Note 241 — Chapter XV · ON THE REIGN OF WILLIAM III. (continued 2)

"Would you have trials secured?" says the author of the "Jacobite Principles Vindicated" (Somers Tracts, 10, 526). "It is the interest of all parties care should be taken about them, or all parties will suffer in their turns. Plunket, and Sidney, and Ashton were doubtless all murdered though they were never so guilty of the crimes wherewith they were charged; the one tried twice, the other found guilty upon one evidence, and the last upon nothing but presumptive proof." Even the prostitute lawyer, Sir Bartholomew Shower, had the assurance to complain of uncertainty in the law of treason. Id. 572. And Roger North, in his Examen, p. 411, labours hard to show that the evidence in Ashton's case was slighter than in Sidney's.