surgents. Those poor
dupes pleaded what may be termed, Baron Thorpe's plea. They argued that
their indictment was not founded on an Act of Parliament, and that
'there can be no treason by an Ordinance.' They urged that a sentence
pronounced by the Serjeant and the Recorder, who were mere 'pleaders,
servants to the Lord Protector,' would be illegal; and they asserted
their right to be tried by Baron Thorpe, 'a sworn judge.' The prisoners,
who could not be convicted of high treason, were condemned to death as
horse stealers. They vainly pleaded, that to requisition a horse for a
warlike enterprise was not felony, and that 'the country knew we did not
intend to steal,' but acted 'as the soldiers did now at London, and
elsewhere, who came against us.'[45] About fourteen of those poor
fellows were put to death, with Grove and Penruddock; and seventy were
sold into West Indian slavery. Accordingly Cromwell was able, as Thurloe
exulted, to prove 'that the Plot was real,' as 'the persons were real,'
who, in consequence, lost their lives, or were condemned to lifelong
misery.

Thus Cromwell, by a deliberate course of fraud, compassed the death of
men, who might otherwise have lived void of offence against his
government. He next proceeded to delude all his subjects by means of the
sham conspiracy by which he had ensnared his victims on to the scaffold.
This development in Cromwell's course of deception brings us back to the
ordinary path of history. Every historical text-book mentions that
Cromwell, within a few months after the Insurrection of March 1655,
subjected England to the authority, almost unlimited, of twelve
Major-Generals. To each one a separate province was allotted, with power
to imprison, fine, or sell as slaves, all that he might select. The
Major-Generals also were directed by Cromwell to pay themselves, and the
soldiers under them, by the levy of a tax of ten per cent. on the
incomes of all but the poorest Royalists, which he imposed for that
purpose. As historians have believed in the reality of the Insurrection
of March 1655, they hold that Cromwell, therefore, 'found himself
compelled to divide England into districts, over which he set
Major-Generals,' and to inflict upon the Royalists the tax, 'known by
the name of the Decimation.' Yet, curiously enough, these hearty
believers in Cromwell have ignored that solemn confirmation of their
opinion, which he addressed to his subjects, namely, the 'Declaration of