and a sword by his side. While in St. James's Park he was accidentally met by Thomas Bird, a justice of the peace for his county, who knew him, and took him prisoner 12 Dec. 1715. He was carried to the Duke of Devonshire's, and thence to Lord Townshend's. After examination he was committed to a messenger's house, and fourteen days afterwards he was sent to Newgate. He was brought to the exchequer bar at Westminster 31 May 1716, when he pleaded not guilty; but when brought again to the bar 15 June he withdrew his former plea, and acknowledged his guilt. After sentence of death was passed he expressed the deepest penitence for his conduct, and wrote letters to the king, the lord chief justice, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, soliciting mercy, in which he asserted that he now detested and abhorred the rebellion from the bottom of his soul. Finding, however, that these professions were ineffectual to save his life, he again entirely changed his attitude. On the scaffold he appeared in the canonical habit of the church of England; declared that he was a true son of the church, not as it was now—schismatical—and that he died in the real nonjuring one, free from rebellion and schism. He, moreover, asked pardon of all he had scandalised by pleading guilty, and of his God and king for having violated his loyalty ‘by taking most abominable oaths in defence of usurpation’ against his ‘lawful sovereign King James the third.’ He was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on 13 July. A portrait of Paul has been engraved in an oval along with John Hall, who was executed on the same gallows. The engraver is supposed to have been Vertue.
[A True Copy of the Papers delivered to the Sheriffs of London by William Paul, a Clergyman, and John Hall, Esq., 1716; The Devil's Martyrs, or Plain Dealing, in answer to the Jacobite Speeches of those two Perjured Rebels, William Paul, a Clergyman, and John Hall, a Justice of the Peace, by John Dunton, 1716; Remarks on the Speeches of Wm. Paul, Clerk, and John Hall, of Otterburn, Esq., 1716; The Thanks of an Honest Clergyman for Mr. Paul's Speech at Tyburn, 1716; Patten's Hist. of the Rebellion; Granger's Biographical History of England.]
PAULDEN, THOMAS (1626–1710?), royalist, son of William Paulden of Wakefield, by his wife Susannah, daughter of Edward Binns of Horbury, Yorkshire, was born in Wakefield in January 1625–6 (baptised on 25 Jan., parish register). He entered the army, and served the king during the civil war with unflinching devotion. He was probably the Captain Paulden who was taken prisoner at Naseby on 14 June 1645 (Rushworth, pt. iv. vol. i. p. 48). In 1647 he was attending meetings of loyal gentlemen at South Kirkby and the neighbourhood, and privately enlisted disbanded troops, both horse and foot. He and his brothers William (1618–1648) and Timothy (1622–1648) seem to have been the sole confidants of the royalist colonel John Morris [q. v.], to whom Overton, the parliamentary governor of Pontefract Castle, had promised to betray the castle. The removal of Overton to Hull in November 1647 rendered the plan impracticable. The royalists—the Pauldens among them—made an unsuccessful attempt at a surprise on 18 May 1648. In the successful capture of the castle by Morris on 3 June Thomas Paulden took no part, but he and his brothers were active during the siege that followed, commanding sallies, acting on councils of war, and settling points of dissension among the garrison. In October 1648 Colonel Thomas Rainsborough [q. v.] arrived from London to reinforce the besieging party, and was quartered at Doncaster, twelve miles from Pontefract. William Paulden then devised a scheme for seizing the person of Rainsborough. On 27 Oct., at midnight, he and twenty-two picked men left for Doncaster, which they reached at 7.30 on the morning of the 28th. After disarming the guard, four men, under pretence of bearing despatches from Cromwell, entered Rainsborough's room and claimed him as their prisoner. Rainsborough, being unarmed, offered no resistance. But, when downstairs, he ‘saw himself, his lieutenant, and his sentinel at his door prisoners to three men and one that held their horses, without any party to second them;’ he cried for arms, and a scuffle ensued, in which Rainsborough was killed. Paulden's party returned to Pontefract Castle unhurt the same evening, 29 Oct. The occurrence was reported in London as a deliberate murder (A Full and Exact Relation, 30 Oct.; Bloody Newes from the Army, 31 Oct. E. 470 [4 and 5]).
On the arrival of Cromwell early in November the garrison at Pontefract was closely shut up in the castle. Part of the building was blown up, and sickness prevailed among the men. But they held out till the end of February 1649, when a message from Prince Charles (whom they had at once proclaimed on his father's execution) excused them from further resistance. On 3 March overtures were made to the besiegers under Lambert. Six commissioners, of whom Thomas Paulden was one, unsuccessfully endeavoured to treat in behalf of the besieged garrison. On 10 March negotiations were renewed, when Paulden raised
