eyes of the people and confirm the belief of the conspiracy There was Digitus Dei in it say's my Lord Chief Justice Jeffryes and enough to satisfie all the world of the Truth of the conspiracy that the Earl of Essex being conscious of the great guilt he had contracted in being concerned in it did rather than abide his Trial and for the avoiding the methods of justice in his own particular case destroy himself The improvement of the Murder of that noble Peer to the establishing the belief of a plot gives no small ground to suspect who were the contrivers of his death and upon what design they did first assassinate and then endeavour to cast and divert the infamy and guilt of it upon himself But I hope they will from their own way 's of argumentation allow us the liberty of inferring that in case my Lord of Essex was not Felo de se that then there was no such Protestant plot as they have filled the world with the noise of seeing the only motives upon which they suppose and alledg ' his having committed that unnatural fact upon himself were the reproach and horror of that conspiracy Nay we doubt not but that all the honest and disinterested part of mankind will upon conviction of their having destroyed that innocent Gentleman become fully satisfied that there hath been no such Treasonable combination as his Majesties Ministers have endeavoured to impose the belief of upon the Nation but that all his Court and Popish Sham and only devised and fram'd for subverting our liberties and Religion by cutting off those that had the integrity and courage to espouse the protection and defence of them And as the end whereunto the unnatural death of my Lord Essex is applied and improved shows by whom it was contrived and effected so the Tim'ing of that murder does further evidence and demonstrate where the guilt of it ought to be charged and what service it was calculated for the promoting of For as if it had not been enough to murder one innocent person in a way of the most barbarous violence imaginable they resolved to adjust it to such a juncture of time as that it might serve to facilitate and compass the ruine of an other Noble Person in the way of their Legal Form's And therefore no sooner was my Lord Russel entred on his Trial for life upon an indictment of being guilt of that pretended conspiracy for which the Earl of Essex stood committed but they assassinated the one in the Tower and immediately dispatched away the news of his having murdered himself to the Old Bayly thereby to amuse and prepossess the jury and byaz them to convict that other virtuous noble and innocent person And with what satisfaction in themselves as well as malice and artifice against the prisoner at the Barr did his Majesties Councel lay hold on the tyd'ings and apply them towards the begetting a belief of the guilt of that admirable person who stood then arraigned and whom they were at that very time harrangu'ing and pleading out of his life As if it had not been enough to impress the minds of a jury sufficiently prejudiced and which to all mens knowledge was grosly partial for the Attorney General to say That my Lord Russel was one of the Council for carrying on the Plot with the Earl of Essex who had that morning prevented the hand of justice upon himself Sir George Jefferys comes after him and adds in the winding up the evidence to the jury just before they went from the Bar and without all doubt the better to mould and determine them to find the arrained person guilty That there was nothing could be said in favour of my Lord Russel's innocency as to what he was accused of but what might be more strongly alledged in behalf of the Earl of Essex who nevertheless from a conciousness of being guilty of that desperate conspiracy had brought himself to an untimely end to avoid the methods of publick justice Yea so evident was it to all impartial persons who were then present at the Tryal that the Murder of the Earl of Essex was not perpetrated by himself but by others and that it was time'd and adjusted to that season in order to influencing the jury to give up my Lord Russel with the more ease as a sacrifice and victime to the rage of the Court that a very noble Lord who was always in the interests of Whitehall and who was then very zealous in the prosecution of those accused for the Plot being at that time on the Bench did upon the hearing of my Lord of Essex's death and who were then walking in the Tower when it fatally fell out and upon observing with what diligence care and artifice the news was brought into Court as my Lord Russel was at the Bar and how the Kings Council thereupon acted their parts rise up in great consternation from the Bench where he sat and pulling his hat over his eyes press out of Court saying he plainly saw the bottom of the business and all the Mysteries wrapt up in it And indeed such influence and success had the news of the Earl of Essex's having murder'd himself from the shame and horror he was under for being concerned in the Conspiracy whereof my Lord Russel stood then arraigned that diverse of the Inquest have confessed and acknowledged that the Report of the Earl's death especially as improved and managed by the Kings Council had greater power over their minds for the convicting him than all the other evidence which was given and that they do really believe they should never have sound him guilty without the intervention of that fatal stroke and the crafty application which the Kings Council at Law made of it But so far was the Earl of Essex from entertaining any foregoing thoughts of murdering himself or from calculating the perpetration of it to that unhappy season that the very day before my Lord Russel's Trial being also the day