132

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XVII.

J GiJ I.Execu-tion ofAshton.

Preston’sirresolu-tion andconfes-sions.

death. Ashton was speedily executed. He might have saved- his life by making disclosures. But though he declared that, ifhe were spared, he would always be a faithful subject of TheirMajesties, he was fully resolved not to give up the names of hisaccomplices. In this resolution he was encouraged by the non-juring divines who attended him in his cell. It was probably bytheir influence that he was induced to deliver to the Sheriffs onthe scaffold a declaration which he had transcribed and signed,but had not, it is to be hoped, composed or attentively con-sidered. In this paper he was made to complain of the unfair-ness of a trial which he had himself in public acknowledged tohave been eminently fair. He was also made to aver, on theword of a dying man, that he knew nothing of the papers whichhad been found upon him. Unfortunately his declaration,when inspected, proved to be in the same handwriting with oneof the most important of those papers. He died with manlyfortitude. *

Elliot was not brought to trial. The evidence against himwas not quite so clear as that on which his associates had beenconvicted; and he was not worth the anger of the government.The fate of Preston was long in suspense. The Jacobitesaffected to be confident that the government would not dare toshed his blood. He was, they said, a favourite at Versailles,and his death would be followed by a terrible retaliation. Theyscattered about the streets of London papers in which it wasasserted that, if any harm befell him, Mountjoy, and all theother Englishmen of quality who were prisoners in France,would be broken on the wheel.** These absurd threats would

* Paper delivered by Mr. Ashton, at his execution, to Sir FrancisChild, Sheriff of London; Answer to the Paper delivered by Mr. Ashton.The Answer was written by Dr. Edward Fowler, afterwards Bishop ofGloucester. Burnet, ii. 70.; Letter from Bishop Lloyd to Dodwell, in thesecond volume of Gutch’s Collectanea Curiosa.

** Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.