One of the Episcopal clergymen who attended him went to the edge of the scaffold, and called out in a loud voice, "My lord dies a Protestant." "Yes," said the earl, stepping forward, "and not only a Protestant, but with a heart-hatred of popery, of prelacy, and of all superstition." He then embraced his friends, put into their hands some tokens of remembrance for his wife and children, kneeled down, laid his head on the block, prayed for a little space, and gave the signal to the executioner. His head was fixed on the top of the Tolbooth, where the head of Montrose had formerly decayed.*

The head of the brave and sincere, though not blameless Rumbold, was already on the West Port of Edinburgh. Surrounded by factious and cowardly associates, he had, through the whole campaign, behaved himself like a soldier trained in the school of the great Protector, had in council strenuously supported the authority of Argyle, and had in the field been distinguished by tranquil intrepidity. After the dispersion of the army he was set upon by a party of militia. He defended himself desperately, and would have cut his way through them had not they ham-stringed his horse. He was brought to Edinburgh mortally wounded. The wish of the government was that he should be executed in England; but he was so near death that, if he was not hanged in Scotland, he could not be hanged at all; and the pleasure of hanging him was one which the conquerors could not bear to forego. It was, indeed, not to be expected that they would show much lenity to one who was regarded as the chief

The authors from whom I have taken the history of Argyle's expedition are Sir Patrick Hume, who was an eye-witness of what he related, and Wod row, who had access to materials of the greatest value, among which were the earl's own papers. Wherever there is a question of veracity between Argyle and Hume, I have no doubt that Argyle's narrative ought to be followed.

See, aiso, Burnet, i., 631. and the Life of Bresson, published by Dr. Mac Crie. The account of the Scotch rebellion in Clarke's Life of James the Second is a ridiculous romance, composed by a Jacobite who did not even take the trouble to look at a map of the seat of war.

of the Rye House Plot, and who was the owner of the building from which that plot took its name; but the insolence with which they treated the dying man seems to our more humane age almost incredible. One of the Scotch privy counselors told him that he was a confounded villain. "I am at peace with God," answered Rumbold, calmly; "how, then, can I be confounded?"

He was hastily tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged and quartered within a few hours, near the city cross in the High Street. Though unable to stand without the support of two men, he maintained his fortitude to the last, and under the gibbet raised his feeble voice against popery and tyranny with such vehemence that the officers ordered the drums to strike up lest the people should hear him. He was a friend, he said, to limited monarchy; but he never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. "I desire," he cried, "to bless and magnify God's holy name for this, that I stand here, not for any wrong that I have done, but for adhering to his cause in an evil day. If every hair of my head were a man, in this quarrel I would venture them all."

Both at his trial and at his execution he spoke of assassination with the abhorrence which became a good Christian and a brave soldier. He had never, he protested, on the faith of a dying man, harbored the thought of committing such villainy; but he frankly owned that in conversation with his fellow-conspirators he had mentioned his own house as a place where the king and the duke might with advantage be attacked, and that much had been said on the subject, though nothing had been determined. It may at first sight seem that this acknowledgment is inconsistent with his declaration that he had always regarded assassination with horror; but the truth appears to be that he was imposed upon by a distinction. which deluded many of his cotemporaries. Nothing would have induced him to have put poison into the food of the

two princes, or to poniard them in their sleep; but t make an unexpected onset on the troop of Life Guards which surrounded the royal coach, to exchange swordcuts and pistol-shots, and to take the chance of slaying or of being slain, was, in his view, a lawful military operation. Ambuscades and surprises were among the ordinary incidents of war. Every old soldier, Cavalier or Roundhead, had been engaged in such enterprises. If in the skirmish the king should fall, he would fall by fair fighting and not by murder. Precisely the same reasoning was employed, after the Revolution, by James himself and by his most gallant and devoted followers, to justify a wicked attempt on the life of William the Third. A band of Jacobites was commissioned to attack the Prince of Orange in his winter-quarters. The meaning latent under this specious phrase was that the prince's throat was to be cut as he went in his coach from Richmond to Kensington. It may seem strange that such fallacies, the dregs of the Jesuitical casuistry, should have had power to seduce men of heroic spirit, both Whigs and Tories, into a crime on which divine and human laws have justly set a peculiar note of infamy. But no sophism is too gross to delude minds distempered by party spirit.*