before his own Throat was cut he gave private directions to his Steward to place himself with all the conveniency in Court which he could at the said Trial the better to take the evidence in short hand instructing him withall how he might afterwards convey it to him for his perusal and to be made use of as he should have occasion And as the Earl of Essex was a person of that sedateness honor and vertue that no rational or good man can believe he would commit so horrid a crime upon himself so such was the entire friendship between him and my Lord Russel that we must renounce common sense and reason before we can admit that the Earl of Essex would be guilty of so heinous an injury to his dearest and best Friend as to calculate and adjust the murdering himself to such a season which he must needs know would be too probable a means to derive the destruction of a person whom he infinitely valued
commit As it will be easily allowed being indelibly ingraven in our Natures that every Murder is to be registred amongst crimes of the deepest die so it cannot be denied but that one may be of a more heynous nature than another and receive aggravation from the worth and quality of him that is assassinated For as the value of kindnesses grows in proportion to the meaness of the persons on whom they are bestowed so crimes receive an encrease of guilt from the dignity and usefulness of those against whom they are committed By how much higher the station of any one is in the Commonwealth and by how much through his wisdom power bounty and influence he is beneficial to the Nation by so much is the destruction of such a person attended with the higher aggravations and to be resented as a most enormous crime Nor are we only to esteem ourselves injured and threatned in and by the example of such a person's ruine but we are to account our selves wronged and ought to demand reparation answerably to the benefits we reapt by him and which we are rob'd of by the loss of so useful and worthy a person Our Law in making that against a Peer liable to an Action of Scandal which it takes not so much as cognisance of as an offence against little and inferior people could not be so improvident in reference to the life 's of Noblemen as not to set a stronger and higher hedge about them than those of Mechanicks are fenced and defended by Nor is it only from the quality of 〈…〉 erson against whom a crime is committed that it receives an aggravation but there accrues a new addition of guilt thereunto from the obligations which the person destroyed may have laid upon those who were instrumental in and accessory to his ruine To see one perish by the hands of those whom he may have injured either in their persons reputations or interest is no more than what we may sometimes find instances of among the â—â—rully and degenerate part of mankind but to hear that a person is assassinated by those whom he served with the utermost zeal and fidelity is a villany which none but prodigies of ingratitude and monsters of humane Nature can be guilty of But there is a certain great man in the World whom I shall forbear to name whose temper is to bestow his Favours upon such as have been his Majesties greatest enemies as well as the most proffligate and basest among men and in the mean time recompence such not only with neglect but hatred whose parents as well as themselves had shed their blood and ventured their fortunes in the behalf of the King and the Royal cause How true is that of Tacitus lib. 4. Annal. Beneficia â—ousque laeta sunt dum videntur exolvi posse ubi multum antevenere pro gratiâ odium redditur Kindnesses are acceptable while they may be repay'd but when they exceed all possibility of recompence they meet with hatred instead of acknowledgment There is no other way to be secure from the malice of some sort of people than in the place of obliging them to keep them at defiance For whereas they are altogether uncapable of being won and impressed by courtesies they are either to be chained up or menaced from doing mischief And as all I have suggested makes but too suitable an introduction into this following Discourse of the Assassination of the Earl of Essex so it is no small reflection upon the honour of the Nation and proclaims the execrableness of the Fact and impudent boldness of the Actors that they durst perpetrate this horrid villany not only in the Royal Prison where the Government in the account of the Law is responsible and pledge for the safety of the captive but in one of his Majesties Palaces where the King himself is to be esteemed security for the preservation and forthcoming of all who come under his roof This honorable Gentleman being the Kings Prisoner and deprived of all means and advantages of defending himself these trusted with the administration of the Government and particularly the King were to be responsible for him in case he miscarried Nor can his Majesties best friends and these who are most zealous for his honour think otherwise of that villanous Fact than that they who where the contrivers of it intended at once to rob the King of one of the best and ablest Ministers he had ever employ'd and to give a mortal wound to the Royal reputation by perpetrating the bloody crime in such a place And whereas the Queen had lain under an imputation of reproach upon the account of Sr. Edmond Bury Godfrey's being assassinated in Somerset-house they might hope to involve the King under the like dishonor by cutting the Throat of this Noble Peer in the Tower of London Nor ought any man whom the providence of God hath furnished with means and advantages of detecting so horrid a murder be judged either officious or held for dissaffected to the Government if he reveal what