. He was a devout member
of the English church; but the other died in the faith of Rome: both
adhered to their political principles. On the fifteenth day of March,
Winton was brought to trial, and being convicted, received sentence of
death.

{1716}

TRIALS OF REBELS.

When the king passed the land-tax bill, which was ushered in with a
very extraordinary preamble, he informed both houses of the pretender's
flight from Scotland. In the beginning of April a commission for trying
the rebels met in the court of common-pleas, when bills of high
treason were found against Mr. Forster, Mackintosh, and twenty of their
confederates. Forster escaped from Newgate, and reached the continent
in safety; the rest pleaded not guilty, and were indulged with time
to prepare for their trials. The judges appointed to try the rebels
at Liverpool, found a considerable number guilty of high treason.
Two-and-twenty were executed at Preston and Manchester; about a
thousand prisoners submitted to the king's mercy, and petitioned for
transportation. Pitts, the keeper of Newgate, being suspected of having
connived at Forster's escape, was tried for his life at the Old-Bailey,
and acquitted. Notwithstanding this prosecution, which ought to have
redoubled the vigilance of the jailors, brigadier Mackintosh, and
several other prisoners, broke from Newgate, after having mastered the
keeper and turnkey, and disarmed the sentinel. The court proceeded with
the trials of those that remained, and a great number were found guilty;
four or five were hanged, drawn, and quartered, at Tyburn; and among
these was one William Paul, a clergyman, who, in his last speech,
professed himself a true and sincere member of the church of England,
but not of the revolution schismatical church, whose bishops had
abandoned the king, and shamefully given up their ecclesiastical rights,
by submitting to the unlawful, invalid, lay-deprivations authorized by
the prince of Orange.

ACT FOR SEPTENNIAL PARLIAMENTS.

Though the rebellion was extinguished, the flame of national
dissatisfaction still continued to rage: the severities exercised
against the rebels increased the general discontent; for now the danger
was blown over, their humane passions began to prevail. The courage
and fortitude with which the condemned persons encountered the pains of
death in its most dreadful force, prepossessed many spectators in favour
of the cause by which those unhappy victims