insurrection. Those letters had been furnished by Monk himself, with a base malice of which a pickpocket would be ashamed. The parliament held that they proved high treason, and Argyll was condemned to death, and beheaded before the sentence could be confirmed by the king (May 27, 1661).

2

As Baillie wrote: "The man was very wise, and questionless the greatest subject the king had, sometime much known and beloved in all the three kingdoms, it was not safe he should live."

It was easy to guess that the same policy which brought Argyll to the maiden, would seek the death of Vane; only it was not so easy to get him tried and condemned, as certain legal formalities had still to be observed in England.

Charles had promised, in the Declaration of Breda, that no one should be excluded from the Act of Indemnity save those who had taken part in the trial or execution of his father, of which Vane had never approved. Relying upon this engagement, Vane had come from Belleau to Hampstead where, early in July 1660, he was arrested and sent to the Tower. The House of Lords had advised the exclusion of Sir Henry Vane at the advice of Clarendon who had drawn up the said Declaration. This was the subject of a conference between the two Houses. Rather than endanger the Indemnity Act, the Commons agreed to except Vane and Lambert on condition that the Lords and Commons should petition the king that, if they should be attainted,

1 The letters are printed in the Appendix of Willcock's Life of the Marquess of Argyll, Edinburgh, 1903.

2 Letters and Journals, let. 200, vol. ii., p. 452.

IMPRISONED IN SCILLY

453

their lives should be spared, and his majesty formally granted the desire of the Houses in the said petition.

What made Vane hateful to the triumphant faction was not his guilt, but his innocence, the noble integrity of his life, the unwavering consistency and rectitude with which he had held his course, the great abilities which had marked him as the chief of the republican party, the only one whom the royalists had now any reason to fear. Clarendon

and the other advisers of the court did not find the time opportune for bringing the illustrious prisoner to trial; he was kept in confinement till, under the subservient and vindictive parliament of 1661, it was thought practicable to arrange for a judicial murder in defiance of the promises of King, Lords, and Commons. There is extant a petition from Lady Vane for renewal of permission to visit her husband in the Tower, and that he should be allowed to take the air, "A great indisposition growing upon him.” On October 21, about fifteen months after his arrest, there was a warrant to take him to Scilly. In a castle in these remote islands he was confined for five months. Means of access to the prisoner were jealously guarded. During these two years the rental of his estates was arrested, his family suffered from want, his debts amounting to £10,000 were unpaid, and he had not wherewithal to maintain himself in prison. He beguiled these melancholy days by composing

1 In the Fifth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, p. 155, we find the following passage: "The king hath given order to Sir Ed. Turner to acquaint the House of Commons that by that clause in his speech, 'If there be any other of such dangerous principles that the safety of the nation cannot consist with their liberty,' that he meant Hesilrige, Vane, Lambert, and Axtell."

meditations on grave subjects. Nothing is more impressive than these weighty reflexions of the victims of oppression, like Eliot and Vane, written in the solemn moments of separation from the world, in which a powerful mind asserts its freedom and soars beyond the walls of the prison upheld by the tyrant and guarded by the slave. In the appendix we give extracts of some of these compositions which were printed by his biographer, George Sikes. The thoughts of this great man were too high to let him dwell upon the hardships and privations of his prison. In the following letter he addresses his lady in a vein of noble consolation :

"Letter of Sir Henry Vane to his Lady from the "Isle of Scylly.

"MY DEAR HEART,-The wind, yet continuing contrary, makes me desirous to be as much in converse with thee (having this opportunity) as the providence of God will permit; hoping these will come safe to your hand. It is no small satisfaction to me, in these sharp tryals, to experience the truth of those Christian principles which God of His grace hath afforded you and me, in our measures, the knowledge, and emboldened us to make the profession of. For surely by this fiery trial which is from God appointed to try us, no strange or unusual dispensation of God hath happened to us, differing from that which all His servants and prophets, from the beginning of the world to this day, have found also to be their lot. Nor is it other than the condition (as I may say) and law that all those must come under and submit unto that will approve themselves Christ's disciples indeed.