always been good and gracious to me: and no place alters it.

Forgive me all my faults; and now comfort thyself in Him, in whom

only true comfort is to be found. The Lord be with thee, bless

and comfort thee, my dearest. Adieu."


It was now time to leave the Council House. The divines who

attended the prisoner were not of his own persuasion; but he

listened to them with civility, and exhorted them to caution

their flocks against those doctrines which all Protestant

churches unite in condemning. He mounted the scaffold, where the

rude old guillotine of Scotland, called the Maiden, awaited him,

and addressed the people in a speech, tinctured with the peculiar

phraseology of his sect, but breathing the spirit of serene

piety. His enemies, he said, he forgave, as he hoped to be

forgiven. Only a single acrimonious expression escaped him. One

of the episcopal clergymen who attended him went to the edge of

the scaffold, and called out in a loud voice, "My Lord dies a

Protestant." "Yes," said the Earl, stepping forward, "and not

only a Protestant, but with a heart hatred of Popery, of Prelacy,

and of all superstition." He then embraced his friends, put into

their hands some tokens of remembrance for his wife and children,

kneeled down, laid his head on the block, prayed during a few

minutes, and gave the signal to the executioner. His head was

fixed on the top of the Tolbooth, where the head of Montrose had

formerly decayed.350


The head of the brave and sincere, though not blameless Rumbold,

was already on the West Port of Edinburgh. Surrounded by factious

and cowardly associates, he had, through the whole campaign,

behaved himself like a soldier trained in the school of the great

Protector, had in council strenuously supported the authority of

Argyle, and had in the field been distinguished by tranquil

intrepidity. After the dispersion of the army he was set upon by

a party of militia. He defended himself desperately, and would

have cut his way through them, had they not hamstringed his

horse. He was brought to Edinburgh mortally wounded. The wish of

the government was that he should be executed in England. But he

was so near death, that, if he was not hanged in Scotland, he

could not be hanged at all; and the pleasure of hanging him was

one which the conquerors could not bear to forego. It was indeed

not to be expected that they would show much lenity to one who

was regarded as the chief of the Rye House plot, and who was the

owner of the building from which that plot took its name: but the

insolence with which they treated the dying man seems to our more

humane age almost incredible. One of the Scotch Privy Councillors

told him that he was a confounded villain. "I am at peace with

God," answered Rumbold, calmly; "how then can I be confounded?"


He was hastily tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged and

quartered within a few hours, near the City Cross in the High

Street. Though unable to stand without the support of two men, he

maintained his fortitude to the last, and under the gibbet raised

his feeble voice against Popery and tyranny with such vehemence

that the officers ordered the drums to strike up, lest the people

should hear him. He was a friend, he said, to limited monarchy.

But he never would believe that Providence had sent a few men

into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions

ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. "I desire," he cried, "to

bless and magnify God's holy name for this, that I stand here,

not for any wrong that I have done, but for adhering to his cause

in an evil day. If every hair of my head were a man, in this

quarrel I would venture them all."


Both at his trial and at his execution he spoke of assassination

with the abhorrence which became a good Christian and a brave

soldier. He had never, he protested, on the faith of a dying man,

harboured the thought of committing such villany. But he frankly

owned that, in conversation with his fellow conspirators, he had

mentioned his own house as a place where Charles and James might

with advantage be attacked, and that much had been said on the

subject, though nothing had been determined. It may at first

sight seem that this acknowledgment is inconsistent with his

declaration that he had always regarded assassination with

horror. But the truth appears to be that he was imposed upon by a

distinction which deluded many of his contemporaries. Nothing

would have induced him to put poison into the food of the two

princes, or to poinard them in their sleep. But to make an

unexpected onset on the troop of Life Guards which surrounded the

royal coach, to exchange sword cuts and pistol shots, and to take

the chance of slaying or of being slain, was, in his view, a

lawful military operation. Ambuscades and surprises were among

the ordinary incidents of war. Every old soldier, Cavalier or

Roundhead, had been engaged in such enterprises. If in the

skirmish the King should fall, he would fall by fair fighting and

not by murder. Precisely the same reasoning was employed, after

the Revolution, by James himself and by some of his most devoted

followers, to justify a wicked attempt on the life of William the

Third. A band of Jacobites was commissioned to attack the Prince

of Orange in his winter quarters. The meaning latent under this

specious phrase was that the Prince's throat was to be cut as he

went in his coach from Richmond to Kensington. It may seem

strange that such fallacies, the dregs of the Jesuitical

casuistry, should have had power to seduce men of heroic spirit,

both Whigs and Tories, into a crime on which divine and human

laws have justly set a peculiar note of infamy. But no sophism is

too gross to delude minds distempered by party spirit.351


Argyle, who survived Rumbold a few hours, left a dying testimony

to the virtues of the gallant Englishman. "Poor Rumbold was a

great support to me, and a brave man, and died Christianly."352


Ayloffe showed as much contempt of death as either Argyle or

Rumbold: but his end did not, like theirs, edify pious minds.

Though political sympathy had drawn him towards the Puritans, he

had no religious sympathy with them, and was indeed regarded by

them as little better than an atheist. He belonged to that

section of the Whigs which sought for models rather among the

patriots of Greece and Rome than among the prophets and judges of

Israel. He was taken prisoner, and carried to Glasgow. There he

attempted to destroy himself with a small penknife: but though he

gave himself several wounds, none of them proved mortal, and he

had strength enough left to bear a journey to London. He was

brought before the Privy Council, and interrogated by the King,

but had too much elevation of mind to save himself by informing

against others. A story was current among the Whigs that the King

said, "You had better be frank with me, Mr. Ayloffe. You know

that it is in my power to pardon you." Then, it was rumoured, the

captive broke his sullen silence, and answered, "It may he in

your power; but it is not in your nature." He was executed under

his old outlawry before the gate of the Temple, and died with

stoical composure 353


In the meantime the vengeance of the conquerors was mercilessly

wreaked on the people of Argyleshire. Many of the Campbells were

hanged by Athol without a trial; and he was with difficulty

restrained by the Privy Council from taking more lives. The

country to the extent of thirty miles round Inverary was wasted.

Houses were burned: the stones of mills were broken to pieces:

fruit trees were cut down, and the very roots seared with fire.

The nets and fishing boats, the sole means by which many

inhabitants of the coast subsisted, were destroyed. More than

three hundred rebels and malecontents were transported to the

colonies. Many of them were also Sentenced to mutilation. On a

single day the hangman of Edinburgh cut off the ears of

thirty-five prisoners. Several women were sent across the

Atlantic after being first branded in the cheek with a hot iron.

It was even in contemplation to obtain an act of Parliament

proscribing the name of Campbell, as the name of Macgregor had

been proscribed eighty years before.354


Argyle's expedition appears to have produced little sensation in

the south of the island. The tidings of his landing reached

London just before the English Parliament met. The King mentioned

the news from the throne; and the Houses assured him that they

would stand by him against every enemy. Nothing more was required

of them. Over Scotland they had no authority; and a war of which

the theatre was so distant, and of which the event might, almost

from the first, be