he hath attained to the knowledg of and publish those evidences which as they have satisfied himself may be sufficient to convince all the unbyaz'd part of mankind of the truth and reality of this barbarous assassination And as it is impossible he should be a good Christian so he ought not to be esteem'd a good Subject to his Majesty nor a sincere friend to his Country who shall more value his own ease and safety than the delivering the throne from guilt or saving the Nation from that vengeance which the cry of innocent blood barbarously and treacherously shed is ready to derive and bring upon it And it is no small evidence by whose countenance and authority this murder was committed that such discouragements have been given to the discovery of it and that an honest Gentlemen hath been so severely proceeded against in defiance of all Law as well as without President for but offering to represent what he had learned in relation to the destruction of that honourable person But as we shall have occasion to speak more fully of that afterwards I shall only add here that the barbarity expressed to Mr. Braddon is so far from deterring others to pursue this affair that his ill treatment at the Council Board and Kings Bench was one of the motives of my undertaking this Province And as by reason of the retirement I have confined my self unto and the privacy I have used in following these researches I labour not under the inconvenience of dreading a sine or prison which does so much frighten others so I dare boldly affirm that the terror of these things were I to encounter them would not so affect me as to make me neglect what I reckon a necessary as well as an important duty Patriae deesse quoad vita suppetat aliis turpe mihi etiam nefas was the saying of Camillus in Livy And tho I be not so vain and ambitious as to
desire the world should know who I am yet I judg it absolutely needful that they should understand who I am not least others come into trouble for that which ought not to be charged upon them and which none but my self can with any equity or justice be made accountable for And seeing Mr. Braddon hath been singled forth as the object of some men's indignation for the service he was willing to have done his Majesty in the detection of this Murder I reckon my self bound to publish to all the world that I know not the Gentleman and that to the best of my remembrance I never saw him much less have ever conversed or had any communication with him I will not deny but that he is a person whom I do infinitely esteem for his integrity zeal and courage in this matter yet I will not be so far injurious to him as to commence an acquaintance with him during the transaction and dependence of this affair and while he is under the power of those that will be ready to declare him criminal for the least intercourse with a person that is likely to become so obnoxious to the rage of St. Jame's and Westminster-Hall as I may come to be for this service to the King and Kingdom But besides the common tyes which I lye under equally with the rest of mankind for endeavouring to detect so horrid and barbarous a Murder there are some special obligations upon me by which I esteem my self more particularly bound than others are to do all the right and justice I can to the memory of this massacred Lord and to redeem his Name from the infamy with which they have aspersed him of being Felo de se. For I had not only the honour to be known to him which Mr. Braddon pretends not unto but besides the favouring me with diverse Testimonies of his respect he did me the kindness to own and befriend me at a juncture when I was in no small hazard from the malice of very Powerful as well as considerable persons And seeing that honourable Peer has been so unhappy as to find nothing but ingratitude as well as injustice from those of the highest and sublimest quality whom he had most effectually served and infinitely obliged it is not amiss that the world should understand there are some remains of vertue and gratitude among the mean and little people and that tho their condition does not inable them to recompence favours conferred upon them by great persons yet they have that ingenuity which others want viz. to sense and acknowledg them And as I reckon it no small honour to have been known to the deccased Peer so I thereby enjoyed an advantage which others wanted namely an opportunity of learning the principles and observing the Temper of that excellent person Whom as I found to be one imbu'd with the most vertuous and religious as well as heroick and generous principles of any Noble Man in the Kingdom so I observed him to be a Gentleman of the greatest sedateness of mind least subject to the undue agitation of unruly passions and most under the conduct of a calm steady strong clear and well poised Reason of any Man of Quality I ever had the happiness of access unto And if either the succors of Nature Education or Grace were sufficient to fortifie and preserve a person from such an enormity and crime then must the Earl of Essex above all men be acquitted from the guilt of so execrable a fact as being contrary to the Frame and constitution of his Nature as well as to all the intellectual and moral habits of his Mind So villanous a Deed was inconsistent with his Temper as well as repugnant to his vertue As he was an excellent Christian he durst not allow a thought that might give encouragement to so heynous a sin and as he was a well accomplisht Gentleman he scorned to render himself guilty of a thing that was so mean and base Nor was the folly of the Assassinates less in hoping to obtain credit to a report that the Earl of Essex cut his own throat than their wickedness was in contriving