tended to think, guilty of having projected the assassination of the late and present King. Weakened as he was in body, his mind was firm, his constancy unshaken; and notwithstanding some endeavours that were made by drums and other instruments, to drown his voice when he was addressing the people from the scaffold, enough has been preserved of what he then uttered, to satisfy us, that his personal courage, the praise of which has not been denied him, was not of the vulgar or constitutional kind, but was accompanied with a proportionable vigour of mind. Upon hearing

his sentence, whether in imitation of Montrose, or from that congeniality of character, which causes men, in similar circumstances, to conceive similar sentiments, he expressed the same wish which that gallant nobleman had done; he wished he had a limb for every town in Christendom. With respect to the intended assassination imputed to him, he protested his innocence, and desired to be believed upon the faith of a dying man; adding, in terms as natural as they are forcibly descriptive of a conscious dignity of character, that he was too well known, for any to have had the imprudence to make such a proposition to him. He concluded with plain, and apparently sincere, declarations of his undiminished attachment to the principles of

liberty, civil and religious; denied that he was an enemy to monarchy, affirming, on the contrary, that he considered it, when properly li mited, as the most eligible form of government; but that he never could believe that any man was born marked by God above another, for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.' *

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Except by Ralph, who, with a warmth that does honour to his feelings, expatiates at some length upon the subject, the circumstances attending the death of this extraordinary man have been little noticed. Rapin, Echard, Kennett, Hume, make no mention of them whatever; and yet, exclusively of the interest always excited by any great display of spirit and magnanimity, his solemn denial of the project of assassination imputed to him in the affair of the Rye-House plot, is in itself a fact of great importance, and one which might have been expected to attract, in no small degree, the attention of the historian. That Hume, who has taken some pains in canvassing the degree of credit due to the different parts of the RyeHouse plot, should pass it over in silence, is the more extraordinary, because, in the case of the

Popish plot, he lays, and justly lays, the greatest stress upon the dying declarations of the sufferers. Burnet adverts, as well to the peculiar language used by Rumbold, as to his denial of the assassination; but having before given us to understand, that he believed that no such crime had been projected, it is the less to be wondered at, that he does not much dwell upon this further evidence in favour of his former opinion. Sir John Dalrymple, upon the authority of a paper which he does not produce, but from which he quotes enough to show, that if produced it would not answer his purpose, takes Rumbold's guilt for a decided fact, and then states his dying protestations of his innocence, as an instance of aggravated wickedness. * It is to be remarked too, that although Sir John is pleased roundly to assert, that Rumbold denied the share he had had in the Rye-House plot, yet the particular words which he cites neither contain, nor express, nor imply, any such denial. He has not even selected those, by which the design of assassination was denied, (the only denial that was uttered,) but refers to a general declaration made by Rumbold, that he had done injustice to no man; a declaration which was by no means inconsistent with his having been a

* Dalrymple's Memoirs, i. 141.

:

party to a plot, which he, no doubt, considered as justifiable, and even meritorious. This is not all the paper referred to is addressed to Walcot, by whom Rumbold states himself to have been led on; and Walcot with his last breath denied his own participation in any design to murder either Charles or James. Thus, therefore, whether the declaration of the sufferer be interpreted in a general, or in a particular sense, there is no contradiction whatever between it and the paper adduced; but thus it is, that the character of a brave, and, as far as appears, a virtuous man, is most unjustly and cruelly traduced. An incredible confusion of head, and an uncommon want of reasoning powers, which distinguish the author to whom I refer, are, I should charitably hope, the true sources of his misrepresentation; while others may probably impute it to his desire of blackening, upon any pretence, a person whose name is more or less connected with those of Sydney and Russell. It ought not, perhaps, to pass without observation, that this attack upon Rumbold is introduced only in an oblique manner: the rigour of government destroyed, says the historian, the morals it intended to correct, and made the unhappy sufferer add to his former crimes, the atrocity of declaring a falsehood in his last moments. Now, what particular instances of rigour are here alluded to, it is difficult to

guess; for surely the execution of a man whom he sets down as guilty of a design to murder the two royal brothers, could not, even in the judgment of persons much less accustomed than Sir John to palliate the crimes of princes, be looked upon as an act of blameable severity; but it was thought, perhaps, that for the purpose of conveying a calumny upon the persons concerned, or accused of being concerned, in the Rye-House plot, an affected censure upon the government would be the fittest vehicle.

*

"The fact itself, that Rumbold did, in his last hours, solemnly deny the having been concerned in any project for assassinating the King or Duke, has not, I believe, been questioned. It is not invalidated by the silence of some historians it is confirmed by the misrepresentation of others. The first question that naturally presents itself, must be, was this declaration true? The asseverations of dying men have always had, and will always have, great influenee upon the minds of those who do not push their ill opinion of mankind to the most outrageous and unwarrantable length; but though the weight of such asseverations be in all cases great, it will not be in all equal. It is material therefore to consider, first, what are the circumstances

It is confirmed, beyond contradiction, by Lord Fountainhall's account of his trial and execution.