State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 2 (of 2) — John Shaqi
State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 2 (of 2)
History
State Trials, Political and Social. Volume 2 (of 2)
Trials -- Great Britain
[24] Burnet had at this time retired into private life, having lost the
Court favour which he had gained at an earlier period. He had been an
intimate friend of Stafford, and was living on terms of the closest
intimacy with Essex and Russell at the time of their arrest. After
Russell's execution he left the country, and eventually found his way to
the Hague just before the Revolution, where he performed services for
William and Mary requiring the utmost degree of confidence. He landed at
Torbay with William, soon became Bishop of Salisbury, and until the end
of William's life remained one of his most trusted councillors. He
retained a position of great influence under Anne, and died in 1715. In
relation to his evidence in this case, it is interesting to read in his
history that Russell was privy to a plot for promoting a rebellion in
the country and for bringing in the Scotch. He says further: 'Lord
Russell desired that his counsel might be heard to this point of seizing
the guards; but that was denied unless he would confess the fact, and he
would not do that, because as the witnesses had sworn it, it was false.
He once intended to have related the whole fact just as it was; but his
counsel advised him against it'; in fact Russell admitted that he knew
of a traitorous plot, and did not reveal it. 'He was a man of so much
candour that he spoke little as to the fact; for since he was advised
not to tell the whole truth, he could not speak against that which he
knew to be true, though in some particulars it had been carried beyond
the truth.' See too _post_, p. 55.
[25] John Tillotson (1630-1694) was the son of a weaver of Sowerby. He
entered Clare Hall in 1647, and became a a fellow of the same college in
1651. He received an early bias against Puritanism from Chillingworth's
_Religion of Protestants_, and his intercourse with Cudworth and others
at Cambridge. He became tutor to the son of Prideaux, Cromwell's
Attorney-General in 1656; he was present at the Savoy Conference in
1661, and remained identified with the Puritans till the passing of the
Act of Uniformity in 1662; afterwards he became curate of Cheshunt in
Hertfordshire and rector of Keddington in Suffolk. In 1664 he was known
as a celebrated preacher, and was appointed preacher in Lincoln's Inn.
In 1678 and 1680 he preached sermons to the House of Commons and the
King respectively, exhorting the former to legislation against Popery,
and pointing out to the latter that whilst Catholics should be
tolerated, they should not be allowed to proselytise. He attended
Russell on the scaffold, and with Burnet was summoned before the Council
on a suspicion of having helped to compose Russell's published speech.
He acquired great influence after the Revolution; and having exercised
the archiepiscopal jurisdiction of the province of Canterbury during
Sancroft's suspension, became himself archbishop in 1691.
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