and perpetrating themselves that bloody murder upon him Yea as if it had not been enough to have first cut the throat of this innocent tho unfortunate Earl and then to have fastned the guilt and infamy of their own Fact upon his untainted vertue and spotless Soul they have sought to gain credit to their calumnious accusation and to reconcile unthinking people to their opinion by assuming that he used to commend and justifie self Murder in case there remained no other way to escape a capital punishment and the being made a spectacle to the little and gazing part of mankind And to give the better gloss to this malicious fiction they report that he used to extol the action of his Ladies Grandfather the Duke of Northumberland who being prisoner in the Tower for Treason shot himself in the head with a Pistol Put as the Earl of Essex had he entertained so ungedly and corrupt a sentiment was more prudent and discreet than to publish and avow an opinion so contrary to the Rules of Religion the principles of honor and the common sense and persuasion of mankind so it is enough to detect the falsehood as well as the malice that is in this report that the Authors and dispersers of it either dare not declare the persons to whom the Earl should have discovered and revealed his mind in this matter or else such as they have named for vouchers of the truth of this story have not only denyed their having at any time heard him express the least word in favour of self murder but do affirm with all the sacredness imaginable that he used to speak always of it with the utmost abhorâ—ency and to brand it as the greatest and most heynous sin For whereas they have had the impudence to affirm that this report either proceeded originally from his own Lady or was at least assented unto and attested by her she hath upon application to her Laâ—â—ship for the knowledge of the truth or falsehood of this Story not only with all the solemnity requisite in a matter of this importance vindicated my Lord from having ever spoken a word that might induce the Lawfulness of self murder or give countenance to a person's being Felo de se but she hath further assirmed that he used to speak against it with an emotion beyond what was customary to him and that he hath often declaned that no circumstances whatsoever could extenuate the guilt or lessen the infamy of so unnatural and wicked a Fact So that this Story which hath been so maliciously and industriously spread to gain belief to the Report of my Lords having murthered himself may upon this detection of its Falshood be very justly improved for the establishing an Assurance that he was assassinated by others For it is impossible to imagine upon what other
say in reference to Mr. Braddon namely that he was ravelling into such a business but that he was resolved to ruine him if all the Law of England would do it makes every man affraid as well as sensible what he may encounter if he have the boldness to interest himself in this affair O degenerate off spring of brave and heroick ancestors were it not much more eligible to run hazard by acquitting your selves as persons of honour in discharge of your duty than to seek for safety by involving your persons and posterity under the guilt of that abominable and villanous Fact And besides can they otherwise hope than that through conniving at so horrid a murder committed upon another person and one who was of a rank and condition equal to themselves they shall at last undergo the same or the like fate whensoever they have the unhappiness and misfortune to fall under the wrath of a certain Gentleman at St. James's But over and above the two Letters that were sent to noble persons very near the King to be communicated to his Majesty there was another Letter addressed to the Countess of Essex and in order to the being conveyed to her Ladyship directed to be left with one Mr. Cadman a Bookseller in the New Exchange in the Strand the Tenor whereof was that if her Honour would prevail with the King for a pardon to one that would discover how my Lord came by his death or obtain of his Majesty a proclamation assuring forgiveness to any who should come in and detect by whom and after what manner my Lord was murder'd that upon either of those securities the way of the Earl of Essex's assassination should be revealed and laid open with all its circumstances This Letter was in August last brought by a young woman to Mr. Cadman's Shop who finding him sleeping on the inside of his Counter told him that she had brought him a Letter directed to my Lady Essex concerning my Lords death which she desired he would read being to that end left open and unsealed But Cadman being drowsie and still inclined to sleep instead of taking notice what she said thrust her from the Counter as an officious and troublesome person and commanded her to goabout her business Yet having after his being throughly awake both perused the Letter and considered the importance and consequence of it he judged himself in prudence obliged to carry it to a Magistrate which accordingly he did to one Hinton a Justice of Peace in Covent Garden who as I have been credibly informed went with it to one of the Secretaries of State This Letter as is most justly conceived was written by Bomeny forasmuch as he not only seemed about that time to be under some Remorse in reference to the death of my Lord but because some of Bomeny's handwriting being shewed to Mr. Cadman it appeared to him according to the best of his remembrance and judgment to be the same hand or at least very much like unto that which the letter was written in This much is plainly evident that it must have been written by one that was willing to be known seeing it was both