On March 19th, Colonel Sloughter, “a profligate, needy, and narrow-minded adventurer,” entered the harbour. Leisler immediately sent messengers to receive his orders; the messengers were detained; the next morning he wrote, inquiring to whom he should surrender the fort. Sloughter’s only reply was an order to Ingoldsby to arrest Leisler and his council. The following day Leisler, Milborne, and six others, were under arrest and brought up to trial before a special court, composed of the adverse party. Six of the prisoners were immediately found guilty of high treason, but afterwards reprieved. Leisler and Milborne, denying the jurisdiction of the court by which they were tried, refused to plead, and appealed to the king. But they were condemned of high treason as mutes, and sentenced to death. Nevertheless, Sloughter hesitated to carry the sentence into execution, until the will of the king should be known, writing to him “that certainly never greater villains lived.” The friends of Leisler boldly defended his conduct, but the opposite party was now in power, and the execution of Leisler and his son-in-law was demanded; still Sloughter hesitated, but nothing could allay the bitter hatred of Leisler’s enemies. At a dinner-party, therefore, when Sloughter was intoxicated, they obtained from him the signatures of the death-warrants, and before he had recovered his senses, the executions had taken place. On the 16th of May, amid drenching rain, Leisler having taken leave of his wife and his numerous family, he and his son-in-law were conducted to the gallows outside the city-wall. “Guarded by troops,” says the historian, “the sad procession moved on, thronged about by weeping friends and exulting enemies. More distressed for the fate of his son-in-law than for his own, Leisler admitted that he might have fallen into error; and turning to the sorrowing populace, said, ‘Weep not for us, we are going to our God; but weep for yourselves that remain behind in misery and vexation.’” The handkerchief was bound round his face, and he said, “I hope these eyes shall see our Lord Jesus in heaven!” These were his last words. Livingstone, one of the leaders of the adverse party, pressed forward to the prisoners to gratify himself with the sight of their last moments. “I will implead thee at the bar of God for this,” said Milborne. His last words were: “I die for the king and queen and the Protestant religion in which I was born and bred. Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” The distressed people, with cries and tears, rushed forward to receive some last memento of their favourite leaders, a fragment of their clothes or a lock of hair.