ited could be without danger spared. The
Whigs however carried their point. A Committee, consisting of all the
Privy Councillors in the House, set off instantly for Newgate. Friend
and Parkyns were interrogated, but to no purpose. They had, after
sentence had been passed on them, shown at first some symptoms of
weakness; but their courage had been fortified by the exhortations of
nonjuring divines who had been admitted to the prison. The rumour
was that Parkyns would have given way but for the entreaties of his
daughter, who adjured him to suffer like a man for the good cause. The
criminals acknowledged that they had done the acts of which they had
been convicted, but, with a resolution which is the more respectable
because it seems to have sprung, not from constitutional hardihood, but
from sentiments of honour and religion, refused to say any thing which
could compromise others. [682]

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 Chu