sent open and by a person that was able to declare of whom she had received it For had the writing of this Letter been only a contrivance to avert the infamy of my Lord's death from himself and deliver those Gentlemen accused for the Plot from the consequences unto which the Earls imagined murdering himself was improved against them it would never have been left unsealed for Mr. Cadman to read nor seat by a person that was acquainted with the contents of it as it plainly appears the bearer was but would both have been sealed to prevent Cadman's looking into it and conveyed by a porter or some such hand that would have been less lyable to be questioned either about the contents or the Author of it Nor does any thing more amaze and astonish thinking people than that notwithstanding the many Reports as well as Universal jealousies of my Lord of Essex being murder'd in the Tower yet all this time his Majesty hath not published one word to encourage an inquisition into the manner of his death or to secure a pardon to such as shall be able to discover whether he was assassinated and by whom and after what manner he was brought to an untimely End For considering the obligations which the King and the Royal Family lay under to the late Earl of Essex as well as to his Father my Lord Capel and considering the many aspersions thrown upon the Court in relation to the death of the said Earl it hath been expected that his Majesty as well in justice to the Family of the Capels as in vindication of his own honour from the infamy of having a person of my Lord Essex's merit and figure assassinated in his Majesties prison and Palace would have issued out a proclamation ascertaining forgiveness to any that should be able to prove his being murdered by others and that he did not destroy himself as some people have been industrious to give out And that which encreaseth the surprise and wonder is the consideration of the forwardness which the King hath expressed in some other cases for the detection of murders of this nature For besides the tender of a pardon there was the promise of 500. l. to any who should discover the murder of Sr. Edmondbury Godfrey and reveal the miscreants by whom he was assassinated And I would be loth to think that his Majesties proceeding so differently in that case from what he hath done in this was rather to be ascribed to his apprehensions of a ParlJament which was then in Being than to his love of justice or the desire of delivering the Nation from the guilt of innocent blood But I am willing to believe that the reason why the King doth not encourage the discovery of this late murder of my L. of Essex ariseth from the fear he is in of the persons that were accessory to it For in case he would authorise the detection of the Assassinates of this Noble Earl he will find himself obliged not only to bring the Earl of S. and my Lord F. but his Royal and dearly beloved Brother I D. of Y. to punishment And who knows but that he dreads left in calling these Gentlemen to account for cutting the E. of Essex's throat He too much hazard and expose his own Nor is it at all surprizing that the King who had not courage to resent the poysoning his own Sister by her husband the Duke of Orleans at a juncture when He might have made France feel the effects of his justice and displeasure should not have the boldness to question his Brother and other principal persons of the Popish Faction for the assassination of Essex especially at a time that he hath divested himself of all power to hurt them and by seeming offended may only stir up their wrath against himself
after it Wherefore that he might tell no more stories nor rise up as a witness against the Assassinates this poor unfortunate Fellow was secretly murdered and thrown into the Tower Ditch And there are several particulars relating to his Death which are not unworthy to be known to the World but it were to advantage the Conspirators and to prejudice our selves to mention them at present Only this is remarkable that as this Robert Meak was for some time before his death very apprehensive of the danger he went in of being privately destroyed for what he had declared concerning the E. of Essex being murdered so he had a greater dread of it the morning before he was killed than he had been possessed with at any other time And therefore from that allarm which his mind suggested to him of his impendent danger he begged of an Acquuaintance and Friend that morning before he died that he would have accompanied and kept with him for that day But such was the poor fellow's fate that tho he told that person the apprehensions he was in of being murdered and he from a sense and belief of it had left his work with a resolution to attend him yet whether from a jealousie he might have of his own safety or upon what other motive I shall not enquire he stole away from and forsook him before Twelve of the Clock But tho the Conspirators and Assassionates had thus by a second murder delivered themselves from the apprehensions they were in of being detected for the first yet there arose an other person who as he had better opportunity of knowing the whole Mystery of the Lord of Essex's death than Meak the Sentinel had so from remorse of Conscience for what he had been accessory unto and from an abhorrency of that bloody Fact which he so well knew the Authors and Perpetrators of he begun to discourse and communicate it with shame and loathing to others The person whom I mean was Mr. Hawley a Warder of the Tower living in Winchester-street being a Person both for Reputation and Estate far above that Hawley in whose house the Earl of Essex was then Prisoner when his Throat was cut and therefore one without whose knowledge