The trial of Lord Russell is one of the darkest events in the annals of our courts of law, while it is also one of the most important in the history of England. He was tried at the Old Bailey on the charge of conspiring the death of the King's Majesty, and of raising rebellion in the kingdom. Every point in the legal indictment was strained, and every artifice resorted to, in order to obtain a verdict of guilty. When it was objected that the jury were not freeholders, the objection was overruled, although in a recent trial, when made in the king's behalf, it had been admitted without any difficulty. The evidence of two or three false witnesses was received, and was made to weigh against a mass of testimony borne by the noblest and best men of the time. Nothing could be proved against him, except that he had been seen in the company of Monmouth, Shaftesbury, Algernon Sidney, and others known to be opposed to the measures of the Government. Lords Anglesey, Cavendish, and Clifford, the Duke of Somerset, Doctors Burnet, Tillotson, Cox, FitzWilliam, and many others testified to his mild and amiable character, his peaceable and virtuous life, and the improbability of his being guilty of the charges brought against him. His public services in defence of freedom and of the Protestant religion were the real causes of the resolution to get rid of him. Towards the close of the trial, one of his enemies, the notorious Jefferies, made a violent declamation, and turned the untimely end of Lord Essex in the Tower into a proof of Russell's being privy to the guilty conspiracy. This base insinuation evidently had effect on the jury, who brought in a verdict of guilty. The sentence was considered by all right-minded persons as a shameful injustice. Burnet afterwards spoke of him as "that great but innocent victim, sacrificed to the rage of a party, and condemned only for treasonable words said to have been spoken in his hearing."

Among the incidents of the trial, one of the most memorable was when the prisoner asked for somebody to write, to help his memory. "You may have a servant," said the Attorney-General, Sir Robert Sawyer. "Any of your servants," added the Lord Chief Justice Pemberton, "shall assist you in writing for you anything you please." "My wife is here, my Lord, to do it." "If my Lady please to give herself the trouble," was the civil reply of the Lord Chief Justice. So the noble wife sat by his side throughout the trial to assist and support her husband.

After the condemnation she drew up and carried to the king a petition for a short reprieve of a few weeks; but this was rejected, though the king saw at his feet the daughter of the Earl of Southampton, the best friend he ever had. His answer was, "Shall I grant that man a reprieve of six weeks, who, if it had been in his power, would not have granted me six hours? Besides," he said, "I must break with the Duke of York if I grant it." Seeking the king's life had never been made a charge, far less attempted to be proved, though something had been said about attacking the king's guards. But Russell denied with his last breath any design against the person of the king. All considerations were weak against the passion of revenge with which the king and the Duke of York were actuated. The Duke of York descended so low in his personal animosity that he urged that the execution should take place before Russell's own door in Bloomsbury Square, but the king would not consent to this. An order was signed for his being beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields, a week after the trial. It is said that at that time Southampton House, on the north side of Bloomsbury Square, was visible from the place where the scaffold was erected.

Lord Cavendish generously offered to manage his escape, and to stay in prison for him while he should go away in his clothes; but Russell would not entertain the proposal. It was then planned that Cavendish, with a party of horse, should attack the guard on the way to the scaffold, and rescue the innocent victim; but this, too, was overruled, as Russell refused to allow any lives being endangered to save his own. He prepared to receive the stroke with meekness, and with a dignity worthy of his name.

On the Tuesday before his execution, when his wife had left him, he expressed great joy in the magnanimity of spirit he saw in her, and said that parting with her was the worst part of his pain. On Thursday, when she left him to try to gain a respite till Monday, he said he wished she would cease from seeking his preservation, but he did not forbid her trying, thinking that these efforts, though unavailing, might bring some mitigation of her sorrows. On the evening before his death he suffered his young children to be brought by their mother for the final parting. In this trying time he maintained his constancy of temper, though his heart was full of tenderness. When they had gone he said that the bitterness of death was passed, and then spoke much of the noble spirit of her whom he had so loved, and who had been to him so great a blessing. He said, "What a misery it would have been to him if she had not that magnanimit of spirit, joined to her tenderness, as never to have desired him to do a base thing for the saving of his life. There was a signal providence of God in giving him such a wife, where there was birth, fortune, great understanding, true religion, and great kindness to him; but her carriage in his extremity was beyond all. He was glad she and his children were to lose nothing by his death; and it was a great comfort to him that he left his children in the hands of such a mother, and that she had promised to him to take care of herself for their sakes."

[Illustration: PARTING OF LORD AND LADY RUSSELL. Copied, by permission, from the fresco in the Palace of Westminster.]

It should be stated that when they partook of the Communion together for the last time, she so controlled her feelings, for his sake, as not to shed a tear; although afterwards she wept so much that it was feared she would lose her sight.

The scene of the parting in prison is not only memorable in history, but has been a favourite theme in art, and one of the frescoes in the new Houses of Parliament commemorates it. Many poets have written about the death of Lord Russell, among them Canning, in a supposed letter to his friend Lord Cavendish, in which the noble character of his wife is celebrated as well as the virtues of her husband.

The execution took place not on Tower Hill, as usual with persons of high rank, but in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in order that the citizens of London might be humbled and terrified by the sight, as he was carried in a coach to the scaffold through the City. The effect was very different from what was intended. The death of this one man made many enemies to the king, and though the triumph of liberty and religion was delayed for a few years, the execution of Lord Russell did much to secure the overthrow of arbitrary power, and the defeat of Popery in England at no distant time. The trial took place July 13 and 14, and the execution on July 21, 1683.