The earl of Northumberland, being too great for prosecution, was only once examined before the lords. The earl of Portland and lord Conway, persisting to deny the charge, and no testimony, but Waller's, yet appearing against them, were, after a long imprisonment, admitted to bail. Hassel, the king's messenger, who carried the letters to Oxford, died the night before his trial. Hampden escaped death, perhaps, by the interest of his family; but was kept in prison to the end of his life. They, whose names were inserted in the commission of array, were not capitally punished, as it could not be proved that they had consented to their own nomination; but they were considered as malignants, and their estates were seized.
"Waller, though confessedly," says Clarendon, "the most guilty, with incredible dissimulation, affected such a remorse of conscience, that his trial was put off, out of christian compassion, till he might recover his understanding." What use he made of this interval, with what liberality and success he distributed flattery and money, and how, when he was brought, July 4, before the house, he confessed and lamented, and submitted and implored, may be read in the History of the Rebellion, (b. vii.) The speech, to which Clarendon ascribes the preservation of his "dear-bought life," is inserted in his works. The great historian, however, seems to have been mistaken in relating that "he prevailed" in the principal part of his supplication, "not to be tried by a council of war;" for, according to Whitlock, he was, by expulsion from the house, abandoned to the tribunal which he so much dreaded, and, being tried and condemned, was reprieved by Essex; but, after a year's imprisonment, in which time resentment grew less acrimonious, paying a fine of ten thousand pounds, he was permitted to "recollect himself in another country."
Of his behaviour in this part of his life, it is not necessary to direct the reader's opinion. "Let us not," says his last ingenious biographer[85], "condemn him with untempered severity, because he was not a prodigy which the world hath seldom seen, because his character included not the poet, the orator, and the hero."
For the place of his exile he chose France, and stayed some time at Roan, where his daughter Margaret was born, who was afterwards his favourite, and his amanuensis. He then removed to Paris, where he lived with great splendour and hospitality; and, from time to time, amused himself with poetry, in which he sometimes speaks of the rebels, and their usurpation, in the natural language of an honest man.