the annals of
our courts of law, while it is also one of the most important in the
history of England. He was tried at the Old Bailey on the charge of
conspiring the death of the King's Majesty, and of raising rebellion in
the kingdom. Every point in the legal indictment was strained, and every
artifice resorted to, in order to obtain a verdict of guilty. When it
was objected that the jury were not freeholders, the objection was
overruled, although in a recent trial, when made in the king's behalf,
it had been admitted without any difficulty. The evidence of two or
three false witnesses was received, and was made to weigh against a mass
of testimony borne by the noblest and best men of the time. Nothing
could be proved against him, except that he had been seen in the company
of Monmouth, Shaftesbury, Algernon Sidney, and others known to be
opposed to the measures of the Government. Lords Anglesey, Cavendish,
and Clifford, the Duke of Somerset, Doctors Burnet, Tillotson, Cox,
FitzWilliam, and many others testified to his mild and amiable
character, his peaceable and virtuous life, and the improbability of his
being guilty of the charges brought against him. His public services in
defence of freedom and of the Protestant religion were the real causes
of the resolution to get rid of him. Towards the close of the trial, one
of his enemies, the notorious Jefferies, made a violent declamation, and
turned the untimely end of Lord Essex in the Tower into a proof of
Russell's being privy to the guilty conspiracy. This base insinuation
evidently had effect on the jury, who brought in a verdict of guilty.
The sentence was considered by all right-minded persons as a shameful
injustice. Burnet afterwards spoke of him as "that great but innocent
victim, sacrificed to the rage of a party, and condemned only for
treasonable words said to have been spoken in his hearing."

Among the incidents of the trial, one of the most memorable was when the
prisoner asked for somebody to write, to help his memory. "You may have
a servant," said the Attorney-General, Sir Robert Sawyer. "Any of your
servants," added the Lord Chief Justice Pemberton, "shall assist you in
writing for you anything you please." "My wife is here, my Lord, to do
it." "If my Lady please to give herself the trouble," was the civil
reply of the Lord Chief Justice. So the noble wife sat by his side
throughout the trial to assist and support her husband.

After the condemnation