the king; that twenty-two persons were come from France who had been officers, and were to be concerned in the design; that consultations were repeatedly held at his, Porter's, lodgings in Norfolk Street, others at the Globe tavern, in Hatton Garden, at the Sun tavern, in the Strand, and at the Nag's Head, in Covent Garden; that he and others had surveyed different spots for carrying out the attack on the king, at Richmond, near the lodge, by ambuscade; at Turnham Green, Brentford, and Kew Ferry, near where Kew Bridge now stands; that Durant—or Durance—had taken a list of the stables and inns near those places; that two of the party were constantly on duty at Kensington, watching all the king's movements. He gave the same account of the arrangements for surrounding the king's carriage at the crossing at Turnham Green which we have already given, and said that it was contended that to kill the king in this manner was just as fair war as attacking him in his camp in Flanders, or surprising him as he passed from one town to another during the campaign.
Porter said that, before going to survey the ground at Turnham Green, he dined with Barclay, Parkyns, Friend, Holmes, and Ferguson; that Friend, observing Barclay, Parkyns, and himself speaking together privately, remarked he was as zealous for the return of king James as any one, but that he saw that there was something behind the curtain by their whispering, and did not think they dealt fairly by him. Porter said that Parkyns and Charnock told him that Friend had a commission from James, and declared that he would be in readiness; but we know that Friend refused to become an assassin. He added that Friend had advanced one hundred pounds to assist colonel Parker's escape out of the Tower, and that Parkyns assured him that Mr. Lewis, gentleman of the horse to lord Feversham, would furnish three horses if wanted. He deposed that Mr. Tempest, of Durham, had a commission to raise a regiment of horse for king James; that he himself was to command the first troop of James's own regiment, of which Parker was the colonel; that Goodman, too, had a commission, and was already provided with arms and accoutrements.
Bertram, Blair, Harris, Hunt, and others made similar confessions. Blair declared that he had been engaged by father Harrington expressly from king James, this Harrington having been the ex-king's secret agent in this country ever since the defeat at La Hogue; and Harris deposed that James himself had sent for him and one Hare into the queen's bed-chamber, and engaged and advanced them money to come over and put themselves under Barclay's command, and promised that they should never want after they had done him this service. Goodman deposed that Sir John Fenwick, lord Montgomery, lord Aylesbury, colonel Fountain, and others, were engaged in a scheme to seize the king and carry him off to France.
On the 11th of March, Charnock, King, and Keyes were placed at the bar of the Old Bailey before lord chief justice Holt and the other chief judges. The prisoners demanded that their trials should be postponed till after the 25th of the month, when the new act for trials for treason came into force, and which allowed counsel to the accused; but the counsel for the crown would not consent to it—a circumstance which certainly does no honour to William and his ministers, for from them the order to proceed must now have been given. Nothing was gained by it, for the guilt of all the parties was sufficiently obvious. They would have been condemned in spite of what the most ingenious counsel could say, and to refuse the prisoners this indulgence only showed an unworthy animus against them in the royal mind. All the accused denied that king James knew of or had done anything to sanction the attempt to assassinate William; but this assertion neither agrees with the depositions made by the other conspirators admitted as evidence, nor with the facts of the case; and, in fact, Charnock left a paper, still in the Bodleian Library of Oxford, in which he declares that the attempt would not have been justifiable had it not been sanctioned by James; that his majesty's commission did fully justify it, and that it was just as proper to attempt to kill the prince of Orange at the head of his guards, serving as they did the king whose throne he had usurped, and who was at war with him, as if he had been at the head of twenty thousand men. They had their king's commission for it, and their king being at declaimed war, it was quite legitimate to attack and kill William wherever they could meet with him. Spite of this high assumption, Charnock, after conviction, offered, if they would pardon him, to reveal the whole particulars of the plot and the names of every one concerned in it; but there was evidence enough; his offer was not accepted, and the three were executed at Tyburn on the 18th.
Sir John Friend and Sir John Parkyns were tried next. Friend asked also for counsel, but it was denied him, and yet no man had more need of it. He was a weak and very ignorant man, and utterly unable to make a fair defence in a public court. He declared that to him it was quite a new and unintelligible doctrine that the king's subjects could depose or dethrone him for any cause whatever; that he had nothing whatever to do with schemes of assassination, but abhorred them; that he was a protestant, and that the witnesses against him were papists, who had received dispensations from their priests for perjury—as if any papists would assist in destroying the servants of the papist king. But poor Sir John, by some curious process of reasoning, persuaded himself that he was about to die because he was a good protestant—an honest, non-juring protestant. "For this," said he, "I suffer and for this I die." Surely it would have been much more to the credit of William to have allowed such a poor, tangle-headed man an advocate.
Parkyns, also, and in vain, demanded counsel, but he had been bred to the bar, and to him it was of less consequence. He contended that he had not been personally engaged in the conspiracy to kill the king—but this was a mere quibble; he was not to be there, but he was to furnish his party of bravos ready equipped. There was a delay in their execution from the expectation that they would reveal some higher personages as implicated than were known to the other conspirators; but they stood firm, and were executed at Tyburn on the 3rd of April. On the scaffold with them appeared three non-juring clergymen, Shadrach Cook, William Snatt, and the famous Jeremy Collier. Just before the hangman turned them off, the prisoners knelt, and the three clergymen laid their hands on their heads, and Collier pronounced their absolution in the name of Christ for all their sins, to
