Constitutional methods of expressing public opinion being suspended, there were men whom desperation drove to think of the patriot’s last resort. They talked of war. Shaftesbury, whose erratic ability and eloquence sometimes helped the cause of liberty, had disappeared from the stage of public affairs, and had, as we have seen, gone over to Holland, where he died. But his restless brain, employed in concocting schemes of insurrection, which at the time came to nothing, had left behind, amongst many Englishmen with whom he had been associated, seeds of discontent, ready to grow into acts of violence. The seeds did grow, and the harvest proved “a heap in the day of grief, and of desperate sorrow.” The Rye House Plot is well known. With any design of assassinating the King, Sidney and Russell--who came within the complications of a plan for forcibly resisting the despotism of Government--had nothing to do. Nothing could be more idle than to talk, as some did, of certain ministers--Owen, Mead, and Griffiths--being engaged in revolutionary designs. The King, when Mead had been summoned, ordered him to be discharged; but Sidney and Russell, it cannot be contradicted, were present at conversations turning upon the subject of an appeal to arms in the cause of freedom. These illustrious men were, as all readers of English history know, tried,[107] condemned, and executed; and as the story of Russell’s last moments belongs to the religious annals of our country, it claims some space on these pages.[108] [Sidenote: 1683.] [Sidenote: LORD W. RUSSELL.]