by the oaths of good and faithful men; it deprived the accused of the benefit of challenge; and its proceedings were contrary to the law of treason, the petition of right, and the very oath of government taken by the protector.  Cromwell, dissatisfied with these acquittals, yielded to the advice of the council, and sent the rest of the prisoners before the usual courts of law, where several were found guilty, and condemned to suffer the penalties of treason.[1]

Great exertions were made to save the lives of Slingsby and Hewet.  In favour of the first, it was urged that he had never been suffered to compound, had never submitted to the commonwealth, and had

[Footnote 1:  Whitelock, 673, 674.  Thurloe, vii. 159, 164.  State Trials, v. 871, 883, 907.  These trials are more interesting in Clarendon, but much of his narrative is certainly, and more of it probably, fictitious.  It is not true that Slingsby’s offence was committed two years before, nor that Hewet was accused of visiting the king in Flanders, nor that Mallory escaped out of the hall on the morning of the trial (See Claren.  Hist. iii. 619-624.) Mallory’s own account of his escape is in Thurloe, vii. 194-220.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1658.  June 9.]

been for years deprived both of his property and liberty, so that his conduct should be rather considered as the attempt of a prisoner of war to regain his freedom, than of a subject to overturn the government.  This reasoning was urged[a] by his nephew, Lord Falconberg, who, by his recent marriage with Mary Cromwell, was believed to possess considerable influence with her father.  The interest of Dr. Hewet was espoused by a more powerful advocate—­by Elizabeth, the best-beloved of Cromwell’s daughters, who at the same time was in a delicate and precarious state of health.  But it was in vain that she interceded for the man whose spiritual ministry she employed; Cromwell was inexorable.  He resolved[b] that blood should be shed, and that the royalists should learn to fear his resentment, since they had not been won by his forbearance.  Both suffered death by decapitation.[1]

During the winter, the gains and losses of the hostile armies in Flanders had been nearly balanced.  If, on the one hand, the duke of York was repulsed with loss in his attempt to storm by night the works at Mardyke; on the other, the Marshal D’Aumont was made prisoner with fifteen hundred men by the Spanish governor of Ostend, who, under the pretence of delivering up the place, had decoyed him within the fortifications.  In February, the offensive treaty

[Footnote 1:  Ludlow, ii. 149.  I think there is some reason to question those sentiments of loyalty to the house of Stuart, and that affliction and displeasure on account of the execution of Hewet, which writers attribute to Elizabeth Claypole.  In a letter written by her to her sister-in-law, the wife of H. Cromwell, and dated only four days after the death of Hewet, she calls on her to return thanks to God for their deliverence from Hewet’s conspiracy:  “for sertingly not ondly his (Cromwell’s) famely would have bin ruined, but in all probabillyti the hol nation would have his invold in blod.”—­June 13.  Thurloe, vii. 171.]