consent and contribution it cannot be supposed to have been done And by how much he was not only more capable than others to detect the whole villany of the Noble Man's death and lay open the enormous crime in all the parts and branches of it but was of better credit than the Sentinel and more likely to obtain belief from the World in what he should declare by so much was he to be esteemed for a most dangerous person to the Conspirators and to be treated as one from whom they might dread the most fatal mischief to themselves as well as their cause Hence the intelligence was no sooner conveyed to a great Man and the rest of the Juncto that Hawly had been talking such things concerning the Earl of Essex's death which it concerned them no less than both their Lives and Honours to have concealed but they resolved to destroy him and thereby prevent his prating for the future and being able to tell any tales And being informed that he was inquiring where he might purchase an Estate they employ one to tempt him out of Town under pretence of his seeing a parcel of Land that was to be sold. For they thought that should they cause him to be murdered in or about the City it would fill all men with jealousies of their being guilty of his death especially considering the Reports which went of them and the suspicions that they lay under of having caused Meak to be killed And therefore in order to the getting him destroyed with the more secrecy and the administring the less apprehension about the Authors of his death they prevailed on him by the baite and temptation which I have mentioned to take a journey into the Countrey Whence having resolved that he should never return they employed some to dogg and others to way-lay and murder him And with that Secrecy as well as Obedience were their Orders and Decrees executed that it was a considerable while after his Death before he could be heard of or his Body found But when after long search and enquiry after him his Corps were at last found there were all the marks and Symptoms of a most barbarous Assassination prepared upon him which malicious wit could invent or enraged jealousie and revenge act or commit For besides diverse conâ—usions in the head face and breast from the blows he had received it appeared plainly that he had been also strangled And as he had never administred cause to any other persons save the Conspirators and Instruments of the Earl of â—ffex's death upon which we can with the least shadow of reason fancy his being murdered upon a personal and private Revenge so there are proofs ready to be produced whensoever either a ParlJament comes or a fair Trial can be obtained before upright and impartial Judges not only by whom he was destroyed but by whose Command and Authority Nor was his Wife unsensible and without apprehension even before the Body was discovered both that he might be murdered and upon what motives and inducements it was done so that she told some Friends how she dreaded the consequences and effects of his having so often discoursed about the Earl of Essex's death Yea there is one Glover who is a Servant to His Majesty being at present a Warder in the Tower who being in conference with some people about the Earl of Essex and Mr. Braddon was pleased with more than an ordinary emotion to say Hawley also hath been prating but he was fain to walk for it But the same person being asked after it was known that he had been murdered what he thought of Mr. Hawley's walking appeared exceedingly disturbed and said he knew nothing of it nor would he have the patience to hear any thing spoken about that matter So that we have here an other evidence that the Earl of Essex did not as he hath been defamed and slandered cut his own Throat but that this Person of incomparable Merit and Vertue was Massacred by wicked and suborned Ruffians seeing to prevent the discovery of that heinous and execrable Fact two other men who had advantages of knowing both the Actors in and manner of his death and had talked somewhat freely about it and seemed inclinable to reveal it were barbarously killed And as the destroying as well as oppressing those from whom the World might receive light about the murder of that Noble Peer plainly shews by whose Councels and by what means he came to his faral End so the countenancing protecting and preferring those who are justly suspected to have been deeply instrumental in it and who long ere this would have been publickly indicted for it had it not been partly for the discouragement given by the Court His Majesties Ministers of State and
and loved after it Having now shown the end unto which the murder of this incomparable Earl was designed and adapted and the improvement which was made of it not only through endeavouring to establish thereby the belief of a Protestant Plot in general but to compass and facilitate the ruine of that religious and noble person my Lord Russel in particular we shall as a further inducement to perswade and convince the inquisitive part of mankind that some about St. James's and Whitehall where the contrivers and authorisers of that barbarous assassination lay open and unfold the motive and pique upon which it was done and what it was which gave the original rise to some mens implacable malice against that loyal as well as virtuous person And as it cannot be denied but this late Nobl ' Earl had received Titles of honor and places of Trust interest and advantage from his Majesty so it will be acknowledged that not only his Father but himself had laid all the obligations upon the Crown which it was possibl ' for Subjects in way of Acting or Suffering to do Nor is it less evident that notwithstanding both the Father my Lord Capel's Laying