share in the conspiracy. The fate of these knights created immense excitement, chiefly on account of a circumstance which brings their execution before us. Jeremy Collier has been already mentioned as a distinguished nonjuring Divine, and a great sensation was produced in the vast crowds round the fatal tree by the sight of this clergyman--in company with two others less known, named Cook and Snatt--performing some peculiar religious rites at the last moment of the culprits’ lives. The three Divines were observed in the cart, not only praying with the unhappy men, but laying hands upon them as they knelt down--Collier solemnly pronouncing over them the form of absolution, prescribed in the Visitation of the Sick. A paper, professedly written by Friend, and delivered to the Sheriff, contained a prayer for King James’ restoration, and stated that the writer was a member of the Church, “though,” he adds, “a most unworthy and unprofitable part of it (meaning the nonjuring part), which suffers so much at present for a strict adherence to the laws and Christian principles. For this I suffer, and for this I die.”[284] [Sidenote: JACOBITES.] People were astonished at the strange absolution performed. Multitudes more who heard of it shared in the wonder, and the circulation of the paper increased the excitement. To all but the most obstinate, the administering of absolution under the circumstances seemed like an act of sympathy with civil treason, and a gross perversion of Church formularies. London presently rose in a state of high commotion. The Tyburn affair was in everybody’s mouth, and broadsides and pamphlets bearing upon it were in everybody’s hands. The public authorities interfered, and at once seized Cook and Snatt. Collier eluded their search; and in some garret, cellar, or other out-of-the-way place, wrote a defence of what he had done. He had, he said, been sent for to Newgate; Sir William Parkyns had begged that the absolution of the Church might be pronounced over him in his last moments. Collier had been refused admittance to the prisoner in his cell on the day of execution, and so he went to Tyburn to pronounce absolution there. He used a form in the Prayer-Book; and as to the imposition of hands, complained of as an innovation, he concluded that it was a very ancient, and, at least, a very innocent ceremony.[285]