IV. 1654. May 20. BOOK impassioned royalist. The project was to have been executed on the twentieth, and was only divulged on the morning of that day, by what means has never appeared. Gerard had engaged to provide twenty-five men for the enterprise, and a major Henshaw fived. Henshaw was never brought forward, and might therefore be conceived to be the betrayer; but he is mentioned at a subsequent period as an eminent royaliste. Cromwel only received notice of the design a few hours before it was to have been executed, and is said to have rendered it abortive by crossing the water at Putney, and thus avoiding the ambuscadef. Five of the conspirators were taken that night in their beds (Gerard being one), and more a day or two after. Had not proper measures been adopted, they had resolved, if they missed the protector as he passed to Hampton Court on Saturday, the twentieth, to have renewed the attempt on Sunday at Whitehall Chapel. Pickering, Strickland, and two or three more of the council were to be murdered; Charles the Second was to be proclaimed in the city; and prince Rupert had engaged to bring over ten thousand Irish, English and French, to the coast d Cobbet, State Trials, Vol. V, p. 518, et seqq. Echard, anno 1657. True Relation of the Plot. Cobbet, ubi supra. of Sussex with the Duke of York in their com- CHAP. pany h VI. Various Cromwel appears to have seized this occasion 1654. for taking some eminent persons into custody, persons apamong whom were sir Gilbert Gerard, brother prehended. to the colonel, the earl of Oxford, sir Richard Willis and the two Ashburnhams, upon pretence of suspecting that they were concerned in the conspiracy. The prisoners altogether exceeded forty in number; but Cromwel with his wonted magnanimity, brought only three of them to trial, one of whom was spared. An ordinance was framed in June for constituting a high court of justice for the trial of the conspirators, of which commissioner Lisle was the president. The other judges were Aske and Nicholas of the upper bench, Atkins of the exchequer, Steele recorder, seven aldermen, and twenty other persons *. The court sat on the thirtieth of June, and again on the sixth of July. Glyn, Prideaux, and Ellis, were counsel for the commonwealth'. h True Account of Conspiracy, p. 63, 64. Cobbet, ubi supra. i Several Proceedings, June 8. Mercurius Politicus, June 22. Cobbet, ubi supra. Prideaux was Cromwel's attorney general, and Ellis solicitor general. Prideaux had been appointed solicitor general in the room of St. John in 1648 (see above Vol. II, p. 622), and in the following year attorney general (Journals, April 9), Robert Reynolds being shortly after promoted to the office of soli High court of justice for trying them. BOOK 1654. Their trial. Execution of Gerard Vowel. The persons tried were Gerard, Peter Vowel, a schoolmaster, and Somerset Fox. Fox pleaded guilty. Vowel demanded a trial in the ordinary forms, and a jury of his peers. He alleged the sixth article of the Government of the Commonwealth. The court answered that they were his peers, and that he might see that the individuals on the bench exceeded twelve in number. Glyn, who was now completely a courtier, affirmed that the ordinance, though made only by the protector and council, was undoubtedly in force, till the parliament should repeal it. He added that, in the old law of treason, king signified merely supreme governor, that it had been so construed in the case of a queen, and that it equally extended to a lord protector". Gerard and Vowel were convicted on the eviand Peter dence of more than ten of their fellow-conspirators. One of them was Charles Gerard, brother to the principal delinquent, only nineteen years of age". It is singular that Gerard, when he came to the place of execution, though he boldly avowed his royalist principles, utterly denied his concern in the conspiracy. He said, he forgave his brother, who, being so young, was frightened into what he citor general (Ibid, June 6, 1650). Prideaux had a fresh patent VI. 1654. did. The victim no doubt was urged to this CHAP. extraordinary conduct by the remainder of liberal and generous principles within him, which made him, though willing to fall a sacrifice to his loyalty, yet ashamed to die for a purpose of base assassination. O Cobbet, ubi supra. 80 CHAPTER VII. IV. Conduct of towards CONDITION OF THE GOVERNMENTS OF FRANCE AND SPAIN. ZARINE. HE CHARACTER OF CARDINAL MA FAVOURS THE CONSPIRACY OF GERARD. CHARACTER OF CHARLES THE SE COND, AS STATED BY THE ENGLISH GOVERN- BOOK WE have seen in how lofty a style Cromwel conducted himself towards foreign powers, Holland, 1654. and Denmark, and Portugal, and how beneficially Cromwel he concluded a treaty with Sweden. We are France and now to consider what was the tenour of his policy towards the states of the first class, that came nearest in contact with our own, France and Spain. France and Spain were not then what these pow- they have appeared in more modern times. France Spain. Relative strength of ers. was just emerging out of a long minority, in the beginning of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth; she had been vexed with the wars of the Fronde, and the bitter and vehement contentions of her principal nobility. The court had been once and again driven into exile from the metropolis. Though France was superior in dimensions to Spain, and her provinces greatly more |