Lord Russell was found sitting in his study, neither seeking to conceal himself nor preparing for flight.  As soon as he was in custody, he gave up all hopes of life, knowing how obnoxious he was to the Duke of York, and only thought of dying with honour and dignity.  The Earl of Essex was at his country house when he heard of the arrest of his friend.  He could have made his escape, and when pressed by his people to fly, he answered that “his own life was not worth saving if, by drawing suspicion on Lord Russell, it might bring his life into danger.”  He was taken to the Tower, where, it was announced, he killed himself on the morning of Lord Russell’s trial.  It is more probable, as was generally believed, that he was murdered, and the report of suicide was spread in order to strengthen the charges against Russell.  Monmouth had disappeared, but, actuated by the same generous motive with Essex, he sent a message to Russell, on hearing of his arrest, that “he would surrender himself and share his fate, if his doing so could he of use to him.”  Russell answered in these words:  “It will be of no advantage to me to have my friends die with me.”

VI.

The trial of Lord Russell is one of the darkest events in 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.”