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HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

enAp. look and gesture, sucli strong resentment at the barbarity and’ 1685. " injustice with which he had been treated, that his enemiesspread a calumnious report concerning him. He was drunk,they said, or out of his mind, when he was turned off. WilliamPenn, however, who stood near the gallows, and whoseprejudices were all on the side of the government, afterwardssaid that he could see in Cornish’s deportment nothing but thenatural indignation of an innocent man slain under the formsof law. The head of the murdered magistrate was placed overthe Guildhall.*

Trial and Black as this case was, it was not the blackest which dis-

execu-

tions of graced the sessions of that autumn at the Old Baily. Amongand Eliza-the persons concerned in the Rye House Plot was a manGaunt, named James Burton. By his own confession he had beenpresent when the design of assassination was discussed by hisaccomplices. When the conspiracy was detected, a rewardwas offered for his apprehension. He was saved from deathby an ancient matron of the Baptist persuasion, named Eliza-beth Gaunt. This woman, with the peculiar manners andphraseology which then distinguished her sect, had a largecharity. Her life was passed in relieving the unhappy of allreligious denominations, and she was well known as a con-stant visitor of the gaols. Her political and theological opi-nions, as well as her compassionate disposition, led her to doeverything in her power for Burton. She procured a boatwhich took him to Gravesend, where he got on board of aship bound for Amsterdam. At the moment of parting sheput into his hand a sum of money which, for her means, wasvery large. Burton, after living Some time in exile, returnedto England with Monmouth, fought at Sedgemoor, fled toLondon, and took refuge in the house of John Fernley, a

* Trial of Cornish in the Collection of State Trials; Sir J. Hawles’sRemarks on Mr. Cornish’s Trial; Burnet, i.651.; Bloody Assizes; Slat. 1Gul. & Mar.