It was through these fields that, one spring night in 1676-7, Thomas Sadler, an impudent and well-known thief, rivalling the audacity of Blood, having with some confederates stolen the mace and purse of Lord Chancellor Finch from his house in Great Queen Street, bore them in mock procession on their way to their lodgings in Knightrider Street, Doctors’ Commons. Sadler was hanged at Tyburn for this theft. Lord William Russell was son of William, Earl of Bedford, by Lady Ann Carr, daughter of Carr, Earl of Somerset. He was beheaded in the centre of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, July 21, 1683, the last year but two of the reign of King Charles II., for being, as it was alleged, engaged in a plot to attack the guards and kill the king, on his return from Newmarket races, at the Rye House Farm, in a by-road near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, about seventeen miles north-east of London. The Whig party, in their eagerness to restrain the Papists and exclude the Duke of York from the throne, had gone too far, and their zeal for the Dissenters had produced a violent reaction in the High Church party. Charles and the Duke, taking advantage of the return tide, began to persecute the Dissenters, denounce Shaftesbury, assail the liberties of the City, and finally dissolved the Parliament. Soon after this, that subtle politician, Shaftesbury, finding it impossible to rouse the Duke of Monmouth, Essex, or Lord Russell, denounced them all as sold and deceived, and fled to Holland. After his flight, meetings of his creatures were held at the chambers of one West, an active talking man. Keeling, a vintner of decaying business, betrayed the plot, as also did Lord Howard, a man so infamous that Charles himself said “he would not hang the worst dog he had upon his evidence.” Keeling and his brother swore that forty men were hired to intercept the king, but that a fire at Newmarket, which had hastened Charles’s return, had defeated their plans. Goodenough, an ex-sheriff, had told them that the Duke of Monmouth and other great men were to raise 4000 soldiers and £20,000. The brothers also swore that Goodenough had told them that Lord Russell had joined in the design of killing the king and the duke. Lord Russell acted with great composure. He would not fly, refused to let his friends surrender themselves to share his fortunes, and told an acquaintance that “he was very sensible he should fall a sacrifice.”[702] When he appeared at the council, the king himself said that “nobody suspected Lord Russell of any design against his own person, but that he had good evidence of his being in designs against his government.” The prisoner denied all knowledge of the intended insurrection, or of the attempt to surprise the guards.