ime, declared treason; and it was
required, that the prosecution should be commenced within six months
after the crime was committed. But notwithstanding this statute, the
lawyers had persevered, as they still do persevere, in the old form of
indictment; and both Sir Harry Vane and Oliver Plunket, titular
primate of Ireland, had been tried by it. Such was the general horror
entertained against the old republicans and the Popish conspirators,
that no one had murmured against this interpretation of the statute; and
the lawyers thought that they might follow the precedent, even in the
case of the popular and beloved Lord Russel. Russel's crime fell plainly
within the statute of Charles II.; but the facts sworn to by Rumsey and
Shephard were beyond the six months required by law, and to the other
facts Howard was a single witness. To make the indictment, therefore,
more extensive, the intention of murdering the king was comprehended
in it; and for proof of this intention the conspiracy for raising a
rebellion was assigned; and, what seemed to bring the matter still
nearer, the design of attacking the king's guards.

Russel perceived this irregularity, and desired to have the point argued
by counsel: the chief justice told him, that this favor could not be
granted, unless he previously confessed the facts charged upon him. The
artificial confounding of the two species of treason, though a practice
supported by many precedents, is the chief, but not the only hardship
of which Russel had reason to complain on his trial. His defence was
feeble: and he contented himself with protesting, that he never had
entertained any design against the life of the king: his veracity would
not allow him to deny the conspiracy for an insurrection. The jury were
men of fair and reputable characters, but zealous royalists: after a
short deliberation, they brought in the prisoner guilty.

Applications were made to the king for a pardon: even money, to the
amount of one hundred thousand pounds, was offered to the duchess of
Portsmouth by the old earl of Bedford, father to Russel. The king was
inexorable. He had been extremely harassed with the violence of the
country party; and he had observed, that the prisoner, besides his
secret designs, had always been carried to the highest extremity of
opposition in parliament. Russel had even adopted a sentiment similar to
what we meet with in a letter of the younger Brutus. Had his father,
he said, advised