Argyle, who survived Rumbold a few hours, left a dying testimony to the virtues of the gallant Englishman. "Poor Rumbold was a great support to me, and a brave man, and died Christianly."+

Wodrow, III., ix., 10; Western Martyrology; Burnet, i., 633; Fox's History, Appendix, iv. I can find no way except that indicated in the text of reconciling Rumbold's denial that he had ever admitted into his mind the thought of assassination with his confession that he had himself mentioned his own house as a convenient place for an attack on the royal brothers. The distinction which I suppose him to have taken was taken by another Rye House conspirator, who was, like him, an old soldier of the Common wealth, Captain Walcot. On Walcot's trial, West, the witness for the crown, said, "Captain, you did agree to be one of those that were to fight the Guards." "What, then, was the reason," asked Chief Justice Pemberton, 'that he would not kill the king?" "He said," answered West, "that it was a base thing to kill a naked man, and he would not do it."

+ Wodrow, III., ix., 9.

Ayloffe showed as much contempt of death as either Argyle or Rumbold; but his end did not, like theirs, edify pious minds. Though political sympathy had drawn him toward the Puritans, he had no religious sympathy with them, and was, indeed, regarded by them as little better than an atheist. He belonged to that section of the Whigs which sought for models rather among the patriots of Greece and Rome than among the prophets and judges of Israel. He was taken prisoner, and carried to Glasgow. There he attempted to destroy himself with a small penknife; but, though he gave himself several wounds, none of them proved mortal, and he had strength enough left to bear a journey to London. He was brought before the Privy Council, and interrogated by the king, but had too much elevation of mind to save himself by informing against others. A story was current among the Whigs that the king said, "You had better be frank with me, Mr. Ayloffe. You know that it is in my power to pardon you." Then, it was rumored, the captive broke his sullen silence, and answered, "It may be in your powbut it is not in your nature." He was executed under his old outlawry before the gate of the Temple, and died with stoical composure.*

er,

In the mean time the vengeance of the conquerors was mercilessly wreaked on the people of Argyleshire. Many of the Campbells were hanged without a trial by Athol; and he was with difficulty restrained by the Privy Council from taking more lives. The country to the extent of thirty miles round Inverary was wasted. Houses were burned, the stones of mills broken to pieces, fruit-trees cut down, and the very roots seared with fire. The nets and fishing-boats, the sole means by which many inhabitants of the coast subsisted, were destroyed. More than three hundred rebels and malcontents were transported to the colonies. Many of them were also sentenced to mu

of

⚫ Wade's Narrative, Harl. MS., 6845; Burnet, i., 634; Citters's Dispatch

tilation. On a single day the hangman of Edinburgh cut off the ears of thirty-five prisoners. Several women were sent across the Atlantic after being first branded in the cheek with a hot iron. It was even in contemplation to obtain an act of Parliament proscribing the name of Campbell, as the name of Mac Gregor had been proscribed eighty years before.*

Argyle's expedition appears to have produced little sensation in the south of the island. The tidings of his landing reached London just before the English Parliament met. The king mentioned the news from the throne, and the houses assured him that they would stand by him against every enemy. Nothing more was required of them. Over Scotland they had no authority; and a war of which the theater was so distant, and of which the event might, almost from the first, be easily foreseen, excited only a languid interest in London.

But, a week before the final dispersion of Argyle's army, England was agitated by the news that a more formidable invader had landed on her own shores. It had been agreed among the refugees that Monmouth should sail from Holland six days after the departure of the Scots. He had deferred his expedition a short time, probably in the hope that most of the troops in the south of the island would be moved to the north as soon as war broke out in the Highlands, and that he should find no force ready to oppose him. When at length he was desirous to proceed, the wind had become adverse and violent.

While his small fleet lay tossing in the Texel, a contest was going on among the Dutch authorities. The StatesGeneral and the Prince of Orange were on one side, the magistracy and Admiralty of Amsterdam on the other.

Skelton had delivered to the States-General a list of the refugees whose residence in the United Provinces caused uneasiness to his master. The States-General,

Wodrow, III., ix., 4, and III., ix., 10. Wodrow gives from the Acts of Council the names of all the prisoners who were transported, mutilated, o. branded.