r
half an hour's deliberation, bring in a verdict against him. The inhuman
spectators received the verdict with a shout of applause: but the
prisoner was nowise dismayed. At his execution, he maintained the same
manly fortitude, and still denied the crime imputed to him. His whole
conduct and demeanor prove him to have been a man led astray only by the
fury of the times, and to have been governed by an honest but indiscreet
zeal for his country and his religion.

Thus the two parties, actuated by mutual rage, but cooped up within the
narrow limits of the law, levelled with poisoned daggers the most
deadly blows against each other's breast, and buried in their factious
divisions all regard to truth, honor and humanity.

CHAPTER LXIX.

CHARLES II.

{1681.} When the cabal entered into the mysterious alliance with France,
they took care to remove the duke of Ormond from the committee of
foreign affairs; and nothing tended further to increase the national
jealousy entertained against the new measures, than to see a man of
so much loyalty, as well as probity and honor, excluded from public
councils. They had even so great interest with the king as to get Ormond
recalled from the government of Ireland; and Lord Robarts, afterwards
earl of Radnor, succeeded him in that important employment. Lord
Berkeley succeeded Robarts; and the earl of Essex, Berkeley. At last,
in the year 1677 Charles cast his eye again upon Ormond, whom he had so
long neglected; and sent him over lieutenant to Ireland. "I have done
every thing," said the king, "to disoblige that man; but it is not in
my power to make him my enemy." Ormond, during his disgrace, had never
joined the malecontents, nor encouraged those clamors which, with too
much reason, but often for bad purposes, were raised against the king's
measures. He even thought it his duty regularly, though with dignity,
to pay his court at Whitehall; and to prove, that his attachments were
founded on gratitude, inclination, and principle, not on any temporary
advantages. All the expressions which dropped from him, while neglected
by the court, showed more of good humor than any prevalence of spleen
and indignation. "I can do you no service," said he to his friends; "I
have only the power left by my applications to do you some hurt." When
Colonel Cary Dillon solicited him to second his pretensions for an
office, and urged that he had no friends but God and his grace, "Alas!
poor C