and aristocratical connections, of orthodox opinions
and regular life, an able and experienced lawyer, a well read scholar,
and, in spite of a little pomposity, a good speaker. He had been
Attorney General at the time of the detection of the Rye House Plot; he
had been employed for the Crown in the prosecutions which followed; and
he had conducted those prosecutions with an eagerness which would, in
our time, be called cruelty by all parties, but which, in his own time,
and to his own party, seemed to be merely laudable zeal. His friends
indeed asserted that he was conscientious even to scrupulosity in
matters of life and death; [558] but this is an eulogy which persons who
bring the feelings of the nineteenth century to the study of the
State Trials of the seventeenth century will have some difficulty in
understanding. The best excuse which can be made for this part of his
life is that the stain of innocent blood was common to him with almost
all the eminent public men of those evil days. When we blame him for
prosecuting Russell, we must not forget that Russell had prosecuted
Stafford.

Great as Sawyer's offences were, he had made great atonement for them.
He had stood up manfully against Popery and despotism; he had, in
the very presence chamber, positively refused to draw warrants in
contravention of Acts of Parliament; he had resigned his lucrative
office rather than appear in Westminster Hall as the champion of the
dispensing power; he had been the leading counsel for the seven Bishops;
and he had, on the day of their trial, done his duty ably, honestly, and
fearlessly. He was therefore a favourite with High Churchmen, and might
be thought to have fairly earned his pardon from the Whigs. But the
Whigs were not in a pardoning mood; and Sawyer was now called to account
for his conduct in the case of Sir Thomas Armstrong.

If Armstrong was not belied, he was deep in the worst secrets of the
Rye House Plot, and was one of those who undertook to slay the two royal
brothers. When the conspiracy was discovered, he fled to the Continent
and was outlawed. The magistrates of Leyden were induced by a bribe to
deliver him up. He was hurried on board of an English ship, carried to
London, and brought before the King's Bench. Sawyer moved the Court to
award execution on the outlawry. Armstrong represented that a year had
not yet elapsed since he had been outlawed, and that, by an Act passed
in the reign of Edward the Sixth, an