No

Colonel Sydney's Overthrow.

"Thrice happy they who with clean hands and heart
Act in this Tragedy the Victim's part;

Who in White Robes follow their Chief the Lamb,
In all his thorny paths of death and shame :
Who, dying, feel no other grief and pain,
But for the guilt of those by whom they're slain,
Who march the safest and the shortest way
To blissful Canaan through this purple sea."

-Advice to the Carver. 1680. [Cf. p. 424.

special tribute, worthy of the occasion, was laid by any Poet as an offering on the tomb of Algernon Sydney; for whom we once again claim as appropriate the words spoken by Shakespeare's Mark Antony, over the dead body of the less-deserving Brutus:

This was the noblest Roman of them all!

All the Conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar:
He only, in a general honest thought,

And common good to all, made one of them.
According to his Virtue let us use him
With all respect, and rites of burial.

Petty malignity attempted to dishonour the corpse and calumniate the name of the undaunted Republican, best of that family which gave so many heroes to the service of their country; but in our hearts we still cherish remembrance of him, and hold him enshrined. Sectarian partizans could rise no higher in enthusiasm than the following Poem against Popery, a declamatory and lame attempt at An Epitaph.

Algernon Sydney fills this Tomb;

An Atheist, by declaiming Rome;

A Rebel bold, by striving still
To keep the Laws above the Will,
And hind'ring those wou'd pull them down,
To leave no limits to a Crown:

Crimes damn'd by Church and Government.
Oh! whither must his Soul be sent ?

Of Heaven it must needs despair,
If that the Pope be Turnkey there;
And Hell can ne'er it entertain,
For there is all Tyrannick Reign;
And Purgatory's such a Pretence,
As ne'er deceiv'd a Man of Sense.

Where goes it then? Where 't ought to go:
Where Pope and Devil have nought to do!

[scilicet, deemed.

424

"And drank delight of Battle with my peers."

We needed the intervening distance of time and change before we could see the heroic proportions of Algernon Sydney. His figure rises like an Alpine height, far above the other men of his time. He belonged indeed to an older race, such as had waged war, like Titans, remorselessly and wrongly, on the aggressive side; but still, while in rebellion, with some largeness of purpose, opposing a rightful cause. They had crossed swords with their peers; they had met triumph or defeat, as either the fortune of war or the irony of fate determined; but nearly all of them, whether friend or foe, had perished before Algernon Sydney laid down his grey head on the block. Defamed and slain as a traitor, he had nevertheless lived stainlessly through memorable years that can never leave us uninfluenced by their dread warning. Little matter was it to him that baser passions of the hour swayed the servile hirelings who addressed the rabble, to which themselves belonged; who wrote such songs of exultation at his death as these which we now reproduce from their dark corners, songs of rejoicing at his downfall. The sole value of such libellous declamation is in showing the vileness of the mob, as result of indulgence in Revolutionary rancour.

Of all who have eyes to see the grand simplicity of Algernon Sydney's nature, no one at this later date can possibly believe him to have been justly slain; for he was incapable of joining in an Assassination Plot, although willing to imperil life in a warlike struggle for Liberty. We feel this now, two centuries later, but others should have seen it, while he stood pleading at the bar.

The crowning guilt of this execrable murder remains with the traitor and renegade, Lord Howard of Escrick, by whose evidence alone a condemnation could be secured. But the Court and Judges share the weight of blame. No less truly than in the case of William Viscount Stafford (see Advice to the Carver), must it be said of Algernon Sydney's trial, with its perversion of Justice :Lawyers to plead, with Witnesses to swear, People to gaze, Ladies to see and hear!— But this Assembly shall hereafter know God and his Angels were spectators too. With awful pomp here Justice sits enthron'd, The Sword she bare, the Ballance was post-pon'd. Ah, Carver, had thy steel the force to raze From Fate's eternal Book these Leaves of Brass! This dismal scene of Horrour we'd expunge, Which did in guilt of blood a nation plunge: For who false Oaths so easily believe, Resemble those who stolen Goods receive; And through such light belief, if blood be spilt, No Forms of Justice can wipe off the guilt. What cause in this corrupted age is tried That ever wants an Oath on either side? Judges themselves their way can hardly see, Through the thick mists of growing Perjury.

["Their crime r."

