In a few hours the crowd again assembled at Tyburn; and this time the sightseers were not defrauded of their amusement.  They saw indeed one sight which they had not expected, and which produced a greater sensation than the execution itself.  Jeremy Collier and two other nonjuring divines of less celebrity, named Cook and Snatt, had attended the prisoners in Newgate, and were in the cart under the gallows.  When the prayers were over, and just before the hangman did his office, the three schismatical priests stood up, and laid their hands on the heads of the dying men who continued to kneel.  Collier pronounced a form of absolution taken from the service for the Visitation of the Sick, and his brethren exclaimed “Amen!”

This ceremony raised a great outcry; and the outcry became louder when, a few hours after the execution, the papers delivered by the two traitors to the Sheriffs were made public.  It had been supposed that Parkyns at least would express some repentance for the crime which had brought him to the gallows.  Indeed he had, before the Committee of the Commons, owned that the Assassination Plot could not be justified.  But, in his last declaration, he avowed his share in that plot, not only without a word indicating remorse, but with something which resembled exultation.  Was this a man to be absolved by Christian divines, absolved before the eyes of tens of thousands, absolved with rites evidently intended to attract public attention, with rites of which there was no trace in the Book of Common Prayer or in the practice of the Church of England?

In journals, pamphlets and broadsides, the insolence of the three Levites, as they were called, was sharply reprehended.  Warrants were soon out.  Cook and Snatt were taken and imprisoned; but Collier was able to conceal himself, and, by the help of one of the presses which were at the service of his party, sent forth from his hiding place a defence of his conduct.  He declared that he abhorred assassination as much as any of those who railed against him; and his general character warrants us in believing that this declaration was perfectly sincere.  But the rash act into which he had been hurried by party spirit furnished his adversaries with very plausible reasons for questioning his sincerity.  A crowd of answers to his defence appeared.  Preeminent among them in importance was a solemn manifesto signed by the two Archbishops and by all the Bishops who were then in London, twelve in number.  Even Crewe of Durham and Sprat of Rochester set their names to this document.  They condemned the proceedings of the three nonjuring divines, as in form irregular and in substance impious.  To remit the sins of impenitent sinners was a profane abuse of the power which Christ had delegated to his ministers.  It was not denied that Parkyns had planned an assassination.  It was not pretended that he had professed any repentance for planning an assassination.  The plain inference was that