down his life for Charles the First and the English Monarchy and his Son Essex's manifold sufferings and services for Charles the Second and the Royal Family yet this honorable Person instead of quietly possessing any longer the just rewards of his own and Fathers merits or enjoying any more the wonted signs of his Princes favour was not onely debarred from and deprived of the respect and confidence which his Majesty had used to show him but was become the object of a great mans implacable hatred and boundless malice For though the Earl of Essex was a person whom nothing could corrupt from his loyalty to the King and the Established Government yet he was also a sincere and zealous Patriot of the Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom and a couragious Defender as well as owner of the Protestant Religion And as he was none of those mercinary base and timorous Lords who would either connive at or concur in the introduction of Slavery and Popery so he was one of the principal of those heroick and generous Peers who had been active in detecting the Popish Conspiracy and who had laboured with the greatest industry to prevent the effects of that hellish conjuration of the Valican Louvre and St. James's for the extirpation of the Reformed Worship and the subversion of the ancient Laws and Priviledges of England And as he was known to understand more of the nature and extent of the Popish Conspiracy and who were concerned in it and to what degree than most persons in the Kingdom either were or ever had oportunities for so nothing can be more certain than that as hereby he became the most dangerous man in the whole Nation to the Papists but that he must consequently be the most special object of their jealousie fear and hatred 〈◊〉 as his publick Station in Ireland as well as his having been long a Member of His Majesty's Privy Council in England furnished him with manifold advantages which others wanted of knowing the tendency and penetrating into the bottom of all the Designs and Counsels which have been carrying on against our Religion and Legal Government so his scorning and abhorring to sacrifice his Conscience and Honour by either falling in with the Conspirators or by avoiding to withstand and oppose them in their attempts for the introduction and establishment of Popery and Arbitrariness made them to think of all ways and means how to destroy him And besides these forementioned advantages which he had above other men of knowing all the dimensions of the Popish Plot he received no small accession of light in that affair by having been always a Member of those Secret Committees which had the Examination of Persons and Inspection of Papers concerning that devilish Conspiracy Nor was the Earl insensible of the danger he was in upon this account and accordingly was wont sometimes to say to his intimate friends that as generally all the Papists and more particularly such of them as make the greatest figure in the Kingdom dreaded him by reason of the detection he was able to make of their horrid Machinations so he could not be without apprehension but that they would seek to destroy him in order to prevent it Alas poor Essex thy respect to some whom I forbear to name made thee wanting to save the Nation and thy self by revealing that while we had ParlJaments the knowledge whereof would have been a means to have prevented our ruine and as thou art now ill rewarded for thy tenderness to those ungratefull men so we are at once unhappily robb'd of the great Instrument that could have unmasked persons and things and denied ParlJaments from whose legal Authority as well as united Counsels and Wisdom we can only under God hope for the preservation of England from becoming the Seat of Popery and the Theatre of Tyranny Nor ought it to seem strange that the malic◠of the Papists and of those who have conspired against our Rights and Priviledges should transport them to that measure and degree of rage against a person who had not only faithfully served his Majesty and the Crown but from whom they could expect no opposition but what was founded in the authority of our Laws and promoted in a ParlJamentary-way and which the King himself is bound by his Oath as well as the duty and trust reposed in him to second and give countenance unto For besides diverse Gentlemen of that temper and character whom they have destroyed or condemned by and under a Form of Law but indeed contrary to all the Laws of the Land and against the worst presidents even in the most absolute and despotical times there may be several Gentlemen mentioned whom they have cut off without the Form of any Process meerly because they either thought themselves prejudiced and withstood by them in their designs or were afraid of them by reason of the discovery which they were able to give of their conjurations against the Kingdom and of the villanies they had committed in subserviency to the establishment of Popery and Tyranny For not to mention either the Condemnation of that most Honourable Person the Earl of Argyle nor the Condemnation and Execution of that gallant Gentleman Collonel Sydney nor the late Barbarity used against their ancient Servant Sir Thomas Armestrong all which were directly repugnant to the Laws of the respective Kingdoms and contrary to all proceedings in other criminal and capital Cases were not my Lord Lucas Sir Robert Brook◠and Sir Edmondbury Godfrey without being so much as arraigned or accused murthered by them only because they either found them opposite to their Romish and Arbitrary designs or knew them capable of revealing their hellish Counsels and Actions against the Nation the established Government and the Reformed Religion What Family in England had