"His Soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart." 425

The Roxburghe-Ballad here ensuing is chiefly interesting for its two
woodcuts; one representing the Trial, and the other showing the
Execution: both superior to the generality of such contemporary
pictures. The verses are poor, and false. Algernon Sydney was too
self-sustained to descend to any special pleading on the Scaffold.
Undaunted by death itself, he felt no weak blush of shame at the
indignities that could be heaped on him by minions of the law,
whether called Judge or Hangman. Even his political foes were
moved to admiration of his serene dignity, and on his associates
blame must rest for their inability to praise the stern Republican.
How Roman-like did our old Rebel dye,
With his last breath profaning Majesty!
And braving Heaven itself, he would not stay
(Lest 'twere a piece of cowardice) to pray.
And cannot all this gallantry engage
Some Zealot, spurr'd up to poetick rage?

But not a word!-there 's not one Ballad made.
Curtis, I see, will have but slender trade;

For Rhymers now begin to Renegade :
That there's not one, of all the Canting Fry,
Can write a failing Brother's Elegy.

[See p. 436.

The truth is that, among his own party, he was never valued as he deserved to be. His uprightness rebuked their time-serving selfishness, their corrupt worldliness, their sanctimonious hypocrisy. He would neither cringe nor bluster; he would neither cant like Slingsby Bethel, Patience Ward, and Cornish, nor utter profane jests with Howard of Escrick. His dreams and theories were often above their understanding, and although a man of robust intellect, of unfailing energy, he was voted "impracticable" in their affairs. He was no declaimer against sensuality; while others, who talked more loudly, had indulged in the grossest vices. Of old he had retained his personal opinions, and lived outside of the intrigues or violence of Oliver Cromwell's faction and coterie; even so, in later time, when he survived as a Republican of the earlier race, he moved among the disaffected as one set apart, not entrusted with any large share in their darker designs. What he affirmed in his public defence is true of his whole existence : that thinks that I would kill the King that knows me. I am not a man to have such a design: perhaps I may say I have saved his life once." England should hold him in her heart, secure against slander, uplifted from neglect. He needed no funeral oration; needed no public prayers or obsequies. He faced Eternity without a tremor, and died as he had lived, incapable of meanness or flattery: even to the mob around him, or to the busy "divines" awaiting a farewell speech. The headsman asked him, "Are you ready, Sir? Will you rise again?" Like notes of doom came the reply of Sydney: "Not till the general resurrection. Strike on!"

"There is no man

[Roxburghe Collection, IV. 12.]

Collonel Sidney's Overthrow; or,

An account of his Execution upon Tower-Hill, on Friday the 7th of December, 1683, who was Condemned for High-Treason against his Sacred Majesty for endeavouring the Subversion of the Government, &c.

TO THE TUNE OF, Now, now the Fight's done. [See pp. 354, 359.]

Ood People, adieu! and fair England farewel,

And you that survive me, pray never Rebell;
Be true to your Prince, who 's a Monarch indeed,
And doth not desire that a subject should bleed :

Be Loyal and true, that your lives you may save,
And bring not gray hairs with shame to the Grave.

6

Colonel Sydney's Overthrow.

Take warning by me, that am now on the brink
Of Death, and my Spirits are ready to sink;
But that which most troubles me, now I must dye,
Is that I was guilty of Disloyalty:

To your Prince then be Loyal, your lives seek to save,
And bring not gray hairs with shame to the Grave.
Poor I, that have flourish'd in credit and fame,
Now finish my days with dishonour and shame;
The name of a Sidney long famous hath been,
But is somewhat Eclips'd by my weakness agen.

Then you that desire to live splendid and brave,
Bring not your gray hairs with grief to the Grave.

Could I but redeem what is past and is gone,
I would find other thoughts to be thinking upon;

Yea, and strive to reverse what will now prove my doom,
My happiness blast, and my Glory consume.

Then you that desire your lives for to save,

427

12

18

Bring not your gray hairs with grief to the Grave.

24

But in vain I lament, and my Sentence is past,

And now I am ready to breath[e] out my last :

Be kind, blessed Saviour, let me happy be,

That I may live with thee to Eternity:

O that I could now be so happy to save

Poor Sidney's gray hairs with shame from the Grave.

30

'T was the Pollitick Pates, that once pleaded for States, That brought me to this, and my Glory abates;

But now I do find it is all but in vain

My case to lament, or of sorrow complain:

All you that desire your lives for to save,

Be true, and with Glory you 'l go to the Grave.

Ther[e]'s some that before me already have gone,
That many had mighty opinions on;
But yet when they looked pale death in the face,
Methoughts I was moved to pity their case.

[Stafford, etc. or Russell.

But now the same fate I must certainly have,
And bring [my gray hairs with grief to the Grave].

God prosper and keep our most Soveraign King,
And all that from his Royal Loins ever spring.
O let him in Glory still sit on his Throne,
Whose mercy's admir'd by every one:

But you that endeavour your lives for to save,
Be true to your King, never matter the Grave.

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